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In this article, an educational project is described that was formulated with the aim to give master's students in business communication the opportunity to experience how theory could be applied to shape practice. A 4-week project was developed in which students were urged to use communication theory and linguistic theory to manage the communication with respect to a simulated crisis at the university. The students were enrolled in collaborative learning teams. In this article, the architecture of the project is described, and drawing on an analysis of the students' work and their evaluation of the project, its outcomes are discussed.

This article explores the adaptive functions of storytelling in the workplace from an evolutionary perspective. Based on the analysis of ethnographic studies on hunter-gatherer and modern work organizations, this article claims that storytelling, as an adapted cognitive device, was selectively retained by natural and sexual selection, because of its survival and reproductive payoff. The narrative production through storytelling is a natural coping mechanism and has been functional in both old and new ways of working life under different ecological conditions. This article also highlights underlying adapted psychological mechanisms of storytelling and discusses some evolutionarily informed practical implications and pedagogical applications. (Contains 1 table.)

Portfolios have long been a staple in professional writing courses: both in employment materials assignments and in entire classes that ask students to reflect on their experiential learning. Portfolios may also be used effectively in business communication teaching methods courses. This article details the justification and methodology for having a teaching portfolio as the capstone assignment in a business communication pedagogy course. It also explains how this portfolio may be used to anticipate programmatic assessment and verification of entry-level business communication courses during the accreditation process. (Contains 1 table.)

This article examines website headings used by "Fortune" 500 companies in their efforts to inform stakeholders about corporate social responsibility (CSR). Instead of using "Corporate Social Responsibility" as a heading, companies often use specific terms to identify various CSR initiatives. The purpose of this article is to identify common CSR-related headings that are currently used on "Fortune" 500 company websites. Data were collected from all Fortune 500 company websites. The websites were further analyzed according to manufacturing, retailing, and service industry. Interesting similarities and differences were found. This study provides guidance on articulating CSR-related activities to consumers, employees, and stakeholders. (Contains 2 tables.)

The presented merger and acquisition classroom exercise is based on a real yet incomplete transaction transpiring during the period of the class. The approach enables adult students to apply their previously acquired business experience to a strategic analysis project facilitating the development of group communication, critical thinking, and consensus-building competences. The exercise assumes that students have practical experience in business areas such as marketing or accounting before entering the classroom, which may make it less applicable to conventional-age students.

Based on a client project assigned to students in two undergraduate business classes, this article argues that social media learning is best done in a context that mixes social media with more traditional kinds of media. Ideally, this approach will involve teams of students who are working on different aspects of a larger client project. This integrated setup has several benefits: It enhances the students' understanding of social media within a real context, it complements more traditional communication methods, and it reveals the communicative aspects of key business functions.

This article analyzes the communication of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate image in the chemical industry through mission slogans. Morsing's (2006) CSR communication framework is adapted for a comparative analysis of the strategies behind mission slogans. By grouping rhetorical strategies in a mission slogan into a mission slogan functionality grid, it was found that most chemical companies use the mission slogan to share their value proposition (CSR promise) and to present their often-stigmatized activities in a euphemistic way. This article offers the tools to use mission slogans as lenses through which to analyze corporate image strategies. (Contains 4 table and 3 figures.)

Millennials, those individuals born between 1980 and 2000, compose the largest cohort of college students in the United States. Stereotypical views of millennials characterize them as technologically sophisticated multitaskers, capable of significant contributions to tomorrow's organizations, yet deficient in communication skills. This article offers insights for business educators to help millennials understand the influence of communication styles when optimizing communication effectiveness. Developing style-typing and style-flexing skills can serve as building blocks for millennials' subsequent interpersonal skill development in key areas such as audience analysis, active listening, conflict management and negotiation, and effective team building. An in-class exercise highlighting communication style-typing and style-flexing is included. (Contains 1 figure.)

As organizations strive to succeed in an increasingly competitive international environment, they are recognizing the importance of maximizing intellectual capital, the collective knowledge that resides within their companies. More and more businesses are turning to wikis, sites where content is collectively edited by users, to maximize the performance of their knowledge workers. Companies have found that wikis can improve work processes and knowledge sharing, resulting in better communication and collaboration. When done well and widely adopted, wikis promise to accelerate progress on projects, serve as a time-saving replacement for the "reply all" function of email, and preserve the knowledge of baby boomers who are now starting to leave the workforce. Business communication teachers can show students how the principles of document design, editing, and marketing that they use in creating and publicizing written and electronic texts are also useful in managing wikis. In this article, the authors present wiki basic design principles and management guidelines that are highlighted in their MBA business communication classes.

Web 2.0 is not only for kids anymore, businesses are using it, too. Businesses are adopting Web 2.0 technology for a variety of purposes. In this article, the author discusses how he incorporates Web 2.0 into his business communications course. He describes a project that has both individual and collaborative elements and requires extensive analysis presented in written and oral modes. Adding a blog to the project resulted in significant outcomes. (Contains 1 figure.)

The millennial generation embraces new technologies as a natural way of accessing and exchanging information, staying connected, and having fun. YouTube, a video-sharing site that allows users to upload, view, and share video clips, is among the latest "cool" technologies for enjoying quick laughs, employing a wide variety of corporate activities, and also communicating relevant, engaging instructional content for today's students. This article describes a YouTube video class project that is a natural fit with today's students because it involves cutting-edge social media while addressing a critical component of professional development-communication ethics. This project encourages critical thinking, creativity, and applied learning in a team environment using a "cool" new media tool.

Within the last 12 years, email has emerged as the most commonly used form of written communication in the corporate workplace. Several factors have contributed to the widespread use of email. This form of communication is generally rapid, is more economical than distributing or mailing printed documents, and permits simultaneous communication with large numbers of recipients. In addition, email is highly practical for organizations whose employees are geographically dispersed. In corporate environments, email messages have expanded beyond their original function as electronic versions of paper memoranda. Indeed, email now encompasses a broad array of genres: (1) newsletters; (2) order confirmations; (3) shipping receipts; (4) account alerts; (5) short reports; (6) announcements; and (7) corporate bulletins. However, despite the ubiquity of email in business settings, academic researchers have been reluctant to examine email from the perspective of document design. Guides to document design, written primarily for technical writers, generally also neglect to consider email as an appropriate topic for consideration. Indeed, several researchers in the field of document design have concluded that email is an impoverished medium, offering few opportunities for creative communication. This article, based on a recent case study focusing on email usage at a "Fortune" 100 company, disputes the notion that email design is a sterile research field for document designers and business communicators. The study suggests that email messages, especially companywide communications originating from senior management, are most likely to be read by an intended audience if messages are designed to incorporate complex sets of visual and textual conventions specifically intended to achieve rhetorical objectives. In addition, the study examines the manner by which flouting these conventions may result in serious communication failure. This article also provides insight into the effective rhetorical strategies for designing email messages for corporate readers. The author compares the impact of two design methods on the effectiveness of email messages for employees of a "Fortune" 100 company, examining the factors of genres and pragmatic functions of the email messages. (Contains 2 figures and 1 table.)

Business communication instructors understand the value of helping students learn, discuss, apply, and manipulate communication strategies on the basis of purpose and audience. This rhetorical bent encourages active learning through activities and multi-purpose projects, but active learning often works best when students believe they are engaging concepts that will be useful to them in the future. In this article, the author discusses an interview project that she developed that encourages students to see beyond their preconceptions while practicing a variety of communication skills with professionals in different workplaces. The project has two overarching goals: to help students understand the value of professional communication skills and to provide practice opportunities with a variety of business communication genres and audiences. Students work through three core project phases: writing correspondence to arrange interviews, planning and conducting three interviews, and synthesizing findings into a short report. The author concludes that this interview project, whether used alone or in conjunction with a final project, has proven a successful strategy to help students see the value of the course to their future and to actively engage course concepts with real audiences.

A well-designed online advertisement is essential for effective communication with potential customers and contributes to successful e-commerce. However, creating online sales messages that appeal to a broad range of cultures can pose unique challenges. Internet ads must offer both a globally appealing and a culture-specific message that in turn "enables localization of marketing communication". Several authors also suggest that "cultural congruity" is essential for effective Internet Web sites. Thus, the inclusion of verbal and nonverbal content that is congruent with a range of cultures allows for ad elements that will be successful both locally and globally. In order to examine cultural congruity in various cultures, the authors conducted consumer interviews of individuals of six nationalities about their reactions to two online Internet advertisements to reveal how the underlying meanings of ad elements vary from culture to culture. Comparisons of 32 interviewees' reactions to the symbolic elements of two Internet advertisements confirm that culture plays a key role in assigning meaning to symbols. (Contains 1 figure.)

Business communication courses often include a mix of students who are native speakers of the language of instruction and those who are not. When native speakers form a majority, it is hard to meet the special needs of the nonnative speakers. If a course's purpose is to cover strategic aspects of communication, it seems inappropriate to spend class time to cover language issues relevant to relatively few students. Yet many nonnative speakers need extra support to be able to execute communication strategies effectively. In this article, the author describes how she applied the concept of self-directed teams in a graduate management program to address the needs of nonnative speakers. (Contains 1 table.)

The authors' business communication perspective is not in fact that of ESL but rather English as a foreign language (EFL) or, even more so, English as a lingua franca (ELF). To be more specific, they would like to add one more acronym to the list: They teach BELF, by which they refer to ELF for business communication purposes. The authors work as teachers and researchers at one of the leading Scandinavian business schools, the Helsinki School of Economics. Their aim is to equip their students with the communication skills they will need in their future jobs doing business globally. In Finland, as elsewhere in Europe, it is a fact that business practitioners have to be able to do business in at least two languages: their own mother tongues and English. However, very seldom do they need to communicate in English with native speakers of that language. By far most, according to some estimates 80% or more, of the daily English business communication in the world takes place in nonnative English (ELF); that is, none of the communicating parties has English as his or her mother tongue. Therefore, to meet the requirements of global business communication, the focus of teaching in EFL environments cannot be on training students to communicate like native speakers of English; that approach would imply that they are automatically doomed to the role of less proficient communicators. This would not be a desired starting point for their students entering the global markets.

When a disaster strikes, the affected population relies upon the swift response and aid rendered by relief organizations such as the California-based Direct Relief International. Since 1948, Direct Relief's mission has been to provide essential material resources to locally run health programs in areas affected by natural disasters, wars, and famine. Most recently, Direct Relief helped victims of the Philippine mudslide, the Pakistani earthquake, the U.S. Hurricane Katrina, and the Southeast Asia tsunami. To operate successfully across such a vast territory, crossing national boundaries, and interfacing with a variety of organizations and social structures, agencies such as Direct Relief must develop an effective communication plan. Thus, the author wanted to learn more about the internal and external communication strategies developed by Direct Relief. In this interview, Jason Kravitz, Direct Relief's communications director describes the communication processes during these stressful times, their intercultural challenges, and how his agency handles stressors similar to those faced by a business handling its own crises. The difference is that Direct Relief has overcome many of the associated obstacles.

Instructors of business and technical communication have held an ongoing interest in using client projects to give students practical experience negotiating the contingencies of workplace communication. Whereas alumni often serve as contacts for internships and job opportunities and have been identified as resources for assessing business communication curricula, alumni professionals are also well suited to working with students as client partners. To that end, this article describes the Alumni Interview Project (AIP), a client project that adds a new dimension to business communicators' collaborations with alumni. Although the AIP's benefits to students, teachers, alumni, and institutions overlap with many similar projects, the AIP represents an innovative strategy for fostering students' rhetorical sophistication. Specifically, by using alumni as a means of accessing corporate culture, the AIP offers a new frame for teaching undergraduates about the complexity of workplace communication. An approach like this one may be particularly useful for instructors seeking to challenge students' assumptions that business writing can be based simply on following prescriptive templates.

Nonprofit organizations, such as social service agencies, charities, and hospitals, plan and prepare communications that are vital to their missions. Although not corporations, these organizations produce news releases, newsletters, and annual reports that are similar to those created in the corporate sector. In this research project for a course titled Corporate Communications, students apply the concepts learned about corporate image-enhancement and reputation-management documents to the nonprofit sector through an assignment requiring some firsthand research into nonprofit communications. The assignment seems to work well; students like getting out of the classroom to do research, learning about nonprofit communications, applying corporate communication strategies and practices to the nonprofit sector, and being exposed to a potential career path.

Two online collaborative assignments that connected students in courses at Unitec, New Zealand, and Baruch College, City University of New York, are the focus of this article. For the first assignment, small, blended groups used five different online techniques to explore topics being discussed in an intercultural communication course at each university. In the second assignment, student teams discussed a case study posted online and produced a collaborative report on their findings. Both assignments were designed to enhance student learning in business communication through computer-mediated communication (CMC) and diverse team building. In this article, the authors first discuss their rationale and goal for this online collaborative project. They then describe how they implemented and evaluated the two assignments, and summarize student recommendations for further replication.

Conflicts often arise in online professional communication class discussions as students discuss sensitive ethical issues relating to the workplace. When conflicts arise in an online class, the activity system of the class has to be kept in balance for the course to continue functioning effectively. Activity theory and distributed learning theory are useful for studying this process of conflict resolution and online communication. Several strategies can be used to facilitate conflict resolution in online courses, based on these theories: complimenting, generalizing, and agreeing. These normalizing strategies can improve conflict resolution in online professional communication courses as well as in various online communication contexts.