#21441
Nearly everyone has a licenced or unlicenced version of Winzip or any other compatible utility installed. You can do a lot more with them than just to compress and combine files into a single archive. E.g. you can "freeze" the present state of a project or use the CRCs to identify files.
von Obert, Alexander. Techwriter.de (2003). (German) Articles>Communication>Software>Compression
#31405
Benchmarking: Ugly Truths and Unpredictable Outcomes
A walk through a benchmarking project, sharing some of the behind-the-scenes stories of benchmarking gone right, and gone wrong. So, here they are, complete with tales of terror, moments of madness and even some back-room horse-trading.
Sinickas, Angela D. Sinickas Communications (2000). Articles>Management>Communication>Assessment
#24638
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
#30875
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
#31682
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
#19135
The Bhopal Gas Tragedy: An Analysis 
Around 1 a.m. on Monday, the 3rd of December, 1984, in a densely populated region in the city of Bhopal, Central India, a poisonous vapor burst from the tall stacks of the Union Carbide pesticide plant. This vapor was a highly toxic cloud of methyl isocyanate. Of the 800,000 people living in Bhopal at the time, 2,000 died immediately, and as many as 300,000 were injured. In addition, about 7,000 animals were injured, of which about one thousand were killed. After the incident, over the next few years, numerous studies were conducted, many theories were explored, and the involved parties accused each other. In this paper, I will try to explore the various causes offered for the tragedy. In the course of my research for this case study, I came across many articles that put blame on various people and groups involved in the tragedy. I found one document particularly interesting from a rhetorical standpoint. This document, titled Union Carbide: Disaster at Bhopal , was authored by the retired Vice President of Health, Safety and Environmental Programs in Union Carbide Corporation. So for this paper, I would also like to rhetorically analyze this document and also, try to explore the various image restoration strategies that Union Carbide Corporation used through the course of the crisis.
Ungarala, Pratima. Michigan Tech University (1998). Articles>TC>Risk Communication>Crisis Communication
#31310
Bird Flu: Communicating the Risk
Most people have already heard a little about bird flu. But people face a host of other problems, and except for public health officials and poultry farmers, few are gearing up for action about H5N1 [the virus that causes the flu]. Yet.
Sandman, Peter M. and Jody Lanard. Communication World Bulletin (2006). Articles>Risk Communication>Biomedical
#31427
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
#26688
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
#25453
Blogs as Virtual Communities: Identifying a Sense of Community in the Julie/Julia Project
We must understand, first, why virtual communities are considered important, and, second, what the characteristics of a virtual community are. Then, we must determine if at least some blogs have these characteristics.
Blanchard, Anita. Into the Blogosphere (2004). Articles>Communication>Community Building>Blogging
#31366
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
#31387
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
#30210
This article uses qualitative material gathered at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) to construct a model of the rhetorical activity that occurs at the boundaries between diverse communities of practice working on complex sociotechnical systems. The authors reinterpret the notion of the boundary object current in science studies as a rhetorical construct that can foster cooperation and communication among the diverse members of heterogeneous working groups. The knowledge maps constructed by team members at LANL in their work on technical systems are boundary objects that can replace the demarcation exigence that so often leads to agonistic rhetorical boundary work with an integrative exigence. The integrative exigence realized by the boundary object of the knowledge map can help create a temporary trading zone characterized by rhetorical relations of symmetry and mutual understanding. In such cases, boundary work can become an effort involving integration and understanding rather than contest, controversy, and demarcation.
Wilson, Greg and Carl G. Herndl. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (2007). Articles>Scientific Communication>Collaboration>Rhetoric
#31505
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
#31361
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
#31785
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
#31499
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
#27280
Building a Biodiversity Content Management System for Science, Education, and Outreach 
We describe the system architecture and data template design for the Animal Diversity Web (http://www.animaldiversity.org), an online natural history resource serving three audiences: 1) the scientific community, 2) educators and learners, and 3) the general public. Our architecture supports highly scalable, flexible resource building by combining relational and object-oriented databases. Content resources are managed separately from identifiers that relate and display them. Websites targeting different audiences from the same database handle large volumes of traffic. Content contribution and legacy data are robust to changes in data models. XML and OWL versions of our data template set the stage for making ADW data accessible to other systems.
Parr, C.S., R. Espinosa, T. Dewey, G. Hammond and P. Myers. Data Science Journal (2005). Articles>Content Management>Scientific Communication
#21561
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
#29223
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
#31216
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
#27821
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
#27826
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
#27817
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
#29541
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
