Janis Forman

The Genre System of the Harvard Case Method

Focusing on the case write-up within the Harvard case method of instruction, this study provides historical and empirical evidence for the theory of genre systems. The Harvard case literature and interviews at a case-based business school in the Harvard tradition show that the purpose of this largely ignored written genre is to prepare students to participate in the primary genre, oral classroom discussion of the case. The case genre system provides highly conventionalized conductor-choreographer roles for instructors and blunt, detached consultant roles for student writers/speakers who repeatedly enact decisive, adversarial personae affirming practices and values of the business school.

Collaborative Business Writing: A Burkean Perspective for Future Research

This paper offers a Burkean framework for study of collaborative business writing. It begins with a review of the research and scholarship on collaborative writing by com position and by business and technical communication specialists. Then it explains a Burkean framework that identifies key areas for future investigation and provides categories for conducting research. Finally, it argues for a research agenda that em phasizes qualitative studies first, to be followed by quantitative research.

Research on Collaboration, Business Communication, and Technology Reflections on an Interdisciplinary Academic Collaboration

Interdisciplinary research is often recommended and occasionally studied, but little has been written about the personal, practical, and methodological issues involved in doing it. In this article, the authors describe one particular research collaboration between a business communication scholar and an information systems researcher. They present their observations about the political pitfalls and personal benefits of their interdisciplinary collaboration. As they attempt to generalize from their experience, the authors conclude that politics in the broadest sense of the term is the most critical challenge to the conduct of interdisciplinary research.

Corporate image and the establishment of Euro Disney: Mickey mouse and the French press

Drawing upon publications in the French press, this article considers three interweaving themes that characterized the construction of the Euro Disney park. It then offers an analysis of the historical context for and the implications of the parks construction, using the literature of French cultural studies and cross‐cultural studies for support. It concludes with a discussion of the possible consequences to the company of Disneys negative image in the French press.

Educating European Corporate Communication Professionals for Senior Management Positions: A Collaboration between UCLA's Anderson School of Management and the University of Lugano.

UCLA’s program in strategic management for European corporate communication professionals provides participants with a concentrated, yet selective, immersion in those management disciplines taught at U.S. business schools, topics that are essential to their work as senior advisors to CEOs and as leaders in the field. The choice of topics represents the close collaboration between the directors of the UCLA and Lugano programs. The UCLA program also encourages the active participation of the professionals by offering an exposure to teaching and classroom communication practices of U.S. business schools that adhere to the case approach to business education and by providing numerous opportunities for participants to present their analyses and application of management topics to their professional roles and responsibilities. Working with European professionals also enables U.S. faculty to reconsider some of their own assumptions about teaching as they train U.S.-based MBA students.