Jessy Ohl- Cultivating Tension Between Academia and Corporate World

Alongside the ever present query "So what do you actually study?” communication students/scholars are also dogged with justifying what their education has to offer the “real world.” The growing cultural and intellectual divide between academia and the private sector is disturbing on many levels. Not only do such divisions fail to recognize the interconnectivity between the university and workplace, but they also stunt opportunities for progress.

Of all the sub-disciplines of communication, I believe organizational communication may be best positioned to answer concerns of real world legitimacy. Organizational scholars seem to interact with, and are respected by, corporate institutions at a much greater rate than those studying rhetoric or interpersonal. Although the usefulness of organizational communication has typically been associated with dogmatic insistences on increased efficiency (conduit metaphor), recent pluralistic views of organization theory have shown their great potential to help make cooperation more clear, fulfilling, and influential. While the burden of uniting theory and industry should not lie solely on the shoulders of organizational communication scholars, I fully agree with Mumby and Stohl that organizational researchers/educators should focus effort into “cultivating” the tension “between the university and the corporate world” (57). In many ways, those applying organizational communication theory/research through consulting act as ambassadors for a discipline not commonly understood by those outside of the university setting.

However, I can not help but notice how contentious this dynamic between researcher and practitioner can be. Consultants are often considered ‘sell-outs’ who are not dedicated to scholarship. Conversely, those who work exclusively on research can be viewed as detached and naïve. What are you purposes for taking this class and studying organizational communication? Do you wish to be primarily dedicated to the advancement of theory/scholarship, or do you wish to leave academia to apply the methods you have learned to organizations? What role (if any) do you see for organizational communication in bridging the gap between the worlds of academia and enterprise?