Melinda Knight

Writing and Other Communication Standards in Undergraduate Business Education: A Study of Current Program Requirements, Practices, and Trends

A survey of 52 top-ranked undergraduate business schools suggests that profi ciency in written and oral communication is considered an important requirement for an undergraduate business degree. This conclusion derives from a study of offi cial Web sites, with follow-up verification by e-mail. All schools have writing and other communication (primarily oral) standnrds in place; 50 have lower-division writing requirements, and 17 schools have other lower-division communication requirements (primarily oral). A total of 36 schools have upper-division writing requirements, and 25 of those schools offer business communication courses through the business schools, and not through liberal arts divisions.

Management Communication in US MBA Programs: The State of the Art.

A study of 32 top-ranked MBA programs suggests that management communica tion is an important part of professional graduate management education. Eigh teen of the schools have required core courses in communication, and two other schools follow an integrated model and also offer electives; another nine offer elec tives only. A total of four schools also have writing proficiency requirements, and all four of those schools have core communication courses as well. Only three schools in the sample do not have any communication course offerings. These results are based on an analysis of official Websites and follow-up contact by e- mail or personal interview.

Book Review : Achieving Success Through Social Capital By Wayne Baker. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Inc., 2000. 256 pages

ocial capital is a hot topic in organizations today. The concept, which gained wide appeal among social scientists in the mid-1980s with Bourdieu’s (1985) essay, The Forms of Capital, has been used to explain a variety of social issues, related to civic involvement, public school education, youth behavior, public health, economic development, and ethnic relations (Adler & Kwon, 2000). Then in 2000, Putnam’s classic, Bowling Alone, which chronicles American society’s increasing individualism, caught the attention of the popular media, and communities around the country began holding workshops to evaluate and repair their social capital. Corporations have begun to explore its currency as they face various operational and personnel changes and challenges. I, too, became fascinated with the term as I conducted field research on entre-

Book Reviews : Handbook of International and Intercultural Communication. Second Edition. Edited by William B. Gudykunst and Bella Mody. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2002. 606 pages

f you are looking for a book that will give your graduate students a clear overall idea of international and intercultural communication research and theory, get them to read this volume. Likewise, new researchers in the field will benefit greatly from it. Established scholarsthe third audience category identified by the editors in their Foreword (p. ix)-will find the collection of articles a highly useful resource, particularly, in any teaching they do. In short, it is extremely useful to have such extensive coverage at hand in one volume. The book contains 29 articles in all. It is divided into 4 Parts: Cross-

Book Review : Writing Workplace Cultures: An Archaeology of Professional Writing By Jim Henry. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000. 260 pp. Index

locations. More recently, however, such qualitative research (called ethnography) has been conducted closer to home, especially (with the Chicago School of Sociology in the 1920s) in educational institutions, where researchers look at variations within ethnic and racial groups (for more information on ethnography as a research method, see http ://labweb.education.wisc.edu/cni916/def_eth.htm). Currently, ethnographers are examining an even wider range of cultural settings, including urban street gangs, suburban communities (gated and ungated), Internet discussion groups, and members of a profession. Writing Workplace Cultures can be seen as one such examination.

Book Reviews : The Social Life of Information By John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2000. 320 pages

ately, I have been indulging in the word &dquo;information,&dquo; noting its conLtrived conjugations (infomate, infomedia, infomercial, informatics) and its prodigious pairings (information highway, information systems, information technology, information broker). Such nomenclatures designate information as an object to be transcribed, traded, and transmitted, with the help of state-of-the-art vehicles and busy information workers. Many organizations have been constructing information stations (a.k.a. computer clusters) to ensure their places at the &dquo;revolution.&dquo; We, as busi-

Book Reviews : The Expressive Organization: Linking Identity, Reputation, and the Corporate Brand: Edited by Majken Schultz, Mary Jo Hatch, and Mogens Holten Larsen. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. 292 pages

THE EXPRESSIVE ORGANIZATION PROVIDES a comprehensive set of readings that fills an important gap in the literature of integrative organizational communication studies. The approach is synergistic and the outlook ecumenical; the contributors come from a wide range of backgrounds. The choice of contributors reflects the ferment and innovation currently at work among those who are groping towards new definitions for the complex, interrelated notions of organizational identity, corporate reputation, and branding. The editors have structured the book around six topics: &dquo;Rethinking Identity,&dquo; The Symbolic Marketplace,&dquo; &dquo;Reputation as Strategy,&dquo; &dquo;Organizations as Brands,&dquo; &dquo;The Value of Storytelling,&dquo; and &dquo;Communicating Organizations.&dquo; The result is an often unruly but certainly thought-provoking assemblage of perspectives and methods that in one way or another aims to discover links between the tangible and intangible components of the aforementioned trinity of identity, reputation, and brand. _

Book Review : Narrative and Professional Communication Edited by Jane M. Perkins and Nancy Blyler. Stamford, CT: Ablex, 1999. 224 pages:

I HAVE LONG FOUND STORYTELLING to be an immensely valuable technique for teaching professional communication, and I was gratified recently to see the business section of the New York Times promoting the value of narrative as a critical tool for persuading audiences in a variety of professional settings-sales pitches, training sessions, presentations to hostile audiences, and even briefings to shareholders. An earlier article in