Virtual reality (VR) has emerged as a promising technology for training oral communication skills (OCS), resulting in a rapidly growing body of research. We conducted a systematic review of 57 studies (2013–2025) mapping OCS types, communication contexts, and key variables, and introduce a conceptual model to guide future research and practice. Findings reveal that current VR-based OCS training captures only a small part of oral communication. Expanding the Cognitive Affective Model of Immersive Learning (CAMIL), we highlight the need for stronger theoretical and pedagogical foundations by exploring cognitive-affective mediators (e.g., cognitive load) and learner-related moderators (e.g., learning styles).

This study examines how information workers perceive charismatic communication in Finnish knowledge-intensive organizations. Based on 10 semi-structured interviews across IT firms, government agencies, and financial institutions conducted in 2014–2015, it identifies six dimensions of charismatic communication that emerged inductively through thematic analysis: authority, approachability, character, aspiration, integrity, and intelligence. Findings suggest that charismatic leaders combine confidence with warmth, emotionally engage followers, and adjust their style to different contexts. The research contributes to leadership studies by offering a perception-based understanding of charisma as a multidimensional and situational phenomenon in a Nordic cultural context. While the small, purposefully selected sample limits generalizability, the study provides rich qualitative insights into how charismatic communication manifests in flat, egalitarian organizational cultures that differ markedly from the Anglo-American contexts dominating existing research.

This study investigates how students interpret AI-assisted written communication in a university context. Although AI assistant programs are increasingly used to draft institutional emails, little is known about whether they enhance clarity or undermine trust and perceived professionalism. Using survey data from 194 Vietnamese undergraduates, the study validates four constructs including perceived usefulness, trust, perceived professionalism, and attitudes toward AI assistant programs, and examines their effects on students’ intention to read emails frequently. Results show that students clearly distinguish clarity benefits from credibility concerns, indicating that AI-assisted emails can improve comprehension.

This study investigates how the linguistic style of CEO digital communication influences audience engagement. Using an NLP pipeline with a panel regression model on a data set of 19,566 tweets from CEOs, this study reveals that linguistic clarity and an on-platform focus are the most robust predictors of engagement; syntactic complexity and the inclusion of external URLs consistently deter engagement metrics. The effects of stylistic choices like emojis and hashtags are less consistent and depend on the type of engagement being measured. These results offer an expanded understanding of digital communication for CEOs and provide direct implications for business communication pedagogy.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, several countries have eliminated face-to-face classes in all schools, requiring all teachers to deliver classes remotely. In this regard, the wide spread of information and communication technology (ICT) products and services in the educational sector became a burden for several teachers. This article aims to study the impact of online teaching, and how technological stress might vary between male and female teachers and to what extent it alters their family lives and their way of living. The case of Lebanon has been examined and analyzed using 379 participants in various schools randomly distributed throughout the country, who participated in a survey on how COVID-19 affected their technostress levels. The findings showed that married women were more prone to technological stress and that their family life and lifestyle were strongly affected. In particular, young women with few years of experience were more likely to experience technostress problems. We also found no differences related to educational levels. In addition, the inclusion of different degrees of computer self-efficacy has shown an impact on the development of technostress among individuals.

In the globalized labor market, skills gaps between industry expectations and university preparation are becoming more prevalent. English communication skills (ECS) are vital soft skills in all workplaces, particularly in international business, where English is commonly used as a lingua franca. This case study examined the nexus between academia and industry regarding the instruction of ECS and their applicability to meet the requirements of the globalized business landscape by collecting data from 43 personnel in the international ready-made garment (RMG) industry in Bangladesh. The research reveals that English courses in higher education do not adequately address the communication needs of the international RMG business, which requires practical experience in the workplace, trade-specific vocabulary, intelligibility, and clarity rather than a high level of fluency. The study recommends promoting the teaching of English for general business purposes in Bangladesh by integrating theoretical and practical learning in the classroom and workplace as part of the curriculum.

This study examines the impact of traditional lectures and guest speaker sessions on developing business communication skills in supply chain education. Focusing on green supply chain management practices (GSCMP) and sustainable development (SD), the research highlights the complementary strengths of these teaching methods. Traditional lectures excel in enhancing written communication and theoretical knowledge, while guest speaker sessions significantly improve verbal communication and practical skills. The findings provide actionable insights for educators to design balanced curricula that align with the dynamic communication needs of modern supply chain management professionals.

The problem of discourse marginalization in intercultural meetings is usually attributed to linguistic or pragmatic shortcomings of marginalized second language English speakers who are seen as either “learners,” in contrast to first-language English speakers, as uncommunicative, or even as professionally incompetent. The influence of culturally oriented participation styles, distinct patterns of turn-taking behavior, has so far not been considered as a contributing factor. The present study examines intercultural meeting discourse and reveals how diverse participation styles can lead to marginalization. Pedagogical implications are discussed.

Modern workplace demographics are changing and so too are workplace relationships. This research explores the impact of poor leader relationships on voice behaviors—more specifically, defensive silence. Results indicate a negative relationship between leader-member exchange (LMX) and defensive silence, a positive relationship between communicative anxiety and defensive silence, and a negative relationship between communicative anxiety and LMX. Additionally, a significant interaction is found between age, years of supervisory experience, LMX, and defensive silence. Theoretical and practical implications for workplace relationships are discussed.

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.

I recommend that teachers of professional communication (e.g., business communication) incorporate into their courses the Giving Voice to Values (GVV) curriculum developed by Mary Gentile. Adding GVV materials to a course in professional communication would add an ethical emphasis to the course or supplement an existing one. GVV materials also provide communication teachers with excellent opportunities to introduce (or expand) attention to rhetorical decision making. Furthermore, GVV materials provide an opportunity for cross-disciplinary cooperation among teachers of business communication and other business disciplines.

This study employs a quantitative content analysis to investigate how reputation-restoring crisis responses (i.e., denial, diminishment, and apology) from organizations and public figures are verbalized. In addition, this study examines if distinct crisis response strategies are systematically associated with particular language categories (i.e., language abstraction, uncertain language, passive voice, and emotional language). By analyzing 179 audiovisual crisis messages (e.g., press conference broadcasts, television interviews, social media videos), this study shows that denials are generally expressed in the most concrete way (i.e., precise numbers), diminish strategies in the most uncertain way (i.e., hedges), and apologies are the most emotionally charged, primarily referring to the emotions of sadness and shame. These findings highlight the significant role of language in crisis communication and help practitioners in the field to become aware of key linguistic features that could influence the effectiveness of a crisis message.

Business and professional communication courses hold special opportunities to contribute to students’ development of entrepreneurial mindsets through the use and extension of classical rhetorical theory and praxis. We situate pedagogical activities within the context of the entrepreneurial venture pitch by using Rhetorical Canons of invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery to develop oral discourse while recognizing and developing entrepreneurial mindsets. We utilize elements of entrepreneurial mindset development presented by Kuratko et al. and Daspit et al. to introduce business and professional communication instructors to cognitive, behavioral, and emotional aspects contributing to the establishment of entrepreneurial mindsets.

The work environment has drastically changed in the last 10 years, necessitating a new look at which soft skills are most relevant in today’s workplace. Because of COVID-19, organizations had to rapidly adjust where and how they work. According to the Pew Research Center, 71% of adults, who can perform their work responsibilities from home, are now working remotely. Then, the workplace shifted again during the “Great Resignation” where an all-time record of 24 million employees left their jobs between April and September 2021. This shift is ever more important as research in the last decade indicates that soft skills are being valued more compared to hard skills during the hiring process. The current study replicated Robles’s (2012) study of soft skills to find which soft skills are most relevant to a thriving work environment in 2022. Results indicate that soft skills emphasizing employee initiative and including others in processes are most relevant today, including Adaptable, Agency, Conscientious, Contextual Awareness, Create Clarity, Curiosity, Engage the Mess, Genuine Care, Integrity, Partnership, Play, Positive Energy, Social Skills, and Suppress the Noise.

This research presents a new theoretical framework through assessing readability research based on the linguistics and communication perspectives to determine the obfuscation probabilities and how to mitigate them. Therefore, this systematic literature review analyzed 219 papers using the SCOPUS and Web of Science databases. Findings show that in every language approach, there is an obfuscation level for annual reports, depending on the weakness of a particular component of the text communication process, starting from the use of a complex writing style and ending with the imposition of specific methods of presentation, while suggesting ways to mitigate the obfuscation.

This study draws from personality psychology and linguistics of written communication to explore the characteristics of self-selected well-written email communications (N=273) solicited from Polish managers who organized and supervised the (remote) work of their units during the COVID-19 period. The focus is on the writing of managers with above-average levels of conscientiousness and agreeableness, as these personality factors are predictors of efficacy in the completion of two work-related goals, Achievement and Communion, according to the Theory of Purposeful Work Behavior. The linguistic patterns responsible for effective email communication are identified through both automated and qualitative textual analyses of the email sample. The study has implications for management training via the assumption that linguistic patterns that a reflexive manager uses in writing are subjected to monitoring and can be modeled and adapted to. Specific recommendations for managerial writing styles concern informational, instructional, explanatory, feedback, and query messages.

Marginalization in decision-making discourse results in disempowerment of the marginalized and detracts from the efficacy of participatory decision making. In ESL contexts, it is usually associated with English proficiency. But this view ignores the influence of preferences for different participation styles, an understanding of which is essential for the development of effective pedagogical remedies to the problem of marginalization. The present study addresses this gap by investigating discourse participation and marginalization from a participation styles perspective. Findings reveal that marginalization resulted from a failure to adopt turn-taking strategies associated with dominant participation styles. Implications for pedagogy are discussed.

In response to COVID-19, educational stakeholders are transferring traditional, face-to-face instruction to the online learning environment. The purpose of this study was to determine if business instructors’ use of immediate behaviors and clarity, which have been found to help business students overcome their writing apprehension in the face-to-face learning environment, can also be used to help business students to overcome their writing apprehension in an online learning environment. Findings indicated that instructor immediate behaviors and clarity are not interventions for writing apprehension in the online learning environment. The instructional strategies business instructors rely on in the face-to-face classroom did not have the same meaning or effect on the online classroom.

The demand for writing skills is becoming increasingly prevalent within the U.S. job market. Yet, the biggest barrier to developing successful writing skills, writing apprehension, has received very little attention from scholars in the past 30 years. The present study sought to identify the influence of instructional communicative behaviors on business students’ writing apprehension. Specifically, the study tested a model in which instructors’ immediate behaviors and clarity indirectly influenced students’ writing apprehension through the mediation of perceived immediacy. The data were consistent with the hypothesized model.

Employers provide their interpretation of the meaning of communication skills in this qualitative study of 22 managers. Employers understand written communication to be types of documents, a way to write, and a mode of communication. Oral communication skills mean a style of interacting, presenting, and conducting meetings. Visual communication skills were understood to be data visualization or nonverbal communication. Electronic communication was interpreted as email. The findings contribute to closing-the-gap research by highlighting areas where meaning converges for employers and instructors. Faculty members in communication disciplines can incorporate these findings into their course design and learning outcome discussions.

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.

The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of the four listening styles of business communication students on their demonstration of compassion for others and themselves. A sample of 387 business students completed a questionnaire that inquired about their perceptions of their preferred listening style, their compassion for others, and their self-compassion for those in a given organization. This study found that people listening positively affected both compassion and self-compassion. Another finding was that action listening negatively affected both compassion and self-compassion. Other findings are also discussed along with future directions.

This article presents findings from a rhetorical analysis of job advertisements posted by the fastest growing companies in the United States ( Inc. 5000 rankings). The analysis suggests that companies rely on standard rhetorical figures and share similar rhetorical visions of novelty that likely effect their organizational culture, paradoxically make them homogeneous, and potentially oversell positions that require prosaic job duties. Suggestions to authors of job advertisements include writing with fewer clichés and metaphors, since they tend to reify ageist stereotypes. Suggestions for job seekers include doing rhetorical analyses of advertisements and writing résumés so they comply with job advertisements’ creative rhetorical styles.

This study was conducted to determine the effectiveness of a soft skills employee training program. We examined willingness to learn and delivery methods (face-to-face vs. online) and their associations with the training outcomes in terms of learning and behavioral change. Results showed that neither participants’ willingness to learn nor delivery methods affected comprehension. However, both variables had significant effects on the reported behavioral change. This training is effective in teaching employees how to “flex” their personal styles and to improve their relationships with each other. Implications for business and professional communication training and directions for future research are discussed in detail.

Written clarity and conciseness are desired by employers and emphasized in business communication courses. We developed and tested the efficacy of a cueing tool—Scribe Bene—to help students reduce their use of imprecise and ambiguous words and wordy phrases. Effectiveness was measured by comparing cue word usage between a treatment group given the tool and a control group without the tool. In written assignments, the treatment group used 16 of 23 cue words significantly less than the control group and this effect persisted over time. Implications for using automated cueing tools in teaching written communication skills are discussed.

Supervisor communication competence and leadership style were used to predict specific employee outcomes. In the study, 276 participants working in various industries completed measures of communication competence and leadership styles about their direct supervisor along with measures of their job satisfaction, motivation, and organizational commitment. As predicted, effective and appropriate communication were both positively related to satisfaction, motivation, and organizational commitment. Furthermore, task- and relations-oriented leadership styles were both positively related to all three employee outcomes as well. Finally, regression analysis determined that effective communication and relations-oriented leadership were the best predictors of satisfaction, motivation, and organizational commitment.

This article, the second of a two-part series, features 11 teaching innovations presented at the 2014 Association for Business Communication annual conference. These 11 assignments included leadership and other-focused communication—detecting communication style, adaptive communication, personality type, delivering feedback, problem solving, and critical thinking—and projects—analytic reports, presentation, slide deck creation, visual tools, ethics, team communication, field observation and reporting, rhetoric, persuasion, advertising messages strategies, delivering bad news, reporting financial data, and cross-cultural and international communication. 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 website http://businesscommunication.org/assignments .

This case study, an example of scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) research, explores student motivations to collaborate with both peer teams and community partners in a service-learning course. Written by one instructor and three undergraduates, the article draws on personal narratives, student reflections, and a postcourse student survey. Our experiences and findings suggest that in courses like these positive extrinsic factors motivate students to collaborate in ways that the extrinsic motivators in typical assignments do not, helping to foster trust and shared goals. We also share our work as an example of how to include student voices in SoTL work.