Association For Business Communication Research Articles

Selections From the ABC 2022 Annual Conference, Tampa, Florida, USA: Refreshing Waves of Creative Teaching Energy

As a business communication teacher walks into their classroom ready to introduce a wonderful new teaching object, they are riding on a wave of spiritual joy. They know that they are about to transport their students into new business communication skills. It’s magical. My Favorite Assignment is Association for Business Communication’s (ABC’s) resource of classroom-tested pedagogical innovations. This article offers 10 teaching innovations first presented at the 2022 ABC Annual International Conference held in Tampa, Florida USA. Readers can select from assignments designed to teach email, personal and professional development, and social media.

My Favorite Assignment—A Storm Surge of Teaching Innovations

This article presents a curated collection of 10 teaching innovations debued at the Association for Business Communication’s 87th annual meeting held in Tampa, Florida, USA, and online October 2022. This My Favorite Assignment 27th edition introduces readers to classroom-ready ideas to help students gain personal and professional development, and a host of fresh assignment topics designed to inviggorate both classic and new assignments. Teaching support materials—instructions to students, stimulus materials, slides, grading rubrics, frequently asked questions, Internet links, and sample student projects—are downloadable from the Association for Business Communication and DePaul University Center for Sales Leadership websites.

Selections from the 2021 ABC Annual Conference, Answering Aretha’s Question: “Who’s Zooming Who?”

This article offers readers 12 teaching innovations introduced at the Association for Business Communication’s 86th annual meeting held online in October 2021. This My Favorite Assignment 22nd edition introduces readers to classroom-ready ideas in analysis, critical thinking, and business writing. Assignment support materials—instructions to students, stimulus materials, slides, grading rubrics, frequently asked questions, internet links, and sample student projects—are downloadable from the Association for Business Communication and DePaul University Center for Sales Leadership websites.

Selections From the ABC 2020 Annual Conference, Online: Gathering Around the Cool Fire to Share Business Communication Teaching Innovations

Readers can explore 13 teaching innovations presented at the 2020 Association for Business Communication (ABC) annual international conference hosted online. Typically held in a large hotel ballroom, this year’s My Favorite Assignment sessions were adapted to an asynchronous virtual conference. These assignments are designed to teach managing complex communication, enhance cross-cultural communication, and building essential technical skills. This article is the second in a two-part series. The first appeared in the June 2021 issue. Additional teaching materials—instructions to students, stimulus materials, slides, grading rubrics, frequently asked questions, and sample student projects—are posted on the ABC website: https://www.businesscommunication.org/page/assignments .

Selections From the ABC 2020 Annual Conference, Online: Business Dress and Pajama Bottoms—My Favorite Assignment Goes Online

This article features 12 teaching innovations presented at the 2020 Association for Business Communication (ABC) annual international conference held online due to the global COVID-19 pandemic. Readers can explore the classroom methods designed to enhance students’ individual and career skills, critical thinking, teamwork, and report writing skills—many are designed to be taught online. This article is the first in a two-part series. The next article will appear in the September 2021 issue. Additional teaching materials—instructions to students, stimulus materials, slides, grading rubrics, frequently asked questions, and sample student projects—are posted on the ABC website: https://www.businesscommunication.org/page/assignments .

Selections From the ABC 2018 Annual Conference, Miami, Florida: Bridging Teaching Ideas From the Innovator to the Classroom

This article offers readers 13 My Favorite Assignments that were presented at the Association for Business Communication’s 83rd annual conference held in Miami, Florida, in 2018. The teaching innovations offered include assignments that present quick, fun icebreaker exercises; visual communication and diversity; rhetoric; email; and informational interviews. Additional assignment support materials—instructions to students, stimulus materials, slides, grading rubrics, frequently asked questions, and sample student projects—are posted on the Association for Business Communication and DePaul University Center for Sales Leadership websites: https://www.businesscommunication.org/page/assignments and https://salesleadershipcenter.com/research/business-professional-communication-quarterly-my-favorite-assignment

Selections From the ABC 2017 Annual Conference, Dublin, Ireland: Teaching With Yeats’s Elegance and Wilde’s Wit

This article, the second of a two-part series, features 13 My Favorite Assignments that were introduced at the Association for Business Communication’s 82nd annual conference held in Dublin, Ireland, in 2017. The pedagogical innovations include assignments that teach students how to conduct primary research, present their findings, package messages for electronic media, and enhance students’ career and personal development. Additional assignment support materials—instructions to students, stimulus materials, slides, grading rubrics, frequently asked questions, and sample student projects—are posted on the Association for Business Communication and DePaul University Center for Sales Leadership websites: http://www.businesscommunication.org/page/assignments and https://salesleadershipcenter.com/research/business-professional-communication-quarterly-my-favorite-assignment

Selections From the ABC 2013 Annual Convention, New Orleans, Louisiana

This article, the first of a two-part series, catalogs teaching innovations presented at the 2013 Association for Business Communication (ABC) Annual Convention, New Orleans. They were presented during the My Favorite Assignment session. The 11 Favorite Assignments featured here offer the reader a variety of learning experiences including collaborative team work, debate, budgets, cross-cultural communication, report writing, persuasion, nonprofit organizations, client communication, and writing funding proposals. Additional teaching materials—including instructions to students, stimulus materials, slides, grading rubrics, frequently asked questions, and sample student projects—are posted on the Association for Business Communication webpage http://businesscommunication.org/assignments .

Selections From the ABC 2012 Annual Convention, Honolulu, Hawaii

The 13 Favorite Assignments featured here were presented at the 2012 Association for Business Communication (ABC) Annual Convention, Honolulu, Hawaii. A variety of learning objectives are featured, including the following: enhancing resume’s visual impact, interpersonal skills, social media, team building, web design, community service projects, and ethics. The authors share ideas for the classroom, for online instruction, and are taught in a single class or designed to consume an entire semester. Each assignment reflects the individual author’s passion for active learning that stimulates practical skill-building, judgment, and communication skills. Additional teaching materials—including instructions to students, stimulus materials, slides, grading rubrics, frequently asked questions (FAQs), and sample student projects—are posted on http://www.salesleadershipcenter.com/research.html#mfa13 . More excellent Favorite Assignment papers can be seen on the above webpage. This year, a bonus five authors have web-published their innovations.

Selections From the ABC 2011 Annual Convention, Montreal, Canada

The 12 Favorite Assignments featured in this article were presented at the 2011 Annual Convention of the Association for Business Communication (ABC), Montreal, Canada. A variety of learning objectives are featured: delivering bad news, handling difficult people, persuasion, reporting financial analysis, electronic media, face-to-face communication, and much more. Some Favorite Assignments take a full semester to complete; others can be done within a single class. Each assignment reflects the individual author’s passion for active learning that stimulates practical skill building, judgment, and communication skills. Additional teaching materials—instructions to students, stimulus materials, slides, grading rubrics, frequently asked questions (FAQs), and sample student projects—are posted on http://www.salesleadershipcenter.com/research.html#mfa12 .

Tenure, Status, and Workload: Fundamental Issues Among Business Communication Faculty

This article is based on the work of the Non-Tenure-Track Committee of the Association for Business Communication (ABC). Results of research performed by the committee are discussed. Focus is on issues of tenure, status, and workload that affect instructors of business communication and, the authors purport, that affect the livelihood of the academic field of business communication. Placed in the context of the national trend in academe to hire non-tenure-track faculty, the authors review results of surveys of ABC members that indicate how business communication faculty fit within that national landscape. Additionally, the survey results offer a glimpse at information from participants about tenure status, academic departments or homes, salaries, and responsibilities associated with appointments. The article ends with a discussion and the recommendations that members of the business communication community may want to consider as a means of strengthening and improving the status and working conditions many ABC members face.

Who We Are and What We Do, 2008: A Response

Dale Cyphert’s thoughtful commentary “Who We Are and What We Do, 2008,” based on a survey of Association for Business Communication (ABC) members, discusses demographic changes, traces the development of the organization through its discussion of such issues as discipline self-examination, and suggests directions for the organization going forward. This response comments on the role of the ABC and suggests that the current economic worldwide upheaval and the resulting changes that may ensue provide a context that must be considered in any strategic planning by the organization and by its members.

Papers By the 2008 Kitty O. Locker Outstanding Researcher Recipient and Respondent: Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Business Communication, October 30, 2008

Papers By the 2008 Kitty O. Locker Outstanding Researcher Recipient and Respondent: Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Business Communication, October 30, 2008

The Impact of Perceptions of Journal Quality on Business and Management Communication Academics

This commentary describes and critiques criteria that, according to results from an Association for Business Communication (ABC) member survey, are having an impact on quality judgments about our j...

Association for Business Communication

Association for Business Communication

Making Knowledge in Business Communication: Collaboration Between Editorial Teams and Authors

The Publications Board of the Association for Business Communication (ABC) sponsored a panel discussion, with the same title as this commentary, for the 2004 annual meeting of the ABC. The goal was bring together editors and authors share insights about the process of publishing one's work in the field of business communication. The participants included the editors of four business communication journals (Debby Andrews [now former editor], Business Communication Quarterly [BCQ]; Steve Ralston, the Journal of Business Communication [JBC]; Charie Thralls and Mark Zachry, Technical Communication Quarterly [TCQ]; and Dorothy Winsor, the Journal of Business and Technical Communication [JBTC]), three authors who have published in those journals (Jackie Hartman, Colorado State University; Pris Rogers, University of Michigan; and Christine Uber Grosse, Thunderbird University), and one panelist who represented both groups (Lamar Reinsch, former editor of JBC, Georgetown University).The panelists were eager share their advice, and it became apparent from the audience's response that many others could benefit from an inside look at the publishing process in our field. This commentary is a distillation of the panelists' remarks. Whether you an reviewer, associate editor, or editor--or someone planning take on one of these roles--we hope that the collective wisdom represented below will make the work of creating knowledge in business communication smoother, inspiring, and successful for you. Making knowledge in business communication is indeed a enterprise. For all four journals represented on this panel, and for most peer-reviewed academic journals, there essentially four sources of influence on a work under consideration: the the editor, manuscript reviewers (which may include associate editors), and the copyediting and production staff. By definition, this makes the act of publishing one's work a highly venture. How much the editorial staff and reviewers can influence a study can vary greatly from case case and from journal journal. For example, depending on the manuscript, Debby Andrews of BCQ would assume a wide range of positions, from the almost hands off a highly invasive strategy that made her, to a very real extent, a Dorothy Winsor of JBTC gives more or less feedback, depending on the clarity of the reviews and the experience of the author, highlighting, in any case, what's probably most for the author do. Charie Thralls and Mark Zachry of TCQ are committed playing a very active role in helping authors produce the highest quality research for the field, which typically takes the form of helping authors interpret reviewers' comments and cultivate the most promising elements of their manuscripts. Steve Ralston of JBC challenged the appropriateness of the word collaboration as a label for the editor-author relationship. He preferred the term coproduction, not wanting in any way be perceived as a coauthor. And yet, as both he and Jackie Hartman brought out, in at least one case Ralston played a major role in helping an author make one kind of contribution the field instead of another. Hartman had conducted a study of internal communication in two organizations, using locus groups as her primary research method. The reviewers selected for her manuscript had trouble accepting Hartman's research approach. Through phone calls and emails, Ralston advised Hartman turn her article into a commentary piece about the usefulness of focus groups as a research methodology. Hartman regarded this process as collaborative and much appreciated Ralston's willingness help her see in her paper what JBC readers would find most valuable. An important point made by the panelists, in fact, is that editors have, as a rule, the most reliable sense of what their readers will find interesting, significant, and convincing. …

Writing, Authenticity, and Knowledge Creation: Why I Write and You Should Too

I have never thought of myself as a researcher. The words Outstanding Researcher Award on the plaques the Association for Business Communication (ABC) and McGraw-Hill/Irwin awarded me this past year don't describe who I am and what I believe I do. Those words, in fact, cause me uncomfortableness, even embarrassment. I deliberately avoid describing myself as a researcher, let alone a scientist. It has taken me well over a decade of my academic life to figure out what I do, aside from teach. Simply put, I write, or write articles. More precisely, I struggle to find time to write, avoid writing more times than I care to adroit because it's hard work, puzzle over how to word and reword (Rose, 1992) the organizational world I'm thinking about, and, more often than not, think and write badly. Not until the mid-1990s did I discover that what I am compelled to write are stories about communication problems I've stumbled across, the ways I've used to solve them, and the problems that still puzzle me. Telling stories feels authentic and enables me to continue writing, even though tenure and promotion are no longer rewards for my writing efforts. This article describes my experiences and beliefs about academic writing in general and, more specifically, writing business and managerial communication stories. I will tell you a story that explains why I think of myself as a storyteller rather than a researcher and the extraordinary effect this change of thinking has had on my attitude toward writing and my ability to write. Before explaining why I chose this approach, I break with storytelling tradition by revealing my goals for telling this story. My story has four goals. The first is to urge those of you who don't write, who may be afraid or lack the confidence to write because you believe you lack the rigor of social scientists and researchers, to consider reframing your professional selves and actions so that you'll be able to see yourselves as active writers who regularly publish your ideas. This goal is important because it strikes me that the ABC has become increasingly an organization in which its members talk--often presenting provocative, interesting ideas about myriad aspects of communication at our conferences and in informal conversations with each other--but don't write. My second goal is to closely connect writing with effective teaching. For me, effective teaching is the art of weaving for learners a coherent story about communication. For that story to have power and impact, I believe we have to create, to write, part of that story. My third goal is to begin a conversation about the kind of writing worth publishing that doesn't fit snugly into our current interpretation of a article. In sociology and subdisciplines of management, this conversation has already begun and has resulted in writing that breaks traditional research article structures: for example, dialogues, analytical narratives, autoethnographies, and interviews with embedded analyses (Tedlock, 2000). These innovative genres have created a new intellectual and emotional writing space that has enabled writers to better connect their academic work with their personal lives. Writers now can blend or integrate in their writing the professional other who is objective, rational, and analytical with the highly personal self who can describe the passion that draws a writer to a project, the confusion that often occurs while gathering and thinking about data, the exhilaration of discovering connections and relationships, and at times the self-doubt about the value of a project or the ability to complete it. This connection has energized writers to create work that is challenging to read, see, and think about. My fourth goal is personal, therapeutic, and, quite frankly, self-indulgent. I have been a full-time administrator for 3 years. For me, finding time to write, to tell the stories about communication puzzles that interest me, to experiment with different ways of telling these stories, has become increasingly difficult. …

Letters from the Association for Business Communication and the Journal of Business Communication Editor

Letters from the Association for Business Communication and the Journal of Business Communication Editor

"Only Connect": Transforming Ourselves and Our Discipline through Co-Mentoring

When I met Debby Andrews at a conference almost 25 years ago and we ended up talking the night away, I thought I had stumbled upon a great idea for developing myself as a scholar-teacher in business communication: Only connect, I thought--form friendships with colleagues in the field. Over time I connected with many stimulating colleagues in the Association for Business Communication (ABC) and elsewhere, people who became my friends and with whom I shared ideas about teaching, doing research, and publishing. A few became very friends who conversed with me in depth about our various professional endeavors and our personal lives. In the process, we opened up new worlds for each other. We each gave the other feedback on ideas and manuscripts, asking tough questions and providing alternative perspectives on our individual efforts to publish. We consulted about our careers, helping each other confront unsettling changes at our universities and negotiate tenure/promotion processes. We laughed and enjoyed go od times together. My story undoubtedly sounds familiar. I tell it because although many of us have been finding great rewards in close collegial relationships, we have had no name for them, we have not discussed or realized their possibilities, and we have not celebrated them as we have networking and collaboration. After reflecting on my collegial friendships and reviewing some of the scholarship on developmental relationships over the past year, I believe that many of our friendships with colleagues amount to peers mentoning each other or, in a word, co-mentorships. Simply put, a co-mentorship is a mutual mentorship of a pair of close, collegial friends committed to facilitating each other's development. Covering both professional and personal concerns, they jointly mentor each other at the current stages of their careers/lives, whether they be early, midcareer, or late. Under ideal conditions, individuals can develop several by linking up with colleagues from anywhere in the world, thereby creating a personal co-mentoring network. If we go about forming and nurturing such collegial relationships with greater awareness of their potential, I believe that co-mentoring can facilitate our individual development as scholars, teachers, and members of our profession, and in turn, contribute to the maturation of business communication as a discipline. Here, then, I would like to advocate that we develop co-mentorships with our colleagues in business communication, especially those at other academic institutions across the globe. I will begin my discussion of co-mentoring by recalling the relationship of trust that forms the basis for all successful mentoring. After reviewing the research that supports the idea of peer mentorships, I propose a model of co-mentoring, suggest its potential for individuals and for the disciplinary community, and note the benefits of some practical applications for us in business communication. I then describe how we can form and nurture co-mentorships, concluding with a brief look at co-mentoring and our profess ional community, the ABC. Throughout this discussion, I use my personal experience with collegial friends to illustrate aspects of co-mentoring, telling the story from my own perspective. Just as the personal element is critical to the learning in a mentorship, so acknowledging the personal is essential to understanding the phenomenon of co-mentoring and appreciating its potential (see Bell, Golombisky, Singh, & Hirshmann, 2000; Mullen with Cox, Boettcher, & Adoue, 1997). A recent study of the transformative power of developmental relationships among women demonstrates that participants were little aware of the significant contribution of these friendships to their professional and personal lives until they narrated their experiences for the researcher (Carter, 2002). …

Interpretive Acts: New Vistas in Qualitative Research in Business Communication. A Guest Editorial

This special issue of The Journal of Business reflects the influences of several forces that are slowly but surely building momentum within the journal, the Association for Business Communication, and our field. The idea began with a panel entitled Qualitative Research Methods and Theories: Evolving Practices for Management Communication at the Association's 65th Annual Convention held in Atlanta, Georgia last year. The panel, which was chaired by Kitty Locker and included Kathryn Rentz, Gail Fann Thomas, JoAnne Yates, and myself, was well attended, suggesting that it spoke to a growing need for dialogue around the topic of qualitative research. A threshold question for the special issue was one that is addressed in the preface to every volume on qualitative research (e.g., Lindlof, 1996; van Maanen, 1983): What is qualitative research, and more particularly, what is qualitative research in the context of our discipline? Van Mannen (1983) offered this now-famous definition: The label qualitative methods has no precise meaning in any of the social sciences. It is at best an umbrella term covering an array of techniques which seek to describe, decode, translate and otherwise come to terms with the meaning, not the frequency, of certain more or less naturally occurring phenomena in the social world.... (p. 9) Narrowing this broad definition is necessary for any collection that purports to address the subject of qualitative research. Even papers that attempt to overview qualitative research in a particular domain of practice (e.g., Tucker, Powell, & Meyer, 1995) will inevitably highlight some kinds of research activities and topics, while giving less attention to others. Ulijn (2000), for instance, noted that Tucker, Powell and Meyer's survey of then-extant qualitative research in journals of business and management communication did not include discourse analysis, a method common in European research. The focus adopted for this special issue, of course, has also led to exclusions, though its scope has widened to include studies influenced by European theories and methods and is thus in line with trends in research in organizational communication and management studies in Europe and the US. Our title, Interpretive Acts, and the details of our call for papers, which asked researchers to draw concepts and techniques from domains of scholarship ranging from rhetorical studies and narrative theory to literary criticism and cultural studies, suggests the focus of this special issue. Like our panel, our call spoke to the background in literary and social theory of many of the members of ABC, noted by Yates (1993) as being one of our strengths. In this respect, the special issue takes into account and parallels the linguistic turn in organizational theory (Mauws & Phillips, 1995; see also Alvesson & Skoldberg, 2000, reviewed in this volume). This perspective understands language not simply as an instrument or tool for accomplishing particular managerial objectives, but as the very means for producing identity (Cheney & Christensen, 2001) and organization itself (Putnam & Pacanowsky, 1983; Smircich & Stubbart, 1985). Consistent with this expanded sense of the role of language and symbolic systems in organization and management, contemporary qualitative methods for addressing the wide range of phenomena of communicative expressions known as have multiplied, expanding to embrace a variety and diversity almost as rich as these texts themselves. The review process for the special issue has yielded studies that bracket a range of social phenomena of interest to business communication researchers and, at the same time, exemplify different methods, and combinations of methods, for capturing and analyzing data of various sorts. The interpretive acts embodied in each of these studies provide new twists on theories already known in our field (e. …