Business and Professional Communication Quarterly

This experiment tested the impacts of demographic congruence between synthetic humanlike spokesperson avatars and learners. Among 437 U.S. working adults, congruence did not affect knowledge transfer, and effects on perceived effectiveness and belonging were confined to one subgroup: Heterosexual White men rated incongruent avatars as more effective yet reported lower belonging with avatars of the same race but different gender. No other subgroup showed significant effects. Behavioral avatar choices mirrored this pattern. These findings identify a precise intersectional boundary condition, suggesting that effectiveness ratings alone may mask inclusion gaps. Implications for corporate training and business communication pedagogy are discussed.

The purpose of this literature synthesis was to identify AI literacy skills, specifically prompt engineering skills, that are applicable to the business communication classroom. By breaking down disciplinary literature silos, six AI competencies, which are extensions of skills already taught in the business communication classroom, were identified. The input competencies involve training students to (1) provide AI with detailed context, (2) create opportunities for clarification of instructions, and (3) think of the creation of communication material as an iterative process. Competencies for working with the AI-created material include training students to (4) evaluate the AI-generated content for accuracy, (5) assess bias, as well as (6) revise output for voice. Each skill extends existing business communication competencies. As such, this paper provides a roadmap for integrating AI literacy into business communication as an extension of existing curriculum rather than an addition of new content.

The release of ChatGPT in 2022 introduced both transformative opportunities and notable challenges for writing instruction and heightened instructors’ concerns about its impact on teaching and student learning. To explore how GenAI may enhance business communication in the age of AI while mitigating its negative effects on writing instruction, this Feature on Teaching article explains how instructors can proactively design custom AI tools to shift use from content generation to learning support, and offers a practical approach to adapting to an evolving, AI-driven context while exploring strategies to enhance student engagement and learning outcomes.

This study investigates how perceived credibility can serve as self-feedback to enhance speaker credibility. Using a critical literacy-informed self-assessment tool, 30 business undergraduates in an advanced business communication course observed the first minute of their recorded presentation at 5-s intervals for 5 non-verbal cues. Coded findings revealed two key gender differences in positioning for speaker credibility: females used fewer body movements, more facial expressiveness and eye contact while males demonstrated greater fluency and more confident hand gestures. These findings may allow instructors and learners to mitigate gender-based differences in the classroom to enhance oral presentation competence critical for workplace success.

Organizational communication patterns were utilized to predict employee creativity and innovation, with employee engagement examined as a potential mediator. Data were collected from participants employed across a variety of industries and organizations, using a census-matched, nationally representative sample ( N  = 378). As hypothesized, the conversation and positive conformity orientations positively predicted both creativity and innovation. Although negative conformity negatively correlated with creativity and innovation, it positively predicted employee innovation in the path analysis. Employee engagement served as a full mediator for positive conformity and a partial mediator for the conversation orientation with both creativity and innovation.

This study examines how a structured LinkedIn workshop influenced undergraduates’ intention to engage in professional online networking. Grounded in Experiential Learning Theory, the workshop combined interactive instruction, guided profile development, and a practitioner-led session. Based on post-intervention survey data from undergraduate students in Vietnam, the findings show that only familiarity with LinkedIn and the perceived training role of the guest speaker significantly predicted engagement intention. The study contributes to business communication pedagogy by emphasizing platform familiarization and expert-led instruction in career-oriented digital learning.

This research uses a hypothetical case discussion to make students understand writing as a thinking and managerial decision-making process versus as a technical output–based task in the context of artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted writing. Using post-and-then-pre survey data and classroom experience of students, the study reports significant improvement in students’ awareness of contextual reasoning, critical thinking, and the limitations of generative AI tools. AI’s compliance orientation and lack of human judgement was critically analysed. This article highlights the importance of sequential use of AI with humans setting the context and critically understanding the problem before giving a prompt.

This exploratory study investigates how frontline managers (n = 10) interpret Generation Z’s early-career communication challenges. Analyzed via constructivist grounded theory and Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT), three themes emerged: professional communication readiness, interpersonal adaptability, and emotional regulation. Findings suggest that early-career communication breakdowns often reflect interpretive mismatches and accommodation failures rather than simple skill deficits. Rather than presenting definitive conclusions, these provisional insights offer a foundational framework to guide future large-scale validation studies, curriculum design, and workplace onboarding.

Annual assessment scores from the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), local business leader feedback, and extensive classroom experience all indicate that students need additional practice writing, particularly in business and/or technical programs in which students often actively avoid courses featuring writing (and to a lesser extent, public speaking). Moreover, experiential learning activities tend to aid students in their eventual transition into the workplace—and they often generate increased levels of student enthusiasm and engagement. However, even as students commonly engage in group-work in business and tech programs, they typically operate within insular groups that rarely if ever interact with other groups. On the other hand, real-world workgroups depend functionally upon contributions from other groups and, in turn, produce deliverables of their own within cycles of inter- and intra-group feedback and cooperation. Therefore, this semester-long, full-class assignment has been designed to address these issues within an Information Technology course setting that, quite unexpectedly for the participants, forces students to practice all of these skills within a simulated work environment.

Business communication pedagogy continues to debate the ways in which professional experience and theoretical training shape cross-cultural negotiation competencies. This study compares cultural intelligence (CQ) self-assessments and live simulation performance among 55 executive education participants and 79 university students from Mexico and Germany. Participants completed a CQ instrument before a multicultural HQ–subsidiary negotiation simulation. Students reported higher metacognitive, cognitive, and behavioral CQ but not motivational CQ. HQ teams outperformed subsidiary teams, and bilateral negotiations generated stronger performance than did presentations. The findings suggest that the simulation architecture influences which communication competencies are observable and rewarded.

This article presents a curated collection of four teaching innovations presented at the Association for Business Communication 90th conference in Long Beach, California, as well as online, in October 2025. These My Favorite Assignment presenters demonstrated various activities in helping students learn skills in analyzing and summarizing research results within business contexts. This My Favorite Assignment 33rd edition introduces readers to a wide variety of classroom-ready ideas that integrate research, analysis, and summary skills. Teaching support materials—instructions to students, stimulus materials, slides, rubrics, frequently asked questions, links, and sample student projects—are downloadable from the Association for Business Communication website.

Learning and development, in its many forms, including one-off training seminars, multisession learning academies, and coaching, continues to be a priority for organizations in all industries. The forms that leadership development takes vary nearly as much as the needs and skill areas of the leaders themselves. Our argument in this article is that although there are myriad ways to do leadership development, some are more effective than others. This article reviews a variety of common approaches to leadership development, progressing from “good” to “better” to “best” practices. Then we present what we term a “breakthrough” approach to leadership development through an in-depth, illustrative case study showcasing how one Fortune 500 company is scaling coaching across the company.

The Résumé Redesign exercise equips business communication students with essential job search competencies through an experimental approach to résumé design. Grounded in contemporary research on AI literacy and résumé design, this assignment incorporates an AI-powered résumé scanner alongside faculty feedback to strengthen students’ understanding of formatting, mechanics, and audience adaption. Survey results from 136 student respondents indicate the AI feedback to be clear and helpful. This exercise offers flexibility for in-person and online learning environments to enhance a résumé assignment and introduce students to AI-mediated recruitment practices, while maintaining the critical role of human review in the résumé evaluation.

This article presents a curated collection of six teaching innovations presented at the Association for Business Communication 90th conference in Long Beach, California, as well as online, in October 2025. These My Favorite Assignment (MFA) presenters demonstrated various activities in helping students learn skills in communicating persuasively within business contexts. This My Favorite Assignment 33rd edition introduces readers to a wide variety of classroom-ready ideas that integrate persuasive skills. Teaching support materials—instructions to students, stimulus materials, slides, rubrics, frequently asked questions, links, and sample student projects—are downloadable from the Association for Business Communication website.

This study examines how diversity and inclusion are communicated in LinkedIn job advertisements as workplace communication texts. Using qualitative, discourse-oriented analysis of job advertisements from global hotel brands, the study identifies recurring discursive frames through which organisations construct inclusivity, including belonging-oriented language, celebration of diversity, formal equal opportunity claims, and well-being–focussed narratives. These discourses are realised through specific communicative signals such as non-discrimination statements, values-based cultural cues, identity-affirming language, and references to inclusive policies. The study proposes the Inclusive Recruitment Communication Process conceptual framework, explaining inclusive recruitment communication as a platform-mediated process linking discourse, signalling, and conceptualised applicant sensemaking.

This article’s author situates late 19th-century essays by Andrew Carnegie within the rhetorical history of business and professional communication (BPC). A close analysis of the essays reveals that Carnegie relied on rhetoric to shape his public image as a benevolent business leader during a period characterized by significant socioeconomic divisions in the United States. Three primary themes— wealth , labor , and democracy —emerge, which the author argues animated Carnegie’s reasoning and arguments throughout the essays. The author concludes by recommending greater attention to the rhetorical history of BPC in future research and teaching.

This study addresses the persistent misalignment between Arabic language curricula in Chinese universities and the communicative demands of Arabic-mediated business work. Adopting an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design, we surveyed 105 Chinese graduates who use Arabic in professional settings and conducted follow-up interviews with three lecturers responsible for Arabic for Business Purposes (ABP) courses. Exploratory factor analysis confirmed three reliable constructs: teaching methodology, workplace ability, and future training needs, while regression analyses showed that learner-centered, task-based teaching methodologies significantly predict graduates’ perceived workplace ability and heighten their awareness of ongoing training needs. The qualitative findings illuminated high-stakes communicative events such as negotiations, client correspondence, and intercultural meetings, and revealed systematic gaps between academic instruction and workplace discourse practices. Integrating quantitative and qualitative strands, the study proposes a dual-layer instructional model consisting of eight developmental stages and five interrelated competence domains that link classroom tasks to authentic business communication events. The model offers a contextualized pathway for redesigning ABP curricula in China and contributes to wider debates on how language-for-specific-purposes programmes can better support employability and professional communication readiness.

Teacher communication influences students’ cognitive and emotional well-being, yet mechanisms linking communication behaviors to learning outcomes remain underexplored. Grounded in the conservation of resources framework, this study tested an ecological model in which teacher clarity and rapport indirectly reduced writing apprehension through perceived immediacy, self-efficacy, and burnout. Undergraduate students ( N  = 389) in Business and Professional Communication courses completed validated measures. Structural equation modeling supported a serial mediation: clarity and rapport predicted immediacy and self-efficacy, which reduced burnout and, in turn, writing apprehension. Findings highlight burnout as a psychological conduit linking instructional communication to student anxiety.

To address students’ challenges in business writing and bridge the gap between workplace demands and the skills of new professionals, this quasi-experimental study examined the effects of flipped-ARCS and face-to-face ARCS instruction on Pakistani undergraduate English as a Second Language (ESL) students’ business writing achievement and motivation in a business communication course. The findings indicated that the flipped-ARCS model was more effective in improving business writing, while face-to-face ARCS instruction better boosted students’ motivation, supporting the potential of innovative teaching strategies and providing valuable insights for educators and policymakers on integrating technology-based instructional methods into business writing education.

This article presents a curated collection of six teaching innovations presented at the Association for Business Communication 90th conference in Long Beach, California, as well as online, in October 2025. These MFA presenters demonstrated activities in helping students understand the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and social media in business communication. This My Favorite Assignment 34th edition introduces readers to a variety of classroom-ready ideas that integrate tasks involving social media and AI. Teaching support materials—instructions to students, stimulus materials, slides, rubrics, frequently asked questions, links, and sample student projects—are downloadable from the Association for Business Communication website.

This study examined how lecture background type influences student learning experiences in business and professional communication contexts. An online experiment was conducted with undergraduate students in the United States. Participants viewed a lecture on one-way interviews presented with either a digitally created background (university-branded PowerPoint slide) or authentic-appearing background (image of a physical office wall). The results revealed an indirect effect of lecture background type on students’ perceptions, mediated by the perceived social presence of the instructor: specifically, a lecture delivered with an authentic-appearing background fostered social presence, which in turn, enhanced students’ perceptions of the instructor’s credibility and their affective learning.

This study explores how truth-default theory (TDT) and relevance theory apply to public speaking and business communication. Two hundred eight college students watched one of four speech introductions varying by topic relevance and the presence of an explicit credibility statement. Participants rated speaker trustworthiness and credibility. Results showed that topic relevance had a greater influence on audience perceptions than explicit credibility statements. Highly relevant topics reduced suspicion and supported TDT’s claim that deception detection requires a trigger. These findings illustrate how speakers can build credibility and how audiences evaluate messages in educational and business public speaking contexts.

How should academics who work in the field of business communication (or management, professional, or technical communication) think of their work? I propose that business communication should be understood as a sentinel discipline and a designer discipline. By sentinel discipline I mean a community that continually monitors (and responds to) changes in business practice. By designer discipline I mean a community that understands the instructional task as shaping the ways in which graduates will shape (and reshape) business organizations through their communicative behavior.

Business communication courses play a key role in preparing students for job market challenges, such as matching resume skills to the job ad. This article presents a classroom activity where students analyze a job description, create a t-chart listing the criteria on one side and experience/skills on the other, and develop an action plan for filling the gaps between the skills and experience the student has and what the ideal candidate would bring to the job. Through this experience, students become aware of their strengths and weaknesses while creating actionable strategies to become the ideal candidate for their post-graduation employment.

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).

Workplace gossip has long been a pervasive and intriguing communication phenomenon within organizational settings, yet its impact on group and team dynamics (i.e., coworker relationships and team performance) remains a topic of considerable interest. Drawing upon social exchange theory, this study scrutinizes the interplay between workplace gossip, coworker exchange, team performance and gender. The findings suggest that positive and negative gossip significantly influences coworker exchange, which in turn impacts team performance. Teams with stronger coworker exchange exhibit higher team performance, even in the presence of workplace gossip, and gender has no effect on these dynamics. Implications for scholars and practitioners in the supply chains and logistics industries are discussed.

Research on psychological safety has expanded rapidly; however, how employees’ communication behaviors shape organizational adjustment remains underexplored. This study examined two dimensions of discussion skills—Discussion Leadership and Empathy—and their associations with psychological safety and adaptive attitudes. A survey of 300 employees in Japan showed a dual-path pattern. Empathy was the strongest predictor of psychological safety, whereas Discussion Leadership was directly associated with adaptive attitudes independent of psychological safety. These findings specify distinct affective and structural communication mechanisms underlying workplace adjustment and highlight Discussion Leadership as a high-impact, learnable skill for fostering engagement, retention, and psychologically safe work environments.

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.

Positive communication and its importance to organizations has become a popular topic of research among organizational scholars. However, there remains a paucity of work exploring nonlinearities in the role of positivity in communication effectiveness, with little research examining whether there can be too much of a good thing when it comes to communication positivity. To address these gaps in the literature on positive communication, I tested the hypothesis that work-related workplace communication will exhibit an inverted U-shaped curvilinear relationship with positive emotion. This relationship is hypothesized to result from a tradeoff between total workplace communication and the proportion of total workplace communication that is explicitly work-related as communication positivity increases. The results of this study generally support the hypothesized relationship and, save for some minor caveats, the hypothesized mechanisms underlying it. Enclosed are discussions on these caveats and the implications of this study’s findings for both organizational researchers and practitioners.

This study contributes to the literature on corporate diversity and crisis management by analyzing stakeholder perceptions in the aftermath of Google’s and Microsoft’s sexual harassment scandals. The results reveal that both scandals were construed from the perspective of activism, an inherent feature of social media communication. While users made demands for additional corrective action from both companies, Google’s scandal was predominantly defined from the frames of controllability and perceived injustice, possibly eroding corporate reputation. By contrast, the frame of severity prevailed in the online discourse around Microsoft and showed a delineation between perceptions of senior leadership and HR. The findings have implications for the practice of communication management with respect to scandals.

Purpose: Writing has been identified as an important skill. Business writing refers to the form of writing that is used to communicate in formal settings in various corporations and organizations. A number of research studies have identified writing as a crucial skill that needs to be developed by students. The purpose of the study is therefore to understand how an experiential learning module on business writing can improve the email-writing and report-writing skills of management postgraduates. Design/Methodology/Approach: The study uses an experimental research methodology based on experiential learning pedagogy to obtain the results of the intervention on the business writing skills of the management postgraduate students. The module was developed by the researcher and then was taught to the students through the online platform Zoom. Pretest, posttest, and delayed posttest analysis was conducted to find the impact of the intervention. The students were evaluated by an industry expert to avoid bias as they were trained by the researcher. Findings: The results of the study indicated that the intervention had a significant impact on the business writing skills of the participants. The results of the component analysis also indicated a large effect on the content, persuasive abilities, lateral thinking abilities, and the interpersonal skills of the participants in written communication. The analysis of the test scores revealed that an initial training based on the experiential learning methods can have a long-term impact on the improvement of the skills of the students, as the delayed posttest results were more than the posttest results. Originality/value: The study will be beneficial to educators, trainers, as well as students in understanding how experiential learning can impact the business writing skills of the students.

Team presentations are prevalent in education and business, yet there is a notable scarcity of scholarly research and discussion on effective delivery practices. The authors bridge this gap by introducing a theoretical foundation for team presentations, enabling further exploration. They first establish prerequisites that a team must address regarding the speech outline, member roles, and transition techniques. They then categorize five distinct team presentation formats and explore each one’s strategic advantages, disadvantages, and application contexts. Lastly, the authors offer strategic implications for practitioners and proposals for future academic inquiries into the realm of team presentation theory.

In this article I explain how the ecological perspective, posthumanism, and rhetorical genre studies all coalesce into a theoretical framework from which to approach business communication theory and practice. I use the United States National Security Strategy as a research object to demonstrate this theoretical approach.

This case, developed for the 2025 ABC Case Writing Competition and sponsored by the ABC Student Competition Committee, asks students to apply persuasive communication strategies to a real-world crisis in public service. Following a violent incident at the Worcester (Massachusetts) Public Library, students step into the role of Board President to advocate for staff safety and resources before the City Council. The case highlights the challenges of community advocacy, secondary traumatic stress, and organizational resilience while offering students practice in crafting persuasive, high-stakes messages.

This study examines the role of positive communication in AI-generated recruitment messaging and its influence on Generation Z job seekers. Drawing on positive communication scholarship (Mirivel & Fuller, 2024) and the Human Needs Approach (Socha & Beck, 2015), we explore how AI-generated job descriptions shape anticipatory socialization and perceptions of workplace culture. Using qualitative focus groups, we identify key themes related to authenticity, engagement, and the fulfillment of fundamental psychological needs. Findings indicate that although positive communication enhances job attractiveness, job seekers remain skeptical of AI-generated content unless it aligns with real-world workplace values. Organizations must balance AI efficiency with human oversight to maintain trust and ensure transparency in recruitment messaging. This study contributes to business communication research by offering practical and pedagogical implications for AI-integrated hiring strategies and ethical recruitment communication.

This article reframes professional networking through the lens of positive communication, arguing that authentic, value-driven relationship building enhances both personal well-being and professional growth. Drawing on positive psychology, emotional intelligence, and moral development, it highlights how empathy, gratitude, and identity alignment transform networking from a transactional act into a relational, self-actualizing practice. The article offers a pedagogical framework for instructors, including a multisession unit to help students internalize and practice positive communication principles. Ultimately, this approach fosters deeper, more fulfilling connections that empower students to become confident, ethical professionals capable of sustaining meaningful, high-quality relationships throughout their careers.

This article presents a curated collection of nine teaching innovations presented at the Association for Business Communication 90th conference in Long Beach, California, as well as online, in October 2025. These My Favorite Assignment (MFA) presenters demonstrated various activities in helping students prepare for their careers and develop their professional skills. This My Favorite Assignment 33rd edition introduces readers to a wide variety of classroom-ready ideas that integrate career readiness tasks. Teaching support materials—instructions to students, stimulus materials, slides, rubrics, frequently asked questions, links, and sample student projects—are downloadable from the Association for Business Communication website.

This article presents critical positive communication pedagogy (CPCP), which synthesizes the fields of critical pedagogy and positive communication pedagogy to promote positive communication practices that develop a social justice sensibility among students. We argue that CPCP contributes to the creation of learner-centered classrooms that promote interpersonal connection, foster feelings of inclusion and belonging, and aid students in achieving sustainable happiness. We provide examples of CPCP in business and professional communication classrooms to promote diversity and inclusion, specifically related to issues of gender and sexuality, race, disability, and class.

This article looks at how I successfully redesigned a business communication course to support the development of students’ interpersonal and team communication as well as negotiation skills through a strong focus on positive communication and improvisation. The article demonstrates that building a course around Mirivel’s (2014) positive communication model and using improvisational techniques in learning activities can effectively support students’ business communication skills development. The article provides instructors with concrete course modules and activities that can be used in similar courses.

We address postpandemic student stress by exploring the integration of mediated-reflexivity assignments to foster positive communication and enhance well-being. The three-part assignment—student reflection, instructor feedback, and final student response—builds on critical reflexivity and positive communication principles. Findings suggest that this assignment improves student engagement, retention, and critical thinking. Students reported a deeper understanding of course concepts and improved real-life application. Instructors benefit from connecting personally with students, adjusting lesson plans based on reflections, and fostering an inclusive, supportive classroom environment. The technique offers a scalable, flexible approach to enhance student learning and well-being.

Positive communication is crucial for effective teaching, influencing student engagement, motivation, and educational outcomes. Synthesizing educational and interdisciplinary literature, this article develops two core propositions: (1) cultivating classroom relationships through responsive interactions and peer connectedness, and (2) strengthening teacher affirmation and credibility via authentic and empathetic communication practices. Specific strategies, such as personalized feedback, inclusive communication methods, structured confirmation behaviors, and generationally responsive techniques, equip educators to enhance classroom environments, improve student learning experiences, and prepare students effectively for academic achievement and professional collaboration.

This study evaluates a “feedback-only,” constrained-generative AI tool designed to support revision without generating or rewriting student text. StoryCoach was developed for a business communication elective and grounded in cognitive apprenticeship with principles of feedback literacy. The tool generated structured feedback: one strength, one opportunity, and one reflective question per submission. Analysis of 57 paired drafts showed significant gains in feature-specific rhetorical execution, with vividness as the primary quantitative indicator (Cohen’s d  = 1.39), supported by independent reader judgments and student reflections. Findings demonstrate that constrained-generative AI can function as a pedagogical partner that strengthens rhetorical awareness and preserves authorship integrity.

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 conceptual article develops a model of positive LinkedIn communication, arguing that responsive, affirming, and authentic interaction—organized into two higher-order behavioral dimensions—strengthens perceived support and trust, thereby shaping professional outcomes (e.g., recruitment, collaboration, and commercial opportunities). By shifting attention from static profile signals to communicative behaviors enacted in posts, comments, and messages, the framework advances testable propositions and specifies mechanisms, boundary conditions, and potential trade-offs that invite empirical evaluation across organizational and cultural contexts.