Avoiding Global Misunderstandings  

When we think of miscommunication across national boundaries, the mostmemorable blunders often relate to problems with translation. Butthere are far more subtle pitfalls thatcan occur. Here, Angela Sinickas shares some of the common mistakes that can lead global communications to miss the mark.

Sinickas, Angela D. Sinickas Communications (2004). Articles>Business Communication>International

Avoiding Wrong Turns in the Shrinking Global Village

With the global village growing smaller every year, more and more communication professionals are taking on assignments that span a wide range of countries and cultures. Cross-border responsibilities require that you constantly expand your horizons and learn about new places and people. At the same time, it can be more than a little daunting to get up to speed on each country’s business and social conventions—and when the two do and don’t mix.

Bird, Shelley. Communication World Bulletin (2005). Articles>Business Communication>International>Cultural Theory

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

Being Seen in the BA Scene

As Business Analysts we have such a great opportunity everyday to use a variety of skills in ever changing project situations. This gives us the chance to showcase and develop in multiple areas that will help us evolve the profession of Business Analysis and help us each grow in our own careers.

Wick, Angela. BA Collective (2007). Articles>Business Communication>Collaboration

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

Beyond Power and Resistance: New Approaches to Organizational Politics  

In this introduction to the special issue, the editors question the still-prevalent dichotomy of power and resistance when studying organizational politics. They begin by tracing the evolution of power and resistance in critical scholarship. Then, they propose that because of changing workplace dynamics, power and resistance are increasingly intertwined. More nuanced concepts are required to describe this. Finally, they argue that power and resistance should be considered as a singular dynamic called struggle.

Fleming, Peter and André Spicer. Management Communication Quarterly (2008). Articles>Management>Organizational Communication>Business Communication

Bloggers' Alert: Confidentiality and Disclosure in the Workplace

First it was e-mail messages, next it was PDA messaging, and now it is blogs. These networking tools are all widely used by employees. They also sometimes become a source of contentious litigation when employers become concerned over the risk of corporate liability and public disclosure of confidential information that these new technologies pose.

Siegel, Ariane. Communication World Bulletin (2005). Articles>Business Communication>Privacy>Blogging

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

Blogs: The Fast Track to Getting Global Awareness

“We need to get global awareness fast,” says your CEO. “Make it happen.” When faced with the need to rapidly increase your organization’s visibility around the world, there are some daunting and expensive challenges, particularly if your company does not have a local presence in the countries it is targeting. Hiring local public relations and marketing communication talent, translating collateral into local languages and identifying and getting into both formal and informal business networks are just a few of these challenges.

Albrycht, Elizabeth. Communication World Bulletin (2005). Articles>Business Communication>Marketing>Blogging

Blogs: Viral, Targeted, Fast, Informative--And Becoming Critical

The world of blogging, also known as the blogosphere, is wild, highly viral, uncensored and unedited. It is also the newest and most critical tool in a business communicator's toolbox. Why? Because with blogs, communicators can quickly, regularly and easily deliver a variety of information to a highly targeted audience. A good blog will create a more personal relationship with customers and influencers by showing that the company is listening and responding to what they have to say.

Cohen, Ephraim. Communication World Bulletin (2005). Articles>Business Communication>Online>Blogging

Branding and the Role of Public Relations: A Bottom-Dollar Proposition

It used to be that advertising was king. If you had a product or service you needed to sell, you went to an advertising agency and developed an advertising campaign to get your item to the public. Then marketing joined the fray, and advertising became an extension of other things you were doing to market yourself, like trade shows or mailings. Eventually branding assumed center stage. Now everything you did to promote, market or sell your product or service, your company or even yourself emanated from the branding mandate. As it should be! The critical importance of strategically focused, consistently delivered messaging cannot be overstated.

Gelfand, Julie Gross. Communication World Bulletin (2004). Articles>Business Communication>Public Relations

Branding Your Company  

Branding dates back to ancient times and can be an aspect of every field. Not only does branding provide clients with a sense of professionalism and reliability, it can also help define your company.

Frick, Elizabeth G. 'Bette'. Intercom (2008). Articles>Business Communication>Marketing

Breaking Professional Boundaries: What the MacCrate Report on Lawyering Skills and Values Means for TPC Programs    

In 1992, the American Bar Association released the MacCrate Report, which listed the ten skills and four professional values that all attorneys need and critiqued law schools and state bars for not doing enough to teach and encourage the development of these skills and values. In response, law schools have significantly increased the skills-based components in their curricula, and most state bar exams now include a performance test. Technical and Professional Communication (TPC) programs already provide substantial instruction in all of the skills and values described in the MacCrate Report; further, an education in TPC prepares graduates to excel in law school and on the bar exam. This knowledge offers opportunities for growth if educators, administrators, and scholars take steps to encourage students to consider not only writing for but also joining in the legal profession.

Todd, Jeff. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2008). Articles>Education>Legal>Business Communication

Build More Effective International Media Analysis Programmes with Market Research Disciplines

Ask communication professionals why measurement is important, and their answers are likely to involve accountability, measures of effectiveness, ROI and planning support. Ask market researchers what makes for good measurement, and they are likely to respond that it involves reproducible results, adherence to rigorous standards and objective impartiality. Within the communication process, however—especially within PR and media relations—there is a tendency to look more closely at the output of their programmes than at the methodology yielding the data charts and reports. While market research has a well-established body of theory to support its claims of delivering objective and authoritative data, media analysis as a commercial discipline is only just beginning to grasp the importance of these standards.

Stoeckle, Thomas and Mike Daniels. Communication World Bulletin (2004). Articles>Business Communication>Marketing>Assessment

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

Building Your Personal Brand Online

It probably wouldn’t surprise you to know that we are operating in a distrustful world, and that both companies and individual executives are subject to suspicion. In 2005, a worldwide Gallup poll found that 40 percent of people believe that company leaders are “largely dishonest,” and a 2006 Watson Wyatt study says that only 56 percent of company employees believe their top management acts with honesty and integrity. These are worrisome figures, given that senior executives worry a great deal about their companies’ reputations but may spend little time on their own.

Fierman, Stephanie. Communication World Bulletin (2008). Articles>Business Communication>Ethics>Online

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

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.

Goby, Valerie Priscilla. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (2007). Articles>Business Communication>International

Business Development Through Online Networking

Recently, business networking has been perceived negatively due to its widespread use in the network marketing industry and the proliferation of “lead generation clubs” that focus on impersonal lead referrals rather than on building relationships. The surge in popularity of social networking sites on the Internet, however, has sparked a renewed interest in meaningful discussion and research on the value and importance of “networking,” particularly to mainstream businesses.

Teten, David and Scott Allen. Communication World Bulletin (2004). Articles>Business Communication>Online

Business Etiquette: New Day, New Time  

Business etiquette including communication, ethics, and teamwork has changed considerably over the years. Core values of companies are evolving. Companies now want to be the "place to work". Issues that were once taboo in the business world are no longer. This can be observed in an employee's appearance for example. The once standard business suit has been replaced with casual dress. The normal peer to peer communication has been replaced with upward and downward communication throughout the business organization.

Ashe, Carolyn and Chynette Nealy. Association for Business Communication (2008). Articles>Business Communication>Collaboration