Review: Balanced Scorecard Step-by-Step: Maximizing Performance and Maintaining Results

Paul Niven's book is invaluable for communicators whose companies are implementing a Balanced Scorecard, and it can also provide a great deal of useful information on setting measurable goals for a staff function like communication to ensure it aligns with a company's strategy. The book provides easy-to-understand summaries of how various business processes work for communicators who want to better understand their businesses.

Sinickas, Angela D. Communication World Bulletin (2003). Articles>Reviews>Communication>Assessment

Review: CEO-Speak: The Language of Corporate Leadership    

The Language of Corporate Leadership is a study of the written discourse of CEOs that is found in annual reports, corporate Web sites, congressional testimonies, and employee newsletters. The book contains 10 case studies of CEOs' writings from past and present megacorporations, including Enron, General Electric, Microsoft, Disney, and AOL. The organizations covered in the book represent both new and old economies and include two Canadian companies and a public-sector company. The authors, Joel Amernic and Russell Craig, are accounting and business professors and appropriately focus on accounting and financial reporting aspects of CEOs' written discourse.

Dave, Anish M. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (2008). Articles>Reviews>Business Communication>Language

Review: Communication Reference Books for Engineers and Scientists

Over the past years, many reference books have been published for various science and engineering disciplines. Based on publishers’ descriptions, I selected four for review.

Kaempf, Charlotte. ATTW Bulletin (2005). Articles>Reviews>Scientific Communication>Engineering

Review: Communication Skills for the Processing of Words, 5th Edition    

This text aims to prepare students for entry-level jobs and foster their career progress after they enter the workplace. The focus of this book is not as broad as the typical introductory text on business communication. However, this book could be the right choice for an advanced business writing course in a high school or an introductory business writing course in a college, university, or technical school. This book might also work well as a supplement in a postsecondary business communication course for use by students who either have not completed a 1st-year composition course or who have completed that course without mastering grammar, mechanics, and style. This textbook includes 18 units: 8 discuss specific types of punctuation (e.g., commas and colons); 7 cover usage and mechanics (e.g., capitalization and numbers); and 3 cover grammar (e.g., subject and verb agreement).

Stallworth Williams, Linda. Business Communication Quarterly (2007). Articles>Reviews>Textbooks>Business Communication

Review: The Craft of Scientific Presentations: Critical Steps to Succeed and Critical Errors to Avoid  

As the word craft in the title of the book suggests, the ability to give good presentations is not a genetically linked trait but a craft that can be learned.

Armbruster, David L. Technical Communication Online (2004). Articles>Reviews>Presentations>Scientific Communication

Review: English for the Energy Industries: Oil, Gas, and Petrochemicals

Not only people preparing to work in the oil, gas, and petrochemical industries, but also students of industrial chemistry and chemical engineering can immensely benefit from the material provided in this coursebook and supplementary CDs.

Kumar Panda, Prasanta. International Journal for Technical Communication (2008). Articles>Reviews>Business Communication>Engineering

Review: Envisioning Science: The Design and Craft of the Science Image  

As an accomplished photographer of science and engineering research, Felice Frankel knows how to capture her readers' attention—her exquisite images in Envisioning science communicate their amazing power, by her design, and ultimately 'teach us to see' science in a different way. We are witnesses to the excitement of discovery represented in such images as cadmium selenide nanocrystals, self-assembled polyhedra, yeast colonies, and mouse embryo lungs, thereby illustrating the book's educational value.

Winn, Wendy. Technical Communication Online (2002). Articles>Reviews>Graphic Design>Scientific Communication

Review: Health and the Rhetoric of Medicine    

Health and the Rhetoric of Medicine is a fine introduction to the burgeoning field of medical rhetoric and an excellent addition to the annals of rhetorical criticism in general. Written by Judy Z. Segal from the University of British Columbia, the work is solidly grounded in the mainstay rhetorical traditions of Burke, Perelman and Olbrects-Tyteca, Booth, and Aristotle. But Health and the Rhetoric of Medicine is hardly conservative in its mission or methodology, and the result is a work that captures the essence of discursive encounters in medicine, especially those between doctors and patients and their families, and yet unabashedly attempts to reform these encounters for the betterment of all parties involved.

Jablonski, Jeffrey and Michael J. Zerbe. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (2007). Articles>Reviews>Scientific Communication>Biomedical

Review: Internet-Based Workplace Communications: Industry and Academic Applications    

Internet-Based Workplace Communications: Industry and Academic Applications, edited by Kirk St.Amant and Pavel Zemliansky, is a collection of essays that aims to bridge a gap between academic and industry understandings of the role of digital technologies in business and technical communication. The essays consider the implications of new online communication technologies for classroom and workplace practices. Although the essays are geared toward an academic audience and do not offer a comprehensive look at Internet-based workplace practices, the collection can serve as a starting point for educators who would like to discuss in their technical communication courses the implications of integrating Internet technologies into contemporary communication practices.

Jablonski, Jeffrey and Jessica Reyman. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (2007). Articles>Reviews>Business Communication>Online

Review: Starring the Text: The Place of Rhetoric in Science Studies    

Given Alan G. Gross's substantial contributions to the rhetoric of science, most recently with Joseph E. Harmon and Michael Reidy (2002) in Communicating Science, I looked forward to reading Gross's latest work, Starring the Text: The Place of Rhetoric in Science Studies--until I read the preface. In the preface, Gross notes that Starring the Text is not a new con- tribution but a 'major refiguring' (p. ix) of his earlier work The Rhetoric of Science (1990). Like most readers, I am decidedly less enthusiastic about reading a revision of an older contribution than I am about reading a new contribution.

Paul, Danette. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (2008). Articles>Reviews>Rhetoric>Scientific Communication

Review: Successful Writing At Work: Concise Edition    

Philip Kolin's purpose in writing Successful Writing at Work: Concise Edition is to introduce professional and business writing to undergraduate students who probably will not be taking other business writing courses. Kolin forgoes theory and provides ample exercises and examples. The concise edition, at 344 pages (10 chapters) and US$55, is 412 pages shorter and US$23 less than the full version, Successful Writing at Work (Kolin, 2006). While the book includes many of the important topics of the full version (such as discrete chapters devoted to letter writing, job applications, and writing procedures), the savings may not justify the loss of content and depth.

Dangler, Doug. Business Communication Quarterly (2008). Articles>Reviews>Textbooks>Business Communication

Review: Writing in the Business Professions

Writing in the Business Professions should interest teachers of advanced composition. I encourage them to peruse the volume for themselves since I can’t analyze its contents at length here. I do, however, feel that I need to warn potential readers about several things that perplexed me when I read the book especially since this book may help determine the future of business communication instruction in the 1990s.

Hagge, John. JAC (1990). Articles>Reviews>Business Communication