Models of Development: Business Schools and Business Communication

Abstract

Colleges of business develop by following one of two models. The first model, the vertical, involves functional specialization and the scientific examination of a specific discipline. The second model, the horizontal, stresses breadth rather than depth. This latter model examines what is often called the "softer" side of managenment—leadership, communication, entrepreneurship, and strategy. Awareness of these two models is important to all business communication faculty, especially to those housed in business schools. The model a school adopts can affect how the faculty member teaches the business communications course and will strongly influence the kind of research that faculty in business schools have to do to receive promotion and tenure.

Disciplinary Practice(s) in Business Communication, 1985 to 2004

“…This binary is similar to the one Ron Dulek (1993) set up in his description of business schools that have horizontal focuses and those that have vertical focuses.…”

Communicating Across the Curriculum in an Undergraduate Business Program: Management 100—Leadership and Communication in Groups

“…The early 1990s brought about a nationwide revision of curriculum in business schools across the country (American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business, 1991Business, , 1992Dulek, 1993;K. C. Green, 1992; "MBA: Is the Traditional," 1992; Neelankavil, 1994;Wardrope, 2002).…”

Research on Collaboration, Business Communication, and Technology: Reflections on an Interdisciplinary Academic Collaboration

“…And each field has periodic crises of faith in which members wonder if the field will ever achieve disciplinary status. (See Dulek, 1993, Graham & Thralls, 1998, Rentz, 1993, and Shaw, 1993, on business communication and Banville & Landry, 1989, Baskerville & Myers, 2002, and Benbasat & Weber, 1996, on information systems.) It is not our intention in this article to engage these concerns, but it is important to understand that interdisciplinary conflicts can arise to some extent even in collaborations among the members of the same field.…”

“…Furthermore, greater value was attributed to "pure research" in one of the better established disciplines such as economics, finance, or marketing than to what the institution considered to be marginal disciplines such as both business communication and IS. (See Graham & Thralls, 1998, Dulek, 1993, and Rentz, 1993, on the struggles of business communication to gain disciplinary status and Banville &Landry, 1989, andZmud, 2003, on this issue as it pertains to IS.) In fact, the discursive power of the disciplines of authority-economics, finance, marketing-diminished the perceived value of knowledge resulting from collaborative work between business communication and IS experts.…”