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Effective written communication is a critical part of management success. Before beginning to write, the manager should consider the importance of the document, its intended audience, the goals to be achieved, and the tone. The most important factor for successful writing is clarity so the recipients correctly understand the message and know what they should do. Careful editing for all types of errors is a must including involving others in the editing process. The manager should consider using the many free tools that are available to improve writing. Two specific tips are: always give the reason for reading the document in the first sentence and use a flat, factual style to communicate negative news. Finally, remember that any poorly written communication, even informal efforts such as emails and social media posts, can have negative management consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This experimental study, extending the communication accommodation theory and the Communication Predicament of Disability Model, examined people with disabilities' perceptions of four manipulated communication styles and tested the effects on their cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses. Results revealed that participants in the integrative talk condition judged the coworker as the most competent and satisfying and had the least anxiety, followed by a relational talk, dismissive talk, and directive talk. Additionally, integrative talk resulted in the least internalized stigma and the highest likelihood of participants using accommodative response strategies, such as problem-solving and obliging. Furthermore, results revealed indirect effects of the communication styles on communication competence, satisfaction, stigma, and response strategies through communication anxiety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Destinations increasingly use chatbots in the management and communication with tourists. This study analyzes the mediating effect of chatbot usage satisfaction on forming the destination's image. As a case study, we use the Chabot "Victoria la Malagueña," Spain. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equations were necessary to identify the relationships between the constructs. The results show that informativeness and empathy are the main attributes that influence user satisfaction and mediate forming a destination image. The study has managerial implications and provides destination management organizations with practical information for creating chatbots. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research applied an affordance approach to the literature in instruction and pedagogy. Because of the continued trend in online instruction and course management, there exists a need to study the impact of technological affordances and communication in learning management systems. The current study replicates and extends research investigating the responses of undergraduate students to discussion comments on a course management page, in which the presence or absence of peer identity and the helper heuristic of fellow students were manipulated. Results suggest that the act of being helpful (through the helper heuristic) positively impacted source credibility, perceptions of an assignment-related message, and computer-mediated competence. Findings for student rapport and task attraction did not replicate. Furthermore, identity cues continue to be unrelated to the variables of interest. Findings are discussed in terms of both theoretical and instructional relevance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the lens of Communication Privacy Management (CPM) theory, this article examines communication between health care providers in the southern United States emergency department (ED) and patients who have experienced IPV. We qualitatively examine communicative challenges that COVID-19 protocols have created, as well as routine difficulties that occur when communicating with survivors of violence. The participants described challenges including: (1) Feeling uncertainty, (2) Encountering patient resistance, (3) Managing apathy and frustration, and (4) Navigating time pressure. Furthermore, the providers explained how COVID-19 compounded those challenges through: (1) Minimizing contact, (2) Losing nonverbal behavior, (3) Encountering limited resources, and (4) Facing visitor complications. This article extends CPM theory by exploring disclosure challenges related to IPV in health care settings during the COVID-19 pandemic including permeability, linkages, and privacy rules. It offers practical suggestions for increasing patient disclosure of IPV experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Responding effectively to climate change requires an understanding of what shapes people's individual and collective sense of agency and responsibility towards the future. It also requires transforming this understanding into political engagement to support systems change. Based on a national representative survey in Sweden (N = 1,237), this research uses the novel SenseMaker methodology to look into these matters. More specifically, in order to understand the social and institutional prerequisites that must be in place to develop inclusive climate responses, we investigate how citizens perceive their everyday life and future, and the implications for their sense of responsibility, agency, and political engagement. Our research findings show how citizens perceive and act on climate change (individually, cooperatively, and by supporting others), their underlying values, beliefs, emotions and paradigms, inter-group variations, and obstacles and enablers for change. The findings reveal that, in general, individual and public climate action is perceived as leading to improved (rather than reduced) wellbeing and welfare. At the same time, climate anxiety and frustration about structural and governance constraints limit agency, whilst positive emotions and inner qualities, such as human–nature connections, support both political engagement and wellbeing. Our results shed light on individual, collective, and structural capacities that must be supported to address climate change. They draw attention to the need to develop new forms of citizen involvement and of policy that can explicitly address these human interactions, inner dimensions of thinking about and acting on climate change, and the underlying social paradigms. We conclude with further research needs and policy recommendations. In general, citizens perceive increased individual and public climate action as leading to improved (rather than reduced) wellbeing and welfare. Effective responses to climate change require addressing underlying social paradigms (to complement predominant external, technological, and information-based approaches). Such responses include increasing policy support for: o learning environments and practices that can help individuals to discover internalized social patterns and increase their sense of agency and interconnection (to self, others, nature); o institutional and political mechanisms that support citizen engagement and the systematic consideration of human inner dimensions (values, beliefs, emotions and associated inner qualities/capacities) across all sectors of work, by systematically revising organizations' vision statements, communication and project management tools, working structures, policies, regulations, human and financial resource allocation, and collaboration; and o nature-based solutions and other approaches to support the human–nature connection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to the disruptions caused by COVID-19, hospitals around the world proactively or reactively developed and/or re-organized their governance structures to manage the COVID-19 response. Hospitals' governance played a crucial role in their ability to reorganize and respond to the pressing needs of their staff. We discuss and compare six hospital cases from four countries on different continents: Brazil, Canada, France, and Japan. Our study examined how governance strategies (e.g., special task forces, communications management tools, etc.) were perceived by hospital staff. Key findings from a total of 177 qualitative interviews with diverse hospital stakeholders were analyzed using three categories drawn from the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies framework on health systems resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic: 1) delivering a clear and timely COVID-19 response strategy; 2) coordinating effectively within (horizontally) and across (vertically) levels of decision-making; and 3) communicating clearly and transparently with the hospital's diverse stakeholders. Our study gleaned rich accounts for these three categories, highlighting significant variations across settings. These variations were primarily determined by the hospitals' environment prior to the COVID-19 crisis, namely whether there already existed a culture of managerial openness (including spaces for social interactions among hospital staff) and whether preparedness planning and training had been routinely integrated into their activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The forensic activity provides an opportunity for students to tackle a variety of topics and subjects. Many topics, specifically in individual events, can provide an outlet for competitors to self-disclose information to audience members. For this qualitative study, we interviewed 13 participants to understand how forensic competitors use self-disclosure within forensics. Our findings suggest that competitors use forensic competitions to implicitly and explicitly self-disclose private information. Additionally, competitors noted using negative experiences with disclosure and general forensic norms to develop privacy boundary rules when determining whether to self-disclose. Most importantly, the study results provide descriptions of and explanations for the types of communication strategies competitors incorporated when considering self-disclosures in forensics. We discuss implications for communication privacy management theory and for competitors, forensic practitioners, and communication scholars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chronic wasting disease (CWD) affects cervids. This research note described a U.S. national survey of ongoing management and communication efforts by state wildlife agencies in response to CWD. Questionnaires were distributed to all 50 states in 2020 (response rate = 76%, n = 38). States with CWD were predicted to differ from states with no known cases of this disease (independent variable). The dependent variables were all related to CWD: current and proposed surveillance, current practices, public involvement, survey research, and other communication forms. Across all 47 variables, the average percent difference between CWD and non-CWD states was 27%, all but seven comparisons were double-digit differences, and the overall average for the effect sizes was.30. Although the findings implied that CWD states were more engaged with the disease, non-CWD states need to recognize that the disease shows no signs of slowing down and will likely spread to most states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

CARD (comfort, ask, relax, distract) is a vaccine delivery framework that includes interventions to improve the patient's experience. CARD has not been previously implemented in long-term care (LTC) settings. This study evaluated drivers to implementation for COVID-19 vaccinations in an LTC facility. Postimplementation interpretive evaluation including qualitative interviews and quantitative surveys with eight participants. The Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) was used for analysis. Adverse reactions to vaccinations and CARD interventions, including local reactogenicity and systemic reactions, were abstracted from medical charts of residents. Eight CFIR constructs emerged. Staff perceived CARD was complex because it added steps to vaccination delivery. Motivated to meet residents' needs, a receptive implementation climate of support among staff led to using strategies within CARD, such as administering topical anesthetics and omitting alcohol skin antisepsis prior to injections. Having an effective network like the residents council positively influenced implementation by allowing residents to voice their opinions. Facilitators to implementation included staff knowledge and beliefs and staff's commitment to their organization, which was focused on person-centered care. Barriers included lack of available resources (inadequate staffing), insufficient communication between management and staff and lack of awareness of CARD, and external policies not aligned with CARD. Chart reviews conducted for 93 vaccinated residents corroborated perceptions of vaccination and CARD intervention safety, revealing a low rate of local and systemic adverse reactions and no cases of skin infection. We identified positive and negative implementation drivers. Future research is recommended to expand the strategies employed and involve residents more directly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses library leadership and provides reasons why some U.S. library leaders fail. Topics discussed include the failure of some library leaders to communicate their vision for success to library employees, the revealing of confidential information by library leaders, and library leaders' inability to make decisions.

Proper leadership in a public service department begins with effective and meaningful communication. Oftentimes the most important piece of information communicated in a library stems from the daily scheduling of events within a department. The Lending Services department at William Paterson University's David and Lorraine Cheng Library piloted a new method of tracking staff scheduling and daily events at a service point location to enhance internal staff communication. The department shifted away from a paper-based monthly calendar and weekly email, and moved towards using a free cloud-based online platform called Teamup. The new calendar compiles daily staff shifts, changes, such as modified library hours, staff vacation and sick days. This facilitates service desk coverage, meetings, and more. The user-friendly calendar offers searchable and color-coded calendars, provides multiple views by day, week, and month, and is embeddable as a stable URL. Other advantages include having an historical record, being able to visually identify gaps in coverage, and above all, enabling communication or events within the department and library in one simple calendar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Guided by the practical question, ‘What is a fair wage?’, this paper takes a culture-centered approach to the discursive construction of a fair wage in the context of industrialized labor. Specifically, this study juxtaposes discursive constructions within (a) corporate social responsibility (CSR) communications concerning wage policies and practices and (b) industrial workers’ narratives about their experiences with wages. Thus, I demonstrate a mutually constitutive process in which the meaning of ‘fair wage’ results from and reifies the structures of supply chain labor. Specifically, I explore how wage fairness is understood in the context of legal and government mandates, international organizations’ recommendations, and the issue of labor sustainability. The culture-centered emphasis of the study explores the possibility of bringing alternative voices to mainstream articulations of labor rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between job engagement and two key components of employee-organization relationships (EOR). Findings from a survey of members of the Millennial Generation (N = 539) in the United States indicate that job engagement mediates the relationship between employee communication and organizational commitment. It is concluded that when employees are engaged in their work, their commitment to the organization is strengthened and the likelihood of them leaving the organization decreases. Furthermore, an argument is made in light of the study’s findings that engagement and commitment work in concert to strengthen EORs overall. To foster engagement, organizations should remove obstacles to internal information flow and provide ongoing feedback to employees about individual and organizational issues. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This qualitative study examined relationship cultivation and public relations practices in start-up companies in Mainland China. Findings from 28 in-depth interviews with entrepreneurs in China1 suggest that employees and customers are the most important strategic publics for start-ups, followed by investors, the media, and the government. Symmetrical relationship cultivation strategies suggested in previous literature apply to the start-up context in China with specific variations. New strategies such as vision and value communication, empowerment, authentic communication, and proactive reporting were identified for start-ups to build quality relationships with various strategic publics. Compared with large established corporations, start-ups have unique public relations purposes, needs, and scope of practice. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High turnover among volunteers means organizations spend significant resources recruiting and retaining them. Research on employees indicates the importance of role development in increasing employee identification and satisfaction while reducing turnover, but limited research has addressed these issues for volunteers. This study explored zoo volunteers’ role development in two phases. In phase one, interviews explored how volunteers learned and understood their roles. Results indicated volunteers learned their roles through communication with supervisors and peers and were generally satisfied with them despite limited opportunity to be innovative. In addition, some volunteers became concerned when their roles were changed with limited input from them. In phase two, questionnaires explored relationships between volunteers’ communication experiences and outcomes. Results indicated volunteers responded negatively to role-remaking, but communication with management, education staff, day captains, and family was associated with positive outcomes. By contrast, communication with peer volunteers had a negative impact on some outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article discusses the importance of communication in dealing with nuclear hazards, risks, and accidents. Officials need to know what they're talking about--and how to listen. During the accident at the Three Mile Island reactor, communications broke down completely. At one point, Pennsylvania Governor Richard Thornburgh tried to confirm that a Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) official had advised an immediate evacuation--but the official had acted on his own, and the advisory was canceled. Neither the NRC commissioners nor their staff could get reliable information from the plant about how bad the accident was or what was happening. And the press, converging on Harrisburg, found no spokesman for the state or the NRC until Harold Denton, the NRC's director of nuclear reactor regulation, arrived the next day. Later, TMI and government officials claimed the press had failed to communicate accurately to the public.

The purpose of this study is to investigate and empirically test cross-cultural differences in preferences for employer communication. Using context orientation as a cultural dimension with respect to recruitment messages from employers, data were collected and analyzed from 350 college students as potential job seekers, from the United States and Taiwan. The findings suggest that individuals with a low-context orientation pay more attention to explicitly coded messages, while high-context orientated individuals are more aware of information that is internalized in the person or in the physical context. Implications and recommendations for hospitality recruitment message strategy and practice are outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors utilized a quasiexperimental design across five sections of a managerial communication course (N = 150) to test the role of course policies and student perceptions of the instructor in influencing student absenteeism and three indicators of student learning: grades, affective learning, and cognitive learning. The experimental group received a class attendance policy containing a grade-related contingency. Results suggest that the three indicators of student learning are associated with different predictors. Moreover, the appropriate attendance policy sets the stage for learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Physical and temporal boundaries are rapidly diminishing in an age of swiftly advancing information communication technologies. Today’s technologically sophisticated business and organizational environments offer a number of distance collaboration modalities (DSMs) that can facilitate efficient and cost-effective meetings that have traditionally required face-to-face meeting venues. Selection of the DCMs that maximize meeting effectiveness is significantly challenging given the wide diversity of available options. Theory and empirical data can be useful as a guide in the selection of the most appropriate DCMs to maximize organizational productivity and success. This article reviews the literature on the behavioral and technical affordances and limitations of the various DCMs. It also provides a theoretical model based on media synchronicity theory to help guide selection of effective DCMs. This theoretical framework emphasizes the primacy of media alignment with core communication processes as well as social and interpersonal factors that influence meeting effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the rhetoric employed by the Atomic Energy Commission and its successor, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, to communicate the risks of nuclear power to legislators and the public. Close reading of official and unofficial documents demonstrates the importance of developing an effective risk-communication strategy in anticipation of danger rather than in response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The organisation and administration of research and teaching in universities depends upon daily consultation, cooperation and negotiation, shared management and input of specialist and organisational skills and expertise. Universities conduct staff surveys which reveal significant worries about certain person–management aspects of everyday university business activity and indicate areas where we can significantly improve management–staff interaction and communication. These data are supported by basic and well-rehearsed management thinking and expert advice from both the higher education and general management fields and by personal experience. Aspects of leadership responsibility and behaviour and the interaction between manager and managed are described in terms of management ‘manners’, focussing on the requirements for clear and open communication, fairness, transparency, management ‘modesty’ and emotional competence. The positive effect good manners have on staff are outlined and further areas for development/review suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

December 2010 saw exceptionally harsh winter weather cause major water supply disruption for thousands of Northern Ireland’s citizens. Sustained low temperatures followed by a rapid thaw led to burst water pipes on an unprecedented scale, triggering a water shortage crisis that attracted global media attention. Government-owned Northern Ireland Water (NI Water) received severe criticism for their response to the incident. This article analyzes the reputational threat posed by the crisis and examines the image repair strategies employed by NI Water before, during, and after the event. The crisis was complex and dynamic, requiring a multistrategy response including bolstering, corrective action, mortification, and shifting the blame. However, this was ultimately deemed largely ineffectual since it was more operationally focused than consumer-oriented. The case study adds to the limited research in public sector crisis communication and illustrates how politics and the governmental organizational structure complicated the threat to NI Water’s image. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, the author explores employees' expectations of organizational communication patterns including internal communication behavior in organizations. In-depth interviews of employees and managers were used as data from four Ghanaian organizations. Results show that employees want a change from the current pattern of overcentralized communication system in organizations to a more horizontal interpersonal communication. Findings also show the importance of effective and interpersonal communication as processes that can affect employees' attitude to work. Additionally, results show that aspects of national culture, structures and systems, and management practices influence the pattern of communication in organizations. The results suggest that work organizations would thrive only if both managers and employees work collectively as a team and understand each other through effective communication media institutionalized in the various organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Communication in and around business organizations has changed due to new technologies, the demand for intercultural communication skills, the changing person-organization relationship, and the global nature of organizing. As a result, new communication competencies may be required. The author's objective was to identify specific communication competencies important in the contemporary business and professional environment. Toward that objective, articles referring to communication from best-selling popular press and practitioner-oriented business periodicals were used as artifacts for a content analysis. Six inductively derived competencies represent a mix of traditional and contemporary communication skills. The influence of collaborative communication and global interconnectivity permeated each theme. Furthermore, the competencies reveal the necessity of a skill set that transcends typical disciplinary divisions-encompassing technology, intergroup relations, nonverbal and chronemic awareness, relational competence, and more. These competencies should be of interest to communication educators and trainers as they design curriculum and training plans for a contemporary audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of management of innovation is crucial to media management research, helping explain how technology diffusion affects the communication industry and providing a glimpse into its future. This meta-analysis looks at the recent history of mass communication scholarship (1983–2008), addressing newsroom changes to determine whether a mainstream managerial theory—sociotechnical literature—garners adequate use. The researchers discovered numerous references—mostly indirect—to sociotechnical systems (STS) theory, yet found sporadic use of a true managerial emphasis as expressed through the analysis of STS theory's principles- and frames-specific theoretical framework. Implications of the findings and future, alternative directions for research are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors utilized an experimental design across six sections of a managerial communications course (N = 173) to test the impact of instructor verbal aggressiveness and class attendance policies on student class attendance. The experimental group received a policy based on the principle of social proof (R. B. Cialdini, 2001), which indicated that for similar students, class attendance was linked to high academic performance. Students also assessed their instructor's level of verbal aggressiveness (D. A. Infante, 1979). Results suggest that instructor verbal aggressiveness did not influence class attendance. However, social proof did positively influence class attendance rates under certain circumstances. The authors discuss the study implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite academia's best efforts there still remains a gap in communication skills desired by business practitioners and those delivered by new graduates. The authors suggest that this may be the result of practitioners demanding outcome-based skills and academia teaching basic non-business-specific fundamentals of communications. An examination of the literature suggested that outcome-motivated skills can be successfully taught, but that comprehensive outcome skills sets do not exist. Thus, the authors conducted a thorough review of the literature to identify those outcome-based communication skills that management experts, leadership theorists, business education professionals, communication skills researchers, and business development writers have stated are in greatest need in business organizations. They conclude with recommendations and implications for business management and education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The authors discuss the effectiveness of the Quality School model and active learning in an undergraduate classroom setting. They compare performance levels of students in two course sections of Principles of Macroeconomics and two sections of Managerial Communications. Students are given an opportunity to help shape the structure of the information covered based on their own interests and concerns. The results support predictions of improved student performance in classes where the Quality School model was implemented relative to those where it was not. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

To better understand leadership in public relations and explore its value in successful communication management, this article captured the perceptions of mid- and senior-level public relations executives (N = 222) regarding the important qualities and dimensions of excellent leadership in the practice. According to study participants, strategic decision-making capability, problem-solving ability, and communication knowledge and expertise are the three most important qualities of excellent leadership. In addition, respondents said that on-the-job experiences, individual initiative and desire, and role models are the most valuable sources of leadership skills and development. About half of the respondents indicated that excellent leaders in public relations are different from leaders in other fields in three ways: They must hold a compelling vision for communication, possess comprehensive understanding of media and information systems, and effectively develop and implement strategic communication plans. Professional women and men in the study viewed excellent leadership in more or less similar ways. The study advances understanding of leadership in the field, which has been little explored in the public relations literature. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This essay analyzes the myths that swirl around digital media convergence - managerial efficiency, experiential immediacy, global interactivity and interpersonal connectedness - and counters these with an ecological historiography that shows how so-called managerial efficiencies waste natural and human resources; the vaunted experiences of immediacy and interactivity induce ignorance of inter-generational effects of consumption, including long-term harm to workers and the environment; and constant connectedness comes with its own peculiar dispossession of the ability to dwell on the interconnections between human communication and the Earth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Competitive markets and the advanced needs of modern societies necessitate mastery and successful design of complex products and systems. The design management of complex products is the focus of this article. We pay particular attention to the fact that organizational communication management is central in the development of complex product design. Any template for complex systems design must pay particular attention to the coupling between product, process, and organization structures. This important coupling can be managed through the effective simulation of the product parametric structure. The complex systems design methodology presented is focused on the organizational structure design, such that the complexity and structure of the to-be-designed product determines the essential interactions of the designers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, due to many reasons, such as the inherent heterogeneity, the diversity and the continuous evolution of actual computational supports, writing efficient parallel applications on such systems represents a great challenge. To achieve good performances in these execution environments, the impact of communications on the global performances of parallel applications should not be neglected. Our objective within this work is to design an analytical model able to predict accurately the performance of communication operations on computational systems characterised by both heterogeneity and hierarchical structure. We principally aim to guarantee the accuracy of the predicted performances with a neglected additional overhead. The proposed model was applied on point-to-point and collective communication operations and showed by achieving experiments on a hierarchical cluster-based system with heterogeneous resources that the predicted performances are close to measured ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined how employees of a multi-campus university view information flow from top administrators in positions of personal influence, employees' communication preferences (amount, channels, types of information), their sense of community within the organization, and the relationship between those perceptions and their willingness to advocate for the university. Open-ended interviews with 147 employees found the personal influence of the chancellor and top administrators has an effect on information satisfaction. Employees who have a relationship with the chancellor are more satisfied with the information they receive and feel a greater responsibility to advocate for the organization. Even the perception of a relationship with top administrators leads to satisfaction. The direction dimension of internal communication, as well as the channel dimension is important. Although e-mail is efficient for information exchange, the preference for communication among all groups of employees is face-to-face, interpersonal, dialogic interactions. Meetings, despite being acknowledged as time-consuming, were valued as a channel for feedback and providing face time with top managers. Electronic channels, if used thoughtfully, can flatten the traditional, hierarchical structure of internal communication and give employees at all levels of the organization the sense of hearing things first-hand, from the top. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an overview of communication networks and the role of verbal behavior in behavioral systems analysis. Our discussion highlights styles of leadership in the design and implementation of effective organizational contingencies that affect ways by which coordinated work practices are managed. We draw upon literature pertaining to complex systems and rule governance to understand how communication networks and verbal rules contribute to the issues involved in reengineering behavioral systems in the face of continued socioeconomic and cultural demands. An analysis of leadership in relation to communication networks in organizations is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Managing With Integrity preconference introduced different types of management theory and styles to attendees seeking answers to the questions of how to be an effective manager. Leonard and White were skilled facilitators. Leonard's background in reference services and White's in technical services enabled them to present a knowledgeable and balanced representation of management issues. Preconference attendees left with a folder of valuable notes, scenarios, and a bibliography to help them begin and continue to manage with integrity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This exploratory study examines the necessary leadership skills for hospitality management education administrators. Eight subjects were used in this exploratory study. Qualitative methods, including triangulation of observation and in-depth interviews, were used to analyze information provided by participants. Study results indicate current administrators believe that communication, diplomacy, and human resources skills are required. Faculty participants believe that communication, goal setting, the ability to encourage collaborative and collegial relationships among staff and faculty, fund-raising, empathy, compassion, and facilitation skills are most important. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China, the same as her Western counterpart countries, has been experiencing educational decentralization over the last two decades. Such a policy shift, however, brings with it issues of “managerialism”, “accountability” and “competition”, all of which are becoming part of the common language in the educational lexicon. These newly imposed strictures have been theorized to influence teachers' daily practice in certain ways and also their views about their roles and responsibilities. It is said teachers have had to redefine their professionalism due to the invasion of this “audit culture” in education. However, research on this particular area has not devoted significant attention to the voices of teachers. This paper uses interview data from 75 teachers in Guangdong Province of China to find out whether policy changes have necessitated teachers to develop strategies to cope with new educational demands and challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the relationship between U.S. public institutions of higher education and state governments with regard to communication, accountability, and finance. The author examines the actions required to compensate for "information asymmetries" in communication between education and government. He notes that governance of public colleges and universities requires a blend of organizational components and explains that this study is based on assumptions from the principal-agent theory within a conceptual framework acknowledging the various external oversight agents. He explains effects of factors including delegation among administrators, students' political activities, and multi-campus systems.

This case study reports the identification strategies and related tactics that American Airlines CEO Don Carty and his team of professional communicators used in their employee crisis response to the September 11 attack. Data analyzed in the study include 78 internal documents; 10 articles from the airline's corporate newspaper; and interviews with Timothy Doke, then American Airlines Vice President of Corporate Communications, and Andrea Rader, a senior member of Doke's team. The results of this study provide guidance to corporate communicators tasked with rebuilding employee morale after a malevolent-type crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines new managerial discourses and practices in which the dialectic of labour is reconstructed as a series of acts of self-understanding, self-examination and "self-work", and through which the "self qua self" is constituted as the central object of management technologies. We interrogate concepts such as "excellence", "total quality", "performance", "knowledge", "play at work" and "wellness" in order to decipher the ways in which managerialism deploys what we term therapeutic habitus, and projects a new horizon of "human resourcefulness" as a store of unlimited potentialities. We invoke management's wider historical-cultural context to situate managerialism within the framework of modernity as a cultural epoch whose main characteristic is what we term "derecognition of finitude". It is the modern synthesis - with the "self" at the centre of its system of values - that provides the ground for current elaborations of subjectivity by managerialism. The paper examines how current vocabularies and practices in organizations use "work" to rearticulate discursively the human subject as an endless source of performativity by configuring work as the site of complex and continuous self-expression. Management thus acquires a new discursive outline: instead of appearing as an authoritarian instance forcing upon workers a series of limitations, it now presents itself as a therapeutic formula mediating self-expression by empowering individuals to work upon themselves to release their fully realized identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The practices and principles of good project management are applicable to projects in all types of institutions. Project managers need to be able to manage change, calculate risks, and, perhaps most importantly, facilitate communication among project stakeholders. There are a variety of techniques that project managers can use to make their projects successful. A professional approach to planning helps keep work tasks on schedule and the project from straying from well-defined and agreed-upon objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents findings on the link between leader motivating language (ML) use and worker intent to stay. Structural equation modeling indicated that ML use significantly improves worker intent to stay—with a 10% increase in ML leading to an approximate 5% increase in worker intent to stay. Also, analysis showed that the full ML model better describes the data than any partial model based on a subset of the ML components, and this outcome helps advance researchers' understanding of the ML theory. Results indicate that proper leader language use can substantially improve the critical organizational outcome of worker retention. As such, this study identifies potential new paths for requisite leader communication research, training, and development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The extent to which managers could accurately predict what items/activities their employees report as preferred was examined. First, managers were asked to rank order a list of items/activities they thought their employees would most prefer to be incorporated into a performance improvement plan. Next, employee preference for these same items was assessed directly using an employee-reinforcer survey. The results of the managers' predictions were then compared to the results of the employee-reinforcer survey using Kendall rank-order correlation coefficients. Correlations ranged from -1 to 1, with a mean of 0.11. The number of participants for whom managers correctly identified the most preferred item/activity was also assessed; managers correctly predicted the most preferred item/activity for 15 of 27 employees. The results suggest that some managers are good at predicting their employees' most preferred item/activity, but most managers are poor at predicting the preferences for less preferred items and activities. Implications of this finding for the assessment of preference among employees and the use of preferred items and activities in performance improvement plans are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how perceptions of administrative support among 83 treatment staff working in a midwest prison system vary according to personal and work-related variables. It extends on previous literature by: (1) analyzing how perceptions of administrative support vary exclusively among prison treatment staff; (2) focusing on a single type of manager, the deputy warden overseeing treatment services, to avoid aggregation problems; and (3) adding new predictor variables to the study of perceptions of prison managers, such as education, danger, paperwork, and caseload. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression was utilized to analyze an eight-item scale measuring overall perceptions of administrative support among treatment staff. In addition, each of the eight items was analyzed separately using backward logistic regression. Our results indicate that demographic variables, particularly age and education, were better overall predictors of administrative support than work-related variables. Furthermore, the disaggregated analyses of the eight items suggest that different explanatory models are necessary for different dimensions of management support. This paper concludes with ideas for developing a theory on prison management/treatment staff relations and an outline to guide future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The principal objective of this paper is to review the business and law literatures to determine the legal, business and ethical issues at stake in setting language policies for personnel in foodservice businesses within the United States. Furthermore, we review the types of language policies and practices that have resulted in claims of employee discrimination under Title VII of the U.S. Civil Rights Code, and where applicable, we note specific legal rulings that have relevance for future managerial decision-making and future research in the foodservice industry. We additionally identify practices for managing a linguistically diverse workforce that are seen to be both-beneficial and compliant with existing civil rights law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The progression of economic value has advanced to the stage of experience economy nowadays. Firms have recognized that the establishment of desirable experiential environment is an essential source of competitive advantage which is difficult to he imitated and substituted. The purpose of this study is to examine whether experiences of experiential marketing have positive effects on the consequent visitors' behaviors. A mean of self-administrative questionnaire on the visitors of Taipei Zoo which is suffused with various experiential marketing stimuli was employed to examine our conceptual framework. The results show that experiences of experiential marketing have positive effects on the emotion. Furthermore, the emotion also has a positive effect on the behavioral intention through the mechanism of satisfaction. This study also proposes some managerial implications and further research directions within this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing world-wide competition of tourism regions, changing demand patterns, the claim for better products and offers, the decreasing attractiveness and increasing uniformity of offers consistently lead to new challenges for the quality assurance of destinations. High service quality enables tourism entrepreneurs to achieve decisive competitive advantages. Quality within a destination comprises all services which the guest is engaged in and is not limited by time or location of the stay. A crucial point is the first contact of a guest with the destination, which happens by e-mail inquiries in the majority of cases. The development of information technology has lead to more and more guests gathering pieces of information via the internet and has induced researchers to study this phenomenon (Buhalis and Licata, 2002; Raman-Bacchus and Molina, 2001). Therefore, response behavior becomes a key factor for the success of tourism organizations (Pechlaner at al. 2002). From the guest's point of view, the speed of response and breadth of information are to be seen as decisive factors for service quality and customer satisfaction. A mystery guest check by means of e-mail inquiries sent to selected tourism organizations was undertaken to determine the response behaviour and breadth of information provided by tourism organizations and to reveal potential gaps in the knowledge management and transfer of these organizations. According to elaborated quality criteria and standards, the paper reports a two-year mystery guest study of tourism organizations of an Alpine destination in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A group decision-making model was designed to improve co-operation during the process of making decisions to support timber procurement goals. The model was used in a Finnish forest company with a district team and six local teams. Co-operation among managers in the wood procurement organization was supported by decentralized synchronous groupware (MetaFrame), a computerized system where communication takes place over the Internet. This groupware provided the foundation for the decision-making system. The main research objective was to survey the opinions of the local managers towards the use of the system; it was assumed that co-operation would improve between managerial levels. Another objective was to investigate whether the groupware increased communication efficiency during this co-operation. The results showed that opinions on the computer-supported process were positive. The timber procurement goals were more acceptable to local teams when the goals and opinions of the district managers could be integrated into the decision-making process, and timber procurement planning was also faster (by 2 days). Therefore, the groupware increased communication efficiency and improved timber procurement planning as a consequence of the facilitated group decision-making process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]