Positive communication is crucial for effective teaching, influencing student engagement, motivation, and educational outcomes. Synthesizing educational and interdisciplinary literature, this article develops two core propositions: (1) cultivating classroom relationships through responsive interactions and peer connectedness, and (2) strengthening teacher affirmation and credibility via authentic and empathetic communication practices. Specific strategies, such as personalized feedback, inclusive communication methods, structured confirmation behaviors, and generationally responsive techniques, equip educators to enhance classroom environments, improve student learning experiences, and prepare students effectively for academic achievement and professional collaboration.

This conceptual article develops a model of positive LinkedIn communication, arguing that responsive, affirming, and authentic interaction—organized into two higher-order behavioral dimensions—strengthens perceived support and trust, thereby shaping professional outcomes (e.g., recruitment, collaboration, and commercial opportunities). By shifting attention from static profile signals to communicative behaviors enacted in posts, comments, and messages, the framework advances testable propositions and specifies mechanisms, boundary conditions, and potential trade-offs that invite empirical evaluation across organizational and cultural contexts.

This review analyzes 59 studies from 2014 to 2024 examining design thinking integration in professional communication pedagogy across eight disciplinary journals. Design thinking has evolved from experimental use to systematic pedagogical approaches, with assignment-level integration proving most viable for educators. Empathy interviews and user research bridge design thinking principles with communication pedagogy’s audience awareness focus. Students show enhanced empathy, improved collaboration, and increased creative confidence with high motivation levels. Implementation challenges include time constraints, student resistance to ambiguity, and assessment difficulties. The study recommends scaffolded introduction, integration with existing content, and institutional support for desirable implementation in business and professional communication pedagogy.

Few studies to date examined the emotional unrest that results from communication across cultures in multinational teams (MNTs). Through examination of 12 in-depth interviews and a focus group of respondents from MNTs, this study investigates the impact of language-induced emotions in MNTs resulting from a corporate language mandate. Even with highly proficient linguists, MNTs still experience collaborative difficulties caused by language differences and associated emotions. Issues identified include loss of information, ambiguity over equivalence of meaning, variability in sociolinguistic competence, and problems of adjustment to cultural norms. The research also pinpointed several lingua-culturally adaptive behavioral strategies relating to international leadership.

Advanced technologies and other rapid changes in the global business environment, especially following the pandemic of 2020, have fundamentally disrupted how, when, and where we work. Through design thinking, business communicators can reenvision the affordance of traditional rhetoric to thrive in this new workplace. The article opens with a scenario based on the postpandemic problem of accommodating a hybrid style of work and then describes how the mindset and method of design thinking transform traditional rhetoric. Grounded in empathetic collaboration, design thinking positions rhetoric as a recursive, nonlinear, and nimble process and provides new perspectives on rhetoric’s time-tested persuasive appeals.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This article features a grounded theory study that explored communication in online Master of Business Administration (MBA) group work, with an emphasis on skills transferable to remote professional collaboration after graduation. Data were collected from nine online MBA students through individual reflection documents and a focus group discussion. These data were analyzed and revealed themes about the importance of agreeing on not just norms and resources but also normative actions to facilitate online collaboration. Findings led to recommendations for designing online group assignments that enhance communication skills during online collaboration—skills that are becoming increasingly integral to professional success.

This article presents a conceptual framework for enhancing business writing skills through social media integration in business communication education. By embedding platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter, the framework promotes essential competencies such as clarity, audience awareness, and professional tone. Five core principles—constructivist learning, digital literacy, ethical writing practices, real-time feedback, and collaborative writing—underpin this framework, emphasizing experiential learning that bridges informal and formal communication styles. This approach offers educators a structured method for developing students’ adaptability and writing proficiency, aligning pedagogical practices with the evolving needs of modern business communication.

Organizations use social networking sites (SNSs) to create collaborative communication channels among employees, consumers, and clients. Organizations expect future employees to be well trained in using SNSs. However, students do not accept SNSs as a professional channel of communication since they use SNSs for fun and socializing. A hypothetical case study was developed to explain the consequences of the unmindful use of SNSs in a professional context. The article discusses the need to use a case study in this context. The effectiveness of the case is assessed through a survey questionnaire. Recommendations for BPC faculty for using the case are also discussed.

This 10-week study investigates the relationships between diversity beliefs, teamwork satisfaction, perceived classroom competitiveness, and attitudes toward project-based activities among 105 marketing students. Findings indicate that diversity beliefs enhance teamwork satisfaction, whereas performance-approach goals reduce it. Classroom competitiveness negatively moderates the impact of teamwork satisfaction on project attitudes, whereas teammate competitiveness has a positive moderating effect. These insights can help educators balance competition and collaboration to optimize learning environments.

This article presents a conceptual framework for integrating AI-enabled business communication in higher education. Drawing on established theories from business communication and educational technology, the framework provides comprehensive guidance for designing engaging learning experiences. It emphasizes the significance of social presence, cognitive load management, and constructivist learning principles. The framework is exemplified through various tasks, including role-playing with AI chatbots, analyzing nonverbal cues, communication simulations, interactive presentation assessments, and collaborative AI-supported projects. Practical considerations for implementation, including technological infrastructure, faculty training, ethics, curriculum integration, and assessment strategies, are discussed. Future directions and implications for business communication education are also explored.

Virtual teams have been adopted by organizations and studied for decades. However, the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of technology-supported collaboration more than ever. This growing importance of virtual teamwork suggests that business education related to virtual team collaboration and communication is critical for students today, and universities play a significant role in equipping students with the knowledge and skillsets necessary to work in a digital world. This work reviews the literature on virtual teams and educational approaches used for teaching virtual team collaboration and communication and presents a framework for virtual team education. Survey findings and illustrative cases are gathered to demonstrate current virtual team education practices. The study concludes with recommendations for the education of virtual team knowledge and skills.

In a case study involving three asynchronous online professional writing courses, this research investigates students’ abilities to establish a social presence and build team cohesion via collaborative, team-based writing projects. Using the Community of Inquiry (COI) framework, this study is situated in the understanding that teaching and learning in higher education are not about the mere transmission of knowledge but that “teaching and learning are inherently interactive” as the terms of “community” and “inquiry” used in the framework suggest. Prior researchers have also established a clear connection between one element of the COI framework— social presence and student satisfaction in online courses. Findings from this study indicate participation in collaborative team assignments contributes to team cohesion and positively affects students’ ability to establish their social presence within online environments as well as transfer their knowledge to other contexts.

Design thinking, broadly understood as an organizational and entrepreneurial process aimed at innovative problem solving, has been productively incorporated by scholar-teachers in rhetoric, writing studies, and technical communication. Business communication offers similar opportunities. After briefly explaining design thinking and reviewing related scholarship and pedagogy, the article traces the process of creating an innovative course in business communication through each phase or mode of this recursive method: empathizing with users, defining the problem, ideating and prototyping solutions, and testing and evaluating the prototypes. The article positions course design as a project grounded in radical collaboration, with diverse colleagues as well as students.

The rapid, widespread implementation of artificial intelligence technologies in workplaces has implications for business communication. In this article, the authors describe current capabilities, challenges, and concepts related to the adoption and use of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in business communication. Understanding the abilities and inabilities of AI technologies is critical to using these technologies ethically. The authors offer a proposed research agenda for researchers in business communication concerning topics of implementation, lexicography and grammar, collaboration, design, trust, bias, managerial concerns, tool assessment, and demographics. The authors conclude with some ideas regarding how to teach about AI in the business communication classroom.

By means of a cross-cultural virtual teams project involving classrooms in Scotland, Germany, and Portugal, students were exposed to the challenges of collaborating internationally with the intention of increasing their intercultural competency. Intercultural sensitivity and intercultural communication competency were measured using responses to surveys before and after the 6-week project. Students reported, among other aspects, a heightened awareness of the difficulties of intercultural communication. Despite a general appreciation of the project and its outcomes, negative results, such as an increased dislike of intercultural interaction, emerged. Contradictory results warrant further investigation with data from future collaborations.

In this article, we present a study focusing on the learning experiences of business students in an organizational and marketing communication course. The pedagogical approaches of a flipped classroom, collaborative inquiry, and communication in the disciplines guided the planning of the course. A mixed-methods approach was used. The key findings include positive student evaluations of the pedagogies utilized. Moreover, a wide variety of learning outcomes was reported, particularly in the fields of crisis communication and workplace communication. The pedagogies utilized enabled a comprehensive model for teaching communication and contributed to relevant learning experiences and skill development for the 21st century.

This article investigates how normative attitudes about work construct barriers to workers who are blind and visually impaired. The researcher collected narratives about rhetorical experiences from blind and visually impaired participants in the United States and analyzed accounts of these workplace interactions to identify rhetorical commonplaces that drive arguments about work. These commonplaces reveal the ableist assumptions that construct access barriers and constrain rhetorical possibilities for disabled workers’ self-advocacy. The author proposes that business and professional communication students and practitioners should engage in collaborative approaches to flexible thinking and leadership necessary for reimagining work in ways that promote accessibility.

This article, the first of a two-part series, presents 13 teaching innovations debuted at the 2016 Association for Business Communication’s annual conference. The second edition of My Favorite Assignment will be published in the fall 2017 Business and Professional Communication Quarterly. Assignments include international collaborative projects, students’ professional development, fast skill-building exercises, data interpretation, event planning, and more. Additional assignment support materials—instructions to students, stimulus materials, slides, grading rubrics, frequently asked questions, and sample student projects—are posted on these websites: http://www.businesscommunication.org/page/assignments and http://salesleadershipcenter.com/research .

This study investigates cooperativeness, assertiveness, group satisfaction, leader grade, and leadership negotiation in a collaborative assignment conducted in a small group. Researchers manipulated the assignment of team members who reported on measures of group satisfaction and original scales of assertiveness and cooperativeness. Respondents also responded to open-ended questions regarding active leadership, leadership traits, and leadership negotiation, which resulted in the emergence of multiple themes. Assertiveness, cooperativeness, and group satisfaction were found to predict the grade given to the leader.

This article describes the use of problem forums in undergraduate professional writing courses as a technique for facilitating and sustaining learning from increasingly complex, messy, and wicked problems that are characteristic of 21st-century work. Problem forums are designed to scaffold project team discussions of rhetorical, technical, or collaborative difficulties that have unexpectedly slowed or halted their work. Problem forums are thus intended to facilitate and sustain continual learning on project teams.

In the previous issue of Business and Professional Communication, we focused on flipped classrooms and discovery learning. We continue that broad stream of research with our articles in this issue, most of which engage students in projects designed to facilitate learning in business and professional communication. Implementing projectbased learning can be challenging, and case studies can reveal issues that may be unanticipated in textbooks. Our lead article reports on the role of a commissioned research project in bridging the gap between theory and practice. At the authors’ research site, organizations representing different sectors of the corporate and nonprofit workplace commission teams of students in business and professional communication to act as their communication experts. The specific case discussed in this article is based on a study carried out by a team of five master’s-level students to promote corporate social responsibility in a professional association of a pharmaceutical industry. The authors analyze the student researchers’ perspectives, as well as the practitioners’ view of the collaboration, and the pitfalls involved in helping put theory into practice in a real-world situation. Our second article presents the results of an actual employee program evaluation as a case study of soft skills training at a large hospital. The authors posit four hypotheses, that greater reported willingness to learn will result in both a higher degree of course comprehension and a higher degree of behavioral change and that the method of delivery will affect trainees’ degree of comprehension and degree of behavioral change. The authors conclude that face-to-face or blended instruction is likely to be more effective than a purely online format. The authors of our third article examine the factors needed for success in group assignments. In a study of cooperativeness, assertiveness, group satisfaction, leader grade, and leadership negotiation, the authors find that group satisfaction is positively related to both leader assertiveness and leader cooperativeness. This research emphasizes the importance of the leader’s role to group outcomes and suggests that assertiveness is a critical component to success. 651428 BCQXXX10.1177/2329490616651428Business and Professional Communication QuarterlyKnight editorial2016

This article argues for a flipped learning approach to business and professional communication composing processes. Flipped learning sequences can scaffold more robust engagement with prewriting activities and support opportunities for in-class collaborative and facilitated drafting exercises. These types of learning experiences offer numerous pedagogical benefits, including more conscious control of messaging strategies and the development of more creative, rhetorically informed communication products. The effectiveness of this approach is explored through a case study of a flipped learning sequence and collaborative drafting workshop designed for an employment communication and résumé-writing assignment.

This article considers how professional writing courses can prepare students in various disciplines for the workforce. Specifically, I argue for Writing in the Disciplines (WID) internships where students learn to write documents relevant for their careers while participating in practical work experiences. In the WID internships I describe, instructors collaborate with coordinators across campus to establish writing-intensive internships that focus on the needs of students and the community partner. This article illustrates the collaborative endeavors of three internships, highlighting the challenges and lessons learned from WID internships.

With the widespread popularity of distance learning, there is a need to investigate elements of online courses that continue to pose significant challenges for educators. One of the challenges relates to creating and managing group projects. This study investigated business students’ perceptions of group work in online classes. The constructs of learning and social interaction, process satisfaction, product satisfaction, and use of technology in the virtual learning environment were investigated. The use of social media networks by group participants was also examined. Recommendations are provided for business educators looking to develop or enhance teamwork in virtual learning environments.

Organizations are increasingly using social media to improve their internal communication. When successfully implemented, such initiatives can have a dramatic impact on internal efficiency, team collaboration, innovation, organizational alignment, and cultural transformation. This article describes a course offered by the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, on the use of social media for internal business communication that can be modified for Bachelor of Business Administration or Master of Business Administration students. The authors describe the pedagogy behind the course design, provide a course description, and discuss social media/communication consulting projects conducted in the class.

This article, the second in a two-part series, catalogs teaching innovations presented at the 2013 Association for Business Communication Annual Convention, New Orleans. They were presented during the My Favorite Assignment session. The 11 Favorite Assignments featured here offer the reader a variety of learning experiences, including collaborative teamwork, debate, budgets, cross-cultural communication, report writing, persuasion, not-for-profit organization, client communication, and writing funding proposals. Additional teaching materials—including instructions to students, stimulus materials, slides, grading rubrics, frequently asked questions, and sample student projects—are posted on the Association for Business Communication web page http://businesscommunication.org/assignments .

In this study, we examined 11 workplaces to determine how they handle termination documentation, an empirically unexplored area in technical communication and rhetoric. We found that the use of termination documentation is context dependent while following a basic pattern of infraction, investigation, intervention, and termination. Furthermore, the primary audience of the documentation is typically legal and regulatory bodies, not the employee. We also make observations about genre, collaboration, and authorship in these documents.

The intercultural divides in values, perceptions, and interpretations of concepts have been studied extensively by international business and intercultural communication scholars. Consequentially, much effort in university classrooms is spent on focusing on the differences between groups and on finding ways to “manage” cultural diversity. What is often missed is the common ground among cultural groups and the differences within what are presumed to be homogenous groups of students. To negotiate this complexity of diversity, we describe an initiative to foster collaborative student-led analyses of a case study to open up meaningful discussions around diversity.

This article, the first of a two-part series, catalogs teaching innovations presented at the 2013 Association for Business Communication (ABC) Annual Convention, New Orleans. They were presented during the My Favorite Assignment session. The 11 Favorite Assignments featured here offer the reader a variety of learning experiences including collaborative team work, debate, budgets, cross-cultural communication, report writing, persuasion, nonprofit organizations, client communication, and writing funding proposals. Additional teaching materials—including instructions to students, stimulus materials, slides, grading rubrics, frequently asked questions, and sample student projects—are posted on the Association for Business Communication webpage http://businesscommunication.org/assignments .

This article investigates student behaviour on collaborative assignments, looking at the relationship between task type and interaction, and considers the implications for task design. Students reported on interactions in a year-long workplace-focussed group communication project, comparing these with interactions on other academy-based group assignments. Differences were seen in the amount of brainstorming, the criteria for dividing up work, the intensity of editing, and how conflict was managed. Contributing factors to these differences included the presence or absence of a creative element, the instrumental nature of the task, and the need for a collective approach inherent in the task design.