http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Articles/Business-Communication/Collaboration A listing of the most recently indexed works about Articles and Business Communication and Collaboration in the field of technical communication. en-us Copyright (c) 2005-08 by the EServer. All rights reserved. tclib-editorial@eserver.org (TC Library Editorial Board) webmaster@eserver.org (Geoffrey Sauer) http://tc.eserver.org/images/newlogo.gif http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Articles/Business-Communication/Collaboration http://tc.eserver.org/35458.html http://tc.eserver.org/35458.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/35145.html http://tc.eserver.org/35145.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/34823.html http://tc.eserver.org/34823.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/34102.html http://tc.eserver.org/34102.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/33716.html http://tc.eserver.org/33716.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/33555.html http://tc.eserver.org/33555.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/33501.html http://tc.eserver.org/33501.html Drawing on insights from Goffman's dramaturgical approach to interaction, this article demonstrates how meetings are team performances routinely concerned with sustaining or challenging interpretations of power relations. The data for this article were collected at a British embassy, relying on participant observation, audio recordings of weekly gatherings of Heads of Section, and interviews with the people that attended the meeting. The analysis focuses on the double role behavior of the Ambassador as the director and central player of a team performance and the conflicting ideologies these shifting roles entail. http://tc.eserver.org/33506.html http://tc.eserver.org/33506.html Student compositions traditionally are written for the teacher. Yet instructors of professional communication genres have discovered that students' motivation may be enhanced when they write assignments for audiences of peers within the classroom or professionals outside the campus. Yet client-based projects require writing students who have never yet written for an external audience to make a leap beyond the classroom. To bridge the gap between writing for classroom peers and writing for professional clients, this article describes a third and intermediate choice of audience, namely, external peers in cross-classroom collaborations that occur via telecommunication. The author places this intermediate-audience strategy within the larger conversation about the impact of audience on student writing outcomes, applies the strategy to professional writing pedagogy, and reports the results of a small pilot study that provide some preliminary support for the strategy. http://tc.eserver.org/32315.html http://tc.eserver.org/32315.html Guanxi referrals help identify potential business partners. Through guanxi networks, businesses can establish favourable and mutually beneficial relationships vital to business success. Guanxi carries assumed knowledge of trust and facilitates business references. It is the construct of `face' that underpins this trust. The high degree of trust in guanxi networks facilitates the flow of strategic information and knowledge, further adding value to business. This article illustrates through case studies how guanxi relationships are formed and how knowledge in guanxi networks can benefit business. The case studies are drawn from experiences of three Europe-based Chinese business directors. http://tc.eserver.org/31807.html http://tc.eserver.org/31807.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/31810.html http://tc.eserver.org/31810.html A case study of Danish SME managers’ understanding of CSR and CSR communication conducted in the beginning of 2007 concluded that CSR communication in SMEs is a practice rather than a corporate strategy. http://tc.eserver.org/31808.html http://tc.eserver.org/31808.html Office politics goes on in most work environments. Learning the rules of office politics helps employees of both genders reap the rewards to which they are entitled. As future employees, students must become knowledgeable about office politics to be successful in the world of work. http://tc.eserver.org/31721.html http://tc.eserver.org/31721.html Most of us are involved in negotiating in some form or other on a daily basis. Here is a look at the process of negotiation and tips you can use to improve your technique as you progress through the process. http://tc.eserver.org/31690.html http://tc.eserver.org/31690.html This article argues for the theoretical and practical incorporation of aesthetic sensibilities into the communicative management of hybrid organizing. Using Dewey's Art as Experience as a conceptual framework, it explores imaginative and aesthetic practices as knowledge-producing resources for organizing and social change. The analysis centers on the complex and contradictory ways that artful capacities and instrumental rationalities interweave to achieve the organizational order of a collaborative art studio. Using discourses from multiple stakeholders, this article examines in detail three themes: art as creation and vocation, art as ephemeral integration, and art as survival and social change. Findings are discussed in the context of other scholarship committed to recovering and fostering alternative logics for organizing. http://tc.eserver.org/31562.html http://tc.eserver.org/31562.html Communication professionals can and should have frequent, direct access to and influence on executive leadership. Your CEO needs you, but are you ready? It is a misperception that CEOs are too busy, uninterested or unreceptive. While some communicators have close contact with executives, many other communication professionals rarely see the CEO and may have many layers of management between themselves and that "C-level" suite. But you don't have to report directly to the CEO to get his or her ear. http://tc.eserver.org/31566.html http://tc.eserver.org/31566.html It's an undisputed fact. Some CEOs refuse to acknowledge that their communication skills could use a tune-up. Someone in your organization -- quite possibly you -- needs to assume responsibility for sharpening your CEO's communication skills. If your leader neglects this part of her leadership toolkit, it's time to offer some frank advice on how she can improve. You must also be prepared to deal with the sensitive matter of how to encourage the boss to accept the benefits of learning from a communication training workshop. http://tc.eserver.org/31212.html http://tc.eserver.org/31212.html Today’s global marketplace teaches us that effective practices for internal communication in international corporations must be tuned to the cultural profiles of employees in their own countries. Internal communication departments are given the task of adapting company messages that effectively reach the organization’s global employee base. In order to ensure the effectiveness of these communications, organizations must first develop awareness, knowledge and intercultural skills within their internal communication teams. http://tc.eserver.org/31209.html http://tc.eserver.org/31209.html Managing internal communication across a global organization is an exciting and challenging task. How this task is approached will vary widely depending on the culture and structure of the particular organization, as well as the location of its headquarters. http://tc.eserver.org/31045.html http://tc.eserver.org/31045.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/31015.html http://tc.eserver.org/31015.html Explains how a leading global law firm manages its market and client research. Outlines the firm's divisions, business activities and client base. Explains in detail how the firm uses business research, covering use of market intelligence on the business issues that an individual client faces, and the gathering of intelligence about the client, to disclose the nature and extent of the firm's ambitions to advise the organization concerned. Discusses the staffing of a law firm's business research capability, pointing out that not only staff expertise but also confidentiality concerns mean that it is not always efficient for lawyers to access internal and external information sources directly. Suggests that defining the minimum business research necessary improves the usefulness of the information delivered and saves the firm time -- and that removing the uncertainty about what is required improves job satisfaction as well. http://tc.eserver.org/31018.html http://tc.eserver.org/31018.html Web 2.0 technologies are becoming increasingly ubiquitous among younger generations of IT users and this is creating a new set of expectations about accessing quality information for business, research and academic purposes. The article looks at how this situation has impacted on the expectations of users of library and information services. Although there are solid reasons for standing by professional standards, there is little doubt that the next generation has a greater expectation around being participants in, rather than recipients of, knowledge sharing. How will this impact the status of the professional librarian and information manager, and to what extent should they change with this paradigm shift looming? http://tc.eserver.org/30724.html http://tc.eserver.org/30724.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/30702.html http://tc.eserver.org/30702.html This article reports a case study of three multinational companies that work together in a consortium, focusing on intercompany and intracompany variation in writing products and processes. The authors discuss variation in two genres: meeting minutes and internal memos. Adopting a social constructionist, communities of practice (CofP) approach, they argue that the companies form overarching constellations of CofP. Although the participants broadly work with the same genres of written documents, the form of these documents varies according to the local context, audience, and purpose. The authors discuss the implications of their findings, with particular reference to the difficulty writers face when they make the transition from writing for one community of practice to writing for another. http://tc.eserver.org/30398.html http://tc.eserver.org/30398.html This progression presents a structured approach to client-vendor communications that can enhance quality; ease frazzled nerves; and result in win-win situations for clients, vendors, end users, and their organizations. Participants will discuss how clear, structured communications can strengthen their roles as clients and vendors of publication products and services. Participants will review the checklist that this vendor developed for use from initial contact to contract to project completion. Discussion will address how participants can develop their own customized checklists. http://tc.eserver.org/29367.html http://tc.eserver.org/29367.html Technical support relies heavily on users' abilities to perform tasks, and we're all more than familiar with the difficulty involved with assisting inexperienced computer users. Most widespread worms and viruses take hold and spread due to poorly maintained systems, commonly home systems found on broadband networks. http://tc.eserver.org/29362.html http://tc.eserver.org/29362.html One sure-fire way to improve help desk morale and raise awareness of your technical support team is to write a help desk mission statement. Get some tips on what to include and find some samples of other mission statements. http://tc.eserver.org/28631.html http://tc.eserver.org/28631.html Adult bullying at work is a shocking, terrifying, and at times shattering experience. What's more, bullying appears to be quite common, as one in ten U.S. workers report feeling bullied at work, and one in four report working in extremely hostile environments. Workplace bullying is repetitive, enduring abuse that escalates over time and results in serious harm to those targeted, to witnessing coworkers, and to the organizations that allow it to persist. Bullying runs the gamut of hostile communication and behavior and can consist of excluding and ignoring certain workers, throwing things and destroying work, public humiliation and embarrassment, screaming and swearing, and occasionally even physical assault. What makes workplace bullying so harmful is its persistent nature. Exposed workers report that bullying goes on and on, lasting for months and--in many cases--even years. http://tc.eserver.org/26583.html http://tc.eserver.org/26583.html This paper explores the possibility that trained business communication professionals might perceive differentially the quality of the identical entrepreneurial presentations, depending on whether they are in audio or print form. By conducting a comparative analysis of heard and read versions of these speeches, we uncovered evidence which frames the following discourse. Results point to the variables which shape either (1) oral communication with an immediately- present audience, or (2) written transcripts with a distanced or imagined set of readers. This has aided us in identifying the funding for new ventures. http://tc.eserver.org/18861.html http://tc.eserver.org/18861.html In many ways, the history of human civilization chronicles the increasing centrality of communication. Communication establishes relationships and makes human organization and cooperation possible. Whether you recognize it or not, you have no choice but to communicate. If you try to avoid communicating by not replying to messages, you are nevertheless sending a message, but it may not be the one you want or intend. When you don’t say yes, you may be saying no by default—and vice versa. The only choice you can make about communication is whether you are going to attempt to communicate effectively.