To investigate the contribution of formal communications (FCs) to problem-solving knowledge work, this study examines survey, interview, and observational data from 212 teams who produced contracting documents, reports, and PowerPoint presentations while working on projects for diverse organizations worldwide. The study found that these FCs engaged teams in a contextual–conceptual dynamic involving interactive pairs of integral work activities. The findings validate, integrate, and extend prior scholarship on organizational genres, writing to learn, and the role of material texts in the work process, leading to a comprehensive framework that pinpoints opportunities for managing FCs to achieve their fullest potential.

This study examines the nature and value of empathic communication in call center dyads. Our research site was a multinational financial services call center that we came to know through grounded study techniques, including analyses of 289 stressful calls. Examining calls as communication genre revealed that agents and customers have conflicting organizational, service, and efficiency needs that undermine communication. But three types of empathic expression can mitigate these conflicts in some interactions. Affective expressions, such as “I’m sorry,” were less effectual, but attentive and cognitive responses could engender highly positive responses although customers’ need for them varied tremendously. Thus, customer service agents must use both diagnostic and enactment skills to perform empathic communication effectively, a coupling that we call empathy work.

This research provides a framework identifying dynamic tensions that occur as subordinates try to maintain a sufficient degree of politeness while reporting to superiors on workplace tasks. Building on politeness theory, the framework suggests how conventional politeness dimensions, such as deference, solidarity, and non-imposition are challenged by organizational obligations and workplace tasks requiring confidence, direction, and individuality. The framework evolved from a series of analyses of two samples: one consisting of e-mail between international project teams and their domestically located supervisors, the other of Asian and U.S. business undergraduates' responses to two workplace scenarios involving critiquing a superior's work. Analyses revealed competing communicative dimensions relevant to subordinate-to-superior interactions, including dimensions that are underdeveloped in politeness literature. Examples from these data suggest that managing a sufficient equilibrium between these dimensions requires a substantial knowledge of rhetorical and linguistic alternatives.

The recent addition of a writing performance assessment to the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) means that many students now enter business school with a writing assessment score and perhaps even a heightened awareness that writing matters in some way to the successful completion of an MBA degree. This situation presents teachers of business and managerial writing with a new opportunity and pressure to provide students with writing tools that are directly relevant to their business studies and professional careers. The Analysis of Argument Measure and the Persuasive Adaptiveness Measure introduced here are assessment tools that may be used to explain holistic assessment scores (which students receive on the GMAT writing component) and may assist students in understanding and evaluating their writing, both in school and in the workplace. Designed to evaluate managerial documents that are persuasive and directorial in nature, these measures were developed through a series of pilots and used to assess a selected sample of managerial memorandums that were also scored holistically. Correlating the holistic and analytic scores revealed a positive association, and interrater reliability achieved good agreement beyond chance. These results suggest that the measures may be reliably employed to assess characteristics valued in managerial writing. Examples of how these analytic measures may be employed for teaching and research are also described.

Research on advance organizers demonstrates the importance of memoran dum subject lines for reader comprehension and, by implication, reinforces the notion that a relationship exists between writer choice and communica tion context. Yet, existing pedagogy presents memorandum subject lines with no regard for context. This article introduces a taxonomy for subject-line com position that takes context into account by classifying memorandum subject lines as either neutral or directed. Analysis of 483 memorandum subject lines led to the development of this taxonomy. Findings from this analysis, as well as findings from several follow-up exercises which tested the usefulness of the taxonomy, indicate that writers compose memorandum subject lines much as pedagogical materials recommend and that these subject lines are usually neutral. However, when given alternatives, writers actually prefer directed sub ject linesforsomesituations. While the study focuses on subject lines in mana gerial memorandums, the proposed taxonomy and findings on writer choice may be more broadly applied and have important implications for pedagogy and research on managerial writing.