Public speaking is often conceptualized as a one-way monologue performed by a speaker for a listening audience. This monologic approach faces challenges and limited results as demonstrated by the education literature on active learning. In response to this research, this practitioner article explores the nature and effective execution of five universal Audience Engagement Techniques that provide opportunities for a speaker to turn their passively listening audience into active participants in a dialogue. Practical and theoretical implications of Audience Engagement Techniques generally are also discussed.

This article presents a curated collection of 11 teaching innovations presented at the Association for Business Communication 89th conference in Tulsa, Oklahoma, as well as online, in October 2024. These MFA presenters demonstrated teaching ideas specifically on improving students’ skills in working in groups. This My Favorite Assignment 32nd edition introduces readers to these classroom approaches in teaching skills involving group dynamics in business contexts. Teaching support materials—instructions to students, stimulus materials, slides, rubrics, frequently asked questions, links, and sample student projects—are downloadable from the Association for Business Communication website.

This article examines how artificial intelligence is transforming instructor-student communication and student evaluation in higher education. By comparing traditional and AI-mediated communication practices, the study synthesizes current literature on opportunities, challenges, and ethical considerations. The analysis highlights the need for digital literacy, emotionally intelligent AI tools, and balanced pedagogical strategies. Practical and theoretical propositions are provided to guide educators in leveraging AI while preserving human-centered teaching values.

Using eye-tracking and interview methods, this study investigates how business communication students and editing students attend to and evaluate writing. Participants reviewed blog posts embedded with errors and judged publication readiness. While both groups visually fixated longer on errors than non-errors, business communication students were more likely to approve error-containing texts for publication. Qualitative data revealed that business communication students prioritized content while editing students prioritized surface-level issues. These findings suggest that disciplinary background informs evaluative standards, even when error-detection behavior is similar. The results carry implications for instruction in business writing and editing, especially concerning collaborative, cross-disciplinary workplace writing.

Unexpected organizational crises require organizations and their members to enact specific communicative strategies to deal with the crisis. In 2020, the COVID-19 crisis impacted many individuals and businesses, including nonprofit organizations; however, some of the new strategies they enacted have been left uncelebrated. Twenty-two interviews with nonprofit workers revealed that humor was often used effectively by organizations and their members in COVID-19. Yet, consistency in communication style before and during the crisis is crucial for determining how members view organizational humor. Humor should be considered another organizational crisis communication strategy that can be highly effective, if used carefully and consistently.

This study explores the critical role of internal communication in driving employee engagement and fostering organizational success. By examining leadership communication, symmetrical communication, emotional culture, communication audits, and digital enablement, the research highlights actionable strategies for enhancing trust, alignment, and collaboration. Leveraging audits and digital tools, organizations can address communication gaps and strengthen employee-organization relationships. The findings contribute to a robust framework for sustainable internal communication, emphasizing inclusivity, transparency, and adaptability in dynamic work environments.

This grounded theory study, informed by Communication Accommodation Theory, explores how frontline managers ( n  = 11) support early-career employees’ communication development. Findings identify three support strategies—structured scaffolding, adaptive leadership, and onboarding for cultural fit—and suggest colleges emphasize verbal and intercultural communication, applied learning, and professional presence. These insights reframe communication readiness as a relational process shaped by emotion, power, and organizational norms. The study calls for stronger collaboration between higher education and employers.

In today’s digitally advanced, AI-driven workplace, effective communication is more critical than ever. Business communication scholarship empathizes competencies such as professionalism, clarity, conciseness, persuasiveness, and evidence-driven messaging, yet applying these systematically in complex decisions remains a challenge. This article introduces the Evaporating Cloud tool—part of the Theory of Constraints Thinking Processes—as a structured communication aid. Through a fictional case study, we show how EC clarifies objectives, uncovers underlying needs and hidden assumptions, and supports ethical, collaborative decision making. The article highlights EC’s value in enhancing core communication competencies in business and professional contexts.

This qualitative study explores how mindful leadership communication fosters organizational mattering in East Asian workplaces shaped by Confucian values and collectivist traditions. Drawing on interviews with mid-level managers, the findings identifies culturally embedded communication strategies such as formal and informal recognition, mutual respect, and nonverbal cues that build trust, enhance belonging, and promote empowerment. These practices contribute to collective workplace cohesion and employees’ sense of relatedness. Mindful leadership communication functions both as a psychological enabler and a strategic tool, reinforcing relationships and engagement. It emerges as a core component of mattering in high-context East Asian organizational cultures, supporting sustainable organizational development.

We conducted 10 focus groups with 32 academic consultants to identify three intrinsic rewards categories for academic consulting: meaningful work, professional development, and enhanced teaching. Based on these findings, we propose a typology of academic consulting, teaching-driven consulting, and a multifaceted framework of academic consultant career identity. Our framework provides rhetorical resources for faculty, staff, and administrators to discuss academic consulting identities, tie aspects of identity to preferred rewards categories, and advocate for consulting resources and support.

We conduct a close reading and micro-level analysis of a market update released by Restaurant Group Plc, a UK leisure firm, during the COVID-19 pandemic to examine its communication functions. While the market update aligns with communicative action theory by enhancing information transparency, it also deploys various rhetorical strategies, including impersonalization, positive self-evaluation, and metaphors consistent with impression management. The overly optimistic tone bears no relation to subsequent corporate outcomes. This study provides valuable insights for business and professional communication practitioners and students, enabling them to interpret the linguistic characteristics of market updates as a distinct genre of corporate communication.

This article examines the relationship between politeness, culture, and speech acts in multilingual corporate communication. It emphasizes the role of second language acquisition (SLA) practices in teaching politeness strategies, with a focus on explicit instruction, immersion programs, and authentic language practice. The article also offers suggestions to enhance communication in such environments, using Luxembourg as an example of a multicultural business environment and highlighting the importance of understanding cultural norms and expectations surrounding politeness. By examining the interplay between these factors, this study aims to contribute to improved communication practices in multilingual corporate settings.

The article deals with intercultural business communication challenges that complicate discourses in multinational organizations. The article explores the cultural incompatibility problems with their corresponding cultural dimensions extracted from the seminal theories of intercultural management to identify training needs for multinational managers. The fulcrum of this work rests on the salient value orientations that lead to communication collapses when managers from different countries fail to accomplish optimal cultural attunement in their narratives and script their conversations with ethnocentric biases. To counter these debilitating stressful intercultural conversations, the author presents an innovative training solution of a “20-20 culture-communication template tool” for coaching managers for effective production of ethno-relative dialogues across diverse geo-cultural economies. This culture tool uses a 20-point culture questionnaire format with the complementary application apparatus of 20 culture sensitivity programs that organizations can undertake for a quick tutoring of multinational managers for forging successful intercultural coalitions in plural work spaces.

Managers who are seen as approachable by their employees are the key drivers of building an excellent organizational workplace where supportive communication is available for the employees, especially during difficult situations. Regrettably, not all managers are approachable and communicate supportively. In such situations, the result can be a dysfunctional work environment that demoralizes employees’ attitudes, causing organizational work productivity to deteriorate. Our study explores the factors related to unapproachable organizational managers who do not use supportive communication. We employed a qualitative statistical approach to interview 155 professional employees from various industries representing different countries

Social media backlashes have emerged as important phenomena complicating how businesses communicate online and representing significant brand risk. This article demonstrates the value of content analysis and argumentation theory for understanding and responding to social media backlash events, using two examples from the UK fashion industry (hashtags #ThanksItsASOS and #boycottboohoo). The results provide lessons about the way backlashes operate in practice, how to analyze these effectively, and have implications for business approaches to communicating about Corporate Social Responsibility and managing social media. The authors conclude with suggestions for training on social media and CSR for businesses.

This study utilizes a communication accommodation framework to explore how entrepreneurs shape positive social identities through initiated intra- and intergroup (non)accommodation with other entrepreneurs, and non-entrepreneurs. Thematic analysis of semistructured interviews with 43 women and men in several U.S. cities revealed nine themes that represent ways in which participants’ verbal and nonverbal intra- and intergroup communicative convergence and divergence enhanced the development of this identity. The results offer insights into motivation for engaging in entrepreneurial ventures. Discussed are the findings’ implications for educators, corporate consultants, and managers who seek to encourage individuals’ entrepreneurial or intrapreneurial mindsets through training program development.

Alongside the self-help industry, self-assessment in higher education and organizational training has blossomed, especially as digital tools have made it possible to provide immediate feedback. Both contexts lack validated tools for accomplishing their goals. This study created and validated a series of self-assessments for classroom and training use. Drawing on student self-report data, self-assessment items were subjected to confirmatory factor analysis to assess construct validity and correlational analysis with existing research instruments to assess convergent validity. A set of 19 self-assessments with their accompanying validity and reliability evidence correspond to the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) career-readiness (2021) skills, including communication, leadership, teamwork, technology, inclusiveness, and critical thinking.

The current study aims to evaluate the impact of Facebook integration on student engagement and academic performance on a business communication course taught in an Indian private university in an online teaching environment. A direct relationship was established between Facebook usage in an online learning environment and student engagement—both situational and personal factors. A quantitative data analysis using structured equation modeling was conducted to test the validity of the conceptualized model. The study reports that integration of contemporary social media tools in academia fosters communication, collaboration, and participation in online learning environment to develop discussion-oriented learning and cocreation.

This article presents a curated collection of 12 teaching innovations presented at the Association for Business Communication 89th conference in Tulsa, Oklahoma, as well as online, in October 2024. These MFA presenters demonstrated teaching ideas specifically on improving students’ speaking skills. This My Favorite Assignment 32nd edition introduces readers to these classroom approaches in teaching speaking skills in business contexts. Teaching support materials—instructions to students, stimulus materials, slides, rubrics, frequently asked questions, links, and sample student projects—are downloadable from the Association for Business Communication website.

Internationally operating business professionals communicate using English as a business lingua franca (BELF), which differs from “standard” English usage, leading to calls for innovations in business English (BE) pedagogy. However, how BE instructors incorporate BELF research findings in the classroom remains unexplored. Therefore, in this mixed methods explanatory sequential study, we used a questionnaire and semistructured interviews to collect data from BE instructors who had been exposed to BELF research. The findings revealed that while the exposure to BELF raised their awareness and understanding, there remain contextual, theoretical, and mindset-based obstacles to implementing BELF principles in the classroom.

English professional communication competence is crucial for fresh graduates to succeed in the workplace and has been identified as a national priority in Malaysia to enhance employability. This study explores key attributes of that competence based on interviews with 12 employers and 9 graduates. Using a basic interpretive qualitative approach, 26 attributes were identified across four areas: linguistic, sociolinguistic, discourse, and strategic competence. The findings highlight the importance of aligning educational outcomes with workplace demands and offer insights that support curriculum development, targeted instruction, and assessment—informing policy and future research to enhance graduate readiness.

This study examines metaphors in the hospitality discourse of Singapore (SG) and Hong Kong (HK) using conceptual metaphor theory, corpus linguistics, and discourse analysis. We identify the key source domains employed in luxury hotel websites across both regions and use quantitative methods to reveal metaphorical patterns in each corpus. The findings reveal that the SG corpus exhibits a greater inclination toward FORTUNE metaphors, whereas the HK corpus shows a prominence of MAGIC metaphors. Against this background, we argue the importance of a frequency-based collocational approach for analyzing conceptual metaphors, as it facilitates the exploration of the sociocultural dimensions embedded in hospitality discourse.

This article examines the often-overlooked role played by classical dialectics in managerial discourse, highlighting its enduring relevance in business communication instruction. Through comparative analysis, the article shows how Peter F. Drucker’s management theories draw on classical dialectics and how an applied liberal arts approach can inform interpersonal workplace dialogue and strengthen managerial effectiveness. The analysis suggests that, through the Druckerian lens, classical dialectic effectively bridges practical wisdom ( phronesis ) and action ( praxis ) in management. The article concludes that incorporating classical dialectics into business communication curricula and training can enhance modern management education.

This feature article delves into the experiences and insights from the interdisciplinary faculty team at Miami University’s Farmer School of Business to explore the practical application of four digital gaming platforms in the context of business communication courses. Grounded in self-determination theory, this article showcases the transformative potential of digital gamification in equipping students with a heightened sense of agency (autonomy), increased confidence (competence), and a profound sense of belonging (relatedness). This article aims to serve as a valuable resource for educators seeking innovative strategies to curate learning experiences that not only impart essential business communication skills but also cultivate agentic engagement and facilitate social learning activities.

This study presents a dual bibliometric analysis of business communication research. Study 1 analyzes 135 publications from the Web of Science (1993-2024) to map global trends in communication and pedagogy within business education. Study 2 focuses on 328 articles from Business and Professional Communication Quarterly , offering journal-specific insights. Key themes include soft skills, AI literacy, digital communication, and experiential learning. The study highlights how global trends are reflected and extended within a leading journal. Findings offer valuable implications for educators, researchers, and curriculum developers seeking to align communication instruction with evolving academic and professional demands.

This study assesses the potential use of artificial intelligence-programmed managers in the workplace through two experiments that manipulated source cues and time cues. Data were collected before the Novel Coronavirus pandemic and then 3 years after the pandemic’s outbreak when many businesses had returned to normal operations and ChatGPT had been released. Results held across the two experiments. Neither time nor source automation cues had an impact on the affective impressions participants formed of the simulated email exchange. Attention check data further suggests time cues may no longer be a relevant predictor of impression formation in workplace communication.

Simulations have proven effective in creating an authentic and experiential learning environment for practicing communication skills. However, more simulations based on real-life events can be conceptualized to engage and immerse students in business and social scenarios. This article presents a simulation based on the Olympics, where teams take on the roles of various stakeholders such as citizen groups, environmentalists, government representatives, sponsors, and others, negotiating the feasibility and environmental impact of organizing such large-scale events. The students learned and honed their strategic persuasion and negotiation skills during the simulation. Limitations and areas for improvement of the simulation are also discussed.

The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies is significantly impacting public relations (PR) practices, especially in the area of organization-public dialogues. This study explores how Kenyan PR practitioners perceive AI’s influence on their ability to achieve mutuality and openness, which are core principles of effective communication. Through in-depth interviews, the findings reveal that AI is regarded as a valuable tool for transforming dialogues across both online and offline channels, indicating a paradigm shift in how practitioners facilitate communication. However, concerns surrounding AI-generated content, data security transparency, and the responsible application of AI technology also arose, potentially affecting trust between organizations and their publics. The implications of these findings are discussed.

This study investigates how overly familiar personal communication habits, specifically the use of terms of endearment, impact professional workplace relationships. It examines the role of demographic factors—such as age, ethnicity, geographic region, and sexual orientation—in shaping perceptions of these communication patterns. Additionally, the study addresses the legal and ethical implications of such language usage in the workplace. Using data from 154 respondents, the results provide insight into how various demographics perceive personal communication in a professional context.

The social practice of workplace gossip has many implications for organizations and members. By using LMX theory, this study investigated positive and negative gossip types and their association with relational quality with supervisors and coworkers. Patterns of findings suggest a contagious quality of both forms of workplace gossip, such that positive supervisor gossip is highly related to positive coworker gossip; meanwhile, negative supervisor gossip is highly related to negative coworker gossip. Additionally, this study demonstrated a positive relationship between LMX and positive gossip as well as a positive relationship between perceived LMX injustice and negative gossip. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

This article examines whether energy companies use corporate social responsibility communication on X to manage their reputation. A total of 1,161,538 messages directed at the six Spanish energy companies listed in MERCO and 568,677 messages issued by them were analyzed using natural language processing, network theory, and statistical analysis. A predominantly informative, unidirectional, and defensive communication style was observed. However, positive emotions, joy and surprise, are positively associated with reputation, whereas negative emotions, fear and sadness, are negatively correlated. Social media, as a reflection of society, enables companies to establish communication strategies aligned with stakeholder demands and to ensure their effectiveness.

Purpose: This study offers an in-depth review of the body of research articles on the topic of boundary spanning and the dynamic nature of different actors to provide a more comprehensive knowledge on different boundary spanning activities and their effects on performance, flexibility, and resilience in educational institutions. Design/methodology/approach: To address the limited research on boundary-spanning functions in education, this study employed a two-round systematic literature review (SLR). The first round, which included an analysis of 338 research studies, sought to identify boundary-spanning functions and their activities. Using data from 39 studies, the second round sought to examine the boundary-spanning function and the critical role that information transfer plays in enabling boundary spanning in education. Findings: This review of literature led researchers to draw the main variables/strategies that facilitate boundary spanning in education (leadership and instructional strategies; collaboration and networking; training and development; teamwork; and revised pedagogical approaches). Also, the review highlighted the importance of knowledge transfer in facilitating boundary-spanning functions. Originality/value: Researchers, practitioners, and decision makers looking to improve boundary-spanning activities by utilizing networks and knowledge transfer might use this systematic review as a source. It also provides various strategies of how boundary spanners and leaders can support and facilitate the function of boundary spanning in educational institutions.

LinkedIn has emerged as a dominant platform for professional networking and career development, yet bibliometric analyses on its scholarly landscape remain scarce. This study systematically maps LinkedIn research using 1,273 peer-reviewed publications from Web of Science (WoS), following the SPAR-4-SLR protocol. To address four core research questions, we analyze (1) thematic structures and evolution, (2) collaboration and citation networks, (3) publication venues and citation metrics, and (4) emerging trends. Key bibliometric indicators—total citations (25,461), h- index (38), and publication trends—were analyzed, while co-citation and bibliographic coupling (WoS) and keyword co-occurrence (Scopus) network analyses were conducted using VOSviewer. Results reveal a sharp publication increase, peaking at 204 in 2023, with Computers in Human Behavior (19 papers, 898 citations) and PLOS One (10 papers, 897 citations) as leading outlets. Research clusters focus on recruitment, professional branding, and LinkedIn’s role in organizations, though empirical validation remains limited, particularly regarding career outcome predictions. Findings offer a structured knowledge base for academia and industry. Limitations include reliance on WoS for citations and Scopus for keywords, potentially introducing data set inconsistencies. Future research should integrate cross-database approaches and explore LinkedIn’s role in AI-driven recruitment.

Based on the foundations of femininity-masculinity and assertiveness-responsiveness, this study investigates the interplay between gender roles and social styles in managerial behavior and its impact on employee voice and engagement in a fully remote work setting. The research gathered data from 542 Information Technology (IT) professionals with a two-wave survey design. The results suggest a potential linkage between gender roles and social styles. Managers with androgynous gender roles are more likely to exhibit expressive social style than any other style; masculine gender roles exhibit driver social style, while managers with undifferentiated gender roles are likelier to demonstrate analytical social style. The findings further indicate that managers exhibiting higher levels of femininity within their gender role (androgynous and feminine) positively impact employee voice and engagement. In contrast, lower levels of femininity (masculine and undifferentiated) seem to correspond with diminished employee voice and engagement. This pattern also extends to social styles.

The study examines the communication difficulties faced by employees in work-from-home (WFH) environments and the impact these obstacles have on business communication education. The research employs focus groups and interviews to identify three main obstacles: ambiguous job responsibilities, decreased trust, and a lack of social cohesion resulting from decreased in-person encounters. The study highlights important pedagogical factors, such as promoting virtual professional and social connections, managing the balance between excessive and unclear communication, and providing training in virtual collaboration tools. The suggestion is to include WFH-specific communication skills in curriculum, recognizing the growing probability of future distant job assignments for students. The study highlights the significance of providing employees with the essential communication skills to achieve good performance when working from home, as firms adopt remote work.

The article investigates how crisis response strategy is influenced by pre-crisis reputation and country of origin during (COO) during crisis. A quasi-experimental study was undertaken to test this influence in Indian versus Non-Indian countries. Countries with positive national identity can withstand the crisis situation better than one with a negative or neutral identity. Based on the COO, companies can choose a less accommodative crisis response strategy like diminishing rather than rebuilding to quell the crisis impact. It provides an understanding of how crisis managers can select the most appropriate response strategy during crisis.

The research combines explanatory and predictive modeling to examine the impact of annual report tone in predicting publicly traded companies’ profitability in Vietnam, an emerging Southeast Asian market. SGMM regression shows that this year’s narrative tone affects next year’s profitability. The study also used Scikit-learn Python machine learning algorithms to forecast profitability. The tone-based forecasting model that incorporates the company’s general and financial features predicts profitability is the most effective model. This study provides stakeholders such as investors and creditors with an approach to predict future profitability based on the narrative tone and expands theoretical understanding of its predictive power. JEL codes: D21, G33, M40, M41

This developmental article presents a case for narrative inquiry, and fiction in particular, to be considered as an important pedagogic mode that informs business communication pedagogy. The article uses two illustrative exemplars from Herman Melville and Chinua Achebe. Informed by the frame of critical pedagogy, signature pedagogy, and narrative medicine, this developmental article argues that fiction expands the narrative imagination of learners of business communication, enabling sensitive and compassionate managers for the future. The article seeks to demonstrate the strength of narrative, especially fiction, for students of management as essentially shaping future managers into holistically developed, ethically conscious, empathic managers with competency for emotional self-regulation. As a move toward sustaining business communication on the fulcrum of a humanities philosophy, this article will demonstrate the advantages of the terrain of narrative inquiry in business classrooms as enabling life skills like compassion, empathy, and altruism, all central tenets of being human. With an increased significance attributed to skills like empathy, resilience, and flexibility as future competencies to be built, we argue that a conscious interjection of narrative ethics in an emphatic manner into business communication curriculum can expand learners’ narrative imagination competency. To this effect, the paper also proposes an instructional framework that serves to advance DELTAs (Distinct Elements of Talent) through the use of fiction that covers significant units of a Business Communication course.

This article argues that action research and action learning are qualitative methods that can bridge the research and practice gap. Grounded in realist perspective, action and reflection are its dominant features. Action research enables research participants to build capacity and work collaboratively to solve the complex problems and build knowledge. It brings everyone to the same place to understand each other’s experiences and values in the world they live. Then we discussed one specific context of action learning for leadership development in small and medium businesses. We made this preposition that conducting qualitative research in the form of action learning can build transformational leadership development skills in them. Transformational leadership is vital to the sustainability of the organization, especially in small and medium businesses. It is the combination of action learning and transformational leadership that can help businesses reach their optimal potential in productivity. Leaders in the company have significant influence on an organization, where poor management and leadership can have irreparable consequences. It is not only important to have the infrastructure in place, but the right personnel, especially management, which is vital to the organization.

At first glance, humor and the weighty issues that social entrepreneurs aim to address might seem like unlikely companions. However, studies have illuminated humor’s potent ability to shift attitudes and catalyze change. This research examines the incorporation of humor by social entrepreneurs in their TED Talks, analyzing its use across a sample of 114 presentations. Of these, 69 humor-inclusive talks were scrutinized to identify the target, methods, and underlying intentions of humor. From this thematic analysis, six primary themes emerged: self-disparaging , cause of the social problem , problem-specific , solution-oriented , beneficiary-focused , and other .

The purpose of this article is to share teaching strategies within business and professional communication that assisted students in developing a job portfolio, potentially enhancing students’ ability to secure an internship or job after course completion. This article details the application of these strategies over the course of three semesters in 2018 and 2019 at Monmouth University. Student comments suggested these strategies enhanced their chances of employment success. Using course curriculum to put students in position to secure employment should be a goal of the course and curriculum should be adjusted periodically to meet this goal.

This study presents a systematic review of the last decade of research published in Business and Professional Communication Quarterly , using PRISMA guidelines and bibliometric analysis. The review analyzes publication and citation trends, key contributors, and emerging themes. The research highlights how the field has evolved in response to global crises, technological advancements, and shifts in social dynamics. By exploring key themes such as virtual team communication, social presence in online learning, and the integration of emerging technologies, the study provides a comprehensive assessment of the journal’s contributions from 2014 to 2024. It also identifies future research directions.

Meetings are an essential part of organizational life everywhere. Although research has shown that meeting styles differ among cultures, studies focusing on a broad set of data to compare the prevalent meeting styles systematically are rare, partly because of the high academic standards required by researchers. There is, however, much informal data on meeting styles aimed at practitioners, which despite its shortcomings, can be useful. The information provided is largely based on the experiences made by internationally active businesspeople. Under the author’s supervision, students of the author’s business school analyzed a great number of descriptions of meeting practices to investigate in what respects meetings differ. The results were combined with earlier research and general situational context models to come to a meeting-specific model that enables a systematic comparison of meeting practices. This model can be applied for educational as well as for practical purposes.

In this article, we replicate important findings about workplace persuasion (e.g., a preference for face-to-face rather than computer-mediated messages). We extend those findings by including videoconferencing among the available channels and determining that practitioners regard video as less effective than face-to-face and more effective than email. Furthermore, we find that business practitioners prefer multichannel strategies for upwardly directed persuasion, and that some—more women than men in our sample—call on a person to serve as one of the channels. These findings provide insights that teachers can apply in the classroom; they also suggest questions for future research.

This study explores graphical depictions in annual and corporate social responsibility reports. The 10 largest Canadian corporations in the oil and gas industry were selected to focus on graph selectivity, enhancement, and distortions as impression management strategies. The results show evidence of selectivity and enhancement. However, unlike previous studies on graphical distortions, there is no evidence of favorable distortions in graphs. The graphs reported are well depicted and not distorted, indicating that this industry is rather cautious in its reporting. Potential explanations and reasons why this might be the case are offered. This study suggests the concept of “plausible deniability” in the context of graph manipulations.

This study examines how communication channel use explains the effectiveness of workplace team communication through Media Richness Theory and Media Synchronicity Theory. It examines how job characteristics, personal attributes, communication channel usage, and team performance are interrelated in the workplace. The results of an online survey of 400 full-time employees and executives of large Japanese companies show that team communication effectiveness, including the degree of team coordination, inclusion, and performance satisfaction, can be explained through a combination of rich (synchronous) and lean (asynchronous) media use. The implications of using communication channels in the workplace are also discussed.