Resources for Writing Business Plans

A business plan is a document used to start a new business or get funding for a business that is changing in some significant way. Business plans are important documents for business partners who need to agree upon and document their plans, government officials who may need to approve aspects of the plan, and of course potential investors such as banks or private individuals who may decide to fund the business or its expansion.

McMurrey, David A. Illuminati Online (2001). Articles>Business Communication>Planning>Writing

Response Mechanisms—The Key to ROI

ROI still eludes many B2B communicators, despite the increasing pressure to prove it. What is the amount of revenue your company gains as a result of your communication after you’ve subtracted expenses? This is especially good to know if you integrate your marketing communication. What part of the mix is working, and what isn’t? If you know that, you can eliminate the duds and rev up the elements that really bring in revenue. Ultimately, over time, you can increase the return on your marketing investment by knowing how well the components of your program perform.

Elrick, Merry. Communication World Bulletin (2004). Articles>Business Communication>Assessment

A Response To Patrick Moore's 'Questioning The Motives Of Technical Communication and Rhetoric: Steven Katz's 'Ethic Of Expediency''    

In my 1992 College English article 'The Ethic of Expediency: Classical Rhetoric, Technology, and the Holocaust' [1], I looked at the implications of a Nazi memo whose sole purpose was to improve the efficiency of the gassing vans, in order to begin to try to understand and discuss the negative uses and ethical abuses to which technical communication, and deliberative rhetoric generally, could be taken by the powerful and unscrupulous. In 'Questioning the Motives of Technical Communication and Rhetoric: Steven Katz's 'Ethic of Expediency'' [2], Patrick Moore accuses me of ignoring alternate translations, citing out of context, and focusing on the negative meaning of words to make my case. The point at issue in these charges, I believe, is whether (and to what degree) Aristotle meant to base deliberative discourse on 'expediency.' I will take each of these charges up one at a time to explore them more thoroughly, discuss their interrelations, and then conclude with a few observations of my own.

Katz, Steven B. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2006). Articles>Business Communication>Ethics>Theory

Rethinking Community Collaboration Through a Dialogic Lens: Creativity, Democracy, and Diversity in Community Organizing    

Community collaboration has become an influential interorganizational phenomenon that provides innovative solutions for social problems. This critical case study uses dialogic theory to investigate how collaboration stakeholders negotiate creative and democratic outcomes. Findings demonstrate how a dialogic moment, although embedded in a homogenous partnership that facilitated discursive closure, constituted meaningful organizational change. The study empirically extends the theoretical claim that diversity resides in the communication situation and reveals that collaboration practices and stakeholder models are better understood when grounded in dialogic theory.

Guarrello, Renee. Management Communication Quarterly (2007). Articles>Collaboration>Community Building>Organizational Communication

Rethinking the Idea of Profit in Professional Communication and Cultural Capitalism    

Critical theorists often attack economic capitalists for focusing excessively on profit. But critical theorists are themselves capitalists--cultural capitalists--and they also pursue profit: in the form of publications, promotions, enhanced reputations, tenure, and course releases. Economic capitalists typically use profit for constructive reasons: as a form of audience analysis and as a way to create the wealth that enables other people to work, to have specialized jobs (including professorships), and to raise families. Profit is an integral part of the communication of economic capitalism, and the profit motive helps capitalists create safer products and usable professional communication.

Moore, Patrick. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (2004). Articles>Business Communication

Revive Employee Publications with New Technologies

You would think that if the humble print employee newsletter hasn't been killed off in the Internet explosion of the past decade, then it must have more than just its reputation going for it. It must actually meet a fundamental business need to inform and engage a workforce.

Schmidt, Belinda. Communication World Bulletin (2005). Articles>Business Communication>Workplace>Newsletters

The Rhetoric of Misdirection in Corporate Privacy-Policy Statements    

U.S. businesses wish to continue to profit by collecting personal information from their website visitors, yet they fear that the practice both alienates visitors and exposes them both to legal problems from U.S. authorities and business sanctions from data-privacy authorities in Europe and Canada. This dilemma is reflected in the typical corporate privacy-policy statement, which is full of misleading and deceptive rhetoric intended to cover up the gap between the company's privacy policy and the image it wishes to project.

Markel, Mike. Technical Communication Quarterly (2005). Articles>Business Communication>Legal>Privacy

The Rhetoric Of Promoting Health    

This article uses Chaim Perelman's theories of argumentation to examine a recent Institute of Medicine (IOM) report, Promoting Health: Intervention Strategies from Social and Behavioral Research (2000). The IOM's text explores social and behavioral research to devise multipronged intervention strategies; it focuses on social, economic, behavioral, and political health as a means of assuring population health--and thereby expands the conventional boundaries of public health. Since Chaim Perelman's rhetoric is seldom applied in the field of health communication, employing his ideas to consider the role of style, arrangement, and argument in such a cutting-edge document can illuminate public health writing, as well as shed new light on Perelmanian rhetoric.

Hamilton, Margaret. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2002). Articles>Scientific Communication>Biomedical>Rhetoric

The Rising Power of Research in the Boardroom

Reputation risk has become an increasingly important item on the boardroom agenda. Conscientious and/or beleaguered company directors are turning to research for a sense of the health of their world and, in turn, the measure of the responsibilities they must assume. Like a ‘wellperson clinic,’ objective and independent research is increasingly being used to test perceptions and expectations and monitor the weak signals or murmurs that may either support them or destroy them in the years, if not months, ahead. For the reluctant directors out there, new-style regulation is ensuring that being pessimistic is no way to run a company. Beyond tarnished personal reputations, the penalties for poor risk management and oversight can range from unlimited fines and censure to imprisonment.

Macleod, Sandra. Communication World Bulletin (2004). Articles>Business Communication>Research

Risk Communication in the Context of Consumer Perceptions of Risks

One goal of risk communication on food safety issues (among many) is communication between risk assessors and risk managers and the average citizen. This dimension includes both communication with the citizenry as a whole, through the mass media and other widely disseminated information, and communication with consumer organizations that participate in the risk analysis/risk management process.

Groth, Edward III. Consumers Union (1992). Articles>Risk Communication>Biomedical

Risk Communication—Lessons from Communication Science  

This article explores risk communication from the communication science perspective, discusses three theoretical risk communication models: theory of reasoned action, extended parallel processing model, and dialectical discourse model; explores the complexities of risk communication messages; suggests guidance for risk communicators; and provides a working bibliography of recent risk communication literature.

Zimmerman, Donald E. STC Proceedings (2001). Articles>Risk Communication

Risk Communication: A Critical Component in Every Crisis

Having been deployed as a crisis communicator to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, immediately after the New Orleans levees failed last year, I am frequently asked to talk about the experience and my opinion of why so much went wrong so quickly in the aftermath. My quick response is "Too little too late."

Alvey, Robert J. Communication World Bulletin (2006). Articles>Risk Communication>Crisis Communication

Risk Communication: A Guide to Regulatory Practice  

Risk communication is central to making decisions. It enables people to participate in deciding how risks should be managed.

Health and Safety Executive (2004). Articles>Risk Communication>Government>United Kingdom

Risk Communication: A Neglected Tool in Protecting Public Health  

A June 2003 publication from the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis.

Harvard University (2003). Articles>Risk Communication

Risk Communication: Working With Individuals and Communities To Weigh the Odds

Risk communication is a complex, multidisciplinary, multidimensional, and evolving process of increasing importance in protecting the public's health. Public health officials use RC to give citizens necessary and appropriate information and to involve them in making decisions that affect them-such as where to build waste disposal facilities.

Prevention Report (1995). Articles>Risk Communication

ROI Doesn't Have to be a Four-Letter Word

If you know ahead of time where the risks are, you can manage them (or at least watch them) and avoid unpleasant surprises down the road.

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

ROI That Never Arrives: The Devil is in the Assumptions

ROI estimates in business fail primarily because managers give too much attention to the 'pay out' odds, and too little attention to measuring and managing 'probability' odds. A good risk and sensitivity analysis of the assumptions behind the predictions allows you to do both.

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

The Role of Graphic Art in Modern Scientific Communication  

The use of graphics in scientific communication increases the level of understanding of the subject matter. Graphic art has helped transform the way we view science and technology. It simplifies complex ideas in a visual way and opens up a new way of seeing the world around us. A graphic representation of a spacecraft in orbit is visually stunning and easier to obtain than a photograph would be. A graphic can also provide us with an understanding of three-dimensional objects. The structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), depicted as a double helix, is an example of the power of graphics in a scientific communication.

Peck, Angelika D. STC Proceedings (1995). Articles>Graphic Design>Scientific Communication

Safety Risks in Mechanical Engineering

The cause for the careless handling of possible dangers is not so much unwillingness, but rather the lack of know-how. There are no standardised and well-documented processes that are simple to implement and use.

Walther, Andreas. TC-FORUM (2002). Articles>Risk Communication>Engineering

Science and Fiction

The purpose of this article is to clarify some common misperceptions as to what science is, what science does, how science relates to technology, and how the activities of science and technology differ from the areas of informed and uninformed speculation, and how the three areas complement each other.

Hart, Geoffrey J.S. Geoff-Hart.com (1989). Articles>Technology>Scientific Communication

Science Communication and Global Change  

Scientific publications about global changes (i.e., global warming, ozone depletion, and acid precipitation) and their effects (e.g., drought, UV-B radiation exposure, and fish kills) often convey four misimpressions to the reader: (1) A global change occurs at some specific time. (2) A global change occurs uniformly around the world. (3) Change occurs only unidirectionally. (4) Change occurs at a constant rate. These mistaken impressions result largely from how the results are presented and described. Therefore, technical communicators should be aware of the possibility of such misrepresentations and subsequent misinterpretations. They should recognize the complexity of the subject matter, convey to the reader an element of that complexity and its ramifications, and strive to present an accurate view of the processes involved when writing about the results of global-change research.

O'Hara, Frederick M., Jr. STC Proceedings (2001). Articles>Scientific Communication>International

Science Communication in India: Perspectives and Challenges

For the past two decades or so, science communication activities have gained momentum in India. Efforts have been made from both governmental and non-governmental platforms to enhance the public understanding of science. The idea is to help science and a scientific culture penetrate India's socio-culturally diverse society, and to transform it into a nation of scientifically thinking and scientifically aware people.

Patairiya, Manoj. SciDevNet (2002). Articles>Scientific Communication>Regional>India

The Science of Scientific Writing

Science is often hard to read. Most people assume that its difficulties are born out of necessity, out of the extreme complexity of scientific concepts, data and analysis. We argue here that complexity of thought need not lead to impenetrability of expression; we demonstrate a number of rhetorical principles that can produce clarity in communication without oversimplifying scientific issues. The results are substantive, not merely cosmetic: Improving the quality of writing actually improves the quality of thought. The fundamental purpose of scientific discourse is not the mere presentation of information and thought, but rather its actual communication. It does not matter how pleased an author might be to have converted all the right data into sentences and paragraphs; it matters only whether a large majority of the reading audience accurately perceives what the author had in mind. Therefore, in order to understand how best to improve writing, we would do well to understand better how readers go about reading. Such an understanding has recently become available through work done in the fields of rhetoric, linguistics and cognitive psychology. It has helped to produce a methodology based on the concept of reader expectations.

Gopen, George D. and Judith A. Swan. Cambridge Language Consultants (1990). Articles>Scientific Communication

Science Writing and Scientific Writing: Audiences, Purposes, and Techniques  

Science writing for general audiences in newspapers and magazines differs from scientific writing for scientists in journal articles, letters, and grant proposals. The general public is limited in its knowledge and its understanding of scientific advancements, so science writers try to seize on the public's interest in science and "translate" discoveries and developments for them. Science writing differs from scientific writing in audience (lay versus expert), purpose (to entertain as well as to inform or persuade), and techniques such as the use of human interest, control of pace and diction, and appeal to interest in and the utility of science.

Samson, Donald C., Jr. STC Proceedings (2005). Articles>Scientific Communication>Rhetoric