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Technical Writing World. (Japanese) Articles>Business Communication>Education>Writing

Achieving International Communication Success

The world is getting smaller in terms of how fast information gets passed around and, at the same time, larger. Larger in the sense that there are new markets, new languages, and new cultures to understand, as we market and sell around the world.

Winters, Elaine. bena.com (1999). Articles>Business Communication>International

Actively Learning About Readers: Audience Modelling in Business Writing    

The advantages of peer feedback in business writing classes are clear. Students receive more appraisals of their writing than any single lecturer can ever realistically deliver. Also, the feedback comes from different perspectives and sometimes carries extra credibility coming from fellow students. Students gain from giving one another feedback as well. It is certainly learning by doing. Critiquing the work of colleagues raises awareness of the many ways to approach a given task and demands skills of analysis and attention to detail. Delivering feedback also requires tact and the ability to look for positives to commend as well as areas to improve. Reviewing written documents is a skill that students will certainly use in their future work lives. However, many of us have experienced problems with peer reviewing. Students hesitate to criticise their friends and prefer praising in a general way rather than suggesting improvements, which requires confidence.

Holst-Larkin, Jane. Business Communication Quarterly (2008). Articles>Education>Business Communication>Audience Analysis

Activists' Influence Tactics and Corporate Policies    

Corporations increasingly pay attention to issues of social responsibility, but their policies and procedures to articulate such responsibilities are not just a result of the good will of top management. Often, such policies and procedures are devised because some stakeholders raised their voice on issues relating to the interests of employees, investors, governments, and others. One category of visible though heterogeneous stakeholders is composed of 'activist groups.' In this article, we present a range of tactics that activist groups employ to influence corporate policy and conclude with some corporate policy responses to these tactics, illustrated with some examples. Different Tactics Activist groups usually start an influence campaign by collecting and organizing information about some issue about which they are concerned (e.g., sustainable development, human rights, labor conditions), disseminating this information to their audiences and formulating desired outcomes. They inform the target firm's top management of their particular concern and propose desired outcomes or alternative courses of action. If the firm's responses are considered inadequate, they will likely continue their campaign, but by starting to employ a more varied set of tactics. Below, we discuss four different types of tactics that activist groups use to leverage pressure on firms and that do not rely on the state or legal action for resolution of the issue: shareholder activism, political consumerism, social alliances, and alternative business systems (de Bakker and den Hond, 2007).

de Bakker, Frank G.A. and Frank den Hond. Business Communication Quarterly (2008). Articles>Business Communication>Policies and Procedures

Advance Organizers in Advisory Reports: Selective Reading, Recall, and Perception    

According to research in educational psychology, advance organizers lead to better learning and recall of information. In this research, the authors explored advance organizers from a business perspective, where larger documents are read under time pressure. Graphic and verbal advance organizers were manipulated into six versions of an advisory report, read by 159 experienced professional readers in a between-subjects design. Their reading time was limited to encourage selective reading. The results show that graphic advance organizers facilitate selective reading, but they do not enhance recall. Verbal advance organizers introducing a problem enhance recall, and graphic advance organizers moderate the effects on both selective reading and recall.

Lagerwerf, Luuk, Louise Cornelis, Johannes de Geus and Phidias Jansen. Written Communication (2008). Articles>Business Communication>Collaboration

All Business Students Need to Know the Same Things! The Non-Culture-Specific Nature of Communication Needs    

This article challenges the conventional approach to cross-cultural communication teaching that instructs students to adapt their communication styles to different cultures by providing them with details about the particular practices of these cultures. It argues for an approach that focuses on common principles of effective communication by pointing out some limitations of the current culture-specific approach and presenting a pilot study that indicates the commonality of communication needs. It suggests some ways to find a different approach for studying international communication and shows that some current research is, in fact, moving in that direction.

Goby, Valerie Priscilla. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (1999). Articles>Business Communication>International

Allowing for Personal Choice -- HTML or Text E-Mail

When you ask readers whether they want your e-mail newsletter in HTML or text e-mail, be sure to honor their preference.

Allen, Cliff. Allen.com (2001). Articles>Business Communication>Correspondence>Email

Analysis of the Communication Components Found Within the Situational Leadership Model: Toward Integration of Communication and the Model    

This article identifies and assesses the effectiveness of communicating expectations, listening, delegating, and providing feedback in relation to the Hersey-Blanchard Situational Leadership model. It reviews the correlation between task versus relationship behavior that forms the basis of the Situational Leadership model. Then the article summarizes information found in literature on effective techniques for the four skills stated above. As these techniques are identified, they are discussed in relation to their effective use in the Situational Leadership model. To understand the application of the model in businesses and its impact on managers communication effectiveness, we conducted a study of an operational department of a Fortune 500 financial services company. The results and content analysis of a survey we administered by random selection of the managers in this department indicate that successful use of the Situational Leadership model relies on effectiveness in four communication components: communicating expectations, listening, delegating, and providing feedback. Finally, we recommend areas of future research such as comparison analysis of surveys, interviews, and focus groups with subordinates of managers who have been trained on the Situational Leadership model and those who have not.

Brown, Nicole A. and Randolph T. Barker. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2001). Articles>Business Communication>Management

Annual Reports: A Literature Review (1989-2001)    

Since the collapse of Enron Corporation in November 2001, annual reports and corporate financial disclosures have been the focus of government, corporate, and public attention. This article examines the literature written about annual reports between 1989 and 2001 to identify trends in research and determine areas of future study. Articles were categorized as related to SEC regulations and guidelines, summary annual reports, online annual reports, rhetorical analysis of annual reports, readability and accessibility of annual reports, methods of conveying negative information in annual reports, effective annual report writing, use and importance of annual reports, or use of annual reports in business writing classes. Post-Enron, it is likely that the number of articles in this area will dramatically increase over the next five to ten years.

Lord, Heather L. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2002). Articles>Business Communication>Financial>Reports

Applying the Elaboration Likelihood Model to Technical Recommendation Reports  

Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) can help proposal writers identify effective document design techniques and parts of arguments that are critical to persuasion. In addition, ELM has implications for other types of technical communication, including recommendation or feasibility reports. While one would anticipate that decision-makers would be willing and able to evaluate critically all arguments presented in a recommendation report, ELM explains why this is rarely so. Therefore, technical communicators can profit by understanding and using the two routes to persuasion or attitude shift, the central and peripheral routes, explained by ELM.

Engle, Carol. STC Proceedings (1993). Articles>Business Communication>Reports>Rhetoric

Are You Drowning in E-Mail?

We can't halt the flow of incoming email messages, but we can give you some suggestions that will help you become a better email communicator.

Blicq, Ronald S. TC-FORUM (1999). Articles>Business Communication>Correspondence>Email

"As we are Both Deceived": Strategies of Status Repair in 19th Century Hudson's Bay Company Correspondence  

Little attention has yet been paid to the unique workplace that the Hudson's Bay Company constituted and the unique discursive activity on which that workplace fundamentally depended.

Venema, Kathleen. Rhetor (2004). Articles>Business Communication>History

Automated Email From Websites to Customers

Transactional email can be a website's customer service ambassador, but messages must first survive a ruthless selection process in the user's in-box. Differentiating your message from spam is thus the first duty of email design.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2003). Articles>Business Communication>Correspondence>Email

Avoid the Use of Familiar Phrases and Messages in Your Emails

Sometimes copywriters and content writers write in clichés. To a reader, the line has barely any meaning, and certainly no impact. Why not? Because it is too familiar. Because he or she has read the same phrase so many times before, in too many other places.

Usborne, Nick. Excess Voice (2006). Articles>Business Communication>Correspondence>Email

A Beginner's Guide to Effective Email

In a conversation, there is some minimum of shared context. You might be in the same physical location, and even on the phone you have, at minimum, commonality of time. When you generate a document for paper, usually there is some context embedded in the medium: the text is in the proceedings of a conference, written on a birthday card, handed to your professor with a batch of Econ 101 term papers, or something similar. With email, you can't assume anything about a sender's location, time, frame of mind, profession, interests, or future value to you. This means, among other things, that you need to be very, very careful about giving your receivers some context. This section will give specific strategies for doing so.

Sherwood, Kaitlin Duck. Webfoot.com (1998). Articles>Business Communication>Correspondence>Email

Best Practices for Developing Sales Proposals  

Help differentiate your company from the competition by using Schoenecker's suggestions to create effective sales proposals.

Schoenecker, Michelle M. Intercom (2004). Articles>Business Communication>Proposals

Better Business Analysis through User Interface Prototyping

User Interface (UI) prototyping can help business analysts to address many challenges, even though it is usually considered to be part of design rather than requirements analysis. The rest of this article briefly describes UI prototyping, and some of the benefits and risks it offers to business analysts.

Kussmaul, Clif. BA Collective (2008). Articles>User Interface>Business Communication

Blogging and Corporate America: How Weblogs Can Enhance the Marketplace and Foster Intellectual Capital

In a broad sense that the weblog can be beneficial to the business world as a whole. More specifically, however, it provides technical communicators with unprecedented opportunites at innovation and leadership.

Danielson, Joe. Orange Journal, The (2005). Articles>Business Communication>Online>Blogging

Building a Community of Professional Communicators by Mapping Needs and Assets    

For an institution with a regional focus, part of program building involves identifying resources in the region the program serves. This effort can be complicated in regions that generally lack the kind of high-tech industry that draws technical communicators. One cannot easily find a ready-madecommunity of professional communicators in such places, leaving some to wonder whether a professional writing program would be able to thrive. Nevertheless, communicators are ubiquitous, even if most of them don’t identify themselves as such.

Blythe, Stuart. CPTSC Proceedings (2001). Articles>Business Communication>Community Building

Building Context: Using Activity Theory to Teach About Genre in Multi-Major Professional Communication Courses    

Instructors in multi-major professional communication courses are asked to teach students a variety of workplace genres. However, teaching genres apart from their contexts may not result in transfer of knowledge from school to workplace settings. We propose teaching students to research genre use via activity theory as a way of encouraging transfer. We outline theory and research relevant to teaching genre and provide results from a study using activity theory to teach genre in two different professional communication courses.

Kain, Donna and Elizabeth Wardle. Technical Communication Quarterly (2005). Articles>Education>Business Communication>Genre

Bulletproof Your Business Case

No matter when or how you present your business case for review, there will be a sinister, uninvited stranger in the room. You can't bar him from the meeting. You can't prevent him from speaking to everyone present.

Solution Matrix (2006). Articles>Business Communication>Business Case

Business Case Critics: De-Clawing the Cat?

There are some things you don’t want to hear when your business case is under review.

Solution Matrix (2005). Articles>Business Communication>Business Case

Business Case Primer

The Business Case Primer explains how to prepare a business case to justify a proposed project. The process involves assessing needs, defining the business opportunity, planning the work effort, investigating alternatives to the opportunity and alternative ways to achieve the opportunity, evaluating each alternative, defining the project, preparing the report, and presenting the business case for approval. The primer shows how to conduct a financial analysis and includes a brief sample business case.

Kemp, Al. Impact Technical Publications (2006). Articles>Business Communication>Business Case