Business and Professional Communication Quarterly

Just as the challenge in a global economy is to develop new frameworks and then communicate them effectively, our challenge is to prepare students for negotiating wholly new communication challenges. Communication is much more than expressing the content of other "real" business disciplines clearly. Language and image have become a crucial part of creating and managing contemporary corporate culture; thus, we must expand the teaching of man agerial communication to include corporate communication. To describe "communication," we must also employ words such as "critical thinking" and "flexibility." Communication is integral to the process of problem solving in the team-oriented workplace.

A survey of syllabi of MBA communication courses suggests that the "typi cal" MBA course focuses on skill development and integrates both speaking and writing, often with emphasis on speech. It builds problem solving and strategic communication skills through experiential learning gained in work shops, case studies, or field experiences. Current trends favor integration of communication courses into a unified core.

The purpose of this study was to determine graduate business students' pref erences for the business communication course curriculum. Two hundred fifty- five graduate business students who had taken a core course in managerial communication were surveyed, 86% of whom are employed. The most highly rated course topics were making presentations, writing memos and letters, lis tening and interpersonal communication, impromptu speaking, and business report formats. The topics rated least important were international business communication, using technology, and managing diversity. The most fre quently suggested additional topics were job interviews, team building, writing manuals/policies/procedures, and ethics.

We describe the communication component in a first-year MBA program that has been entirely integrated. In this integrated program, no courses, per se, exist; rather, the year's curriculum is built around stages in the business devel opment cycle. We first consider the choices that a program developer has to make about whether communication instruction will be reguired or elective, with or without credit, in the form of courses or workshops, and independent of or integrated with the rest of a business program. We then describe the com munication program, discuss the challenges of embarking on an integrated project, and suggest strategies for meeting them.

Instituted as a regular part of the GMAT in October 1994, the Analytical Writing Assessment (AWA) has the potential to serve as a diagnostic tool in MBA programs. This article describes the new test and reviews the uses of the AWA scores and essays that have significant ramifications for management communication. It concludes by suggesting why it is vital for communication instructors to become involved in decisions about how to use the A WA results.

An analysis of a large-scale professional communication project helps to define relevant managerial communication tasks; the project exemplifies the type of projects that graduating students will be expected to collaborate on or to manage successfully. The implications of this project for teaching manager ial communication to MBA students and recommended applications for inte grating work world tasks into the curriculum are also discussed.

This article describes a communication audit project used in a graduate-level management communication course. We review some of the literature con cerning communication audits, explain why and how we use an audit in our classes, and describe specific audit-related assignments. While a challenging assignment both for student and professor, the audit is—in our judgment— clearly worth the effort.