Business and Professional Communication Quarterly

This paper reports on a project in which students discussed an ethical dilemma using Internet e-mail as the medium of communication. The assignment requires both informal and formal document development in a team environment and uses cooperative learning strategies to assure full participa tion by all students. Students thus have the advantage of discussing an important current business issue, are facili tated in this discussion by the use of structured learning techniques, are required to exercise their thinking and writ ing skills in a variety of ways, and in many cases must acquire new technical and intellectual skills for communi cation across the Internet.

The Internet already has become a pervasive force in our society, and projections are that it will continue to become even more so in the future. We educators need to be sure we are preparing our students adequately to use the rich resources found on the Internet. The purpose of this article is to help business communication instructors become more familiar with the Internet and to discuss ways its use- through several scenarios - can be incorporated into writ ten business communication courses.

The results of an ABC Undergraduate Studies Committee survey of members to determine the status of computer use in business communication courses are presented in this article. The majority of business communication instructors require students to complete all assignments on the com puter, and some instructors provide software training. Stu dents predominantly are using WordPerfect on networked IBM or IBM-compatible computers in labs managed by the college.

This essay explores heuristic uses of Kenneth Burke's pen tad of dramatistic terms for defining institutional problems. Answering questions about institutional problems arranged according to Burke's pentad, students learn to incorporate multiple perspectives into their problem statements provid ing with them a socially inclusive foundation for problem solving reports.

This paper presents a classroom-tested method of present ing a variety of research materials and methods for optimal effectiveness. The integrated approach offers the opportunity for both instructors and their students to share responsibil ity for creating updated and useful courses that explore communication issues and offer practice in research. The suggested approach is multidimensioned but flexible and modular for ease in adaptation.

This article reports the results of an investigation using an interactive approach to teaching listening skills that appears to be ideal for a business communication class. The authors describe their experiences with integrating listen ing activities into the content of an undergraduate organi zational behavior course. The conclusion is drawn that this can be done quite successfully.

Recent developments in the workplace have supported the need for more awareness of business etiquette, especially by new employees entering the workforce. This study was com pleted to determine the current level of etiquette awareness possessed by students enrolled in business communication courses at three AACSB institutions. The findings indicate that students are most concerned with issues related to job interviews, interpersonal relationships, and social issues and least concerned with intercultural issues.

This study examined the effectiveness of conflict-generating decision-making techniques in the college classroom. Utiliz ing constructive conflict in classroom exercises may affect decision-making quality and student reactions. This study of undergraduate and graduate business students found significant difference in both the quality of the decisions and in student reactions to the techniques. The findings and discussion indicate the potential for appropriate use of structured decision-making techniques in the classroom.

This commentary focuses exclusively on problems of dis crimination as a major obstruction in managing diversity and incorporates an experiential training exercise for con fronting discrimination to better understand the difficulties in "going beyond equality" in managing diversity. The exer cise communicates the needed capacity for empathy or ability to cope with the emotional reactions of unequal treat ment that inevitably occur when socially or ethnically dif ferent people work together in organizations. The exercise and results of a recent field study reported herein focus on traditional forms of black and white discrimination. How ever, the procedure and instrument are general and may be modified to fit unique situations.

Implementation of total quality management and continu ous process improvement require validation of competencies by an institution's customers. This study was designed to determine if business faculty and business professionals perceive (a) business writing skills, (b) oral/interpersonal skills, (c) basic English skills, and (d) other business com munication abilities with the same degree of importance. Four one-way analyses of variance revealed no significant difference between 35 business professionals and 30 busi ness faculty concerning the four areas. However, when the 50 competencies within the four areas were ranked, some visible differences occurred in using the telephone and intercom, asking questions, and applying confidentiality.