History of ideas in management communication quarterly

For a quarter of a century, Management Communication Quarterly (MCQ) has published research about communication in the context of work. This article charts the intellectual history of MCQ to trace its epistemic, theoretical, and identity changes. The authors consider how the journal's published research has changed, why it has changed, and what its future direction should be. The article also considers MCQ as a place for a community of scholars and the journal's identity as a member of that community. In providing this empirical study of MCQ's history, it is hoped that organizational communication scholars can consider further questions about their research, their journals, and their communities within the research tradition.