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The Shape of Our Field: Business Communication as a Hybrid Discipline

The College of William and Mary

The field of business communication suffers from a lack of cogency as a discipline. The renewed search for definitions of the field, the wrangling for primacy in its intellectual traditions, and the paucity of robust research reflect continuing confusion over the na ture of our field. The author argues that business communication is a hybrid discipline. Like most hybrids, business communication represents a melding of interests and char acteristics in a new form. The hybrid conception of the field allows us to make the most of our ranging intellectual traditions and to derive research and teaching purposes that extend beyond the limits of a narrow academic legitimacy. A careful look at these intel lectual traditions reveals how we may reconceptualize our sense of a discipline without arguing about whether, for instance, skills or knowledge represents the more respectable focus of our efforts or whether disciplinary categories such as organizational com munication or management communication provide the better umbrella for our work.

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