This study offers a comprehensive review of data-based research on the practice of multicommunicating, that is, the behavior of participating in multiple, overlapping conversations. Initial research has occurred in various academic disciplines and described the phenomenon with a variety of terms. The authors begin by defining multicommunication and then identifying and comparing these various other terms. Next, they summarize past research, offer revised versions of five propositions concerning multicommunicating, and identify a new concept, multicommunicator aspirational stress. Finally, they offer suggestions for both pedagogy and future research on multicommunicating.

Senior U.S. business executives reported that in making recent promotion decisions, they had placed a great deal of weight on candidates’ interpersonal skills, less weight on oral communication skills, and even less weight on writing skills. Older business managers ranked communication skills as more important than did the younger managers. If this age-related difference is a maturation effect, younger managers may place more emphasis on communication as they mature. If the age-related difference is a cohort effect, the relative importance of communication skills for advancement may shift as Generation X executives replace boomer executives in top-level positions at U.S. corporations.

As technology changes business practices, it becomes even more important that our students—and we ourselves—think rhetorically. Our pedagogy should help students look at (not just through) new media to understand how new media reshape the rhetorical situation (audience, exigency, constraints) and to use them effectively. Furthermore, new digital technologies that capture and preserve business messages create opportunities and raise new research questions. Viewing business practices through the lens of rhetoric can provide a valuable perspective for research and emphasize the community-shaping aspects (and thus an ethical dimension) of business. Therefore, in this commentary, the authors call for a reorientation of the field of business communication.

Writers often address letters to people with whom they have few if any personal connections. To increase understanding of rhetorical decision making in such noninterpersonal settings, this article analyzes letters to a United States senator. The analysis draws from three bodies of research on persuasion: situational context, persuade package, and personal constructs. On the basis of that theoretical grounding—and using deliberative democracy theory and the strategic-choice model—the authors develop hypotheses linking situation attributes and writer attributes to letter attributes. The results show that topic, position, sex, and technology are significantly related to the writer’s choice of appeals, argumentative complexity, and structural directness. They also demonstrate a strong link between technology and message length. These results raise several possibilities for further study, such as whether advocates sometimes address messages to an accessible person while aiming their argumentation at an archetypal authority figure.

This article reports Social Sciences Citation Index® citations of six periodicals, three that cover business communication explicitly and three that address related areas. The results indicate that business communication articles are cited by many different journals—primarily in the areas of written communication, social sciences and education, and business and economics—but are not cited frequently. The results also indicate that business communication periodicals compare favorably on several indexes of impact with 10 communication journals studied by Clement So. Some differences are noted between the six journals, and the most-cited business communication articles are identified.