http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Articles/Management/Communication/Business-Communication A listing of the most recently indexed works about Articles and Management and Communication and Business Communication in the field of technical communication. en-us Copyright (c) 2005-08 by the EServer. All rights reserved. tclib-editorial@eserver.org (TC Library Editorial Board) webmaster@eserver.org (Geoffrey Sauer) http://tc.eserver.org/images/newlogo.gif http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Articles/Management/Communication/Business-Communication http://tc.eserver.org/35812.html http://tc.eserver.org/35812.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/35813.html http://tc.eserver.org/35813.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/35382.html http://tc.eserver.org/35382.html 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? http://tc.eserver.org/35147.html http://tc.eserver.org/35147.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/34849.html http://tc.eserver.org/34849.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/34855.html http://tc.eserver.org/34855.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/34531.html http://tc.eserver.org/34531.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/34532.html http://tc.eserver.org/34532.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/34533.html http://tc.eserver.org/34533.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/34276.html http://tc.eserver.org/34276.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/34277.html http://tc.eserver.org/34277.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/34279.html http://tc.eserver.org/34279.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/34090.html http://tc.eserver.org/34090.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/33881.html http://tc.eserver.org/33881.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/33499.html http://tc.eserver.org/33499.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/33502.html http://tc.eserver.org/33502.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/33368.html http://tc.eserver.org/33368.html 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? http://tc.eserver.org/32315.html http://tc.eserver.org/32315.html Guanxi referrals help identify potential business partners. Through guanxi networks, businesses can establish favourable and mutually beneficial relationships vital to business success. Guanxi carries assumed knowledge of trust and facilitates business references. It is the construct of `face' that underpins this trust. The high degree of trust in guanxi networks facilitates the flow of strategic information and knowledge, further adding value to business. This article illustrates through case studies how guanxi relationships are formed and how knowledge in guanxi networks can benefit business. The case studies are drawn from experiences of three Europe-based Chinese business directors. http://tc.eserver.org/32316.html http://tc.eserver.org/32316.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/32205.html http://tc.eserver.org/32205.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/31840.html http://tc.eserver.org/31840.html A case study of a team approach to information architecture at Duke University by graduates of the Duke Continuing Studies Technical Communication Certificate program. http://tc.eserver.org/31805.html http://tc.eserver.org/31805.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/31682.html http://tc.eserver.org/31682.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/31562.html http://tc.eserver.org/31562.html Communication professionals can and should have frequent, direct access to and influence on executive leadership. Your CEO needs you, but are you ready? It is a misperception that CEOs are too busy, uninterested or unreceptive. While some communicators have close contact with executives, many other communication professionals rarely see the CEO and may have many layers of management between themselves and that "C-level" suite. But you don't have to report directly to the CEO to get his or her ear. http://tc.eserver.org/31564.html http://tc.eserver.org/31564.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/31563.html http://tc.eserver.org/31563.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/31566.html http://tc.eserver.org/31566.html It's an undisputed fact. Some CEOs refuse to acknowledge that their communication skills could use a tune-up. Someone in your organization -- quite possibly you -- needs to assume responsibility for sharpening your CEO's communication skills. If your leader neglects this part of her leadership toolkit, it's time to offer some frank advice on how she can improve. You must also be prepared to deal with the sensitive matter of how to encourage the boss to accept the benefits of learning from a communication training workshop. http://tc.eserver.org/31522.html http://tc.eserver.org/31522.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/31520.html http://tc.eserver.org/31520.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/31451.html http://tc.eserver.org/31451.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/31429.html http://tc.eserver.org/31429.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/31351.html http://tc.eserver.org/31351.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/31341.html http://tc.eserver.org/31341.html 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? http://tc.eserver.org/31319.html http://tc.eserver.org/31319.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/31287.html http://tc.eserver.org/31287.html 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? http://tc.eserver.org/31253.html http://tc.eserver.org/31253.html 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? http://tc.eserver.org/31255.html http://tc.eserver.org/31255.html 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? http://tc.eserver.org/31254.html http://tc.eserver.org/31254.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/31252.html http://tc.eserver.org/31252.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/31228.html http://tc.eserver.org/31228.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/31231.html http://tc.eserver.org/31231.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/31222.html http://tc.eserver.org/31222.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/31229.html http://tc.eserver.org/31229.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/30760.html http://tc.eserver.org/30760.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/30737.html http://tc.eserver.org/30737.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/30703.html http://tc.eserver.org/30703.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/30490.html http://tc.eserver.org/30490.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/29595.html http://tc.eserver.org/29595.html Darren Dahl explains why some businesses that once feared whistleblowers are now giving workers new ways to report wrongdoing. http://tc.eserver.org/29057.html http://tc.eserver.org/29057.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/29158.html http://tc.eserver.org/29158.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/28615.html http://tc.eserver.org/28615.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/27824.html http://tc.eserver.org/27824.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/22138.html http://tc.eserver.org/22138.html Discusses ways to communicate the financial benefits, customer value, learning and growth opportunities, and internal process improvements made possible by single sourcing.