http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Articles/Workplace/Communication A listing of the most recently indexed works about Articles and Workplace and 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/Workplace/Communication http://tc.eserver.org/35662.html http://tc.eserver.org/35662.html The generic term “mergers & acquisitions (M&A)” appeared for the first time at the end of the 19th century in the United States. In times of increased global competition, M&A activities have reached all regions of the world and are not solely concerning large enterprises. However, with many M&A projects never reaching the synergy effects that were expected of them, the successful integration of one company into another remains a challenge. http://tc.eserver.org/35663.html http://tc.eserver.org/35663.html Being active in 190 countries around the world, mergers and acquistions are part of the business routine for the engineering conglemerate Siemens AG. A smooth integration process is vital for business success. Supporting this integration process is one of the tasks of Robert Gibson, senior consultant for training and projects at the Siemens headquarters in Munich, Germany. tcworld spoke to him about the challenge of integrating new corporate and national cultures. http://tc.eserver.org/35401.html http://tc.eserver.org/35401.html As a policies and procedures (P&P) practitioner, do you delve into P&P content development projects without a clear understanding of the organizational context? Astute P&P practitioners add more than documentation skills to assignments--they apply an understanding of the organizational context from three perspectives. http://tc.eserver.org/35128.html http://tc.eserver.org/35128.html Although previous researchers have proposed organizational demography as an important determinant of communication, no one has tested this relationship directly. http://tc.eserver.org/32208.html http://tc.eserver.org/32208.html Lone writers are found across all industries, as junior- and senior-level employees, contract workers and direct employees. Sometimes, they’re not even the only writers in their company, but rather are the only writers in their division with either little to no contact — or little to nothing in common — with the other writers in other company divisions. http://tc.eserver.org/31721.html http://tc.eserver.org/31721.html Most of us are involved in negotiating in some form or other on a daily basis. Here is a look at the process of negotiation and tips you can use to improve your technique as you progress through the process. http://tc.eserver.org/31689.html http://tc.eserver.org/31689.html 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). http://tc.eserver.org/31555.html http://tc.eserver.org/31555.html In conducting its landmark 2003 Communication ROI Study, which focuses on the relationship between an organization's internal communication strategy and practices and its shareholder returns, Watson Wyatt made some surprising findings regarding the relationship between effective external and internal communication. http://tc.eserver.org/31532.html http://tc.eserver.org/31532.html On 19 March a war with global implications began between a U.S.-led coalition and Iraq. Although some organizations will be affected by this war more than others, the articles below will help any communicator address certain immediate internal and external organizational war-related communication issues. http://tc.eserver.org/31518.html http://tc.eserver.org/31518.html When two companies merge, the complexities, emotions and often sweeping changes behind the deal can hinder effective communication to key stakeholders. Yet a well planned and implemented communication strategy contributes to the very success of the merger itself. How can you overcome the obstacles to developing and delivering on a merger communication strategy? http://tc.eserver.org/31483.html http://tc.eserver.org/31483.html Employees are inundated with mass information and messages. It is their responsibility to digest all this information in appropriate ways so that they can be effective in their roles, partner with others and help their company be profitable and competitive. Technology—e-newsletters, web mail, instant messaging—has greatly accelerated this environment of mass-transit communications, and while this saves time, it creates a bigger challenge: connecting and managing internal information clearly to align employees and maximize productivity. http://tc.eserver.org/31479.html http://tc.eserver.org/31479.html Corporate culture involves certain values and rules of behaviour within and outside the company, which are shared by the company employees. The cause and effect relationship between the company crisis and corporate culture is reciprocal. If the corporate culture is not strong enough when a crisis occurs, its value system can break down or the crisis can unveil inconsistencies between its stated values and relations and its actual ones. On the other hand, the corporate culture can directly launch a crisis causal chain, which means that the original cause of the crisis initiates other imbalances, or deepens the imbalances occurring in another department, speeding up the development of the crisis and making it more difficult or even impossible to pull the company out. http://tc.eserver.org/31486.html http://tc.eserver.org/31486.html Jean-Paul Sartre said, “We understand everything in human life through stories.” I believe that is true. We comprehend better when a message is related in story form, and we also feel a stronger rapport with the person telling the story. Why not use these memorable stories in your internal communications? When you cram too much information into a communication, training session or presentation, you’re doing a data dump on your listener. Nothing sticks. Yet, if you’ve ever had a supervisor tell a story to illustrate a point, you learned the lesson and probably enjoyed the learning process, too. http://tc.eserver.org/31402.html http://tc.eserver.org/31402.html You would think that if the humble print employee newsletter hasn't been killed off in the Internet explosion of the past decade, then it must have more than just its reputation going for it. It must actually meet a fundamental business need to inform and engage a workforce. http://tc.eserver.org/31428.html http://tc.eserver.org/31428.html Navigating through internal communication "whitewater" is a growing challenge in today's business environment. Every day, we face a flood of messages and requests from multiple sources, making it increasingly difficult to manage the overload. http://tc.eserver.org/31454.html http://tc.eserver.org/31454.html The role of an employee communication professional is, at its core, fundamentally simple: We're in the business of designing and executing messaging to achieve a desired effect with a specific audience. How successful we are is driven by a number of factors, including appropriate use of media, timing and messages. By understanding these factors, we can target communication much more effectively. The key to understanding these factors effectively is simple: Ask. http://tc.eserver.org/31395.html http://tc.eserver.org/31395.html Some say it's a revolution that will change radio broadcasting and people's listening habits forever. Others say it's a fad that's of limited appeal or use to anyone but geeks and enthusiasts. Whatever anyone says, something that has rocketed out of nowhere and gotten big companies and radio stations alike interested (and after only eight months) must be worth investigating. That "something" is called podcasting. http://tc.eserver.org/31400.html http://tc.eserver.org/31400.html Over the past decade, hundreds of employee magazines and newsletters have gone by the wayside as corporate communicators rushed to embrace digital communication. Today, many large organizations do not publish any regular print vehicles for employees. But did they eliminate their publications for the right reasons? And has the rush away from print strengthened or weakened organizations' connection with employees? http://tc.eserver.org/31323.html http://tc.eserver.org/31323.html There are ongoing debates about the reporting and working relationship between HR and internal communication, but one thing is certain: When it comes to systemic change, the kind required for effective corporate social responsibility (CSR) implementation, the two must work together in an inextricably-linked collaboration. http://tc.eserver.org/31321.html http://tc.eserver.org/31321.html Most of those who write about corporate social responsibility focus first and foremost on external stakeholders—responsibility-focused investors, workers in the supply chain, local communities, the press, governments or NGOs—and understandably so. These groups can undermine corporate reputations by publicizing perceived instances of social irresponsibility. Reputations may be intangible, but damage to them can cost real dollars. http://tc.eserver.org/31336.html http://tc.eserver.org/31336.html Internal branding is alive and well, and continues to evolve as more people realize how powerful it is as a business tool. You may hear it called by different names, such as employer branding, employee branding or employee value propositioning, but whatever the term, it is an important and useful concept. http://tc.eserver.org/31326.html http://tc.eserver.org/31326.html We are hearing and reading a lot these days about the new age of transparency, in which organizations must go beyond traditional, tightly controlled communication and engage in a "naked conversation" with their customers, communities, employees and other stakeholders. http://tc.eserver.org/31334.html http://tc.eserver.org/31334.html A recent Gallup poll showed that 69 percent of employees are disengaged at work. A survey of human resources managers by PricewaterhouseCoopers in the U.K. found that only 26 percent of employees demonstrated brand values in their day-to-day behavior. These figures suggest that internal branding efforts are perhaps not producing the desired effect. "Living the brand" initiatives cannot work when the majority of employees are not tuned in at work. Great brands are built by consistently delivering on the brand promise, which requires employee engagement with that brand. http://tc.eserver.org/31335.html http://tc.eserver.org/31335.html Employee engagement, getting employees to "live the brand," gaining employee buy-in—today's managers are trying to wrap their minds around these critical practices through internal marketing and internal branding. But not everyone understands these concepts. You even hear people use the terms interchangeably, even though there are a number of differences between these concepts. 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/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/31095.html http://tc.eserver.org/31095.html This article examines the potential application of stakeholder theory to the case of a disabled worker returning to work. A gated notion combining both the instrumental and ethical views of stakeholder theory is explored as a way to understand how to determine who may be classified as a stakeholder. This nuanced application of stakeholding to the process of returning to work lends itself to the consideration of mediation techniques as mechanisms of conflict avoidance rather than exclusively as dispute resolution techniques. Implications in terms of the study of the return to work process, disability, and the further potential for practical application are discussed. http://tc.eserver.org/31039.html http://tc.eserver.org/31039.html At nearly every conference I attend someone is talking about the need for Subject Matter Expertise for Business Analysts. The rationale is that someone versed in the language, ideas, and systems of a given organization or product will ask better questions and elicit better requirements from stakeholders. http://tc.eserver.org/30846.html http://tc.eserver.org/30846.html Workplace incivility, including aggression and bullying, is a troubling phenomenon. Uncivil behaviors not only harm individuals but also diminish employee performance and sometimes result in legal action against companies. Thus, it behooves organizations and management to become vigilant and responsive to such behaviors. Yet the evidence shows that with the recent exception of attempted legislation in Hawaii (Chiem, 2007), few companies or jurisdictions in the United State have policies and procedures aimed at addressing uncivil behavior. This article outlines some points to consider when developing policies to counteract uncivil behavior in the workplace. In the process, we incorporate the views of two corporate representatives (a diversity manager at Georgia Power, a human resource manager at PepsiCo) and an attorney with the U.S. military. Developing a Policy About Uncivil Behavior Any organization wishing to develop a policy about uncivil behavior should establish a task force or committee representing various categories of employees. These members may serve as liaisons to their units. Here are some points for the group to consider in creating the policy: Define Uncivil Behavior There will likely be much discussion as committee members try to develop a definition, but this is necessary to create a policy. http://tc.eserver.org/30738.html http://tc.eserver.org/30738.html Argues that the subdiscipline or community of organizational communication scholars is also imagined, as much organizational communication scholarship conducted within the global context is performed and interpreted from the dominant Euro-American intellectual tradition, privileging those concepts as well as particular voices and traditions and often ignoring inequality and exploitation within the scholarly community. This forgetting and the imagined scholarly community it creates continue to reify and legitimate a particular form of rationality and, in practice, lead to further colonization, subordination, and oppression of native/indigenous/other forms of understanding and organizing within our disciplinary field. http://tc.eserver.org/30704.html http://tc.eserver.org/30704.html This study examines the processes by which workers in a particular Indian call center located in Kolkata expanded on, negotiated, and chose among an array of possible, especially new, identities and identifications and the ways that these choices affected changing social discourses. Our case study depicted a workplace that was simultaneously casual and urgent, temporal and spatially free and constrained, situated in both Indian and U.S. cultures, and oriented toward business and night-club ambiances. Within this particular workplace, call center employees (re)constructed and negotiated among an array of discourses that bracketed opportunities for particular identities and identifications. Through these negotiation processes, they (a) engaged in strategic identity(ies) invocations and (b) reframed work, career, and family discourses and practices. 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/30421.html http://tc.eserver.org/30421.html You can create an orientation package to acclimate new personnel and ensure that they receive all the items and information they need in a timely manner. The orientation package can consist of six sections: introduction, maps, organization overview, skills list, other information sources, and checklists. Such an orientation package is currently being used at the IBM(R) Corporation in Cary, North Carolina. Businesses constantly grow and change. People join organizations, transfer between departments and sites, and return after extended absences. The sooner new personnel become skilled in their new positions, the sooner they will be productive and contributing members of the organization. http://tc.eserver.org/29345.html http://tc.eserver.org/29345.html One of your most effective means to communicate with team members may not involve words. See why senior editor Matthew Osborn believes body language can say it all. 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/29026.html http://tc.eserver.org/29026.html This conceptual article presents a critical review of gender-difference and gender-sameness theory and research. The focus is upon gender workplace communication, a topic often debated in the popular and organizational literature. A contextually-based integrated paradigm is proposed which represents a shift from a gender-difference foundation to a more integrated approach that includes the interaction of gender with Standpoint Theory, culture, organizational climate, and structure and task context. The network of shared meanings concept is introduced as having a major impact on gender communication orientation. Research using an example of communication to create a contextual meaning for social support is highlighted. Implications and conclusions for organizations, researchers, and educators are discussed. http://tc.eserver.org/29033.html http://tc.eserver.org/29033.html Although studies of actual communication practices in the workplace are now commonplace, few historical studies in this area have been completed. Such historical studies are necessary to help researchers understand the often com-plicated origins of genre conventions in professional discourse. Historical research that draws on contemporary genre theory helps address this void. A genre perspective is particularly valuable for helping researchers trace a given type of document s emergence and evolution. This perspective also provides a way of accounting for the connections between communicative practices and the other activities that occupy the attention of workplace organizations. To illustrate what this perspective brings to historical research in professional communication, I examine the development of communicative practices at a national production company that relied on texts to mediate its organizational activities across geographically dispersed locations. http://tc.eserver.org/28636.html http://tc.eserver.org/28636.html Anyone who writes for a living can, like me, describe a long love-hate relationship with paper as the conveyer of the written word. There's something physically appealing about putting pen to paper, as there is about picking up and reading a well-produced bound document. http://tc.eserver.org/21254.html http://tc.eserver.org/21254.html With a creative background and an M.B.A., I’ve been a professional half-breed over the past 20 years. What I’ve learned is that the antagonism, hostility and resentment often felt on both sides of the equation is the outgrowth of a basic failure to understand what makes the other side tick. http://tc.eserver.org/20087.html http://tc.eserver.org/20087.html What should organizational communication courses contribute to an STC curriculum synthesizing technological and critical literacies? We argue for a strong theoretical component as a way of setting technical competencies and organizational roles in critical perspective. We illustrate the importance of a theoretically-informed synthesis in extended examples from a recent co-op experience at a major government lab. The changing role of technical communicator can be viewed in terms of changing models of organization and communication with implications for STC curriculum design and real-world practice. http://tc.eserver.org/19877.html http://tc.eserver.org/19877.html Understanding an organization's corporate culture can help explain how to get things done in an organization: communicate, advanced up the corporate ladder, and get project ideas accepted and completed. We can understand culture by identifying values, norms, and assumptions underlying the corporate 'world..' Cultures can he better understood by looking at such things as how an organization responds to crisis, how the intentions of group leaders come to be shared, and how an organization perceives itself. For example, a study of culture at one organization revealed such differing values between two groups, scientists and engineers, that cross-cultural mediation was necessary.