Articles>Management>Communication

Introducing Business Activity Monitoring

Typically, an organization's processes span multiple systems, channels, applications, departments, and external partners. In this case, how do we monitor such processes? What is the current state of the organizational processes? What is the benchmark for poorly-performing processes and exceptional processes? Most of the time, organizations are unable to answer such questions, or only have a vague idea for various reasons. Either they are monitoring the process with a very limited scope, or the mechanisms for monitoring the process are not in place to allow such details to be available. We rarely find organizations with process owners having an end-to-end view of a process. The big picture of a process is not available to the decision makers on a real-time basis.

Shotgun Communication

After new product releases or service updates, a torrent of disparate corporate information follows based on the perceived requirements for each team to show their worth. Sales collateral, Marketing webcasts, Support knowledgebase articles, Engineering release notes, and internal reference guides from formal Documentation teams stagger out like drunken sailors looking for their ship after a Cinderella liberty. Add to this meandering information all of the informal input from bloggers, social sites, forums, and independent Web sites, and you have a fog of information to stumble through to find real knowledge and employ best practices for purchased products and services.

The Three Waves of Enterprise 2.0: Climbing the Social Computing Maturity Curve

The intranet is often a depressingly static place even today in many organizations. But those applying Enterprise 2.0 (social, emergent, freeform approaches to business activities) can soon find that the opposite is often the case. The information captured and the knowledge shared in a social business environment is usually globally visible and lasts long after the collaboration ends.

Sharing Knowledge Across Borders

As companies have their offices spread across more and more geographic locations and a large scale of employees working in different countries, it becomes even harder to represent a single organization as one unique entity. The key lies in raising awareness for the company’s vision and mission as well as equipping staff in all locations with the latest technologies. Advancements in communication technology have led to a deeper focus on knowledge management activities – benefiting both the organization and the individual.

Communities of Practice: Optimizing Internal Knowledge Sharing

The key to intranet success is to provide value to employees and give them a reason to visit the site repeatedly. One of the primary ways to achieve this is to connect employees with the people and groups with whom they need to collaborate. Workgroups, or communities of practice, provide the basis for a living, growing, vibrant space in which people can access the information they need, share best practices, and contribute to a shared knowledge base. This article discusses the role of communities of practice within organizations and provides a framework for planning research and design activities to maximize their effectiveness.

Interview with Patrick Lambe: “Real Value Comes from Building Relationships”

An enormous amount of knowledge resides within international organizations. But how can the knowledge management (KM) team unlock this information and make it available to a large number of employees around the globe? How much knowledge should actually be shared and what kind of experience should not be passed on because it might hinder innovation and creative thinking? In an interview with tcworld KM expert Patrick Lambe answered these and many other questions.

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?

Organizational Change: The Challenge of Supporting Staff

Change management is the subject of many books but what is it like to have to lead staff who are finding it difficult? Gina Lane has extensive experience of change in local government, and Non Departmental Public Body and a charity, and in this article provides insight and practical tips for how to support and lead your team as the organization undergoes change.

Risk Assessment: Trading Carefully in an Uncertain World

This article reminds us that risk needs to be identified before it can be quantified. It points out that risk models are only as good as the people who devised them and the basic assumption needs to be frequently re-examined.

Legal Requirements in the New Age

Consider a plan that identifies who in your company will address phone or other inquiries if something goes viral (read the article and you’ll see what I mean).

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.

Musings: What do you Mean Knowledge Management and Negotiating Meaning in Technical and Scientific Reports

"Meaning must be negotiated and confirmed." This is an important concept not just for developing a working definition for a term like knowledge management, but it is also an approach critical to the conveyance of knowledge in scientific and technical report.

Attraction to Organizational Culture Profiles: Effects of Realistic Recruitment and Vertical and Horizontal Individualism—Collectivism

Today's organizations are challenged with attracting, developing, and retaining high-quality employees; thus, many firms seek to improve their recruitment and selection processes. One approach involves using realistic job previews (RJPs) to communicate a balanced view of the organization. The authors explored the effects of organizational culture (hierarchy, market, clan, and adhocracy), recruitment strategy (RJP vs. traditional), and personality (horizontal and vertical individualism—collectivism) on attraction to Web-based organizational profiles using a sample of 234 undergraduate students in a mixed two-factor experimental design. Results indicate that the clan culture is viewed as the most attractive. Traditional versus RJP recruitment produced higher levels of organizational attraction. Finally, predicted relationships between the personality framework of horizontal and vertical individualism—collectivism and organizational attraction were supported.

"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.

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.

The Accomplishment of Authority Through Presentification: How Authority Is Distributed Among and Negotiated by Organizational Members

The complex distribution and negotiation of authority in real time is a key issue for today's organizations. The authors investigate how the negotiations that sustain authority at work actually unfold by analyzing the ways of talking and acting through which organizational members establish their authority. They argue that authority is achieved through presentification—that is, by making sources of authority present in interaction. On the basis of an empirical analysis of a naturally occurring interaction between a medical coordinator for Médecins Sans Frontières and technicians of a hospital supported by her organization, the authors identify key communicative practices involved in achieving authority and discuss their implications for scholars' understanding of what being in authority at work means.

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.

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.

Finding Solutions by Being Aware of the Way You Think

It is the task of the project manager to be aware of the larger environment in which a project is operating. One approach that helps achieve this insight is systems thinking.

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.

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.

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.

Your Wiki Isn’t Wikipedia: How to Use It for Technical Communication

Learn how to use a wiki as an organizational tool within your company.

Same Token, Different Actions

Using a conversation analytic approach, this article presents a systematic analysis of the interactional use of the particle ok in the institutional setting of German business meetings. Through an examination of talk-in-interaction with a thorough description of relevant embodied actions, the author analyzes how meeting participants co-construct social roles by employing different uses of free-standing ok. More specifically, the author focuses on two different uses of free-standing ok in business meetings: ok with averted eye gaze and ok with maintained eye gaze. The author addresses the question of how the chairperson uses free-standing ok to accomplish different actions and to perform "doing-being-facilitator." By describing where the chairperson looks while producing ok, I also discuss how the chair manages both the coordination of face-to-face interaction and the practical task of facilitating the progress of a meeting.

Beyond Taxonomies of Influence: "Doing" Influence and Making Decisions in Management Team Meetings

Studies of influence in organizational settings have tended to concentrate on defining categories of influence based on self-reports and questionnaires. This has tended to decontextualize and generalize the findings and therefore overlooks the inevitably temporally and locally situated nature of all social activity. Using conversation analysis as a methodology and videotaped data of naturally occurring talk, this article seeks to go beyond such taxonomies of influence. More specifically, this article seeks to provide a fine-grained analysis of how subordinates, as well as superiors, can influence decision-making episodes of talk. It is also argued that the results of such research can be fed back into practice and ultimately can be of help in allowing better decision-making practices.

Funding Enterprise Design Functions

Enterprise design tasks are typically owned--if addressed at all--by a disjointed collection of business units concerned mostly with their own requirements and politics. The needs of the users of enterprise information and the managers concerned for those users often get left out. That's why I encourage placing enterprise design functions in the hands of a central, stand-alone team or business unit. Such a group has a broad perspective that counterbalances the localised goals of autonomous business units. But our new team will be a cost center; how do we pay for it?

Improving Organizational Performance

This session is designed to provide you with an overview of Thomas Gilbert's Behavioral Engineering Model (BEM) and alternatives to his model, and a review of Hersey and Chevalier's PROBE Model to assist you to identify elements that support and impact behavior within your organization.

Health Informatics: Current Issues and Challenges

Health informatics concerns the use of information and information and communication technologies within healthcare. Health informatics and information science need to take account of the unique aspects of health and medicine. The development of information systems and electronic records within health needs to consider the information needs and behaviour of all users. The sensitivity of personal health data raises ethical concerns for developing electronic records. E-health initiatives must actively involve users in the design, development, implementation and evaluation, and information science can contribute to understanding the needs and behaviour of user groups. Health informatics could make an important contribution to the ageing society and to reducing the digital divide and health divides within society. There is a need for an appropriate evidence base within health informatics to support future developments, and to ensure health informatics reaches its potential to improve the health and well-being of patients and the public.

Demystifying Chinese Guanxi Networks: Cultivating and Sharing of Knowledge for Business Benefit

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.

Information Management Challenges for the Professional Accountant in Business

Information professionals have fundamental skills that -- if harnessed optimally -- have the potential to be of significant value to professional accountants working in business. The accounting profession is grappling with issues emerging from a changing external environment. The roles, responsibilities and priorities of those with a finance function -- especially those in business -- are evolving, bringing about shifts in information needs. The opportunity for information professionals is to assert and demonstrate the relevance and value of their skill set to the emerging, more strategic finance function. This article provides an overview of the developments impacting accountants in business to highlight potential opportunities for information professionals.

Creating Science and Technology Information Databases for Developing and Sustaining Sub-Saharan Africa's Indigenous Knowledge

In this article, indigenous knowledge is defined as holistic of all forms of knowledge emanating from an indigenous community. The critical relevance of local science and technology information (STI) databases in the development and sustainability of Africa's indigenous knowledge is discussed. It is advocated that local African STI databases should be considered required development infrastructures because they will provide information resources that are more adequate for national planning and management than their international counterparts. Furthermore, the various stakeholders and their roles are identified and the policy environment of STI databases in Africa examined. Constraints notwithstanding, local databases for African STI resources are envisaged to enhance global distribution and sharing of Africa's indigenous knowledge.

Moving Beyond Tacit and Explicit Distinctions: A Realist Theory of Organizational Knowledge

This paper challenges the popular notions of tacit and explicit organizational knowledge and argues that its philosophical underpinnings derived from Gilbert Ryle are problematic due to their logical behaviourist perspective. The paper articulates the philosophical problem as the neglect of any role for the mind in organizational activity and the representation of mental activity as purely a set of behaviours. An alternative realist philosophy is advanced taking into account the potential of adopting a number of competing philosophical perspectives. The paper forwards a realist theory of organizational knowledge that moves beyond the surface behaviours of tacit and explicit knowledge and argues that collective consciousness and organizational memory play primary and deeper roles as knowledge processes and structures. Consciousness is not a Hegelian world spirit but rather a real process embedded in people's brains and mental activity. Further, the paper argues that organizational routines provide the contingent condition or `spark' to activate organizational knowledge processes. The implications of this model are explored in relation to the measurement of intellectual capital. The theory developed in this paper represents the first attempt to provide a coherent philosophically grounded framework of organizational knowledge that moves organizational theory beyond neat conversion processes of tacit and explicit knowledge.

Impact of Coherent Versus Multiple Identities on Knowledge Integration

This paper addresses the influence of two competing views of social identity on knowledge integration. One view sees social identity primarily as a coherent characteristic of organizations, which can leverage knowledge integration by unconditional cooperative behaviour, shared values, mindsets, trust, and loyalty. The opposing view considers social identity as multiple and fragmented. This fragmented view emphasizes the problematic nature of social identity for knowledge integration and states that social identity is an additional barrier to knowledge integration in organizations. The aim of this paper is to examine these competing accounts and to develop insight into the underlying mechanisms that lead to the different effects of social identity on knowledge integration. Two polar case studies illustrate the different effects of a coherent versus multiple identity on knowledge integration and the need for a coherent company-wide social identity, instead of a multiple community or group based social identity, to leverage knowledge integration in organizations.

The Importance of Articulation Work to Agency Content Management: Balancing Publication and Control

This paper describes the initial results of a qualitative field study of the work required to review and approve the content on government agency web sites. The study analyzes content management work in terms of Strauss’s conceptualization of articulation. The analysis describes examples of high and low level articulation in content review and approval including using paper, personal contact, and surveillance. Study results suggest that the articulation work present in non-software based review and approval processes helps to balance conflicting agency goals of publishing content and achieving absolute oversight over published content. It also suggests that software based content management systems may prove helpful for the management of some types of content in some situations, but it hypothesizes that actors will choose paper and face to face communication mechanisms to review and approve large amounts of new content and sensitive content.

Why You Should Hire Professional Writers to do the Writing

Who is writing all the documents that organizations produce? The typical answer: Anyone who has a keyboard. But not everyone with a keyboard has the skills required to create the quality documents that ultimately fall into the hands of customers and regulators. Nor does everyone who is asked to write these important documents have the desire—or time—to perform such tasks.

In Search of Subtlety

What is the role of contradiction in organizational rhetoric? This article argues that existing research tends to focus on contradiction at an institutional level and then develop a distinct but complementary perspective that views contradictory rhetoric at an interactional level and as a practical concern, especially when routine is disrupted and repair tactics are required. Drawing on data from a study of a quality improvement initiative in the United Kingdom, the authors examine the contradictions that were constructed when a 'change champion' attempted to deal with resistance to change. They conclude by depicting how contradiction can emerge when actors reflexively shift their identifications to portray themselves and their actions in a contextually appropriate manner.

A Team Approach to Information Architecture

A case study of a team approach to information architecture at Duke University by graduates of the Duke Continuing Studies Technical Communication Certificate program.

Communication Strategies for Implementing Organizational Change

This work advances a stronger conceptual and empirical understanding of two broad, conceptual communicative treatments for implementing change: programmatic and participatory. These theoretical approaches are elucidated respectively through established communication models, activities, and strategies advanced by previous scholarship within the communication and business disciplines. In addition, conclusions are drawn about the supposed limitations and benefits of using these change implementation approaches in applied settings. This article concludes with potential strategies for advancing for research in this arena.

Streamlining the Phases of Disaster Recovery

All too often, companies either rely upon personal knowledge and skill to recover from emergency situations, or they write a multi-volume encyclopedia of recovery procedures. When disaster strikes, neither approach lends itself to rapid response.

Accomplishing Knowledge: A Framework for Investigating Knowing in Organizations

This article proposes a shift in how researchers study knowledge and knowing in organizations. Responding to a pronounced lack of methodological guidance from existing research, this work develops a framework for analyzing situated organizational problem solving. This framework, rooted in social practice theory, focuses on communicative knowledge-accomplishing activities, which frame and respond to various problematic situations. Vignettes drawn from a call center demonstrate the value of the framework, which can advance practice-oriented research on knowledge and knowing by helping it break with dubious assumptions about knowledge homogeneity within groups, examine knowing as instrumental action and involvement in a struggle over meaning, and display how patterns of knowledge-accomplishing activities can generate unintended organizational consequences.

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.

Our Stake in Struggle (Or Is Resistance Something Only Others Do?)

Encourages critical organization scholars to develop our stake in struggle in at least three ways: (a) by examining how the structure and practice of our own work enacts relations of power and resistance (i.e., reflexive, empirical study of organizational dynamics in higher education), (b) by considering how our experience of knowledge labor implicitly shapes our representations of organization (i.e., reflexive analyses of the relation between the process and products of scholarly production), and (c) by more explicitly accounting for our role as cultural agents in representing organizational life and inducting students into it (i.e., reflexive analyses of the relations among the labors of teaching, researching, and theorizing power and resistance).

Forget ROI, Let's Show How We're Making Money

Throw a stone in a room full of communication professionals and there's a good chance you'll hit one that will back up this statement: senior management loves to see ROI measurements, but seeing how communication initiatives create sales trumps all other measurements. From a marketing communication perspective, simply receiving feedback from a sales team can help your team answer most senior-level frustrations. From the perspective of a sales force, understanding marketing efforts (and how those efforts actually work) aids in everyone's ultimate objective: securing sales.

Getting the Ear of Your CEO

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.

Is the New CEO Allowed to Care?

The brand experts and advertising gurus tell us that "caring is commercial," but this has not changed the behavior or profile of many chief executives. One new chief immediately canceled the daily VIP lunch delivered to his office and instead went down to the staff canteen, sitting among his workforce. In another case, a tough CEO confronts an aggressive media at an annual meeting and declares, "Our task it to manage the business to provide maximum return for our shareholders -- end of story." In these cases, communicators provide support and advice, yet in many instances, the decision about profile is made before they are called in.

Twelve Strategies to Raise Your CEO's Profile

Some business leaders have a natural panache. How do you raise the profile of a CEO that lacks that kind of flash? The answer is to approach your communication strategically and to use your CEO wisely. This applies whether you represent a Fortune 500 company or a small non-profit group. Media training, presentation skills training and testimony training workshops can devote large amounts of time to defining and seizing strategic communication opportunities. Let's review a dozen techniques designed to secure strategic placements for your CEO and put your organization on the road to out-thinking the competition.

What to Do When the Boss Says No

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.

Case in Point: Cisco’s Model For Change Management

A few months ago, a company-wide team at Cisco Systems Inc. was challenged to come up with the best model for change management. Several team members had experience in change management through various disciplines, such as process management, HR consulting, communication, Six Sigma and IT. In the first meeting, the team recognized many factors that would affect how they moved forward: hundreds (maybe thousands) of models already existed, thousands of consultants had their favorite models and were eager to help, and employees were familiar with models from other companies.

Communicating Information or Engaging Your People—How Does Communication Best Support Change?

According to a 1997 survey entitled “The Quality of Working Life” by Professors Les Worrall and Cary Cooper of the Institute of Management, of the 5,000 U.K. managers polled, a majority revealed that they had been affected by organisational change in the last year and failed to see business benefits. When asked about possible improvements, the largest response reflected the need for greater involvement, more listening by senior managers and more honest, two-way communication.

Alternative Ways to Measure the Effectiveness of Your Publications

If you want to go beyond the usual limits of a traditional readership survey that tells you how well received a publication is, first clarify your objectives. Then you might include additional "impact" questions on your next survey, conduct in-depth focus groups with readers, and conduct some objective, "audience-free" measurements of the publication to see how well those objectives were met.

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.

Choosing the Right Metrics to Benchmark

The assumption that financial analysts make is that low numbers on efficiency (communicators per employee, for example) would be better than high numbers. Unfortunately, that doesn't take into account that low-cost communication may have low impact on the bottom line. If your organization wants to track communication efficiency metrics, then I'd suggest tracking effectiveness measures as well.

Corporate Social Responsibility: Communicators Wanted

Communication practitioners understand how to use a range of tools—formal, informal, traditional and online—and two-way symmetrical communication. They need to know that, through the energetic use of these skills, they can advance the economic, social and environmental well-being of society.

Defining Benchmark Questions for Great Results

Part of the challenge of determining the questions to ask during benchmarking is to match the questions to the purpose of the study and the outcomes you are trying to achieve. Below is a breakdown of some of the issues regarding benchmarking questions that need to be addressed before beginning a benchmarking exercise.

The Pitfalls of Financial Benchmarking

Recently I spent two hours with a management consultant trying to help her identify appropriate metrics for benchmarking a client's communication function. Some of the initial financial measurements that were being considered raised some concerns.

The (Staggering) Cost of Information Overload

Recently, I was waiting for a meeting to begin at a 500-person professional services firm. An item on the bulletin board caught my eye. It was a memo from the CFO. If everyone in the firm could spend an hour less per day managing e-mail, he said, it would make a difference of US$2 million a year to the company.

The Emotive Value of Professional Communication and Use of Emotional Intelligence in Mangement

Now there is a growing body of science in the field of Emotional Intelligence (EI), indicating that the proper understanding and use of emotions can help us to be more effective professionals and better communicators for the overall development of a learning organization. This paper provides an overview of this topic and includes commentary from EI experts Daniel Goleman, Peter Salovey, and others to prove how one can effectively manipulate EI. This paper also highlights the components of EI and how they can be used to help employees create more productive working relationships inside and outside their organization. Through an analysis of various models of EI competencies available, this paper argues how they can be combined with other knowledge and technical capabilities to increase one’s overall effectiveness on the job.

Challenging Your Assumptions: Entrepreneurial Groups Offer Idea Incubators

I recently had a conversation with a colleague about business development. While that's neither revolutionary nor even terribly uncommon, what was different was that we weren't commiserating about business cycles or the fact that when we're busy we often neglect the very activities that bring in new projects. Instead, we were talking about strategies for moving our businesses in new directions. When was the last time you questioned your business strategy or seriously considered adding a new business line or branching out into a new service area?

The Making of a Successful Entrepreneur: Tapping into Drive, Direction, and Common Sense

When Christopher Gergen talks about what it takes to be an entrepreneur, he speaks as someone who's been there, done that, and is still doing it today. In 1994, he left the security of a burgeoning career as a writer for CNN Headline News to move to Santiago, Chile, where he opened a restaurant and bar. That proved to be the first of many business ventures.

Preparing Your Organization for Pandemic Flu

In the past few weeks, articles appeared on the inside pages of The New York Times and other news sources, with reports from Indonesia of human-to-human infection by avian flu, such as Elisabeth Rosenthal's article "Human-to-Human Infection by Bird Flu Virus Is Confirmed." Another article by Donald McNeil in the Times reported that mortality rates for avian flu are higher in young people, which was also the case in the devastating Spanish flu pandemic of 1918.

Story Scrapbooks: Tools for Engagement

Thank heavens for big sisters—especially mine. I was over at Franca's house sipping hot chocolate and catching up on life. While we spoke, she was assembling another one of her family scrapbook masterpieces. We started talking about her work—she is an international marketing and publication relations consultant. As we discussed the internal communication challenges one of her clients was facing, I had a flash of brilliance. What if we helped the client put together a story scrapbook and then used it to facilitate conversations around the organization?

The Digital Debate: Should CEOs Blog?

A debate continues to rage about how important and influential media such as blogs, podcasts and social networking sites really are. At the heart of this debate is the question, Is the blogosphere really an appropriate place for executives and others in positions of power who have everything to lose?

Does Your CEO Have Spokesperson Deficit Disorder (SDD)?

It's an all-too-common ailment, a not-so-silent killer of corporate reputation—often going undiagnosed even when the symptoms are evident. Early symptoms include negative or weak media coverage, "misquotes" and interviews that go off track. Although it can strike at any level within an organization, Spokesperson Deficit Disorder, or SDD, is perhaps most damaging if left untreated at the CEO level. So what can you do if your CEO suffers from this dreadful condition?

Lessons Learned in the Corporate Blogosphere

As the publisher of CEO Blog Watch, I pay close attention the evolution of corporate communication, especially as it pertains to blogging. In fact, the mission of CEO Blog Watch is to chronicle the continued rise of corporate and CEO blogs. As someone who monitors CEO blogging, I can tell you that the most commonly asked question on the subject is, "Should a CEO blog?" Here's my take on the subject.

New Media Answers Old Questions for CEOs

How do you scare a CEO? Whisper the words "new media" and wait for the trembling to begin. But new media can also help CEOs address old issues in their role as chief communicators for their organizations.

The Challenge of Line Manager Communication

There is a great deal of research around these days that makes the connection between employee engagement and good line manager communication. After all, as the saying goes, people don’t leave bad companies, they leave bad managers. The reality is there are many elements that make a bad manager. As communication professionals, we are not there to solve all the problems of socially challenged managers, but we do need to help them fulfill their role in effectively communicating to their people.

Frontline Managers and Human Resources: Partnering for Effective Communication

In my human resources consulting practice, when I ask employees about their major concerns, their primary complaint is how poorly their managers communicate with them about human resources issues, especially compensation and job performance objectives. Ensuring that effective employee communication is embedded in the company’s culture is everyone’s responsibility—from senior executives on down. However, the primary players in effective employee communication are human resources professionals and frontline managers.

Structuring Employee Communication

In the 21st-century workplace, efficiency and speed are demanded, change is the norm, time is at a premium, and stress levels are high. Management has big expectations for what employee communication can accomplish in support of its goals, believing it can play a significant role in solving problems, achieving employee engagement, and building momentum for change and growth. Building an effective employee communication department that can rise to meet expectations and deliver results is no easy task.

Teaching Line Managers to Be Good Communicators During Times of Change

When organizations are going through change, be it major or minor, the most trusted source of communication for employees is nearly always their line manager. Equipping line managers to communicate well is essential, but it also has inherent challenges.

Resistance, Gender, and Bourdieu's Notion of Field

Recent conceptualizations of resistance have tended to privilege intentional and conscious acts of resistance and forms of resistance manifested within relations of power that researchers typically define as asymmetrical, such as the labor-management relation. The author argues that these tendencies lead us to overlook forms of resistance manifest in other relations of power that exist in organizations, as well as set ourselves up as arbitrators of what is to be considered 'effective' resistance. Using Bourdieu's concepts of capital and field, the author examines how we can read resistance both to the idea of sex discrimination and to patriarchal power relations from the accounts of female career police officers and offers a more perspectival, relativistic account of resistance.

Communicating Corporate Social Responsibility on the Internet: A Case Study of the Top 100 Information Technology Companies in India

The need for and benefits of proactive and transparent communication about corporate social responsibility (CSR) are widely acknowledged. This study examines CSR communication undertaken by the top 100 information technology (IT) companies in India on their corporate Web sites, with an analytical focus on the dimensions of prominence of communication, extent of information, and style of presentation. The findings indicate that the number of companies with CSR information on their Web sites is strikingly low and that these leading companies do not leverage the Web sites to their advantage in terms of the quantity and style of CSR communication. Although the findings do not necessarily imply absence of CSR action on the part of IT companies in India, they attest to a general lack of proactive CSR communication. The article concludes with managerial implications for CSR communication on corporate Web sites.

The Link Between Leadership Style, Communicator Competence, and Employee Satisfaction

The current study examined the influence of supervisor communicator competence and leadership style on employee job and communication satisfaction. Participants were 220 individuals (116 men and 104 women) working full-time for a variety of companies in the Midwest. The findings indicated a strong relationship between supervisors' communicator competence and their task and relational leadership styles, with supervisor communicator competence being a stronger predictor of employee job and communication satisfaction. More specifically, the findings indicated that supervisor communicator competence accounted for 68% of the variance in subordinate communication satisfaction and nearly 18% of the variance in subordinate job satisfaction. More important, these findings provide an association between communication, leadership, and employee job and communication satisfaction.

Wrestling With Proteus: Tales of Communication Managers in a Changing Economy

Because communication specialists often lack the power and prestige of other knowledge workers, such as engineers and product designers, managers who direct the work of communication specialists face unique challenges. This study, based on interviews with 11 communication managers, found that their agency and identity were determined both by the structure of the organizations in which they worked and by their use of genres, technologies, and regulatory techniques. With their work undergoing transition because of globalization, outsourcing, and rapid technological change, the stories that these managers tell demonstrate the importance of studying management as it specifically applies to communication specialists.

Empowerment: A Manager's and Professional's Perspective

In today's dynamic business environment, management gurus claim that corporate survival depends upon visionary leadership. The visionary leadership term bandied about most frequently is empowerment. Seminars, courses, books, and corporate communications are educating managers in this concept. The managers return to their jobs charged up and ready to make changes. But how can managers translate abstract concepts into practice? This presentation explores empowerment form a technical communicator and a manager's perspective, giving concrete examples.

It's Not What You Know: A Transactive Memory Analysis of Knowledge Networks at NASA

Much of America was stunned into mourning on February 1, 2003 as the space shuttle Columbia was reported to have broken up over Texas. The ensuing investigation revealed that debris at liftoff was the cause of the crash, but the official report suggested that NASA's organizational communication was just as much to blame. This article uses transactive memory theory to argue that there were significant gaps in the knowledge network of NASA organizational members, and those gaps impeded information flow regarding potential disaster. E-mails to and from NASA employees were examined (the 'To' and 'From' fields) to map a network of communication related to Columbia's damage and risk. Although NASA personnel were connected with each other in this incident-based network, the right information did not get to the people who needed it. The article concludes with extensions of theory and practical implications for organizations, including NASA.

Learning to Love Whistleblowers

Darren Dahl explains why some businesses that once feared whistleblowers are now giving workers new ways to report wrongdoing.

Analysis of the Communication Components Found Within the Situational Leadership Model: Toward Integration of Communication and the Model

This article identifies and assesses the effectiveness of communicating expectations, listening, delegating, and providing feedback in relation to the Hersey-Blanchard Situational Leadership model. It reviews the correlation between task versus relationship behavior that forms the basis of the Situational Leadership model. Then the article summarizes information found in literature on effective techniques for the four skills stated above. As these techniques are identified, they are discussed in relation to their effective use in the Situational Leadership model. To understand the application of the model in businesses and its impact on managers communication effectiveness, we conducted a study of an operational department of a Fortune 500 financial services company. The results and content analysis of a survey we administered by random selection of the managers in this department indicate that successful use of the Situational Leadership model relies on effectiveness in four communication components: communicating expectations, listening, delegating, and providing feedback. Finally, we recommend areas of future research such as comparison analysis of surveys, interviews, and focus groups with subordinates of managers who have been trained on the Situational Leadership model and those who have not.

Choose Sunwest: One Airline's Organizational Communication Strategies in A Campaign Against the Teamsters Union

This article presents a qualitative text analysis of persuasive documents written by a major U.S. airline in a 2004 counter-campaign against the Teamsters union. The methodology for this study is based on Stephen Toulmin's argument model, including his "double triad" and his interpretation of artistic proofs, which parallel the three classical rhetorical appeals. Actual corporate documents are featured in this article, supported by content from management conference calls that were attended by the researchers. The article concludes with implications for teaching and research in the field of technical and professional communication.

Afraid to Measure: The State of Communications Accountability

With all the emphasis on ROI of public relations in the so-called 'marketing mix' to increase sales, the communications goals of most leaders and communicators go far beyond public relations ROI connected to sales.

Labor Costs can Make or Break the Case: Which Way Should This Manager Go?

When your business case deals with a project or program, labor costs may be the largest single cost category, by far. Labor costs can even loom large in in a major capital expenditure (CAPEX) business case, if the acquisition comes with a serious need for operating and maintenance support (as in many IT CAPEX requests, for instance). How well you handle the labor costs can make or break the case.

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.

Knowledge Management and Life Long Education in Science

In 1998 ENEA, the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and the Environment, launched an e-learning platform with the mission of sharing scientific knowledge among everyone, not just workers but also students and the unemployed, in order to use its research results to support competitiveness and sustainable development. In 6 years, more than 20.000 users have followed one or more of the 46 on line courses. Many agreements with schools, universities, private and public training organisation are now under way to improve the dissemination of scientific knowledge and to build an open data base of scientific learning objects that anyone can use.

A Polythematic Real-Time Synergistic Hybrid Data Telecommunication System for Scientific Research with Bidirectional Fuzzy Feedback Peer Review by Expert Referees

Heterogeneous research environments, interests and locations do not necessarily coincide, thus hitherto the primary method of communication amongst researchers has been email. In this article a novel unified polythematic, real-time, synergistic, data telecommunication system is proposed with peer-reviewed, bidirectional fuzzy feedback for research scientists, to facilitate scientific information exchange via the extensible markup language (XML) on multiple scientific topics, e.g. in mathematics, physics, biology and chemistry.

Enterprise Agility - Is Risk Management

Plain and simple, the value proposition for enterprise agility is rooted firmly in risk management. The purpose of agility is to maintain both reactive and proactive response options in the face of uncertainty.

K-Logging: Supporting KM With Weblogs

Web-logging software has received plenty of attention as a quick and easy way to post content to a web site. Web logs (blogs) tend to fall into two categories: personal web logs that function sort of like diaries, and informational blogs that target a readership with a shared interest. But web logging can also be used to support knowledge management (KM)Â¡Âªthe effort within an organization to share knowledge and help the organization achieve its mission. This form of web logging, called knowledge logging, or k-logging, is emerging as an inexpensive alternative to large-scale KM solutions.

Knowledge Management: Refining Roles in Scientific Communication

Libraries historically have been identified with the functions of storage and retrieval. In recent years, they have expanded their role to include information transfer and the creation of the networked, digital library for information access and dissemination. More recently, the William H. Welch Medical Library (WML) of the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) has been exploring strategies to integrate the library more fully into the scholarly and scientific communication process. The result is a new role we call knowledge management.

Drug Information Association: XML Resources for Life Sciences Pro

The Drug Information Association (DIA) has compiled a series of useful articles designed to help you understand XML and related technologies. Don't worry! You don't have to be an IT guru to understand XML. The resources provided are written in laymen's terms and geared towards life sciences professionals, but may prove beneficial to professionals in other industries and vertical markets.

Managing Life Sciences Content

Life sciences have been called the least automated industry in the world, but some pharmaceutical companies, medical device manufacturers, and healthcare-related organizations are working to dispel that image by implementing targeted content management solutions aimed at shortening the amount of time it takes to get new products to market.

Making the Business Case for Single Sourcing

Discusses ways to communicate the financial benefits, customer value, learning and growth opportunities, and internal process improvements made possible by single sourcing.

A Virtual Conversation on Bernadette Longo's Spurious Coin: A History of Science, Management, and Technical Writing

A collection of responses to Bernadette Longo's Spurious Coin.

Managing Project Risk

Risk management is as much art as science. Being aware of what risks are and how they can affect a project can be the difference between success and failure. Three elements of risk management—regardless of project size or scope—will influence success: understanding what risks are; developing and detailing categories of risk; and building a mitigation plan into the project plan. This approach to risk management benefits the project manager by bringing into focus—as early as possible in the project life cycle—many potential detriments to project success. When folded into a repeatable project management methodology, these processes can translate into dollars as the probability of meeting calendar and budget goals increases.

Filling Knowledge Gaps

Knowledge gaps arise when a small team in an organization creates or compiles a body of knowledge that needs to be deployed to a larger group of people. A gap then exists between the small team that has the knowledge and the larger group of people who need it. In the normal course of doing business, healthy organizations naturally create knowledge gaps, and the healthiest organizations create the most knowledge gaps.

History of the Vision

The goal of having a comprehensive collection of science information easily available to researchers and students has been expressed repeatedly for decades. These reports reiterate that our concept of a comprehensive collection of information has been attractive to the physical science community for decades.

Lessons from Y2K for Strategic Management of Information and Communication Technology

Y2K was a unique event, particularly for any organization that relies on information and communication technology to accomplish its mission and adhieve its strategic goals. There were various impacts on the design, development, and maintenance of systems and applications throughout the organization, as well as various impacts on the roles and responsibilites of people who deal with them. The fact that Y2K did not result in widespread catastrophic failures actually makes it a richer potential source of critical lessons for longterm strategic management of information and communication technology. We are now in a position to learn from this 'test' and apply those lessons to evolving organizational strategies for managing information and communications. This presentation explores issues and initial progress in the following five areas: (1) organizational roles and responses; (2) information gathering, use, and value; (3) life cycle management of systems and software; (4) information assurance and critical infrastructure protection; and (5) understanding the relationship between risk and response.

Knowledge Management and Pharmaceutical Development Teams: Using Writing to Guide Science

This article introduces a way of working with drug development teams that relies on writing as a key development activity. The work of cross-functional teams in pharmaceutical research and development can be guided by the use of tools normally thought of as 'writing' tools. Writing can be used intentionally to help teams develop their thinking, identify and respond to troublesome issues, and develop project documentation efficiently. The article introduces the use of a 'seed document' (one step in a systematic, wholly collaborative, document development process) to establish a conceptual knowledge bank for a development team, and demonstrates how complex documentation can flow naturally out of the evolving seed document. The authors argue that structured writing can help team members, who have varying perspectives and expertise, engage in substantive conflict and reach consensus on team responses to difficult issues.