Articles>Business Communication

Teaching the Facebook Generation

Today, marketing students also need to know basic HTML, design software such as the Adobe Suite, how to run a Google adwords campaign, how to optimize a Web site for search engines, how to analyze Web analytics data, develop a keyword strategy, and manage e-mail marketing campaigns. A basic knowledge of how social media including sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr, and Twitter can be used to leverage a marketing message isn't optional—it's a requirement.

Social Media and Public Relations: You Can Do This

For professional communicators, social media is like a new, wild river born from the converging streams of public relations and marketing. A good social media campaign requires the traditional PR skills of telling engaging stories and building positive relationships with constituents, and a marketer’s knack for knowing and finding “the buyer.”

Next-Generation Press Releases

The age-old public relations tool, once crafted as fodder for print journalists, is now being applied more to the online world. A recent study by the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR) found that most releases now target consumers and customers directly, rather than through the filter of the news media. Enter the social media release (SMR).

Tweet Ethics: Trust and Transparency in a Web 2.0 World

Don’t we all want to get the conversation going in a positive direction when it comes to representing the companies and clients we work for? And while there have, of course, always been incidents of deception in journalism and PR, somehow the advent of the Internet and social media has made this a much bigger issue. As PR representatives and journalists for individuals and companies learn more about the benefits of Twitter and other forms of social media, questions are arising about how—and how not—to present information.

Taking the Guesswork Out of Social Media

New opportunities have arisen from the advent of Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites. But professional communicators, in their effort to gain a better understanding of the medium, tend to make social media tools more complex than they really are. As a result, they miss out on the big breaks they need to achieve their goals. Below are tips to take the guesswork out of connecting social media with PR. Hopefully, these are steps you are already taking in your career. But if you are like me and need a friendly reminder, read on.

HR Can Help Protect Online Reputation

Social media sites offer a range of new opportunities for communication, marketing and networking. But employees’ unfettered online engagement can be bad for business and potentially injurious to their employment and career prospects. Social media present a huge threat to organizations’ reputations, especially those that don’t inform and educate their staff about their online responsibilities. That’s why Web 2.0 education must become a priority for HR departments, who should collaborate with PR teams to brief employees about appropriate online engagement. The same Web 2.0 education must become part of new staff induction programs.

The Two-Edged Sword of Web 2.0

As web workers, most of us are steeped in Web 2.0 throughout our working day (never mind that we can’t agree on what “Web 2.0″ means). Many of us have embraced online applications from Google, Yahoo, and elsewhere to do the bulk of our work, and we rely on a mishmash of social media sites to stay in touch with our peers and build our extended networks. But this connectivity comes at a cost: the internet is filled with bright, shiny distractions.

How To Write A Press Release For Your Services

If you have an interesting story to tell, a press release will help you to make newspaper editors aware of it. Maybe you recently won an award. Maybe you stumbled upon some interesting information in the field you work in. Or maybe your design contributed towards some kind of achievement on behalf of your client. Depending on the scale and content of your story, you can send your press release to marketing websites, marketing magazines, the relevant trade press, the regional press, and even the business section of the national press.

Top Five Tips For a Great Press Release

A news publication gets a lot of press releases over the course of the day. In an ideal world, this document delivers valuable and maybe even actionable news and, if things are really well done, gets journalists excited about sharing it with the world. What's beautiful about this is that it is a realm over which you have some control, and improvements are easy to achieve.

Strategies for Training the Executive Spokesperson

CEOs and other executives often find themselves in the role of company spokesperson. More often than not, they have neither the background nor the proper training to be effective. As the communication professional responsible for media relations at your company, there are several things you can do to help prepare your executive for the interviews to come.

What You Don’t Say: The Power of Nonverbal Communication

Most explanations of human behavior in the business world assume that people are best persuaded by reason and logic. Steeped in that belief, executives and senior managers have focused on delivering convincing speeches and finding “just the right words” when dealing with the public and the press. But what if that view is flawed?

What Spokespeople Should Say and Do in a Crisis

Powerful communication before a crisis and rapid communication during a crisis have the ability to move people out of harm’s way, save lives and protect reputations. Yet so many organizations second-guess what they should say, who should say it and when. Here are some rules to follow in these circumstances.

Netiquette, Twettiquette: How to Build the Social Media Audiences You Want

How can you build the right following? The question is important because like it or not, as communicators, we’re expected to lead the way in our organizations’ use of social media.

Forget the Golden Rule

Treat others the way you would want to be treated. It seems ridiculous to think that one of the most common rules taught to children somehow hinders effective business communication when these children become adults. But it’s true. To be effective at communicating with customers (for example, internal audiences who buy into ideas or messages, or external audiences who buy products or services), one must turn away from this standard rule and focus instead on treating others the way they want to be treated.

Companies Are Behind in Social Media Training for Employees

Many companies continue to discount the power and potential of social media. Others are just beginning to flirt with the idea of using this new form of communication, while still others are in the process of developing social media policies to establish what employees can and cannot do. Then, there are those companies that have started allowing their communication specialists to engage in social media on behalf of the organization. But how many are teaching non-communication staff how to use this new media?

Identifying Spokespeople for PR and Social Media: Choosing the Right Spokesperson to Communicate the Message

Identifying the right corporate spokesperson for traditional and new media strategies - including public relations, blogging, video marketing, etc. - is an important task. Whether they are speaking to Katie Couric, a New York Times reporter or a blogger, it is essential that they be well versed on the do's and don't's of effective communication. Whether its a formal, televised interview or an informal email thread that leads to a story in a blog, the spokesperson should represent the image and persona of the company at all times.

Communicating in a Crisis Situation

A fire has destroyed your manufacturing facility that produces 80% of your products. Your staff has nowhere to work, your suppliers have nowhere to ship goods, and your customers start looking for new suppliers. Now what?

How to Handle a Crisis: Eleven Communications Tips

Every company – no matter what size, whether public or private – faces crises. While the scale may be different compared to these corporate giants, crises happen all the time. Crises are all around us. Is your company prepared to handle one?

Managing Culture Change Within the Context of Mergers and Acquisitions

The generic term “mergers & acquisitions (M&A)” appeared for the first time at the end of the 19th century in the United States. In times of increased global competition, M&A activities have reached all regions of the world and are not solely concerning large enterprises. However, with many M&A projects never reaching the synergy effects that were expected of them, the successful integration of one company into another remains a challenge.

Interview with Robert Gibson: "Communicate Consistent Messages"

Being active in 190 countries around the world, mergers and acquistions are part of the business routine for the engineering conglemerate Siemens AG. A smooth integration process is vital for business success. Supporting this integration process is one of the tasks of Robert Gibson, senior consultant for training and projects at the Siemens headquarters in Munich, Germany. tcworld spoke to him about the challenge of integrating new corporate and national cultures.

Conflict of Generations: Business Culture of Contemporary Russia

Doing business in a foreign country and encountering an unfamiliar business culture can be a complex and strenuous activity. Even more so, if the country is torn between three different business cultures and mentalities. This is the case in contemporary Russia.

The Multiculturalist: Beyond One Single Perspective

Cross-cultural encounters are experienced on different levels: While some managers head home from a business trip feeling that the world is small and essentially the same everywhere, others have the ability to sense the hidden differences. These "multiculturalists" see the deep culture that lies behind the curtains of globalization.

East Meets West: Negotiating Interculturally

Along with the prospects of success and benefits, negotiations in any business environment bear definite risks. They require thorough preparation, patience, time, and flexibility. Negotiating with people from different cultures might sometimes feel like sitting at a poker table, with all participants following their own rules, which remain mysterious for the rest. The result of this game is obvious: Pretty soon, both parties will be frustrated and confused.

Invisible Difference: The Deep Culture of Japanese Values

Some visitors to Japan are disappointed. The images on tourist posters – the graceful curves of a temple, the enigmatic smile of the geisha – are hard to find in this industrialized, high-tech, post-modern society. “Westernization” is everywhere. Geishas and Samurais do not walk among the skyscrapers of the Shinjuku district in Tokyo. For foreigners doing business in Japan this perception gap can be a challenge.

Why is it so Difficult to Maintain Accurate Process Documentation Across an IT Organization?

I saw this question posed in a discussion on LinkedIn, and thought that it deserved an answer from an IT Process Automation (ITPA) perspective. One respondent to the question stated it well: "The answer is simple, if there is not a common bond and governance mechanism between process documentation and the technology that is executing the process, the documentation eventually atrophies and collects dust." In my days as an independent ITIL consultant, I found that training and getting personnel to use process as part of their daily routine was at least as difficult as maintaining and updating process documentation. There is a chasm between theory and practice when it comes to process execution.

White Paper Writing: Strategies for Success

White papers are a fundamental part of your marketing arsenal. And if you think technical writers don't need to worry about marketing, read on to see why white paper writing is an essential skill, and how to turn a ho-hum paper into a killer communications tool.

How To Persuade Your Users, Boss or Clients

Whether you are getting a client to sign off on a website’s design or persuade a user to complete a call to action, we all need to know how to be convincing. Like many in the Web design industry, I have a strange job. I am part salesperson, part consultant and part user experience designer. One day I could be pitching a new idea to a board of directors, the next I might be designing an e-commerce purchasing process. There is, however, a common theme: I spend most of my time persuading people.

Business Communications and Meetings to Become Steady Stream of Enterprise 2.0 Content?

Cisco's $3.2 billion intended acquisition of WebEx has me thinking of what Charles Giancarlo, Cisco's chief development officer, calls "this next wave of business communications." What do you suppose he means?

Grammar on the Web: Some Rules of Thumb for Business

Now that Twitter’s 140 character limit has become commonplace, web shorthand techniques are once again in full use. So what should you, as a businessperson, know about grammar use on the web? Is it ever appropriate to use this type of language shorthand? It’s actually a complicated matter, which is why I’ve written up this short guide on grammar on the web for business.

A Small Business Guide to Wikis

Social technology has risen to meet this challenge over the last few years. And while there are a lot of social tools to choose from, one type stands out for this type of collaboration: the wiki. The unique communication model inherent in the wiki makes it ideal for becoming a central business tool for your entire team. The following is an overview of using wiki software for small business.

Business Information Through Spain’s Chambers of Commerce: Meeting Business Needs

From different public and private requirements, mechanisms have been set in action that allow for companies to obtain information in order to make decisions with a stronger foundation. This article is focused on the description of an entire information system for the business world, developed in the realm of the Chambers of Commerce of Spain, which has given rise to the creation of an authentic network of inter-chamber information. In Spain, the obligatory membership of businesses to the Chambers of Commerce in their geographic areas, and therefore the compulsory payment of member quotas, has traditionally generated some polemics, above all because many firms have not perceived a material usefulness of the services offered by these Chambers. Notwithstanding, the 85 Chambers currently existing in Spain, as well as the organization that coordinates them – the Upper Council or Consejo Superior de Cámaras de Comercio – and the company created expressly to commercialize information services online, Camerdata, have developed genuinely informative tools that cover a good part of the information demands that a business might claim, and these are described here.

The Changing Nature of Commercial Research

In this article, Nigel Spencer compares and contrasts his experience of delivering fee-based business information research from 1987 to 2008. Although the article is written from the perspective of the British Library priced research services, many points made could also apply to the changing role of the business information professional.

Online Customer Communities

This article describes how the author investigated the business case for the operation of online customer communities, and evaluated their impact. This was achieved through analysis of opinions from members in company-sponsored and member-initiated online customer communities. The research aimed to understand the relationship between customer and company in online communities, explore the motivations of customers to participate in online customer communities, and the benefits of these communities to companies. The main findings of the research revealed that online customer communities are beneficial to both company and customer. The evaluation concludes with a set of recommendations to companies on how online customer communities might be effectively created and managed.

Engaging with Social Media in the Business and Intellectual Property Centre (BIPC) at the British Library

In this article, Neil Infield shares with us the way in which the BIPC has successfully used social media to reach its diverse audience of inventors, entrepreneurs and small business owner.

Using Research: Supporting Organizational Change and Improvement

Explores the importance of organizational research as a tool to support business change and improvement. Describes a tried and tested research methodology that has been used within public and private sector organizations and can be easily adapted by in-house research and information services. Demonstrates how research can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of learning and development products and services. Includes a case study from a central government department that investigates the role of the line manager in learning.

Market Data and Business Information

Market Data and Business information have traditionally been two disciplines that have been very separate with no overlap. However, changes in content and delivery now mean that the two professions are much closer than previously and many of the issues and content sets are now common to both. Looking at some of the issues involved we can see how each side can benefit from the experience of the other.

Practitioners' Views About the Use of Business Email Within Organizational Settings: Implications for Developing Student Generic Competence

Although extensive research has been done on teaching emails and on the use of emails in organisations, little research exists about how to incorporate organizational practitioners' views as the voices of the community of social practice. To remedy this pedagogical gap, this article uses a genre approach to discuss organizational practitioners' views on the use of email in organizational settings. It also develops seven teaching and learning stages for situated learning and teaching in business communication based upon the presented study findings.

Consulting On Negotiation: Teaching Business Students Basic Techniques

My experience as a consultant has provided a wealth of information and ideas that I often share with my college students. Perhaps the most important skill I have honed has been the ability to negotiate deals and contracts. No other factor has had such a direct impact on the success of my consulting business. The art of negotiation is understood by few people or regularly utilized, and yet most people negotiate several times a day. Each time a person buys a product or service, an internal as well as external negotiation occurs. We barter professionally, personally, and psychologically with little or no thought of improving this much-needed skill.

Best Practices in Preparing Students for Mock Interviews

Studies have shown the importance of employment interview preparation in boosting the confidence and performance of students and jobseekers when they interview. This article reviews several techniques for preparing students for mock job interviews and, hence, actual job interviews.

Use of Uncertainty Reduction and Narrative Paradigm Theories in Management Consulting and Teaching: Lessons Learned

Teaching business communication while performing professional business consulting is the perfect learning match. The bizarre but true stories from our consulting world provide excellent analogies for classroom learning, and feedback from students about the consulting experiences reaffirms the power of using stories for teaching. When discussing this article, we recognized that we used two distinct communication theories for consulting and then for relaying these experiences in teaching. First, we talked about the challenge of truly in-depth process consulting: determining with the client what they need, not simply what they want. This requires extensive uncertainty reduction theory--continuing to drill down until the true nature of the problem is revealed and further consulting can begin.

Trends in Industry Supervisors' Feedback On Business Communication Internships

The purpose of this empirical study is to explore expectations of industry insiders and identify how student interns are performing in relation to those expectations as defined by 11 performance areas. The results of a survey of 238 industry supervisors were collected over a 5-year period in the departments of English and communication at a private university in the Northeast. While the results suggest that student interns tend to meet their supervisors' expectations in many areas, performance categories such as initiative, writing skills, and oral communication skills require increased attention in the ways we prepare students for their internships and post-graduation employment and, perhaps, the ways we help onsite supervisors develop expectations for and evaluate our interns.

Economic Crises and Financial Disasters: The Role of Business Communication

In the wake of global economic crisis, some of those responsible were summoned to testify under oath before Congressional committees to explain to the public what went wrong. What they said opened a window onto the thought processes and communication abilities of major business leaders. Many of them denied responsibility, failed to explain what occurred, and undermined their own credibility; as a result they were pilloried by Congress and the media. But how are these people connected to those of us who teach and do research in business communication? Unfortunately, these are our alumni, our former students.

Obfuscating the Obvious: Miscommunication Issues in the Interpretation of Common Terms

We communicate via many forms every day. When what we say or write is misunderstood, the fault may lie with either party. One source of miscommunication is the different meaning people place on commonly used words and phrases. In this article, the authors report preliminary results from a study on such miscommunication and lay out an agenda for research on improving business communication based on the Integrative Model of Levels of Analysis of 'Miscommunication,' developed by Coupland, Wiemann, and Giles.

Performing Sustainable Development Through Eco-Collaboration: The Ricelands Habitat Partnership

In this article, the authors demonstrate this point through a genealogy and textual analysis of the Ricelands Habitat Partnership (RHP), an eco-collaboration between the rice industry and environmental advocates in California's Sacramento Valley. Articulated here as a story of enemies becoming friends, the RHP gives life to a vision of more (if not perfectly) sustainable agriculture, where sustaining business and the natural environment can go hand in hand. The authors argue that sustainable development (like democracy or other abstract concepts) becomes 'real' for businesses and for society at large through local enactment.

The Role of Leader Motivating Language in Employee Absenteeism

This study investigates the relationship between strategic leader language (as embodied in Motivating Language Theory) and employee absenteeism. With a structural equation model, two perspectives were measured for the impact of leader spoken language: employee attitudes toward absenteeism and actual attendance. Results suggest that leader language does in fact have a positive, significant relationship with work attendance through the mediation effect of worker attendance attitude.

Five Simple Ways to Let Go and Give in to New Digital Routines

The way to be a jack-of-all-trades is to have the right tools in place so you can spend more time on the things you're good at. Here are five simple switches that allow you to shake your fusty old habits and start using the right tools.

How to Select a Proper Article Writing Method

Here are two main methods you can use to launch off your article marketing campaign.

DITA For Business Documents? New OASIS Committee Says "Yes!"

Think DITA is just for procedural technical documents? Think again. A new OASIS DITA sub-committee has been announced whose purpose it is to explore using the popular technical documentation standard known as the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) outside technical documentation projects.

Composition Studies, Professional Writing and Empirical Research: A Skeptical View

This article builds upon the work of Richard Haswell's "NCTE/CCCC's Recent War on Scholarship" by providing an alternative framework for empirical inquiry based on principles of skepticism. It examines the literature relating to empirical research and argues that one of the issues at hand is the perceived link of empirical research to positivism, which clashes with the dominant social constructivist paradigm. It draws upon classical rhetoric and the work of radial empiricist William James to formulate an alternative framework for empirical research based on skeptical principles.

Presenting Consumer Technology with POP: A Rhetorical and Ethnographic Exploration of Point-of-Purchase Advertising

Point-of-purchase advertising (POP) is responsible for half of the purchase decisions made in the store. Because of: 1) the influence of POP on the sale of technical consumer products and the economy; 2) our need to understand trends that shape technical and business communication; 3) the intermedial nature of POP (where spoken and written words work with place, visual image, physical structures, and multimedia integrated marketing campaigns); and 4) its theatrical and local nature, we need both a situated and theoretical exploration of POP. Drawing upon three months' participant observation in advertising, I describe a POP composing process in an integrated marketing campaign. Cognitive responses to layout and the interrelation of rhetorical canons are considered for preparing communication for a marketplace that is three-dimensional variegated, noisy, and peripatetic.

Anti-Employer Blogging: An Overview of Legal and Ethical Issues

Anti-employer blogs, those which criticize companies or their employees, are posing significant legal and ethical challenges for corporations. The important legal issue is the conflict between the employee's legal duty of loyalty to the employer and the employee's right to free speech. Although U.S. and state law describes what an employee may or may not say in a blog, corporations should encourage employees to contribute to the process of creating clear, reasonable policies that will help prevent expensive court cases. The important ethical issue concerning anti-employer blogs is whether an employee incurs an ethical duty of loyalty. In this article, I conclude that there is no such ethical duty. The legal duty of loyalty, explained in a company-written policy statement that employees must endorse as a condition of employment, offers the best means of protecting the legal and ethical rights of both employers and employees.

Ars Dictaminis Perverted: The Personal Solicitation E-mail as a Genre

Phishing e-mails deceive individuals into giving out personal information which may then be utilized for identity theft. One particular type, the Personal Solicitation E-mail (PSE) mimics personal letters—modern perversions of ars dictaminis (the classical art of letter writing). In this article, I determine and discuss 19 appeals common to the PSE. These appeals were established first by conducting generative rhetorical analysis, then by volunteer coding, on 170 e-mails collected over a 12-month period. After defining these categories, I show how these letters are excellent twenty-first century teaching tools for pathos-based argumentation, logical appeals, the creation of ethos, and kairos in the development of perceived exigency.

企業サイト上の投資家向け情報（IR）

個人投資家はあまりにも複雑なIRサイトに怖気づき、財務データのシンプルなサマリーを欲しがっている。個人投資家も投資専門家も、共に必要としているのは、企業自体のstoryとその投資ビジョンである。

Business Communication Needs: A Multicultural Perspective

How should we teach international business communication? What role can multiculturalism play in the business communication classroom? Can we identify a set of business communication requirements that are valid across different cultures? This article enters this discussion by presenting a small empirical study of the business communication needs expressed by postgraduate students in a North Cyprus university and comparing it to similar studies conducted in the United States and Singapore. The findings reveal some interesting correspondences between the needs expressed by students in these different countries. In addition, the multicultural environment of the North Cyprus university studied suggests that multicultural interaction increases students' sensitivity to the need for a nonethnocentric approach to international communication. The findings also indicate that respondents in multicultural settings may be more inclined to engage in groupthink because of their heightened awareness of cultural differences and their wish to avoid conflict.

Crossing National and Corporate Cultures: Stages in Localizing a Pre-Production Meeting Report

Localization includes translating, explaining, and adapting a document for use in a specific culture. This article presents the case of a form for reporting the findings and decisions of pre-production meetings held during development of electronic products. The need to localize such a document may seem less obvious or critical than the need for sales documents like manuals, but this case demonstrates the same cultural requirements and, furthermore, the requirements of corporate differences. To meet local needs, the comprehensive preparation that localization requires should follow specific methods in each step of a process corresponding to the general writing process, like the stages defined in common technical writing texts. The deliberate use of an effective writing process to localize documents will improve results.

Teaching Professional Writing to American Students in a Study Abroad Program

Studying abroad enhances the intercultural competencies of American students, but that enhancement strategy may be seen as an obstacle to those in business and technical fields who follow a tight curriculum and work to cover expenses. To meet their needs, U.S. professional communication faculty are designing short courses that can be delivered abroad during between-term periods and that foster an understanding of the situations and genres of the field within a context of cultural dislocation. Based on the courses described in this article, the best approach is to settle students in one location rather than touring; keep student numbers low by an entrepreneurial approach to keeping costs low; encourage students to live as the locals do, in apartments rather than hotels; explicitly plan appropriate access to technology; use class time to provide structure and reflection, but allow free time for collateral learning; and make sure the course grows local roots.

Merck's Open Letters and the Teaching of Ethos

In fall 2004, Merck faced a significant threat to the company's public image because of the withdrawal of VIOXX, and Merck executives were forced to defend the company's actions, its motivation for those actions, and its reputation. Confronted with enormous rhetorical challenges, Merck tried to generate public goodwill toward the company by creating a personalized image of a corporate giant worthy of understanding, sympathy, and trust. Open letters released during the initial response to the VIOXX crisis rely on the intimacy of interpersonal communication and demonstrate to students of business communication arguments based on ethos.

Enterprise Networking Web Sites and Organizational Communication in Australia

This article aims to report initial findings about networking in organizational settings in Australia through the use of enterprise social software.

Designing a Successful Group-Report Experience

Report assignments and collaborative assignments can both be fraught with risk. Report projects, if notstration) and/or can leave students wondering what they are supposed to have learned—all while creating a major grading burden for the instructor. Poorly planned group projects can cause similar difficulties, with the added danger of creating interpersonal stress in the student groups. Yet for many reasons, the report assignment is the perfect choice for the collaborative project. Because of its extra length and complexity, the report enables several students to contribute meaningful research, writing, and document design decisions to one product or a related set of products. If the project goes well, each student will learn important lessons both about report writing and about teamwork. To maximize the likelihood that the project will go well, the instructor must think through a wide range of variables and decide, based upon his or her learning objectives, what the features of the project will be.

Facilitating Teamwork With Lean Six Sigma and Web-Based Technology

One of the largest team-based projects that I worked on in industry involved a team of more than a dozen members, a multiyear timeline, and a budget well into six figures. Our task was to deliver a new corporate Web site. As the business owner of that project, I remember sitting down with our IT manager, who explained that she would be assisting the team in managing the cost, scope, and time involved in delivering the end product. I was thrilled to have someone who would help ensure we were successful across those variables, until she told me that I had to pick one of the three as the most important. When the team ran into issues, she said her team would sacrifice aspects of the other two. Although I insisted all three were equally important, the manager ultimately decided that cost would be the controlling variable because it was the one by which she and her team would be judged by her supervisor. My experience with projects like this one has led me to think about what successful teams look like and then to determine how best to foster such teams.

Students Advise Fortune 500 Company: Designing a Problem-Based Learning Community

This article describes the process of planning and implementing a problem-based learning community. Business and communication students from a large university in the Western United States competed in teams to solve an authentic business problem posed by a Fortune 500 company. The company's willingness to adopt some of their recommendations testified to the professional quality of their final product. This experience gave students an opportunity to apply communication concepts to a business problem. They learned how to make vital connections between theory and practice and between shared knowledge and shared knowing. In the process, students grew personally and professionally.

Team Virtual Discussion Board: Toward Multipurpose Written Assignments

What do teams, writing, time, technology, and critiques have in common? If you said they all have the letter 't' in them, you were correct. There can be so much more, though, when we connect each of these words in our course written assignments. Most of us use teams in our graduate and undergraduate organizational communication classes. What follows is a brief description of written (letter) assignments that use student pairs in a virtual Blackboard-based discussion board.

Do Business Communication Technology Tools Meet Learner Needs?

While institutions of higher education are enthusiastically embracing technology-mediated learning (TML), little research has been conducted to identify factors that influence student use of TML tools or determine whether use of them increases student learning. This study of business communication students at two universities found that (1) students tend to be sensing, visual, active, and sequential learners; (2) perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use of TML tools are positively associated with perceived learning success; (3) learning styles do influence the students' usage behavior of certain TML tools; and (4) students' sensing/intuitive learning style is related to their perceived learning success.

Writing for Business: a Graduate-Level Course in Problem-Solving

When I was assigned to teach graduate-level business writing in a Master's of Professional Communication (MPC) program, I was unsure what to do with the course. What kind of writing instruction do students need that they have not already received in their undergraduate business writing classes or in other required graduate writing courses? What makes an advanced writing class advanced? In order to answer those questions, I began looking for articles by other teachers and scholars in the field of professional and business writing. I discovered that in terms of assignments, teachers and scholars seem to agree that client projects form the cornerstones of business writing curricula.

The Rhetorical Helix of the Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical Industries: Strategies of Transformation Through Definition, Description and Ingratiation

Transformation wields great power. As individuals, we can define who we are and describe those essential characteristics that make us unique. Our view of ourselves, however, may not necessarily align with the opinions of those around us. Thus, the ability to reinvent oneself, to change how others see us and react to us, is critical for the process of ingratiation.

Incorporating Reflective Practice Into Team Simulation Projects for Improved Learning Outcomes

The use of simulation games in business courses is a popular method for providing undergraduate students with experiences similar to those they might encounter in the business world. As such, in 2003 we were pleased to find a classroom simulation tool that combined the decision-making and team experiences of a senior management group with a fun, realistic, and competitive plot: We selected the Business Strategy Game, an online simulation for use with the textbook Crafting and Executing Strategy: The Quest for Competitive Advantage. We then enhanced the student experience by blending the simulation game with reflective writing tools that help students recognize how team experiences and decisions ripple though an enterprise.

Structuring a Competency-Based Accounting Communication Course At the Graduate Level

The authors describe a graduate capstone accounting class as a basis for building communication skills desired by both accounting practitioners and accounting faculty. An academic service-learning (ASL) component is included. Adopted as a required class for a master of science degree in accounting at two universities, this course supports accounting accreditation. Surveys offer evidence that both accounting practitioners and faculty rate, in slightly different order, the three most important skills as written communication, oral communication, and analytical/critical thinking. Accounting curricula worldwide are under pressure to develop better skills in these areas as well as to meet assessment and accreditation directives and criteria. The authors designed a communication course utilizing ASL that not only meets all of the above objectives but also provides the student with hands-on experiential learning. Information about this course provides a guide to accounting and business faculty who may wish to pursue such an approach in their schools.

Who We Are and What We Do, 2008

A recent survey of some Association for Business Communication members highlights changes in the organization's focus over the past 40 years. Members continue to highly value pedagogical relevance, but the Association for Business Communication clearly attracts research-active academics, suggesting potential directions for the organization.

A Descriptive Account of the Investor Relations Profession: A National Study

Despite being a practice of vital importance for corporations, investor relations commands little attention in scholarly research. The studies of investor relations from a strategic communication standpoint are almost nonexistent in the United States. At the same time, investor relations today is undergoing a major shift from financial reporting to building and maintaining relationships with shareholders. The article reviews literature to define the current body of knowledge and state of research in investor relations. Then, the article reports on a survey of Fortune 500 companies to identify major investor relations practices at corporations: investor relations activities, their target audiences, their place in organizational structure, the education of investor relations officers, and what problems investor relations officers face.

Time to Socialize: Organizational Socialization Structures and Temporality

Organizational socialization is a communicative practice that affects and is affected by organizational temporality. The relationship between organizational socialization practices and organizational temporality is empirically explored through a questionnaire focusing on Ballard and Seibold's temporality dimensions and measures emphasizing structural dimensions of socialization tactics. Findings indicate that the perception of time as scarce is related to organizational members' development of formal structures that promote socialization of newcomers. Further, findings suggest that organizational members holding a future temporal focus may engage in the development of formal socialization structures that provide social support for newcomers and help newcomers predict their career path within the organization.

Positioned by Reading and Writing: Literacy Practices, Roles, and Genres in Common Occupations

In the research project Literacy Practices in Working Life, the role played by reading and writing in common nonacademic occupations in Sweden was investigated. The results highlight not only some typical ways of using writing to frame units of work but also differences reflecting the main focus of work (“people” or “things”) and overall organizing principles. This article deals with patterns in the use of writing, which may be related to modern ways of organizing work (efficiency and flexibility, personal responsibility, identification with the company, etc.). Case studies show a range of literacy practices—running from extensive and rather complicated uses of writing connected with individual responsibility to very restricted and dependent uses of reading and writing governed by a top-down organization. Examples illustrate how emerging ways of governing work through written discourse, related to the new, knowledge-based work order, create very different roles for workers.

Exploring the Concept of “Profession” for Organizational Communication Research: Institutional Influences in a Veterinary Organization

Recent scholarship has argued that the concept of profession is undertheorized and accepted uncritically. The authors address this issue by summarizing the characteristics of professions and articulating professions as institutionalized occupations. Their study of a veterinary call center suggests that profession influences the workplace through (a) knowledge providing, seeking, and sharing; (b) self-management of behavior, emotions, and productivity; (c) internal sources of motivation; (d) a service orientation; (e) the invocation of field standards; and (f) participation in a knowledge community beyond the workplace. Although these features may be distinguishable analytically, they are unified in the experience of work. Moreover, the close match in this case between the service orientations of the profession and of the organization strengthened the workers' commitment and thus the legitimacy of the organization.

"In Case You Didn't Hear Me the First Time": An Examination of Repetitious Upward Dissent

This study explores how employees express dissent to management about the same issue on multiple occasions across time (i.e., how they practice repetition). Employees completed a survey instrument reporting how often they used varying upward dissent tactics, how often and for how long they raised the same issue, and how they perceived their supervisors responded to their concerns. Results indicate that employees relied predominantly on competent upward dissent tactics but that they adopted less competent and more face-threatening tactics as repetition progressed. In addition, employees' perceptions of their supervisors' responses to repetition related to the overall duration of repetition but not to the frequency with which employees raised issues or the amount of time that elapsed between dissent episodes.

On a Growing Dualism in Organizational Discourse Research

Duality arguments are now a common perspective employed in organizational discourse research to avoid the problematic dualism of necessarily prioritizing structure or agency. Despite this considerable philosophical maturity, not all duality approaches are created equal. In fact, duality theorizing in current organizational discourse research has developed into two perspectives— structured in action or acted in structure. This article outlines the characteristics of each research program and provides an illustration of how similar organizational phenomena may be interpreted differently depending on paradigmatic orientation. Then, methodological recommendations and two emerging theoretical myopias—duality and organizing biases—are described to challenge scholars to employ dialectically these seemingly incommensurate perspectives in their theorizing of 21st-century organizational discourse.

The Relationship Between the Academy and Professional Organizations in the Development of Organizational Communication

Since the 1960s, Brazil has developed very close ties between academia and professionals in the marketplace. The efforts of scholars and the enthusiastic support of professionals have contributed to this development and advanced both practice and the scholarly agenda of the field. This essay examines this partnership as it formed through the growth of undergraduate education, the development of graduate programs, the establishment of the bridge between academia and the business world, and the integration of the academy and the market.

The Social, Political, and Economic Context in the Development of Organizational Communication in Brazil

As a professional practice and an academic subfield, organizational communication is a relatively recent addition in Brazil, dating primarily from the 1980s. In both arenas, organizational communication developed from the theory and practice of public relations. Much of its design, however, grows out of the particularities and consequences of the Brazilian social, political, and economic context. This article presents a brief profile of the history of public relations and organizational communication in this country.

Embracing Left and Right: Image Repair and Crisis Communication in a Polarized Ideological Milieu

The author explores how a tobacco firm in crisis engaged in crisis communication and image repair work in a highly polarized ideological milieu. Through an analysis of the tobacco firm's public statements produced in the aftermath of a 1997 lawsuit, the author demonstrates how the firm dealt with its milieu by exploiting and embracing both of the ambient ideological poles. By embracing these poles, the firm turned critique and opposition into discursive resources for its crisis communication. The author argues that political-ideological framing of organizational communication and discursive appropriation of critique and opposition serve as critical foci for organizational communication scholarship.

Employee Voice Behavior: Interactive Effects of LMX and Power Distance in the United States and Colombia

In contemporary organizations, competitive advantage can come from ideas employees communicate to supervisors for improving processes, products, and services. One approach to studying employee communications with supervisors is voice behavior. In this research, the authors consider leader— member exchange (LMX) and the individual cultural value orientation of power distance (PD) as predictors of voice. Two studies, conducted in different countries, demonstrate the unique and combined effects of these predictors. In Study 1, conducted in the United States, LMX was positively related to voice, PD was negatively related to voice, and PD made more of a difference in voice when LMX was high. In Study 2, conducted in Colombia, LMX and PD were both related to voice but did not interact. The authors discuss the implications for theory and practice.

Rethinking the Design of PowerPoint Slides: Claim-Evidence Structure

One of the criticisms leveled against technical PPT slides is the overuse (perhaps abuse is a better descriptor) of the topic/subtopic organization structure. One of the simple ways PPT presentations can be improved is to follow the BLUF principle. Bottom Line Up Front.

Why Tech Writers Need To Understand Business: Yet Another Example...

For some years, people, myself included, have noted the lack of interest, even disdain, that many tech writers have for business issues. This reduces these writers' ability to affect company decisions, including decisions that may affect them. Writers from fine arts or English backgrounds can rarely discuss cost-justification in finance terms, so they have little input on buying decisions.

Presenting To Win: Top Ten Tips for a Winning Pitch

Top 10 tips for a winning pitch by David McDermott, MD of Edomidas. David McDermott is MD of edoMidas Ltd and is an advisor and international speaker on competitive pitching. His success is founded on thoroughly researched pitching strategies, drawing from experience of the most successful global business pitches.

How To Write a White Paper to Attract Clients

Do you have a new idea, business model, product or service? Do you want to get noticed by using a marketing method that might only cost you time? Try writing a white paper to attract people to your door.

“About Us” Doesn’t Have to be All “Ugh.”

No matter how beautifully designed, if a site’s voice doesn’t ring true, it’s easy to spot an “ugh.” Rather than using this section of a site like a congratulatory press release, consider approaching “About Us” like a magazine’s Editor Letter.

Web Writing for Email

Learning about writing for the web has made me a better email communicator and project manager. Email would be much more effective if content was broken out in easy-to-understand sections with a clear guide for next steps at the end.

Investor Relations (IR) on Corporate Websites

Individual investors are intimidated by overly complex IR sites and need simple summaries of financial data. Both individual and professional investors want the company's own story and investment vision.

The Central Role of Communication in Developing Trust and Its Effect On Employee Involvement

Communication plays an important role in the development of trust within an organization. While a number of researchers have studied the relationship of trust and communication, little is known about the specific linkages among quality of information, quantity of information, openness, trust, and outcomes such as employee involvement. This study tests these relationships using communication audit data from 218 employees in the oil industry. Using mediation analysis and structural equation modeling, we found that quality of information predicted trust of one's coworkers and supervisors while adequacy of information predicted one's trust of top management. Trust of coworkers, supervisors, and top management influenced perceptions of organizational openness, which in turn influenced employees' ratings of their own level of involvement in the organization's goals. This study suggests that the relationship between communication and trust is complex, and that simple strategies focusing on either quality or quantity of information may be ineffective for dealing with all members in an organization.

CEOs' Hybrid Speeches: Business Communication Staples

Closely examining a number of contemporary speeches given by CEOs, this study highlights differentiating features of two business speech genres that together account for a large number of corporate speeches. These genres, which are exemplified by speeches given at events such as industry conferences or company ceremonies, are unlike other business speech genres in that they pursue two main communication ends at once. They take on an assignment set by the speaking occasion while simultaneously pursuing the speaker's commercial objective. CEO speakers construct the hybrid speeches of these two genres by drawing on and modifying single-purpose speech types regularly used today both in business and in other sectors. Recognizing the dual communication purpose of hybrid speeches is critical for understanding their unusual structures and for developing appropriate standards to evaluate them.

A Content Analysis Investigating Relationships Between Communication and Business Continuity Planning

This study provides an exploratory content analysis of business continuity planning (BCP) literature. The researchers systematically sampled multiple databases and codified artifacts using a set of variables developed by the research team. Based on the analysis, arguments are presented concerning the nature of BCP, the state of the BCP literature, and the nature of the conversations taking place in regard to BCP among academics, government/legal institutions, the media, and trade industries. Finally, the researchers demonstrate gaps in the current knowledge on BCP and suggest future directions for applied and theoretical research.

The Importance of "Niche" Journals To New Business-Communication Academics— and To All of Us

This commentary, extending one published in 2007, reports on a study of publishing advice being given to new academics in business communication. The findings suggest that 'niche' journals such as the Journal of Business Communication are very important to these academics' professional advancement and are, in general, well regarded in the respondents' host departments. Such journals are essential to the scholarly conversation in specialty areas that are not well served by bigger, mainstream journals.

Is Your Email Businesslike — or Brusque?

Anyone whose ever been part of an online "flame war" has had the experience of a tiny "e-mole" becoming a mountain. Studies have shown that readers add (or invent) emotional bias that is often counter to your intent as the sender. In this case, all of the niceties you thought you were writing ended up sounding very different in the mind of your employee.

Marketing: Intertwining The Mobile Revolution

Online through mobile will be, is, WAS the future. Ori Carmel from Ambergreen says that The Future of Mobile Marketing crept up on us while we were looking the other way and is already here.

Writing For the Market

If you’re a generalist, as most tech writers are, you write about many things in a variety of media with a number of objectives. Each new job involves determining who your audience is, what their needs are, and how your product or service can satisfy those needs. Then you need to recognize, understand, and adjust your writing so one time it appeals to the camper and the next time to the business owner.

Five Benefits of Blogger Outreach

Blogger outreach has quickly become an integral part of many brands’ marketing efforts. The blogosphere enables interactive dialogue between bloggers and consumers, and blogger outreach opens the door for conversation between your brand, bloggers and consumers. For any company that is looking to leverage the blogosphere for your marketing or PR strategy, here are 5 benefits of blogger outreach.

Is My Brand Right For Twitter?

Marketers are increasingly engaging with consumers on social media platforms and Twitter, in particular, has received, and continues to gain, attention. From shock tactics, to useful value propositions like @amazonmp3 content feed, brands are revealing themselves on Twitter. We are starting to hear of stories about top executives calling meetings about how they should "get on Twitter" and saying, "We need a social media profile." But should they? Do they?

Writing Quality Requirements

This article describes several characteristics of high quality software requirement statements and specifications. We will examine some less-than-perfect requirements from these perspectives and take a stab at rewriting them. I’ve also included some general tips on how to write good requirements. You might want to evaluate your own project’s requirements against these quality criteria.

Introduction to Requirements: The Critical Details That Make or Break a Project

Every project has requirements. It doesn't matter if it's building hardware solutions, developing software solutions, installing networks, protecting data, or training users. For the project to be a success, knowing what the requirements are is an absolute must. Requirements exist for virtually any components of a project or task. For example, a project may require specific methods, expertise levels of personnel, or the format of deliverables. This whitepaper will discuss the various kinds of information technology requirements, their importance, the different requirement types, the concept of requirements engineering, and the process for gathering requirements.

Decision Analysis and Risk Management: Two Sides of the Same Coin

Every decision involves an analysis of possible future events (costs, outcomes, markets, etc.) and selection of a choice among competing alternatives. Making a decision is making a selection. This white paper will provide you with an outline of how to judge the quality of decisions by exploring how effectively the risks associated with various options have been analyzed.

Making Whuffie: Raising Social Capital in Online Communities

This talk gets to the heart of how people interact and exchange information in online communities: through social capital, or as Cory Doctorow calls it, Whuffie. The key to growing customers in online communities is through growing your social capital. You will learn the 5 lessons of raising Whuffie through online communities in this presentation.

Three Reasons to Love the Twitter Hate

Twitteurs are in a hyperventilating snit over the ridicule being heaped on their plaything by, among others, the New York Times’ Maureen Dowd, Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart and Doonesbury’s Garry Trudeau. I’m a longtime Twitteur, semi-evangelical and pretty well engaged with it on a daily basis. By this point it is as integrated in my being as lymph. But I think the ridicule is a delightful, even important development.

XML-Based Multimodal Interaction Framework for Contact Center Applications

In this paper, we consider a way to represent contact center applications as a set of multiple XML documents written in different markups including VoiceXML and CCXML. Applications can comprise a dialog with IVR, call routing and agent scripting functionalities. We also consider ways how such applications can be executed in run-time contact center environment.

Summarizing Email Conversations with Clue Words

Accessing an ever increasing number of emails, possibly on small mobile devices, has become a ma jor problem for many users. Email summarization is a promising way to solve this problem. In this paper, we propose a new framework for email summarization. One novelty is to use a fragment quotation graph to try to capture an email conversation. The second novelty is to use clue words to measure the importance of sentences in conversation summarization. Based on clue words and their scores, we propose a method called CWS, which is capable of producing a summary of any length as requested by the user. We provide a comprehensive comparison of CWS with various existing methods on the Enron data set. Preliminary results suggest that CWS provides better summaries than existing methods.

Strictly Business: Marketing With Social Networking Sites

For writer, photographer, and video producer David Chandler-Gick, Facebook is a practical tool. "On a recent cross-country excursion to work with Cathy Steffan of Parallel Media Productions, Facebook served as a central hub to keep me in contact with friends and colleagues," he writes. "Accessing Facebook kept me in touch with what was going on, last-minute changes, and more."

Talking 'Bout My Generation: The Evolution of Online Marketing Research

Utilizing reliable market research on an ongoing basis is the most effective way to ensure a successful marketing campaign. Nevertheless, for many companies, the benefits of conducting marketing research and the costs of conducting marketing research always seem to be at odds. Marketing research can be expensive. Not knowing your customer's needs can be costly.

Collaborative ICT for Indian Business Clusters

Indian business clusters have contributed immensely to the country’s industrial output, poverty alleviation and employment generation. However, with recent globalization these clusters can lose out to international competitors if they do not continuously innovate and take advantage of the new opportunities that are available through economic liberalization. In this paper, we discuss how information and communication technologies (ICT) can help in improving the productivity and growth of these clusters.

The Perils of Our Digital Communications

When 90% of what you do for work is based online, there are bound to be some glitches, and not just the technical ones. How do you handle the inevitable misunderstandings that come with today’s rapid-fire digital conversations and communications in the workplace? I’ve put together a few ideas for how we can all minimize misunderstandings or at least diffuse the fallout.

Your Agency's Clients Deserve the Truth -- Can You Handle It? The Digital Age Will Force You to Give Up Pseudo-Science and Rules of Thumb

If you aren't yet, get really digital, really fast. Don't just hire some kid out of college that knows .NET or PHP and talks of something called Cold Fusion. No, go find one of those really expensive geeks that has been in the biz for a while. Then get out of their way.

Don't Waste Money On A Business Blog

Don't waste your money on a business blog (unless search engine marketing is an important piece of your overall marketing efforts and you're going to invest the time and effort into making it work).

Return on Investment (ROI) on XBRL

Our initial effort at tagging and furnishing an XBRL document to the SEC consumed approximately 80 hours of an employee’s time. But to adequately evaluate this commitment, it is necessary to understand the scope and context of the effort. The hours included not only the time to tag the underlying document, but also the time to learn how to use the tagging tool, understand the requirements for filing under the SEC’s VFP, create tags that did not exist in the standard taxonomy, and to build a process that would allow the ongoing tagging and filing of documents. Our current effort to tag and file an 8-K earnings release is down to approximately four hours now that the learning curve has been eliminated.

Ten Ways to Make Social Media Matter to Skeptical CEOs

Not embracing conversational marketing and letting go of some control is reckless because it puts a barrier up between you and your customers, I reminded some executive clients. Change that makes a big difference, however, requires just a small bit of courage.

Policies and Procedures Communication Becoming More Suitable for Learning

Three workplace trends are driving policies and procedures (P&P) communication to be more suitable for learning than classroom training: changing workforce needs; e-content availability; and changing organizational needs.

Policies and Procedures for Training and Reference: One Source?

Should an organization maintain two sets of policies and procedure (P&P) information—one that is developed for training and another that is developed for on-going reference?

Using XSL, XForms and UBL Together to Create Complex Forms With Visual Fidelity

This paper will explain how XSL-FO, XSLT, XForms and UBL can be used together (and how the implementation in Scriptura XBOS is done). Each technology contributes its own strengts to the total solution. XSL-FO for page oriented layout with a visual fidelity, XForms for advanced and flexible forms, and UBL to represent the business data. Together they allow to create UBL documents such as invoices in a very powerful and flexible way, all with open standards.

Large Scale Validation of Millions of UBL Invoices with XML Schema and Schematron

Since February 1st 2005, millions of invoices have been exchanged between the private sector and the public sector in Denmark. This paper focuses on real life problems, experiences and solutions with syntactical and semantical validation of millions of electronic invoices. Localization and documentation for regional and national use is a massive and important assignment. I.e. decisions on the use of identifiers have to be specified and local payment methods must be mapped to the international standard. The result is a message with many internal integrity constraints that cannot be validated with the UBL schemas alone. In order to provide even stronger validation, non-normative supplementary schemas have been developed. These schemas perform stronger validation based on decisions about the use of national identifiers for companies and persons. In addition to the use of XML schema – Schematron is used for the validation of internal referential integrity constraints. Experiences and theoretical considerations on the localization of international vocabularies are discussed.

Visually Modelling Business Processes

Learn how to visually design and implement process definitions using BPSS V2 including the use of context mechanisms and workflows, signals and joins. A selection of sample industry and government applications will be provided from automotive, financial, homeland security and healthcare applications.

The Benefits of ebXML for e-Business

The ebXML specifications have matured rapidly over the past year. New components and capabilities have extended the architecture for service oriented architectures (SOA). Learn about this new comprehensive release of ebXML that is available from OASIS.

UBL and the Colombian Connection

This session provides a realistic tour of the process of implementing and customizing UBL, through the study of our implementation of UBL for the ministries of agriculture and commerce of the Republic of Colombia. Both through general tools (xmlroff as modified by Fabio to support UBL pdf output) and through custom made, open source software, XML-based technologies are effectively bridging the gap of B2B commerce between the United States and the rest of the world. UBL Capture, Presentation, Storage, Transfer software custom made by UBL voting member Fabio Arciniegas is demonstrated and dissected within the context of a real life example of implementation for the colombian government.

Using XSL-FO 1.1 for Business-Type Documents

In addition to the powerful features available now, the upcoming XSL-FO 1.1 will bring several new features. In the world of business-type documents, marketing material and forms, there is currently a need for end-of-page subtotals, multiple flows, easier page number citation, things that will be possible with XSL-FO 1.1. This presentation will cover the features of XSL-FO that are needed for this type of documents. Formatting objects and properties of both XSL-FO 1.0 as 1.1 will be covered, as well as how to combine these things to create a good-looking business-type document, because these types of documents need have the perfect layout.

Save the Touchy-Feely for the Redwoods

When you lay your feelings out to people, it can be cathartic for you, but it also places a weight on those around you. Learning when, where, and how, to talk to someone about your feelings is tricky. Sometimes it’s okay, and sometimes it’s not.

Warning: Dependence on Facebook, Twitter Could Be Hazardous to Your Business

You've probably heard how much the micro-blogging service Twitter can help your business, or that being on social networking site Facebook can boost your company's profile. But what you might not have considered is the potential danger in over-relying on these startups that could go out of business, get bought out, or close your account if you aren't familiar with their Terms of Service.

Mind the Gap

Twitter and other social media give customers the potential to create their own models of customer service, their own expectations of how help and support might be provided. They will find gaps through which to force departments to talk to each other, erode lines between companies, and perhaps ultimately for companies unwilling to change they may bypass them altogether and look to each other for help through applications such as Twitter.

Communicating Customer and Business Value with a Value Matrix

If you’re like me, you’ve always felt something was missing once you finished creating your personas and scenarios. They communicate the heart and goals of the user, but miss out on a lot of details. And while it’s the intent of both documents to do just that, neither personas nor scenarios succinctly communicates to your business what features a product or service should have and why it should have them.

Toward a Post-Technê: Or, Inventing Pedagogies for Professional Writing

This article examines the concept of technê in relation to situatedness. Technê is conceived as techniques for situating bodies in contexts. Although many theorists and practitioners in technical communication are working from ecological and posthuman perspectives with regard to interface designs, this article argues for extending those perspectives to workplace and classroom situations. Starting from a Heideggerian reading of technê, the article moves toward the concept of post-technê, which remakes pedagogical techniques for writing and inventing in institutional contexts.

Consistency of Message

The main aims are to provide a consistent set of information to our customers, throughout their relationship with us. So from initial contact right the way through to rollout and future upgrades, we will have a coherent set of information that is updated accordingly and a clear idea of how it will all be communicated to the customer.

Is Your Homepage Immature?

Every large corporation has a marketing strategy that outlines what it wants to say to customers, but many of them still aren’t using their homepages effectively to highlight that message.

Teamwork Through Team Building: Face-to-Face to Online

This article describes the ways the authors incorporated team-building activities into our online business writing courses by interrogating the ways that kinesthetic learning translates into the electronic realm. The authors review foundational theories of team building, including Cog's Ladder and Tuckman's Stages, and offer sample exercises they have converted. The authors show how the medium affects the exercises, how the choices made as teachers affect the exercises, and how they adjusted to meet the needs of their students. The authors argue that teamwork most successfully occurs after team building, and too often this team building is lacking in online environments.

Set Design for Online Corporate Video

In this article, I’ll discuss four design-related areas: how to create a simple set for in-house use; how to choose the best background for location shoots like case studies and testimonials; current trends in set design for internet-only media sites; how to dress your subjects for optimum compression. The importance of many of the set design principles discussed in this chapter relate to your distribution data rate. If the bitrate of the video you’re delivering is very high, say in the 400Kbps range for 320x240 video or 650Kbps or higher for 640x480, you have a lot more flexibility, since the compressed quality of your video will remain quite high. Once you sink below these rates, quality degrades. Choosing a poor background or set will only make the problem worse.

Producing Corporate Web Videos

Website videos are a natural for event videographers. We use them to demonstrate our work to prospective clients, and they have proven to be a vital marketing medium to showcase our range of products. We might even post short video testimonials from happy clients or put our own talking heads on our sites.

Interpretative Management in Business Meetings

Middle managers interpret experiences and observations of employees and relate them to organizational contexts, practices, and strategies. By analyzing authentic verbal communication between middle managers and employees, this article will draw five conclusions about how interpretational work support organizational goals and values: 1. Middle managers and employees collaborate in interpreting tasks in relation to organizational context; 2. This interpretative work is based on language acquisition: learning the vocabulary of the organization; 3. The managers articulate the process, explicitly defining reality and influencing language use; 4. Employees show expectation of having their experiences interpreted by managers; 5. Employees may challenge managers with competing interpretations. This article will contribute to the study of leadership communication by combining organization communication theory and conversation analytic methodology. The article shows important ways in which middle managers "do leadership": by contextualizing employee actions and bringing employee perceptions in accordance with executive-level perceptions of organizational practices.