research on collaboration, business communication and technology

10.1177/0021943604271958JOURNAL OF BUSINESS COMMUNICATIONForman, Markus / COLLABORATION, COMMUNICATION, TECHNOLOGY

RESEARCH ON COLLABORATION,BUSINESS COMMUNICATION,

AND TECHNOLOGY:

Reflections on an InterdisciplinaryAcademic Collaboration

Janis FormanUniversity of California, Los Angeles

M. Lynne MarkusBentley College

Interdisciplinary research is often recommended and occasionally studied, but little has been writtenabout the personal, practical, and methodological issues involved in doing it. In this article, the authorsdescribe one particular research collaboration between a business communication scholar and an infor-mation systems researcher. They present their observations about the political pitfalls and personal ben-efits of their interdisciplinary collaboration. As they attempt to generalize from their experience, theauthors conclude that politics in the broadest sense of the term is the most critical challenge to theconduct of interdisciplinary research.

Keywords: collaboration; interdisciplinary; computer-supported writing; management communica-tion; information systems

Following publication of the Forum in the January 2004 issue of the Journal ofBusiness Communication (JBC), the topic of collaborative writing again comes tothe pages of JBC. Although enough research has been done on the topic to warrant areview (Forman, 2004; Thompson, 2001), important areas of collaborative writingresearch remain relatively underexplored. One such area is interdisciplinary aca-demic collaborations on the topic of collaborative writing.

Janis Forman (Ph.D., Rutgers University, 1980) is director of management communication and anadjunct full professor of management in the UCLA Anderson School of Management at the University ofCalifornia, Los Angeles. M. Lynne Markus (Ph.D., Case Western Reserve University, 1979) is trusteeprofessor of management in the Management Department at Bentley College. The authors would like tothank the following people for their assistance with this article: Marjorie Horton (The Center forMachine Intelligence), Allen S. Lee (Virginia Commonwealth University School of Business), WandaOrlikowski (MIT Sloan School of Management), Priscilla Rogers (The University of Michigan School ofBusiness Adminstration), Barbara Shwom (Northwestern Universitys writing programs), and JoAnneYates (MIT Sloan School of Management). Correspondence concerning this article should be addressedto Dr. Janis Forman, 110 Westwood Plaza, Suite 420, Box 951481, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1481;e-mail:[email protected] of Business Communication, Volume 42, Number 1, January 2005 78-102DOI: 10.1177/0021943604271958 2005 by the Association for Business Communication

In academia, interdisciplinary research is often recommended, both as a generalvalue and as an approach to understanding particular research questions, but littlehas been written about the personal, practical, or methodological issues it entails(Barton, 2001; Lowry, Curtis, & Lowry, 2004; OConnor, Rice, Peters, & Veryzer,2003). Interdisciplinary collaborations bring an extra element of difficulty to analready challenging task. As Larry Smeltzer (1994) notes in commenting on KittyLockers (1994) thoughts about interdisciplinary research:

She states that business communication is interdisciplinary; however, I am notsure that many of us are interdisciplinary. We simply bring our own disciplinarytraining to the forum and tend to ignore valuable contributions made by thoseusing a different perspective. (Smeltzer, 1994, p. 158)

Similarly, in the field of organizational behavior, OConnor et al. (2003) pointout that researchers run the risk of interpreting . . . data through their ownthought worlds. . . . [T]hought worlds exist in academia . . . and work againstresearchers achievement of a thorough understanding of complex phenomena(p. 354).

Investigations of computer-supported collaborative writing qualify as a com-plex phenomenon to which the divergent academic disciplines of business com-munication and information systems can usefully be brought to bear. From 1985through 1987, we undertook an interdisciplinary collaborative research project onthat topic, hoping to learn from the convergence of our respective fields. In 1993afew years after the study was completedwe wrote up our observations on our col-laboration. For various reasons, these observations were never published, but therecent JBC Forum on collaborative writing recalls our project to mind. Reflectingon those observations in 2004, we believe that they remain current todayand addto the discussions on collaborative writing and interdisciplinary research.

DISCIPLINES AND INTERDISCIPLINARITY: BUSINESS

COMMUNICATION AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS

The core and boundaries of the academic fields of business communication andinformation systems are hotly contested. (See, for example, Blyler, 1995, Forman,1998, and Smeltzer, 1993, on business communication, and Benbasat & Zmud,2003, and Briggs, Nunamaker, & Sprague, 1999/2000, on information systems.)Each field issues periodic calls for diversity and openness to other points of view.And each field has periodic crises of faith in which members wonder if the field willever 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 sys-tems.) It is not our intention in this article to engage these concerns, but it is impor-tant to understand that interdisciplinary conflicts can arise to some extent even in

Forman, Markus / COLLABORATION, COMMUNICATION, TECHNOLOGY 79

collaborations among the members of the same field. Indeed, across two fields theclash of thought worlds can be much greater, even when they share the commondenominator of business.

By the discipline of business communication, we include those research ques-tions, theoretical concerns, and methodological practices that are found in articlespublished by the major journals, namely, Business Communication Quarterly, theJournal of Business Communication, the Journal of Business and Technical Com-munication, Management Communication Quarterly, and Technical Communica-tion Quarterly. By the early 1990s, some of the leading scholars in business com-munication strongly advocated opening research in the discipline to outsideinfluences. This rhetoric of interdisciplinarityexpertspublic statements aboutthe need to include other disciplines in the study of business communication, andpublic acknowledgment of the goodness of inclusivenesstook center stage inLarry Smeltzer and James Suchans introduction to the 1991 special issue of JBCon theory in the discipline: Business communication research continues to repre-sent a pastiche of theoretical perspectives borrowed from organizational behavior,speech communication, rhetoric, composition, organizational communication,marketing, international business, and a number of other areas (p. 181).

Other scholars followed suit, especially in the 1993 special issue of JBC on busi-ness communication as a discipline. (See, in particular, Gary Shaw, 1993, on busi-ness communication as a hybrid discipline based upon the fields of communica-tion, management, and rhetoric.) Interest in the topic deepened in the late 1990s andthe first decade of the new century. For example, Margaret Baker Graham andCharlotte Thralls (1998) discussed the interdisciplinary dimensions of the field as acentral concern in the formation of the discipline, as did Priscilla Rogers (2001) inher Outstanding Researcher Award lecture given at the 2000 Association for Busi-ness Communication Conference and those who commented on her presentation ina later issue of JBC. (See Bargiela-Chiappini & Nickerson, 2001; Ryan, 2001a,2001b; Wardrope, 2001, for the commentary.)

Information systems (IS) started as an area of interest at the intersection ofcomputer science, management science, and organizational science (Culnan &Swanson, 1986). Over the years, the field has also drawn in other perspectives,notably psychology, economics, and strategy. Among the leading journals in thefield today are Management Information Systems Quarterly, Information SystemsResearch, Journal of the Association for Information Systems, and Journal of Man-agement Information Systems. As technology developed, emerging challengeslinked to the advances in technology often lead to calls for the importation of yetmore perspectives. For example, electronic commerce has led many IS researchersto explore the marketing and supply chain literatures. Just as frequently, fears offragmentation stimulate calls for stronger boundaries and a more stable core(Banville & Landry, 1989; Benbasat & Zmud, 2003).

Researchers who hope to bridge two fields as different as business communica-tion and information systems face a double challenge. Not only must they reconcile

80 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS COMMUNICATION

the conflicting voices within one community of scholars, but they must also find away to understand the conflicts in another. How can a researcher who has alreadystudied the constituent disciplines of business communicationcomposition, rhet-oric, organizational communication, among othersalso achieve competence inthe relevant constituent disciplines of information systemscomputer science,operations research, management science, and organizational behavior, amongothersor vice versa? Is the need to bring in still other disciplines not simply toomuch to ask of specialists in interdisciplinary fields who enter a new researchdomain?

Clearly, interdisciplinary academic collaborations are one way to bring the per-spectives of different disciplines to bear on complex, multifaceted research topics.But despite considerable research on academic collaboration and communication(see, for instance, Galegher, Kraut, & Egido, 1990; Latour & Woolgar, 1979;OConnor et al., 2003), the rhetoric encouraging interdisciplinary research(Barton, 2001) has far outstripped the study of such undertakings. Little has beenwritten about academic research that crosses disciplinary lines. What little there issuggests that the challenges facing interdisciplinary research teams are great.OConnor et al. (2003) note that academic environments have pressures that dis-courage and foil interdisciplinary collaborations. For example, junior faculty pur-suing tenure are expected to publish a certain number of articles in the high-rankingjournals of their specific field. Interdisciplinary collaboration appears to many to bea highly risky endeavor because the possibility of publication in the high-rankingjournals of ones home discipline may be more difficult for studies that cut acrossdisciplines than for those that are clearly linked to the home discipline. Should ajunior faculty member manage to achieve a sufficient number of publications inhigh-ranking journals, he or she may face an additional hurdle in consideringcollaborative interdisciplinary research:

There is no explicit discussion offered regarding the appropriate degrees to whichresearchers acting as a team should influence one anothers thinking, when in theprocess such interaction should take place . . . , or what the best mechanisms are atdifferent points in the process for engaging in such interaction. (OConnor et al.,2003, pp. 353-354)

At the end of the road, the potential rewardswith an emphasis on poten-tialinclude a richer understanding of complex phenomena but at the cost oftime spent learning to work collaboratively across disciplinary boundaries.

One way to close the gap between the rhetoric and the practice of interdisciplin-ary academic collaborations is through stories. These stories, we argue, can givesubstance to the rhetoric of interdisciplinary collaboration while suggesting prob-lems in its theory and practice. (In his Outstanding Researcher Award lecture givenat the 2003 Association for Business Communication Conference, Jim Suchan,2004, urged researchers and practitioners to begin telling their stories as anapproach to developing knowledge in the discipline.) In this article, we offer our


own story of interdisciplinary collaboration for a multiyear research study of infor-mation technology and collaborative writing involving the collaboration of abusiness communication specialist and a researcher in information systems.

One way to close the gap between therhetoric and the practice of interdisci-plinary academic collaborations isthrough stories. These stories, weargue, can give substance to the rheto-ric of interdisciplinary collaborationwhile suggesting problems in its theoryand practice.

We begin with a narrative of our collaboration, written (except for minor edit-ing) in 1993, a few years after our joint study, conducted between 1985 and 1987,was concluded. This narrative describes the study, how we worked together, thewritten products of the study, and our contemporaneous observations about the fac-tors that spawned and shaped our collaboration and our assessment of its benefits.Then we revisit this story from the perspective of 2004, considering the issues thatarise in interdisciplinary collaboration more generallyespecially the politics ofthe academyand conclude with suggestions for additional research.

OUR INTERDISCIPLINARY COLLABORATION THEN . . .

Our collaboration involved a 2-year study of information technology use in col-laborative writing. In the first year of the study (1985-1986), we closely observedteams of master of business administration (MBA) students while they conducted6-month consulting projects that culminated in strategic reports for real client orga-nizations. As a result of our observations, we identified many problems in collabo-ration attributable to poor group dynamics, writing problems, and lack of appropri-ate information technologies. In the 2nd year of the study (1986-1987), we selecteda package of information technologies that addressed, we believed, many of thetechnology needs identified during our initial investigation. We solicited fourteams of volunteers, had them trained in the use of information technology, andobserved how they collaborated in their consulting and writing tasks and how theyused technology while doing so. (See Figure 1 for details of the project rationale,the groups studied, the information technology used, and the research procedures.)



Project Rationale

This project focuses on the uses of computer-mediated group writing in the managerial problem-solving, decision-making, and communication tasks that take place in the Field Study process. Com-puter-mediated group writing includes electronic messaging, computer conferencing, and group writingsoftware. Since Field Study resembles the small group project activity that many managers perform,Field Study research provides an ideal testbed for exploring ways the new information technology cancontribute to overall project success.

Dr. Forman will focus upon how computer-mediated technology influences the creation of two group-written documents for Field Study, namely the communications component and the final report.Professor Markus will look at 1) the different material constraints and enablements of traditional ver-sus computer-mediated group writing and 2) the influence of computer-mediated technology on the timeuse and interaction patterns of Field Study teams.

The thesis of this study is that computer-mediated technology will enhance group problem-solving,decision-making, and communication tasks, but will require new users of the technology to master a setof new skills to use it effectively. (from a joint-authored memo requesting funding for the study, October10, 1985)The Groups and Their Task

As a requirement for their master of business administration (MBA) degree, 2nd-year students atUCLA must complete a field study. The field study is a strategic consultation for a real client; it culmi-nates in an oral and a written report (approximately 25 pages) to the management of the client company.The report describes a strategic problem or opportunity facing the company, an analysis of it, and recom-mendations for client company management. In addition to this final report, several intermediate writtenproducts are required of the field study teams. The field study is conducted over two quarters (6 months)in teams of three to five students, during which time students take other courses, conduct job searches,and may engage in part-time employment. Teams are supervised by two faculty advisors; a single grade,common to all members of the team, is given for both quarters work.

The Information Technology

Each participant in our study was provided an information technology package with four key elements:(a) the loan of an IBM personal computer (PC) Convertible with a portable dot-matrix draft printer and anexternal modem, (b) a complimentary copy of Framework II, an integrated word processing, spread-sheet, database, graphics, and terminal emulation package, (c) access to an electronic communicationpackage called TEAMate with three key features: electronic messaging, electronic filing/bulletin board,and electronic file transfer, and (d) extensive initial training and ongoing support. (TEAMate predatedLotus NOTESa widely used software package with functions similar to those of TEAMate.) Access tothe telecommunications package was limited to the team members, their faculty advisors, and the studyresearch staff.

Research Procedures

Four field study teams (three teams of four students, one team of three students) and their faculty advi-sors volunteered to participate in the study during the fall and winter quarters of the 1986-1987 academicyear. In return for the loan of the equipment and training in its use, participants granted permission forresearchers to observe the teams at work; to record or collect oral, written, and computer communi-cations; and to interview them individually 4 times over the course of the study. At the midpoint of theproject, we conducted taped group interviews evaluating each teams interpersonal process duringthe creation of an early deliverable, a five-page proposal. Participants were not required to use the study-supplied technology except to demonstrate competence in its use. Our contract with participants did notenable us to coerce them to use the technology, and we had limited reward power over them.

Figure 1. Our Collaborative Research Project

Method of Working Together

Unlike some other interdisciplinary projects, for this one we did not work dia-lectically to create a set of agreed-upon, shared research questions that synthesizedour disciplinary perspectives. Instead, we pursued separate research agendaswithin the context of our shared data collection and analysis. We collaborated fullyin many aspects of the project: the initial project proposal, data collection, projectadministration, and final data analysis. Naturally, some division of labor occurredfor reasons both of efficiencyit made sense to split up the data-gathering tasksand of expertiseit made more sense for Janis than Lynne to evaluate the teamswriting processes and written products and for Lynne rather than Janis to evaluatethe technology and design of the technology training.

To some extent, the data collection reflected a compromise rather than a synthe-sis of interests. Janis required assembly of all intermediate drafts whereas Lynneinsisted on computer monitoring of communication behavior. Nonetheless, wejointly agreed about the best procedures for collecting, coding, and analyzing alldataagreements that involved many hours of meeting and discussion. Forinstance, we strove for, and achieved, consensus about a ranking of the teams interms of writing quality, interpersonal effectiveness, and use of technology.

Written Research Products

We departed from our pattern of collaboration only in the publication of ourresearch, whichexcept for this articlewas written separately for specializedjournals in our respective fields and reflects our concern for pursuing questions ofinterest to our home disciplines and our perceptions that the key publication outletsfor each field lacked the necessary readiness to publish work in the others homediscipline. For example, merely defining the meaning of key terms in one field forpublication in another would not suffice. Such key terms themselvesfor instance,collaborative writing in business communicationcarry a history of meaningsand research claims that could not be easily transferred to an information technol-ogy publication. Table 1 provides some details of our separate publications fromthis joint research: article titles, journals where published, intended audiences,research questions, and abstracts.

Personal Reasons for Launching the Project

Our predisposition toward interdisciplinarity was essential in creating and sus-taining our collaboration. Janis initially had several practical and theoretical rea-sons for undertaking an interdisciplinary project on collaborative writing and com-puting. As her earlier interest in collaborative writing expanded to include aconcern for the relationship between technology and collaboration, she realizedthat she lacked the expertise to conduct a study of collaboration involving technol-ogy. Very early in the project, she also learned that an intervention study requires


85

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the participation of someone experienced in working with computer vendors and inchoosing intelligently among technology optionstraining that Lynne had andJanis did not. As important, either by sensibility or habit, she was interested in ques-tions that defy disciplinary boundaries rather than in disciplinary-based research.(Her first publication was jointly authored with a political theorist, a critical intro-duction to a work by Rousseau that reflected his ideas as a dramatist and a socialthinker [Barber & Forman, 1978].) She strongly concurred with Kenneth Burkes(1984) notion of trained incapacity, the idea of limits to our understanding ofproblems that result from training in a specific discipline with its necessary restric-tions, namely, its underlying propositions, theories, and methodologies. (Burkeclaimed to have borrowed the idea from Thorsten Veblen, who used it to describethe limitations of financially trained business people in their approach to decisionmaking.)

As the study progressed, other reasons emerged for doing work with an ISexpert. With Lynnes assistance, Janis could formulate questions about writing andcomputing that she sensed to be important but as a business communication spe-cialist could not articulate specifically. These questions concerned how the com-puting policies and practices of groups contribute to their use of technology forreport writing, how the social dynamics of groups influence their choice and use ofgroupware, how the geographical proximity of group members may affect theirdecisions about which technology to use and when to use it (Forman, 1991a, p. 68),and, perhaps, most important, how technology ought to be regarded as a set ofoptions or tools that writing groups manage or mismanage rather than as a machine,a convenient substitute for pen and paper or a typewriter. At the same time, as anadditional benefit of interdisciplinary research, Janis found that she was forced tolook critically at her own research assumptions when explaining some of the pre-mises of business communication to Lynne (Forman, 1991a, p. 68). For instance,through her exchanges with Lynne, Janis learned that she adheredperhaps toouncriticallyto the notion that writing is central to management tasks, when, infact, writing may sometimes be peripheral, just one of several communicationoptions from which managers may choose.

For her part, Lynne had several reasons for wanting to do interdisciplinaryresearch. She had had good experience working with a business communicationspecialist before and so was favorably inclined to work with Janis. From a broaderperspective, she was intellectually predisposed to choose an interdiscipinary ratherthan a single-discipline approach to research; her academic career is characterizedby interdisciplinary work. She came to the field of IS as a cross-disciplinary excur-sion from her doctoral training in organizational behavior. In her studies of thebehavioral aspects of information technology use, she had on various occasionsread deeply in the literatures of other disciplines such as anthropology, economics,organizational communication, and sociology. She had been working on studies ofelectronic mail use in organizations and was interested in getting more deeply intothe emerging study of computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) or group-


ware. The study with Janis offered the opportunity to work with a subject matterexpert in group writing, and Lynne thought that the very subject matter of the studyof groupware seemed to demand a collaborative effort. Finally, from a pragmaticpoint of view, she knew that if she did not collaborate, she would have had to choosea more bounded project, such as an analysis of the uses of electronic mail in anorganization, rather than the more challenging implementation study that she con-ducted with Janis.

In forming a research partnership, we agreed that we represented different disci-plines in several ways. We had different academic training, had read different litera-tures, and used different research methodologies in our earlier separate studies. Wealso had different professional affiliations and, as a result, we attended differentconferences and socialized with professionals in different discourse communities.Within the Graduate School of Management (GSM) at University of California,Los Angeles (UCLA), we were located in different units that had different objec-tives, and we taught subjects that occupied different places in the curriculum.(Today, GSM is known as UCLA Anderson School of Management.)

We also recognized a number of similar disciplinary and professional concernswithout which we would not have shared enough common ground to undertake ajoint research venture. Both of us believe that knowledge is not objective, nor com-pletely generalizable across individual cases. (On the continuum of researchapproaches that Blyler, 1995, presents as a single one of functionalist versus inter-pretive, both of us fall somewhere in the middle.) As researchers and instructors in aschool of business, we were both interested in our students becoming leaders in thebusiness world and in their development of useful skills as well as interpretiveframeworks based in specific disciplines.

Institutional Support for Our Collaboration

Despite our predisposition toward interdisciplinary collaboration, this collabo-ration might not have occurred without institutional support in the form of researchfunding and without the institutional placement of our respective disciplines. In themid-1980s, GSM had received a grant from IBM to conduct applied research on ISand the education of managers. The grant provided the opportunity for the collabo-ration and for the design of the specific project in question, involving a technologyimplementation and intervention. Because Lynne could calculate the amount ofwork necessary to design and execute an effective intervention, she would nevereven have dreamed of proposing one as a faculty member in a management schoolin the absence of UCLAs receiving the IBM grant, which made funds available forcomputer equipment. (She might also have conducted this kind of project if she hadbeen working for a computer or software product development firm, where equip-ment resources would presumably be available, but, of course, that is a differentstory.)


For her part, Janiss role as director of management communication at GSMgave her a unique position with respect to the field study programthe settingwithin which this study was conducted. Because of her involvement with fieldstudy as the key communications instructor for all field study teams, senior admin-istration at the school wanted Janis to consider ways in which to integrate comput-ing into the instruction of group writing. Thus, except for the institutional accidentof Janiss services to the field study program, the collaboration would never haveoccurred.

The institutional arrangements thatmade our interdisciplinary collaborationpossible also placed constraints on itsoutcomes, and in particular shaped ourdecision to publish the major results ofour research as single-authored publica-tions for journals in our respectivefields.

Other institutional arrangements also supported work such as ours. Both IS andthe teaching of business writing were housed in UCLAs management school,GSM. In all likelihood, our study of the four student teams would not have occurredhad business writing been located in a traditional English department, that is, in aliterature-centered English department with little disciplinary diversity. In suchdepartments, interdisciplinary problem-centered research such as ours is rarelyfunded. Furthermore, as a member of an English department, Janis would nothave had occasion to meet colleagues in IS, who typically belong to managementdepartments, for conversations about concerns shared across the disciplines. Inthis instance, the shared concern was technology and group work. More-over, if Janis had belonged to a traditional English department, her thinking aboutcomputers and group writing would more likely have been influenced by humani-ties scholarshipthe disciplinary authority of literary theory and especially ofpostmodernismthan by research on small group dynamics and IS. In the mid-1980s, none of the IS literature appeared in business communication journals. Sim-ilarly, had Lynne been teaching in a school of computer science, library science, ordepartment of industrial engineering, there would have been considerably lessopportunity for her to interact with someone of Janiss background. We surmise,then, that departmental goals and configurations, including the literal proximity toone another of researchers from different disciplines, can be powerful agents in theshaping of interdisciplinary research.


Institutional Disincentives for Our Collaboration

The institutional arrangements that made our interdisciplinary collaborationpossible also placed constraints on its outcomes, and in particular shaped our deci-sion to publish the major results of our research as single-authored publications forjournals in our respective fields. At GSM, more reward is given for a single-authored publication than for a collaborative work. This bias, made clear in facultymeetings and during Lynnes brief stint on the schools personnel committee, moti-vated us to publish as sole authors. In addition, although the school had recentlyendorsed the importance of applied interdisciplinary research, building formalmathematical theory was more valued than was empirical research focused on find-ing answers to practical business problems, which by their nature usually cross dis-ciplines. The higher value placed on mathematical theory was demonstrated by therelative speed with which such researchers achieved tenure and accelerated promo-tions. Furthermore, greater value was attributed to pure research in one of thebetter established disciplines such as economics, finance, or marketing than to whatthe institution considered to be marginal disciplines such as both business commu-nication and IS. (See Graham & Thralls, 1998, Dulek, 1993, and Rentz, 1993, onthe struggles of business communication to gain disciplinary status and Banville &Landry, 1989, and Benbasat & Zmud, 2003, on this issue as it pertains to IS.) Infact, the discursive power of the disciplines of authorityeconomics, finance,marketingdiminished the perceived value of knowledge resulting from collabo-rative work between business communication and IS experts. In Foucaults (1972)words, not just anyone, finally, may speak of just anything (p. 216). The empow-ered disciplines have the most say as well as the authority to exclude others fromspeaking.

Had either of us been more politically motivated, we would have delayed ourjoint research until we had gained the requisite promotion or tenure. Interdisciplin-ary research seems to be toleratedeven rewardedwhen conducted by facultywho have institutionally recognized reputations that have been built in a single dis-cipline. Or, if organizational enfranchisement had been our central concern, wewould have aligned our research interests to those of an empowered discipline inorder to seek status by association with that discipline. Of course, such a decisionwould have been at considerable expense to the concerns of our home disciplinesbecause, in all likelihood, these concerns would have been subordinated to those ofthe empowered discipline. (See Warren Bennis, 1956, on how status conflict affectsinterdisciplinary research teams.)

Barriers to Interdisciplinary CollaborationCreated by Our Respective Disciplines

The barriers to interdisciplinary collaboration extended beyond the confines ofour employing institution into our academic disciplines as well. This claim may besubstantiated by considering how our colleagues in IS and in business communica-


tion, respectively, would evaluate our joint research. To simulate this situation wegave an IS expert (an experienced journal editor) Janiss published article toreview as though she were submitting it for publication in a mainstream IS jour-nal, and we asked a business communication expert to do the same with Lynnesarticle. The results of these reviews, written in 1993 and summarized in Figure 2,speak for themselves.

In both cases, our single-authored articles were unacceptable to members ofeach others field, because these papers were insensitive to a host of audienceissues, including lack of focus on topics central to the journals readership and fail-ure to explain literature cited from the others discipline or to cite literature appro-priate to the disciplinary domain of the journal. In Janiss case, the reviewer notedthat she

has done little to establish any ties between her research and the current body of ISresearch. Relevant to the failure of the four teams to use technology successfully,for example, are the literatures of IS implementation, IS development, and CSCW.

According to the reviewer of Lynnes article, it seems to assume that the adop-tion of technology is an end in itself. Our field [business communication] ismore concerned with ways in which people adopt and adapt technology to meetor expand their communication objectives. Viewed from a rhetorical perspec-tive, these fundamental differences confirm Perelman and Olbrechts-Tytecas(1969) assertion that there are agreements that are peculiar to the members of aparticular discipline and there is a discourse characteristic of each disciplinethat summarize[s] an aggregate of acquired knowledge, rules, and conven-tions (p. 99). In sum, each article faced rejection in the others discipline on thebasis of differences about what issues are worthy of investigation and whatconstitutes appropriate evidence and its presentation.

Despite the difficulties we experiencedin our collaborative research, anddespite the constraints imposed on ourwork by our institutional setting, weboth found many benefits from our col-laboration, both for this study and forsubsequent projects each of us hasundertaken.



Rejection of Janiss Article

Journal where publication sought: Management Information Systems Quarterly (MISQ)

Reviewer who rejected the article: Allen S. Lee, (in 1993) Information Systems Department, Collegeof Business Administration, the University of Cincinnati, and member of the editorial board of MISQ; (in2004) professor of information systems and associate dean for research, School of Business, VirginiaCommonwealth University, and former editor-in-chief of MISQ

Reviewers reasons for rejection of the articlePertinent excerpts from the review: The manuscriptcurrently addresses business communication specialists, of which there are few among the MISQ reader-ship. MISQ readers have expectations that, I believe, the manuscript would not satisfy. These expecta-tions pertain to (1) methodology/research-designand (2) relationship or relevance to the IS literature.

With regard to methodology and research design, it seems to me that the manuscript is doing a casestudy. However, the manuscript makes no use of Robert K. Yins classic book, Case Study Research:Design and Methods, 1989, or to Allen S. Lees article, A Scientific Methodology for MIS Case Stud-ies, in the March 1989 issue of MISQ. Because case research is a form of research that MISQ readerstoday would recognize and readily consider acceptable, I therefore strongly urge the author to reframehis or her research design as one of a case study. Of course, there are also other genres of qualitativeresearch that MISQ readers would recognize and accept, and which, therefore, the author might also con-sider in addition to that of case studies. One such genre is grounded theory, which appears in the Sep-tember 1993 issue of MISQ.

With regard to the manuscripts relationship or relevance to the IS literature, the author has done littleto establish any ties between her research and the current body of IS research. Relevant to the failure ofthe four teams to use technology successfully, for example, are the literatures on IS implementation, ISdevelopment, and CSCW [computer-supported cooperative work]. As I was reading the manuscript, Iwas wondering what lessons these three literatures might have for the authors case study, as well as whatlessons the authors case study might have for these three literatures. To address the current body of IS[information systems] research would increase the manuscripts interest in the eyes of the MISQreadership.

Because I am not at all familiar with how technology can be used to support group writing, I foundmuch of the manuscript to be difficult to understand, simply because I had no idea as to how informationtechnology could conceivably support group writing. If, instead, early in the manuscript, there had been athick case description (whether actual or hypothetical) about who uses what tools to support this or thatparticular task, then I could have understood the manuscript better in my first reading of it. Of course, Iwas eventually able to infer who used (or could have used) what tools to support this or that particulartask; however, why not just tell the reader up front?Rejection of Lynnes Article

Journal where publication sought: Journal of Business Communication

Reviewer who rejected the article: Barbara Shwom, Northwestern Universitys writing programsand reviewer for business communication journals (in 2002) president of the Association for BusinessCommunication

Reviewers reasons for rejection of the articlePertinent excerpts from the review: This article is notappropriate for this journal for one key reason: the article focuses primarily on technology; issues ofcommunication, though present in the article, are submerged.

Figure 2. Rejection of Janiss and Lynnes Articles for Publica-tion in a Journal of the Others Discipline

(continued)

Benefits of Our Collaboration

Despite the difficulties we experienced in our collaborative research, anddespite the constraints imposed on our work by our institutional setting, we bothfound many benefits from our collaboration, both for this study and for subsequentprojects each of us has undertaken. For Janis, her work with Lynne has allowed herto see the role of technology as a possible agent in group writing, influencing bothwriting processes and products. What technology is chosen? How is it managed?These are central questions in any study of collaborative writing that involves tech-nology, and they have informed her research, teaching, and consulting. Prior to herinterdisciplinary work with Lynne, Janis unwittingly adopted an add technologyand mix approach to her understanding of technology and writing. (Lynne wouldcall this approach treating technology like a black box.) That is, she viewed tech-nology as not much more than a machine that writers could use to facilitate writing.For Lynne, her work with Janis has increased her rhetorical awareness and her rec-ognition of how important the notion of discourse community is to the develop-ment of arguments. This new knowledge has assisted her in teaching graduate stu-dents and in her work as an associate editor and a reviewer for several journals invarious fields (communication, computer science, IS, organizational studies). Ithas also influenced her work on a manuscript on the topic of writing as the method-ology of qualitative research. For both of us, viewing the others radically differentinterpretation of the same data puts into relief our respective theoretical and meth-odological views of how knowledge is made and what constitutes knowledge in ourrespective disciplines. (In one instance, Janis used the idea of discourse commu-nity to interpret a teams unorthodox use of groupware, whereas Lynne used theteams use of groupware to substantiate her argument about social distance andtechnology.)

Perhaps most important for both of us, our knowledge of each others disciplineis based on experiencing an insiders perspective from another discipline and


Although the article does an excellent job of contextualizing its issues within a body of currentresearch, most of that research is from outside the fields our journal covers: business, technical, organiza-tion, or management communication. Very few of the references are from communication journals orbooks; they are weighted heavily toward information systems and information technology. This posestwo problems for the article. Readers of our journal are unlikely to be familiar with any of the theoriespresented or the researchers or research studies used as evidence. In addition, readers will have to workhard to see the relevance of the research to communication issues.

The article assumes a knowledge of certain concepts in the communication technology research thatis not appropriate for the business communication audience. For example, the article assumes that every-one will be familiar with the concept of discretionary database, a term from outside the communicationfields.

Currently the article seems to assume that the adoption of technology is an end in itself. Our field ismore concerned with the ways in which people adopt and adapt technology to meet or expand theircommunication objectives. The article should highlight the communication issues in technology and per-haps, in its conclusion, address the benefits of introducing asynchronous technologies into the workplace.

Figure 2 (continued)

constitutes a tacit knowledge of the other discipline that cannot be easily acquiredby other means, such as by intensive reading of the literature in the others field.Both this kind of tacit knowledge and work with colleagues from other disciplinesmay be able to mitigate the hazards of wholesale, naive borrowing from otherdisciplines and the tendency to overgeneralize theories from other disciplinesbeyond their original intended application (see Rose, 1988, and Forman, 1998, onthis problem). At best, in the words of a collaborator from another business com-munication/IS team, the specialist from the other discipline can become an invisi-ble author (M. S. Horton, personal communication, March 31, 1992), an internal-ized voice that opens up new methods of inquiry, new problem-solving approaches,in work that follows an interdisciplinary effort.

How Typical Was Our Collaboration?

Reflecting in 1993 on our interdisciplinary collaboration naturally raised thequestion of how it compared to other collaborations we had participated in as wellas to those of other business communication/IS teams. Was our interdisciplinarywork limited or extensive? From one perspective, our collaboration was extensivein that we shared many aspects of the study, including lengthy analysis of the data.But from another perspective, unlike other collaborations we had engaged in(Forman & Katsky, 1986; Markus & Connolly, 1990), our collaboration was lim-ited in that each of us developed a separate set of research questions and retainedour own intellectual property in the form of separate publications. Moreover, in thegeneration of these single-authored publications, each of us subordinated theothers work both in the argument and in the writing process. In addition, our read-ing of each others manuscripts was limited to a review for readability and foraccuracy of details drawn from our pooled data.

One explanation for our decision to publish separately lies in the immaturity ofcombined research efforts in business communication and IS at the time of ourstudy. There were, in fact, no other studies published in the late 1980s that repre-sented this kind of collaboration and, hence, there were no theoretical bases or prac-tices that we could build upon. This contrasts to the state of research by the mid-1990s; collaborations between researchers in the two disciplines who publishtogether, in particular the work of Priscilla S. Rogers and Marjorie S. Horton andthat of JoAnne Yates and Wanda J. Orlikowski, as well as studies on technology andwriting that link written communication to other disciplines (Ferrara, Brunner, &Whittemore, 1991), offered precedent for further interdisciplinary work.

Negotiation Between Collaborators

Of course, collaborative research even within a single discipline is characterizedby negotiation, as collaborators Lisa Ede and Andrea Lunsford (1983, 1990)reported in the mid-1980s and early 1990s in their discussions of the differences ineach others composing processes and in their routines for conducting research.


But negotiations between collaborators from different disciplines can compoundthese challenges by introducing potential incompatibilities in the methods andunderlying assumptions of each of the disciplines involved (although members ofthe same discipline may disagree vehemently if their theoretical or methodologicalviews differ). In our case, we debated about data interpretation, especially in ourcoding of teams according to variables such as group dynamics and experiencewith technology, and in our creation of case histories for each team.

In the early 1990s, intellectual debate based on the differing disciplinaryhome of collaborators was also amply attested to by two other pairs of businesscommunication/IS researchers, Priscilla S. Rogers and Marjorie S. Horton of theUniversity of Michigan and JoAnne Yates and Wanda J. Orlikowski of Massachu-setts Institute of Technology (MIT). Horton and Rogers engaged in frequent debateabout what constitutes data, one arguing for quantitative methods and the other forqualitative (M. S. Horton & P. S. Rogers, personal communication, March 31,1992). Yates summed up her negotiations with Orlikowski as a protracted pro-cess in which each of them was aware of her own core beliefs and of those areasin which they were willing to be persuaded (J. Yates, personal communication,April 7, 1992).

Yet, despite the costs in time and effort, negotiation represents a key strength ofinterdisciplinary collaboration. The Orlikowski-Yates team concurred that debateand dialectic fostered the kind of invention that neither collaborator alone couldhave achieved. In our collaboration, we bypassed the difficulties of such negotia-tion by agreeing early to study questions of interest in our respective disciplines.This limitation may have been partially attenuated by our extensive debate aboutdata interpretation.

. . . AND NOW: SOME GENERALIZATIONS ON

INTERDISCIPLINARY COLLABORATION IN 2004

Revisiting our project in 2004, we find that the politics of such effortspoliticsin the broadest sense of the termstrikes us as the most critical challenge to theconduct of such research. Interdisciplinary collaborators must conduct their workwithin the context of the opportunities and constraints offered by institutions anddisciplines.

Institutional Enabling of and ConstraintsUpon Interdisciplinary Collaboration

Interdisciplinary collaboration is embedded in and often deeply influenced bythe institutional settings in which it occurs. As discussed earlier, our placementwithin a management department, even the location of our offices within closeproximity to each other, encouraged discussion between us, and eventually, a for-mal research project. Orlikowski and Yates view this issue similarly, although in


their case they were and are members of a single departmentan incentive for jointresearchbut are located in different buildingsa constraint, but one they are ableto overcome (W. J. Orlikowski & J. Yates, personal communication, July 16, 2004).

Placement in an interdisciplinary program, think tank, or research center includ-ing business communication experts and experts from other disciplines wouldmake collaboration even easier, we believe, because the raison detre of such orga-nizational units is facilitation of interdisciplinary work, and the reward structure insuch units favors interdisciplinary efforts. This incentive for interdisciplinaryresearch has been the case for the Orlikowski-Yates team over the past decade: theCenter for Coordination Science, which had funded each of us individually beforewe began working together, enthusiastically supported our joint work (W. J.Orlikowski & J. Yates, personal communication, July 16, 2004). Moreover, thisteam is now 4 years into a 5-year National Science Foundation grant focusedexplicitly on interdisciplinary work.

But institutions can constrain interdisciplinary collaboration as well. For exam-ple, Rogers notes that since the early 1990s at her home institution,

our two deans . . . seem to be moving faculty together again by disciplinary groupas offices become open. Meanwhile, interdisciplinary research and pedagogy isless a topic of discussion, and faculty teams for projects have been reduced to oneprimary and one secondary faculty member in the discipline directly related to thenature of the project. (P. S. Rogers, personal communication, July 1, 2004)

(A similar movement to assign faculty office locations by disciplinary group hasalso characterized GSM since moving into new facilities in the mid-1990s.)In sum, challenges persist even in management schools that are home to sev-eral related fields (Boudreau, Hopp, McClain, & Thomas, 2003; Henderson,Ganesh, & Chandy, 1990) and, in some instances, appear to have increased.

One of the least conducive settings for interdisciplinary work such as we havedescribed is the traditional English department. There, business communicationspecialists who seek to work with experts in other fields need to make extra effortsto arrange such work and to defend it, because social science research and collabo-ration tend to be devalued.

Opportunities and Constraints ofthe Disciplines Upon Collaboration

Negotiation between collaborators from different disciplines cannot be sepa-rated from the receptivity of each discipline to borrowing from other fields. Thisproved both advantageous and disadvantageous in our collaboration in the 1980s.Although there had been no collaboration between business communication and ISspecialists prior to our research project, both disciplines espoused the value of con-tributions from other disciplines to further knowledgeand still do (see, e.g.,Smeltzer & Suchan, 1991, on business communication and Benbasat & Zmud,


2003, Fitzgerald, 2003, Paul, 2002, and Perry, 2003, on IS). In fact, by the early1990s, cross citations had begun to appear in the major publications of each disci-pline. At present, IS seems a strong potential partner for business communicationresearchers as the importance of electronic messaging and groupware to writingprocesses and products is recognized (Lowry et al., 2004; E. M. Rogers &Allbritton, 1995). Moreover, interdisciplinary partnerships may be able to bypassthe gatekeeping of single disciplines by publishing their work in the journals offields that are explicitly interdisciplinary, as is the case for the Orlikowski-Yatesteam:

We chose to publish most of our work not in disciplinary journals, but in the inter-disciplinary field of Organization Studies, in such outlets as ASQ, AMR, andOrganization Science. For both of us, these journals were perceived by Sloansinterdisciplinary Personnel Committee as more prestigious than the disciplinaryjournals of IS and particularly of management communication. (W. J. Orlikowski& J. Yates, personal communication, July 16, 2004)

On the other hand, interdisciplinary work may be discouraged by the lack ofpublication outlets in business communication, in IS, or in some combination ofthe two that create forums in which each discipline is on an equal footing. Com-menting more generally about publication outlets for interdisciplinary work,Rogers notes her recent experience in which her interdisciplinary work wasrejected by

three relevant journals before we finally got it accepted. Our first submission, to asister journal, was rejected outright, our second try with a different sister jour-nal was rejected based on reviewer input, and, finally, our third submission, to ajournal directly in our field [management communication] was embraced. (P. S.Rogers, personal communication, July 1, 2004)

Summarizing her experience, in the same communication, she concludes,I seem to be experiencing more barriers to interdisciplinary thinking thanpreviously.

Where joint authorship occurs, the disciplinary focus of the publication outletresults in an imbalance of authority over the text; the collaborator from the samedisciplinary focus as the publication outlet has a disproportionate say in the argu-ment, organization, and voice of the text. For instance, in the case of this article,Janis took the lead because this article has been submitted to a leading journal forexperts in business communication and because she is more familiar with discourseconventions for communication articles and with the discussions about collabora-tion among these experts than is Lynne. Joint authorship representing equallyshared authority on the part of each collaborator can be very difficult, if notimpossible.

The maturity of each discipline relative to the research questions addressed bythe collaborators also influences interdisciplinary collaboration. As the abstract


from Janiss article indicates (see Table 1), she drew upon the literatures of severaldisciplines: from composition and rhetoric (references to audience analysis); fromsocial psychology and the management of small groups (references to leadershipand group conflict); from IS (references to computer policies and practices and toconflicting hardware and software needs); and from composition (references topedagogy). On the other hand, Lynnes article (see Table 1) contains a central argu-ment that is placed in an ongoing set of propositions about technology and groupwork within IS. As she writes, the paper compares actual observations with thetheory-based expectationstheories that are widely accepted within IS. On thebasis of these abstracts, sociologist Murray Davis would say that IS is a moremature discipline than is business communication, at least in terms of Lynnes argu-ment as opposed to Janiss (at the time when the research was conducted): Lynnespropositions confirm, extend, or work against accepted theories within IS, some ofwhich synthesized work in other disciplines. Her baseline is the taken-for-grantedassumption of the intellectual specialty itself (Davis, 1971, p. 330). By contrast,Janiss work reflects thinking in a less mature discipline as far as computing andgroup work are concerned. There are no established propositions in businesscommunication that her article addresses.

The relative maturity of the two disciplines partially explains why we decided towork with some independence within the context of our collaborative project andmay suggest what motivates other collaborators to choose a similar pattern forworking together. As management theorist Warren Bennis (1956) has noted, inter-disciplinary research may be discouraged by

the difficulty of sharing and combining concepts between disciplines at varyingstages of development. Interdisciplinary research infers a contemporaneity betweencultural products. . . . It may be that an attempt to cross disciplines at a conceptuallevel may be destined for failure because of their lack of contemporaneity.(p. 227).

NEW DIRECTIONS

This article has been our attempt to describe one extended interdisciplinary pro-ject and to comment on it from the perspective of 1993, the completion of ourresearch publications, and from the perspective of 2004more than a decade later.In his Outstanding Researcher Award lecture given at the 2003 Association forBusiness Communication Conference, Jim Suchan appealed to researchers tobegin telling their stories, arguing that stories are a legitimate and undervaluedmethod for advancing knowledge in the field as well as an approach that unearthsdata and insights that would be otherwise overlooked. At a minimum, we hope thatour example will prompt those who conduct interdisciplinary collaborations tobegin telling their stories, especially as these stories anchor, in specific cases,notions of what constitutes knowledge and knowledge making in business commu-


nication and offer opportunities to test and define what is meant by interdisciplin-ary research in the discipline.

In his Outstanding Researcher Awardlecture given at the 2003 Associationfor Business Communication Confer-ence, Jim Suchan appealed to research-ers to begin telling their stories, arguingthat stories are a legitimate and under-valued method for advancing knowl-edge in the field, as well as an approachthat unearths data and insights thatwould be otherwise overlooked.

Increasingly, business communication specialists have claimed that knowledgeand knowledge making involve an openness to other disciplines, a turn towardinterdisciplinary work. But as even this one example shows, the idea of interdisci-plinary approaches to business communication and the conduct of such work arecomplex and problematic along several dimensions:

the nature of interdisciplinary work; interdisciplinary teams; the fortunes of the discipline; the role of publication outlets and institutional politics.

The nature of interdisciplinary work: What is meant by interdisciplinarywork? Does it mean drawing on multiple research literatures, using a commondatabase for different audiences, and sharing interpretations of data? Or is it amore global, synthetic kind of knowledge building represented by the researchof Horton and Rogers and of Orlikowski and Yates?

Interdisciplinary teams: Will a pattern emerge of business communicationexperts displaying disciplinary loyalty in some of their research and movinginto interdisciplinary groups for other work, as in the case of the Orlikowski-Yates partnership? If such a pattern emerges, what will it reveal about the kindsof questions being investigated?

The fortunes of the discipline: If business communication continues todemonstrate permeability, will it be open to all other disciplines or only to some,


and for what reasons? Will there come a point at which openness causes thebreakdown of the field and the constitution of new ones born of collaborativeinterdisciplinary effort and the recognition of a fundamental commonalitybetween once distinct disciplines? In other words, will business communicationexperts build bridges to other disciplines or radically restructure the discipline?(See Klein, 1990, pp. 27-28.)

The role of publication outlets and institutional politics: Because fundingagencies, educational institutions, and publication outlets can confer status andauthority, what role will they play in the fortunes of business communication?The most long-standing and prolific of the teamsOrlikowski-Yateshas pub-lished most of their work in interdisciplinary journals. These journals are highlyrespected by their home institution and also forced/enabled us to merge ourperspective and develop a more thoroughly combined one (W. J. Orlikowski &J. Yates, personal communication, July 16, 2004).

Stories of interdisciplinary teams will help to address these issues. Analysis ofsuch stories, especially of the kinds of sharing that occur among researchers fromdifferent disciplines, may help specify what is meant by saying that business com-munication is open to interdisciplinary approaches.

Beyond the telling of stories about interdisciplinary work as a way to address thequestions identified above, we offer two other recommendations: ethnographicresearch on the work of interdisciplinary teams and cocitation studies of articlespublished in business communication journals. As for the former, investigatorsobservations and interviews of interdisciplinary business communication and ISteams (or of business communication researchers and researchers from any otherdiscipline) promise to yield insights about the nature of such research and the theo-retical borrowings and transformations that characterize the growth of businesscommunication as a result of such collaboration. Research by sociologists of thenatural sciences may offer models for such study of collaborative interdisciplinaryresearch, in particular Latour and Woolgars (1979) participant-observer study ofteam research in a scientific lab. As for the latter, researchers and theorists within ISmay provide business communication specialists with good examples (e.g., Culnan& Swanson, 1986). Tracking those instances when a researcher cites any work ofany given author along with the work of any other author in a new document(Culnan, 1987, p. 343) assists in determining the disciplines outside IS that areinfluencing its growth. The same kind of tracking has begun for business communi-cation (Reinsch & Lewis, 1993). Such analysis results in information about the var-ious disciplines that have influenced business communication at different times andin the work of different researchers and scholars, and might form the basis for his-torical analysis of business communications relationship to other disciplines.Taken as a whole, personal stories, outside investigatorsethnographic studies, andcocitation analysis may illuminate how knowledge in business communication issocially constructed, especially as this construction is influenced by outside experts.


Our emphasis on the institutional context for interdisciplinary collaborationunderscores how such collaboration is a highly bounded activity that goes beyondthe dynamics between or among collaborators. The ability of business communica-tion specialists to work with outside experts may depend upon institutionalarrangements. Institutions are not neutral; they can be gatekeepers or facilitators ofresearch. For this reason, business communication specialists located in traditionalEnglish departments will have to make extra efforts to undertake interdisciplinarywork. Informal meeting places such as study groups and colloquia that bringtogether experts from different disciplines may be one way to initiate such efforts.For example, at GSM a colloquium series on the topic of groups in the workplaceattracted faculty from business communication, management, IS, public health,psychology, and sociology. Those business communication specialists located inprofessional schools or in interdisciplinary units rather than in traditional Englishdepartments should find it easier to establish both formal and informal researchactivities, and may be expected to lead attempts to apply other disciplines tobusiness communication.

The ability of business communicationspecialists to work with outside expertsmay depend upon institutional arrange-ments. Institutions are not neutral; theycan be gatekeepers or facilitators ofresearch.

If it is important to broaden the theoretical and methodological base for futureresearch in business communication, one avenue for such expansion is collabora-tive research with experts from other disciplines. Precedent is set for this kind ofwork, but there is much more to be done. The conduct of such work should proceedin tandem with the critical analysis that can clarify our understanding of businesscommunication as a discipline continually revitalized and redefined by the theoriesand practices of other disciplines.

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