Marlina Davidson - Representation of the Field

After reading Putnam, Phillips, and Chapman’s (1996) examination of seven metaphor clusters of communication and organization I began to wonder where my research interests fit into these metaphors. For each metaphor, the authors give research areas that fit into these metaphor clusters. My question for you is this, where do you think your research interests lie, what metaphor fits what you’re studying or have studied. Remember that the authors say, “researchers can examine any organizational topic from one of these clusters” (p. 394).

Taylor, Flanagin, Cheney, and Seibold’s (2001) article focuses on the challenges addressed by organizational communication researchers. Towards the beginning of this article Taylor et al. (2001) make the statement that “we have the opportunity to take advantage of our ‘loose coupling’s a discipline, rather than rush toward constraining attempts at capturing organizational communication” (p. 103). This statement was made in regard to the development of organizational communication and the discipline’s conceptual roots. My question is this, do we need to worry about how we define ourselves and on what the disciplinary boundaries are? What will we gain by really defining our discipline and what we will gain by leaving questions as to what our discipline encompasses?