This article draws on a decade of research in strategic communication and especially on the contributions in this special issue to propose a new and more comprehensive definition of strategic communication. We argue that strategic communication encompasses all communication that is substantial for the survival and sustained success of an entity. Specifically, strategic communication is the purposeful use of communication by an entity to engage in conversations of strategic significance to its goals. Entity includes all kind of organizations (e.g., corporations, governments, or non-profits), as well as social movements and known individuals in the public sphere. Communication can play a distinctive role for the formulation, revision, presentation, execution, implementation, and operationalization of strategies. While there are many ways to investigate these research objects, strategic communication as a discipline takes the perspective of the focal organization/entity and its calculus to achieve specific goals by means of communication under conditions of limited resources and uncertainty. The article takes a critical look at the current state of the field and outlines several requirements that will help scholars and practitioners alike to build a unique body of knowledge in strategic communication.try to pursue their individual goals in an optimal way, while business administration and management science incorporates a broader research perspective, taking into account multiple and bounded rationalities as well as the need to handle economic challenges, as well as legal, ethical, ecological, and psychological problems, to name just a few dimensions of company life.Along this line, strategic communication can only flourish as a research field if it has specific research objects and a specific research perspective, along with institutional manifestations (publication outlets, conferences, study programs, research projects) that create an accumulated body of knowledge (theories, concepts and frameworks, empirical insights).These core assets will allow the discipline to enact a distinct role in the overall concert of knowledge production and disciplinary discourses. To this end, strategic communication needs to draw on other disciplines as well. As an applied science, it requires an interdisciplinary approach that integrates-but also limits itself to-any knowledge that helps to expand knowledge about the designated object and perspective of research (Szostak, 2013;. This article is devoted to outlining such an approach. We begin by exploring the various understandings of strategic communication that have organically emerged over the last decade.After reviewing currently co-existing approaches, we attempt a more precise and focused definition of strategic communication by offering answers to five key questions that have emerged as central to the strategic communications debate. We then shift focus from the reality of practice to the academic discipline. Our question here centers on how strategic communication research ...

The article explores how strategic communication successfully established itself as an academic discipline despite (or perhaps because of) being centered on an elusive concept. Drawing on ideas about the evolution of academic disciplines proposed by Alexander M. Shneider, we argue that strategic communication is currently caught in a cycle of constant reinvention obscured by a discourse of emergence. Although the discipline is undoubtedly becoming more sophisticated, it is doubtful whether there is genuine progress. The authors examine facets of strategic communication that contribute to the current state of affairs. Although clearer conceptualization and a more realistic understanding of the discipline are identified as a prerequisite for maturation, progress-as opposed to sophistication-ultimately depends on the development of discipline-specific, unique, and robust methods.

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