Association For Business Communication Research Articles

Instructor and Student Perceptions of What is Learned by Writing the Business Report

In many business communication courses students must write a business report. This study compared what business communication instructors believe their stu dents learn and what writing skills they improve by completing the assignment with what students believe they learn and what writing skills they believe are improved. Data were gathered from members of the Association for Business Communica tion and from students who have completed a business report. Instructors see greater improvement in student writing skills than do students. To close this gap, faculty should offer more explicit explanations of the assignment and of the con cepts to be learned and the skills to be improved. They should also explain the cri teria for evaluation and help students assess their writing skills and set personal goals for improvement. Questionnaires are provided so instructors can compare their own perceptions with those of their students as well as with the instructors and students from this study.

Challenges for ABC Members in 2000: Outstanding Teacher Lecture

Outstanding Teacher Lecture Preparing for my talk winner of year's Outstanding Teacher Award forced me to look closely at my years a teacher--my skills, my attitudes, and my growth over those years. It also gave me opportunity to assess profession of teaching business communication and state of field itself. I have examined what my own professional life has entailed and discussions I've had with Association for Business Communication (ABC) members through years. One overwhelming theme has emerged: many of us feel isolated and powerless we fight administrations to keep our programs. Our business communication programs are regarded weak and are susceptible to change more so than other disciplines. I am challenging ABC to fill void many of us feel. We need some strengths to fall back on when we are asked who we are and to support us when we are under attack. I have four challenges, each based on an attitude I have observed during my tenure a business communication instructor. Meeting any one of these challenges would help us take pride in our profession. Meeting all four would empower us to stand up a bit straighter in fight. Support Plain Language Across Continents The plain language movement has no academic sponsor, and I can think of no more appropriate group to endorse it than ABC. In some ways push for plain language is much stronger in countries other than US. However, movement is deserving of serious attention everywhere. I would hope that members of association would be flag bearers. In fact, back in 1985 Gretchen Vik wrote that as business communicators we need to keep track of movement's figures (p. 66). She pointed to interest of Department of Commerce and American Bankers Association in plain language validation of the concern we business communicators have shown for subject (p. 66). However, we have not followed her suggestion and could do much more. When I worked on my dissertation in mid-1980s, I interviewed a vice president at State Farm about rewriting of insurance policies into plain language. We first discussed challenges of meeting plain language requirements of 34 states' laws. He explained company's drafting process and pointed out that lawyers had lost some of their say in writing of policies. The final step was to send policy drafts to Document Design Center for editing and help with design of policy. Because rewritten policies actually filled more pages, there was a concern with increased expenses in printing process. So State Farm found a thinner paper that did not bleed, bought new printing presses, and decided to glue spines instead of using staples. They now could fold policies once and use a business-size envelope. They saved over a million dollars in postage simply by eliminating staples. The lengths plain language laws would force a company to go were fascinating. Nowhere had I read any of those details. However, when I submitted an article with those details to one of our journals in about 1988, one reviewer wrote, this old stuff again! I thought we were through with plain language by now. I had my doubts about an organization that had members with attitudes like that. Why wouldn't we want to know what lengths a company had to go to in order to meet needs of its policyholders? That was probably 13 years ago, and plain language movement is more active than ever in 2000. The Security and Exchange Commission is probably most visible proponent for plain language today; however, there is other activity well. For example, I teach a unit on plain language in my corporate communications class. Just semester, I have been able to make a very strong point to my class about current activity. The Food and Drug Administration required Glaxo Wellcome to produce a document in plain language explaining side effects of Lotronex because several women who had taken drug for irritable bowel syndrome became extremely ill. …

Convergence and Commonality Challenge Business Communication Research: Outstanding Researcher Lecture

Outstanding Researcher Lecture Just over a decade ago, in 1990, MIT Professor JoAnne Yates became the first recipient of the Association for Business Communication (ABC) Outstanding Researcher Award. The announcement, at this ABC conference in Atlanta, of Jone Rymer as the 11th recipient not only marks a decade for the award but also represents our hope for research in the millennium. It seems a fitting time, therefore, to consider some ways that our past research equips us to tacide research challenges facing us now. Indeed, as a representative of the decade past, let me suggest challenges for consideration, one I'll call convergence, the other commonality. Convergence and commonality, I'll suggest, challenge us to let go of the search for disciplinary identity, to stop seeking uniformity in methods, to forget about the idea of having a common institutional home, and rather, to use our diversity and concentrate our research efforts more deliberately around the purpose we share. Convergence Two roads in a yellow wood, wrote the American poet Robert Frost (1920). sorry I could not travel both, he continued, But be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as long as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other just as fair, . . . And that has made all the difference. (p. 9) From Frost's perspective the roads diverged, requiring a choice. Standing at the same fork in the road and looking the other way, however, presents quite a different picture. Turned around, Frost's two roads diverged are two roads converged, roads coming together. As this ABC conference is meeting in CNN Center, it seems appropriate to consider what means to news professionals these days. Convergence in the news involves an intermingling of three highly diverse media platforms--print, television, and the Internet. The Tampa Tribune, WFLA-TV Channel 8, and their online sites, for example, recently moved in together under one glass roof, a $40 million temple to which they call the Newscenter (Smith, 2000). More than simply bricks, mortar, and lots of glass, however, this convergence is seen as a revolution in the news business, a revolution involving a new togetherness that's thrusting seasoned professionals into roles, involving unfamiliar processes and different products, requiring and flexible competencies, many of which must be learned quickly on the job. In addition to preparing a 30-minute TV special, a news anchor may be asked to provide text for the online site, then turn the same story into copy suitable for the morning newspaper, even if it means scooping her TV special slated to appear sometime later. [It's] a nightmare, said anchorwoman Gayle Sierens, because it's not what I do (Smith, 2000). When it comes to our communication research endeavors, convergence may not seem like a totally idea. We've been navigating multiple disciplines and diverse methods for some time now. In fact, our diversity in backgrounds, cultures, approaches, and institutions has become central to our identity. As our ABC mission states, business communication is interdisciplinary, drawing theory, research methods, and knowledge from disciplines as diverse as management, rhetoric, organizational behavior, composition, speech communication, mass communication, psychology, linguistics, information technology, education, and history among others (ABC, 2000; see also Locker, 1993, 1998). At the 1994 Research Think Tank, held in conjunction with the ABC Conference in San Diego, participants were asked to name sources that had greatly influenced their research. Their responses ranged from Faigley to Fielden; from Maslow to Tufte; from Hirokawa and Poole to Hofstede; from Daft and Lengel to Ede and Lunsford (for a complete list see Rogers, 1995). …

A copyright questionnaire

How well do you understand copyright law? How about the doctrine of fair use? If a recent study reported in the Business Communication Quarterly is any indication, IEEE members may not have a very solid understanding of either. J.V. Arn, R. Gatlin, and W. Kordsmeier reported the results of a questionnaire survey of the membership of the Association for Business Communication (ABC) (see Bus. Commun. Quart., vol.61, no.4, p.32-9, 1998). The survey was designed to test the understanding of ABC members of various parts of copyright law including the sections cited in the fair use guidelines for educational multimedia. In their brief description of fair use, the authors explain: "fair use is a possible defense to copyright infringement in an educational or nonprofit environment but not in a commercial application" (p. 36). This difference has long been recognized in differing fees for use. Nonprofit institutions who publish newsletters, monographs, and books routinely pay nominal fees to use copyrighted materials, but what about more limited uses such as in the classroom or in a presentation at a professional meeting? Defining multimedia as "a single, computer-controlled product that integrates text, audio, graphic, still image, and moving pictures", J.V. Arn et al., note that such a "variety of sources requires the producer to understand a wide variety of legal constraints" (p. 33). Their study showed that ABC members often underestimated their rights to use copyrighted material.

The Role of The Association for Business Communication in Shaping Business Communication as an Academic Discipline

The Association for Business Communication (ABC) has been instrumental in the development of business communication as an academic discipline. This article reviews ABC's impact in seven areas: nurt...

Transforming Business Communication by Building on Forman's Translation Metaphor

Forman's translation metaphor provides a powerful lens for examining business communication as a discipline. However, its focus on a uni-directional transla tion from one language into another by an individual scholar, with too little consideration for the influences, expectations, and entanglements of culture, proves problematic. The present essay envisions translation as a bi-directional, dynamically negotiated process that occurs within and between communities of scholars and that transforms the language, the person of the translator, the communities involved, and the cultural expectations. This conception of transla tion as a dynamic process in which business communication scholars partici pate predicts a balance of trade between business communication and other disciplines, situates language use in place and time, and helps to articulate and develop international cultural expectations for transforming business communi cation and the Association for Business Communication.

On the Road to Maturity

This special issue on ethics marks another step toward maturity for business communication ethics. The guest editor, Steve Ralston, and the authors of the included papers deserve our congratulations and our thanks. I welcome this special issue because its publication, six years after a previous special issue devoted to ethics (Lewis, 1990), suggests that interest in business communication ethics may have achieved a sell sustaining critical mass among scholars. I can, perhaps, clarify my reasons for reading events in this way by recording some personal memories and impressions. Looking Back During the 1987 annual meeting of the Association for Business Communication (ABC), Larry Smeltzer suggested to me and to Phillip Lewis - newly-named Associate Editor and Editor, respectively, of The Journal of Business Communication (JBC) - that someone should put together a panel on ethics for the following year's meeting. He further suggested that the JBC should consider a special issue devoted to the subject. Both Phil and I expressed interest in the project and Larry accepted responsibility for identifying participants and for preparing a formal proposal. As a result of Larry's efforts, the program for the 1988 annual meeting included a panel on the topic of Ethics in Business Communication. Kitty Locker, Phillip Lewis, Lamar Reinsch, Kathryn Rentz, and William Shannon constituted the panel; Larry Smeltzer served as chairperson (Bruno, 1988, p. 21). When the time came for their session, the presenters found their room packed with attendees, a sign that many ABC members shared an interest in the topic. (The program for the 1988 annual ABC meeting also listed several other papers on ethics.) My remarks as a member of the 1988 panel - I reported on the results of a preliminary literature review - reflected my interest in the history of business communications attention to ethics. In subsequent conversations, Robert Gieselman and several other people offered helpful suggestions and cautioned me that, in the past, ABC's interest in ethics had been intermittent and reactive. By the time the meeting ended, I had decided to attempt a more careful and comprehensive review of business communication ethics literature, a decision that has resulted in a series of papers (Reinsch, 1989, 1990, 1993, 1996). When I began to review the literature on business communication ethics research I lacked - as I still do - easy access to the earliest issues of ABC's first periodical, the Bulletin (now published under the title Business Communication Quarterly). I began my review, therefore, with 1958 (Reinsch, 1990, p. 253). I found a few articles in the 1958-to-1960 period, articles that focused primarily on the question of whether rhetoric was amoral. I found a few articles in the 1964-to-1965 period, most of which focused on whether dishonesty could be an effective long-run strategy. I also found a trickle of articles between 1973 and 1984, and a small-but-growing stream from 1985 onward (Reinsch, 1990, 1993). Based on the articles I had found, and based also on some informal attempts to identify the factors (for example, attempts to capitalize on current events) that had motivated authors to write the articles, I concluded that business communication scholars were interested in ethics as a pedagogical problem but not as a research field. I also noticed that only a few people had published more than a single paper on business communication ethics, further evidence, I thought, that business communication scholars did not regard ethics as an important topic for scholarly research. By the time I made final pre-publication changes in my 1990 paper I was pessimistic about the future of business communication ethics research. I wondered if future historians would regard the 1990 special issue as an evanescent flurry of interest in the topic. In subsequent years, I welcomed the appearance of ethics papers in the JBC (for example, Schultz, 1996) as well as in the Journal of Business and Technical Communication (for example, Russell, 1993), in Management Communication Quarterly (for example, Hobbs, 1995; Pratt, 1994), and other periodicals (for example, Sims, 1993) and dissertations (Stevens, 1992, 1994, 1996). …

A Professional Profile of Business Communication Educators and Their Research Preferences: Survey Results

From a large sample survey of the membership of the Association for Business Com munication (ABC), the authors develop a detailed profile of business communication educators.1Specifacally, this survey explores the training and background of business communication instructors, how they are situated professionally, and the characteristics of the business communication programs in which they teach.The first major profile study since 1968, this study also reports on the kinds of research topics and methods found to be valuable by educators in the ABC. From a comparison of various sample subgroups, the authors identify important differences in attitudes toward potential research topics and methodologies in the field of business communica tion.

Peer Evaluation of Writing in Business Communication Classes

Abstract This study was done to determine how selected member teachers of the Association for Business Communication (ABC) employ peer evaluation of writing in their business communication classes. A purposive sample of 78 teachers responded to a questionnaire. The findings indicate that most often the peer evaluation group ranges in size from two students to the entire class and consists of juniors and seniors who most frequently evaluate in- and out-of-class letters. Students usually use a teacher-developed, analytic scale on which they make additional comments, both positive and negative. In general, the process is successful, as revealed by a number of specific instructor comments.

Book Reviews : Conducting Research in Business Communication. Patty G. Campbell, Thomas Housel, and Kitty O. Locker, editors. Urbana, IL. Association for Business Communication, 1988. Paperback, 297 pages. Multimethod Research: A Synthesis of Styles. John Brewer and Albert Hunter. Newbury Park, CA. Sage, 1989. Hardback, 209 pages. Designing Qualitative Research. Catherine Marshall, and Gretchen B. Rossman. Newbury Park, CA. Sage,

Book Reviews : Conducting Research in Business Communication. Patty G. Campbell, Thomas Housel, and Kitty O. Locker, editors. Urbana, IL. Association for Business Communication, 1988. Paperback, 297 pages. Multimethod Research: A Synthesis of Styles. John Brewer and Albert Hunter. Newbury Park, CA. Sage, 1989. Hardback, 209 pages. Designing Qualitative Research. Catherine Marshall, and Gretchen B. Rossman. Newbury Park, CA. Sage,

Ethics Research in Business Communication: The State of the Art

This paper surveys treatments of business communication ethics in Association for Business Communication (ABC) Publications for the last 30 years. Pedagogical papers reveal an almost unanimous opinion that business communication is inherently a moral subject and that ethics has a place in the classroom. Consensus on how to teach or to evaluate moral behavior has not, however, been achieved. Nonpedagogical papers have usually been conceptual or descriptive, and have rarely been part of program matic research. Consequently a unified body of knowledge that could guide future re search or provide a basis for moral instruction does not exist. Future research in both pedagogical and nonpedagogical areas is recommended.

Book Reviews : Academic Editor: Craig Kallendorf Texas A&M University Industrial Editor: Carol Kallendorf Kallendorf Communication Services Studies in the History of Business Writing. Ed. George H. Douglas and Herbert W. Hildebrandt. Urbana, IL: Association for Business Communication, 1985. Reviewed by Edward P. J. Corbett Ohio State University

Book Reviews : Academic Editor: Craig Kallendorf Texas A&M University Industrial Editor: Carol Kallendorf Kallendorf Communication Services Studies in the History of Business Writing. Ed. George H. Douglas and Herbert W. Hildebrandt. Urbana, IL: Association for Business Communication, 1985. Reviewed by Edward P. J. Corbett Ohio State University

Proposal for a Master of Business Administration in Business Communication

A statement prepared by the Graduate Studies Committee of the American Business Communication Asso ciation. Leland Brown, Richard C. Hansen, Richard C. Huseman, William J. Lord, Jr., John D. Pettit, Jr., Michael Porte, Norman B. Sigband, Francis W. Weeks, Robert M. Wendlinger, Richard A. Hatch, and Herbert W. Hildebrandt, Chairman.

How Undergraduate Business Communication Programs Can Meet the Communication Needs of Business

The Undergraduate Studies Committee of the American Business Communi cation Association for 1972 studied the problem of how undergraduate busi ness communication programs can meet the communication needs of business. The study proceeded through four stages, with the final stage yielding the report from which this abstract is taken.