bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Self-Help Awareness in Israel: An Expression of Structural Changes and Expanding Citizen Participation
Authors: Gidron Benjamin , Bargal David
Published: March 2007

Observers of the Israeli society in the 1950s and 1960s have characterized its political structure as centralistic, with a very large public sector and with relatively little activity taking place outside it or without its consent. There are indications that since the early 1970s, certain structural changes have been taking place, whereby the centralistic nature of the society is giving way to a more open and tolerant atmosphere towards political, social and voluntary organizations, with a greater degree of independence from the public sector. It is argued that the develop ment of the Self-Help Awareness is a reflection and an expression of these changes and the self-help phenomenon has to be understood within this societal context. Findings from a recent survey of self-help groups in Jerusalem show that there were over 30 such groups in a variety of fields. The data also shows that most groups were new and fragile. Implications of these findings are discussed.
Minority Participation on Boards of Directors of Human Service Agencies: Some Evidence and Suggestions
Authors: Widmer Candace
Published: March 2007

Boards of directors of human service agencies are rarely representative of the com munities they serve. This paper examines the characteristics, recruitment, retention, and participation of minority members of boards. Minority representation and the stresses unique to minority participants are also discussed. Some practical steps toward achieving diversity and some directions for future research are suggested.
Self-Transcendence, Time Perspective, and Prosocial Behavior
Authors: Mathews Robert C. , Kling Kacey J.
Published: March 2007

This study examines the hypothesis that different types of prosocial behaviors are motivated by different ways of fulfilling the need to relate to life beyond one's self. Lifton's (1973, 1976) theory of symbolic immortality is used to generate predictions concerning relations between differences in the ways individuals express this need and differences in the frequency of various types of prosocial behaviors. In the study, 482 adult respondents in the Baton Rouge community filled out a questionnaire measuring their symbolic immortality needs and their time perspective, and estima ting the frequency with which they engage in a variety of prosocial and asocial behaviors. A factor analysis of the social behavior data revealed five prosocial factors (peace activism, nominal donors, proximal donors, family communication, and family security), and two asocial factors (nonconformist pleasure seeking, and illegal behaviors). Multiple regression analyses indicated that the motivational bases of these social behavior factors were quite different. However, the "nature mode" of symbolic immortality (e.g., identification with nature) was related to all five prosocial factors and none of the asocial factors. The results are discussed in terms of current research on prosocial behavior and applications to motivating volunteers in social organizations.
Disarmament, Citizen Activism, or What? Beliefs and Values of the Nuclear Test Ban Movement of 1957-63
Authors: MacDougall John
Published: March 2007

An analysis of the beliefs and values of the popular movement for a nuclear test ban in the United States between 1957 and 1963. The movement's history is summarized. Advertisements in the New York Times placed by SANE are used as evidence of the movement's beliefs and values. The main values the ads advocate are found to be disarmament, the unity of the world's peoples, inter-government co-operation, and citizen activism. The most common factual belief found in the ads is that the world faces a vast danger. Differences between the values expressed in the Eisenhower and Kennedy years reflect perhaps a greater sense of political opportunities under Ken nedy. It is suggested that SANE's ads deflect charges of Communist sympathies partly by drawing on traditional American values like citizen activism.
Reagan Among the Corinthians
Authors: Lyman Richard W.
Published: March 2007

Hopes for an advance of voluntarism and philanthropy in Ronald Reagan's administration were dashed by its failure to build on the tradition of using private resources, both human and financial, to resolve public problems. Reagan's legacy may well be to strengthen the hand of those who see the voluntary tradition as elitist and reactionary.
The Governing Body Role: Problems and Perceptions in Implementation
Authors: Harris Margaret
Published: March 2007

This paper focuses on problems of implementing the role of govern ing bodies in the voluntary sector. It draws primarily on a case study of local management committees in a national service-providing welfare agency in England. An examination was made of the percep tions and assumptions held by staff and governors about the imple mentation of key functions of governing bodies, including policy making, planning, securing resources, monitoring service quality, and controlling staff. The paper discusses themes that emerge from the case study and suggests that the governing body role in the vol untary sector is most usefully conceptualized as interlinked and in terdependent with staff roles. Agency culture and organizational structure are seen to have an important impact on the nature of the relationship between staff and their boards. Some proposals are made for tackling problems that arise around the implementation of the governing body role in the voluntary sector.
Children as Citizens in Training: Political Socialization for a Strong Democracy
Authors: Walter Virginia A.
Published: March 2007

The author analyzed the content of three popular prime-time televi sion programs and the California state school system's social science curriculum to determine their possible effect on the development of political efficacy in children. The findings were checked by conduct ing focus groups with children. This exploratory research suggests that participation in a youth service organization is a more potent agent for the transference of knowledge, values, and skills relating to political efficacy and civic voluntarism than either television or formal education.
Multiple Forms of Volunteer Activity in the Public Sector: Functional, Structural, and Policy Dimensions
Authors: Brudney Jeffrey L. , Warren Robert
Published: March 2007

Growing use of volunteers in public programs has outstripped our understanding of the behavioral, structural, and policy effects of citi zen inputs of time, fiscal resources, and influence. A reconsideration of the functional roles of volunteers and their linkages with public agencies is needed.
Motivational Differences Between Black and White Volunteers
Authors: Latting Jean Kantambu
Published: March 2007

Several studies have suggested that both altruistic and egoistic motiva tions help to explain why people choose to volunteer. These theories have been applied universally without regard to cultural differences among volunteer groups. To refine these theories, comparisons were performed between black and white volunteers of a Big Brothers/Big Sisters agency in a southwestern city. The black volunteers were significantly more likely to report altruistic reasons for volunteering than their white counterparts.
Activity Areas and Developmental Stages in Self-Help Groups
Authors: Trojan Alf , Halves Edith , Wetendorf Hans-Wilhelm , Bauer Rudolph
Published: March 2007

This article reports on four and a half years of participant observation in two self-help associations, a Gray Panthers group and a Parents Circle of Young Drug Abusers. As the first step of our analysis, we developed a classification system for the activities of these groups (self-maintenance, mutual aid, socializing, voluntary work, and lobbying). This helped us to identify and characterize five developmental stages (solidarization, orienta tion, stabilization, differentiation, and institutionalization of one or more activity areas). We describe the development of the two groups and their transformation over time, suggest some hypotheses for further research, and discuss some implications of the results.
Expanding the Government-by- Proxy Construct: Volunteers in the Delivery of Public Services
Authors: Brudney Jeffrey L.
Published: March 2007

Government by proxy—the use of third parties rather than government employees and organizations to deliver publicly funded services—is on the increase. Volunteers constitute one of the third parties through which governments fulfill important service responsibilities. This article discusses the advantages of this form of government by proxy as well as the implica tions of volunteer involvement for public management.
Four Sectors or Five? Retaining the Member-Benefit Sector
Authors: Smith David Horton
Published: March 2007

The sectors of society include not only the government, business, and nonprofit sectors but also the personal (expanded household) sector. The nonprofit sector is the fourth (and, if necessary, fifth) sector, not the third sector. Either the membership sector (member-serving nonprofits) is rec ognized as a significant part of the nonprofit sector more adequately, or it should be seen as a fifth sector.
Varieties of Activism in Three Western Democracies
Authors: Heunks Felix J.
Published: March 2007

A cross-cultural comparison of the characteristics of activists and initiators in three modes of action indicates that civic attitudes, group mobilization, and capacities are more important than dissatisfaction and values as backgrounds of activism. Although the three modes of direct action tend to be applied in different situations, they also have much in common. Instead of distinguishing unconventional from conventional participation, one might speak of varieties of activism.
Neighborhood Needs and Organizational Resources: New Lessons from Detroit
Authors: Checkoway Barry
Published: March 2007

Despite declining conditions in many U.S. urban neighborhoods, some people have organized and planned programs and services at the neigh borhood level. This article reports research designed to assess the scope and quality of participation in neighborhood organizations in Detroit, one of the nation's most seriously distressed cities. The findings suggest that although people participate in organizations with a wide range of activities and accomplishments, their leaders perceive that neighborhood problems are worsening and that neighborhood participation and organizational resources are not necessarily enough to reverse decline.
Self-Help Groups Providing Services: Conflict and Change
Authors: Zev Kalifon S.
Published: March 2007

Since 1963, the lives of thousands of psychiatric patients in the United States have been drastically and dramatically changed by a national policy change to community-based mental health care. Faults in the implementation of that policy have often placed the burden of care for these patients in the hands of their families. Several years ago, a self-help group composed of par ents of chronically mentally ill adults founded two small residential facilities for their patient-children. One facility was intended to be an innovative attempt to provide care for this population but quickly became a facility like those established by professionals. The other facility unintentionally pre served the model of the first. This study looks at the development of the par ents' self-help group, the two facilities, and the conflicts that developed because of these attempts to provide formal services to the mentally ill.
On Sharing: A Preface to an Economic Theory of Voluntary Action
Authors: Wagner Antonin
Published: March 2007

This article constitutes a preface to an economic foundation of a theory of the voluntary sector-the share economy. The paper is divided into four sections. The first section is concerned with sharing as an alternative mode of interaction in a society, differing from two-way exchange and one-way transfer transactions and constituting an important element in building up communities. The analysis emphasizes the importance of certain types of goods requiring sharing. The characteristics of these goods, which are referred to here as collective goods, are explored in the second section. The third section shows that, from the point of view of social and economic efficiency, the production of collective goods will have to be assumed at least partially by a special economic sector termed the voluntary sector. Therefore, the voluntary sector and the transaction of sharing play a significant role in the allocation of resources comparable to the role assumed by the institutions of the market (exchange sector) and government (transfer sector). A concluding remark discusses some political ramifications of the economy of the voluntary sector.
The public librarian as budget manager
Authors: Midwinter Arthur , McVicar Murray
Published: March 2007

The article examines the role of the public librarian in the local authori ty budgetary process. It discusses the organizational structure in each authority and the chosen budgetary process, and analyses professional behaviour. The first section sets the work into context and examines the basic concepts. The second reports on the results of a survey of 20 Scottish library authorities. The final part concludes by examining the budgetary outcomes and sug gests that the success of a library authority in securing finance depends both on the nature of the structure and process and on the manner in which library officers play the budgetary game.
Dictionaries of English: a decade of development
Authors: Grogan Denis J.
Published: March 2007

This has been a decade of develop ment for dictionaries of English, culminating in the publication of the Oxford English dictionary 2nd edition. Lexicography itself has emerged as a distinct profession. The dominance of the Concise Oxford dictionary in the single-vol ume dictionary market has been strongly challenged. The monolin gual learners' dictionary has made great strides, drawing on recent lin guistic research. After a slow start, computerization is now wide spread. The OED 2nd edition is not a full revision but an integration of the 1st edition and the Supplement, with some updating. It is now in database form and an interim CD- ROM has been published. Enhancements are planned.
The European Register of Microform Masters: a new bibliographical tool
Authors: Feather John , Vitiello Giuseppe
Published: March 2007

The European Register of Microform Masters (EROMM) is one of the pilot projects in the implementation of the EC Action Plan for Libraries. The paper traces its history, and puts it in the context of national and international con cern for microforms as a major instrument of preservation policy implementation. The feasibility study is described and analysed in detail, together with the issues which arise in planning EROMM. Finally, there is an account of the present situation (early summer 1991) and the likely future of the project.
Evolution of information resource management
Authors: Savic Dobrica
Published: March 2007

Information resource management (IRM) has been with us for almost three decades. Numerous articles and monographs have been written about this interesting unconventional field of management. This article sheds some light on the evolutionary path of IRM. Information explosion, pro liferation of paper and extensive use of information handling technologies are examined as causes for the incep tion of IRM. An attempt was also made to define relations and differ ences with other concepts such as records management, data manage ment and information management. As any other concept IRM had to be put to the test through its use in gov ernment and military sectors, as well as in private business. In dealing with the historical perspective of IRM this article examines some general and theoretical classifications, searching for the place of IRM in the history of information management. Finally, IRM regarded as a live concept, is studied through different stages of its own development.
Library effectiveness: the search for a social context
Authors: Calvert Philip J.
Published: March 2007

The literature of librarianship and information science rarely, if ever, deals with the social and political environment in which libraries oper ate and which shapes the services provided. Society provides the justi fication for libraries' existence and without society there would be no context in which to measure library effectiveness. Uses the example of the prevailing political philosophy in New Zealand to consider the way in which the separation of the client from the contractor makes it desir able for librarians to become part of the political consensus on library effectiveness. Describes a project, car ried out at the behest of the New Zealand Library Association as part of their quest for a set of public library standards incorporating performance measures, which studied performance measures applied to New Zealand public libraries using the Van House and Childers methodology and their multiple constituencies model of organizational effectiveness. Results from 3 groups: librarians; local gov ernment councillors; and users showed great similarities in percep tions of library effectiveness.
Evaluation of academic libraries: with special reference to the Copenhagen Business School Library
Authors: Cotta-Schonberg Michael , Line Maurice B.
Published: March 2007

Past studies of performance indicators for libraries have concentrated on theoreti cal considerations at the expense of prac tical measures applicable without undue effort in normal working situations. Many indicators advocated are highly valid but are too expensive in relation to their util ity. Libraries in some countries have tried to agree a total set of indicators before starting to apply any of them, while many individual libraries have instituted their own measures, which are unlikely to be totally consistent with those used by other libraries. A pilot project, conducted at the Copenhagen Business School Library, Denmark (CBS) aimed to approach the matter empirically, starting with a set of measures, testing them in one or more libraries, and then seeking agreement between libraries of the same type, in order to establish a standard set of mea sures that may be applied throughout the country. The pilot evaluation tested most of the proposed indicators satisfactorily; indicated those that were most promising; and confirmed many of the suspected strengths and weaknesses of the CBS Library, but putting them on a firmer quantitative footing. The study also pro duced unexpected findings and pointed to remedial action needing to be taken at once. A full report of the evaluation has been issued separately in Danish and English versions (Copenhagen Business School Library, 1992).
Breaking down the barriers
Authors: Lonsdale Ray , Everitt Jean
Published: March 2007

Reports on the first comprehensive national study, funded by the Arts Council of England and the University of Wales Aberystwyth Research Fund, to investigate the provision of European modern language books for children in UK public libraries. The aims were: to investigate the nature of European modern language book and non book publishing for children; to examine the relationship between the publishing of European language and translated materials; to explore the supply of these materials by bookshops and library suppliers and to examine library collections; and to produce an evaluative bibliographic listing of materials currently available for use by teachers. The survey had the effect of creating a greater awareness among young people's librarians about the issues surrounding foreign language materials and their place in children's collections. Results show clearly that a low priority is given to these materials by local authorities and this is reflected in the size, nature and accessibility of their library holdings and frag mentary nature of their services. Whilst many local authorities expressed the opinion that there was little demand for this material, that perception was seen to be conditional. The UK's partnership within the European Union was not seen to be a highly prioritized motive for the provision of European modern language library materials.
Uncertainty, Planning Sophistication and Performance in Small New Zealand Firms
Authors: Yusuf Attahir , Nyomori Robert O.
Published: March 2007

Environmental uncertainty is unavoidable. Business organisations, hence, have to develop ways and means to cultivate the opportunities and contain the men ace that resultfrom uncertainty. It has been argued that firms can address both the opportunity and menace questions of uncertainty through systematic plan ning which, in turn, help them enhance their performance. Using data from a sample of small firms in New Zealand, this study tries to examine the relation ship between environmental uncertainty, planning and performance. The re sults of the enquiry suggest that small firms do not respond to uncertainty with increased planning. However, when they plan, their performance does record some improvement.
Institutionalisation of Rural Entrepreneurship through NGOs: Introspection from the Case Studies
Authors: Singh Naresh
Published: March 2007

The rural population constitutes a major segment in India. The livelihood strate gies of this vast segment depend primarily on agriculture and allied activities. Growth in this agriculture sector has shown a declining trend during the last one decade. The declining trend is noted in the growth rate of employment and gross domestic production. In the context of this reality, it becomes a primary necessity for institutions and agencies involved in rural development in general and poverty alleviation in particular to undergo a paradigm shift. The bur geoning problem of population and underemployment can be tackled through institutionalising the process and concept of rural entrepreneurship. NGOs definitely have an increasing role to play in this process. The experience of the Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India (EDI) in implementing Rural Entrepreneurship Development Programmes (REDPs) using training as a strategy has yielded very positive results. This process was carried forward in collaboration with NGOs. This implementation strategy has proved effective. Using the case study methodology, an attempt has been made to understand the success and failure factors towards institutionalising this REDP approach.
Entrepreneurial Role Stress
Authors: Pareek Udai
Published: March 2007

Entrepreneurs, like all creative people, have to contend constantly with various kinds of mental stresses springing from a variety of sources. The entrepreneurs may not even be conscious of these stresses or where they originate from. Pleading that if the entrepreneurs are aware of the nature and pattern of their stresses they would be better able to cope with them, the author presents here an instrument which can help the entrepreneurs discover the sources of their stresses and gauge their intensity.
Small Business and the Regeneration of Britain's Coalfields
Authors: Turner Royce
Published: March 2007

In most countries of the world, governmental or quasi-governmental agen cies are engaged in efforts to stimulate entrepreneurship. This paper seeks to examine the impact of entrepreneurship stimulation efforts in Britain's deindustrialised coalfields. Analysing the effectiveness of development agencies established specially for this purpose, the paper concludes that for such attempts to be successful they need to be implemented within a socio-economic environment in which entrepreneurship and innovation have at least a presence and an existence.
Voluntary Initiatives for Tribal Development in Gujarat
Authors: Iyengar Sudarshan
Published: March 2007

The issue of development in the tribal areas has become complex as the conventional understanding of economic growth and development is not readily accepted as relevant by many scholars. Some plead that the tribals should be left alone, while most contend this view. In Gujarat, an Indian state with about 15 per cent tribal population, major initiatives for tribal development have come from the voluntary sector. This article attempts to review four voluntary initiatives in Gujarat by drawing upon existing studies and the author's first-hand knowledge of the field. The review suggests that although every initiative has had some significant impact on the lives of tribal people, the ones based on the mobilisation and organisa tion of local populations promise results that are most sustainable in the long run.
Preparing Business Leaders to Manage Social Impacts: Lessons from the Field
Authors: Gentile Mary C.
Published: March 2007

The power, wealth and impact of multinational corporations now exceed that of many national govern ments, and this fact has created an expectation that corporations have a responsibility to manage their impacts on the wider social context. Although these observations are increasingly cited as 'truisms' in the business press and in policy debates, few business schools have given attention to the management of social impacts into their core curriculum. In this article the author raises the question that, if business leaders, pol icy makers, NGOs and even the media agree there is a need, why is there so little expressed demand from business who recruit at business schools? The work done at the Aspen Institute has been presented in this regard. The Aspen Institute's Initiative for Social Innovation through Business (ISIB) has taken a system atic look at both the 'demand' for and the 'supply' of business education that addresses the interdependence between business needs and wider societal concerns. By means of global dialogues among CEOs and lead ers of the public, NGOs and academic sectors, as well as through surveys, focus groups and traditional research, Aspen ISIB has gathered data that illuminates this question of supply and demand, and also sug gests powerful levers for influencing what business scholars research and what business educators teach about the management of social impacts.
Character Competence of the Corporation
Authors: Sharma Subhash
Published: March 2007

This paper presents the concept of character competence as a basis for creating ethical organizations. In view of the gaps between the 'statement' of values and the 'state' of values that have been witnessed recently in many corporates, the need to improve character competence of the corporates has become critical to the success of organizations. While corporates pay a lot of attention to core competence, they hardly pay much to character competence. Drawing upon various paradigms of ethics, this paper suggests a holistic framework of business ethics rooted in ethical imperatives for individuals, organizations and markets. The framework developed in the paper forms the foundational basis for the concept of character competence. The author suggests the need for developing a character competence index and rating corporates on such an index. Further, it is suggested that ethical sensitivity can be inculcated through development of ethics-based management models with roots in character competence.
Bureaucracy: Ethical Perspectives
Authors: Sen Shekhar , Bhattacharya Pradip
Published: March 2007

The LBS National Academy of Administration, Government of India, had invited the authors to present before 30 officers of the Indian Administrative Service their views regarding the role of ethics in public administration as part of a five-day training programme on the subject. The participants' experience ranged from 12 to 31 years. The paper seeks to bring home to administrators that for carrying out the responsibilities that the Constitution of India has entrusted to the civil services there is no option but to subscribe to a sound ethical framework of reference.
Business Transformation through the Creation of a Complex Adaptive System
Authors: Malik Pravir
Published: March 2007

Successful business transformation has proven to be a complex issue. This paper proposes an ap proach to business transformation based on the emulation of systems in nature that have survived through masterful adaptation. Such systems, complex adaptive systems, are those which are able to adapt to a broad range of situations. This paper proposes an approach to understanding the steps that lead to the existence of a masterful complex adaptive system, through observation of different sets of dynamics that seem to characterize different types of organizations. In this manner, a system is pro posed by which business organizations may progressively transform themselves to become completely adaptable, and hence, masterful complex adaptive systems.
Managing the Earth-System: The Millennial Choice before the World's Policy-makers
Authors: Chakraborty S.K.
Published: March 2007

This paper is an adventure of ideas which draws on the 'magic—magician' metaphor of medieval India to define the current existential predicament of the world. The author sets an agenda for reprioritization for restoring the imbalance in the fragmented human consciousness. This, the paper suggests, can be done by a gradual return to the subjective causal source of all our problems. The waning of the Objective Age created by science-technology-industrialism has led to a 'mutilating assimilative im balance' in this world. The author urges the readers to strive for a subjective metanoia to counteract the objective paranoia of our times.
Back to the Future or the 'Bitter Tastelessness of Shadow Fruit'?
Authors: Bhattacharya Pradip
Published: March 2007

This paper is a comprehensive survey of the alarming deterioration in the morals, values and mental health of individuals and societies right across the globe. In fact this decline is really the true globalization of the day, not so much equitable distribution, meeting of minds and so on. The author explores numerous reports and writings of researchers, poets, thinkers, policy-makers, journalists and intellectuals, and uses all that to deliver a shattering knock to the complacent and smug modern citizen—Western or Eastern. For remedies against the modern consumerist-materialist global epidemic, Bhattacharya falls back upon classical Eastern and Indian thought. This corpus offers timeless wisdom, the seers having accurately forecasted today's human predicament and having laid down the blueprint for sane living.
Is there a Place for the Sacred in Organizations and their Development
Authors: Gupta Rajen K.
Published: March 2007

Secularization of life in general is widely seen as a direct consequence of European enlightenment and the process of modernization. The paper contests this thesis of societal secularization through a historical analysis of ideas in the Anglo-Saxon Christian parts of Europe and North America. It contends that the sense of the sacred has either been pushed to the private lives of individuals or marginalized into myriad forms of counter-movements. This paper then contests secularization of organizations and sees it as a thin veil of misperception. Success of Japanese organizations and studies thereof, have brought back the inevitable relevance of societal cultures for organizational management. A sense of the sacred is an essential aspect of culture—societal or organizational—which must be taken into account to build truly humane and optimally effective organizations. The theory and practice of organization development must advance itself accordingly to remain true to its spirit.
Reflections on Periodisation in Aradic Historiography
Authors: Khalidi Tarif
Published: March 2007

This article attempts to analyse what one might call the 'politics' of periodisation in Arabic historiography. It is divided into three sections. The first deals with issues relating to periodisation prior to the nineteenth century, the second with nineteenth and twentieth century views and the third sets forth some general reflections on this theme. It argues that in the early period, certain criteria were established for periodisation and were drawn from political and historical experiences as well as scriptural and other textual sources. Once formulated, however, these criteria could not be easily overturned. Perhaps the only exception to this was Ibn Khaldun. In the more modern period, European periodisation schemes begin to impinge upon Arabic historiography, concurrently with European hegemony over large areas of Asia and Africa. Here, questions of progress and decline became uppermost in historiographical speculation about periodisation. The rise of nationalism resulted in singling out certain eras as examples of progress or decline, in accordance with the nationalist agenda. In contemporary historiography, periodisation no longer occupies centre stage as a theoretical problem, emerging only in times of extreme political turmoil.
How Writing Quality Influences Readers' Judgments of Résumés in Business and Engineering
Authors: CHARNEY DAVIDA H. , RAYMAN JACK , FERREIRA-BUCKLEY LINDA
Published: March 2007

To help students enter a professional discourse community, teachers must assess how accurately they both understand the community's discourse practices. Our research investigated how job recruiters seeking to fill positions in mechanical engineering or marketing were influenced by the quality of writing in student résumés. The résumés varied in elaboration, sentence style, mechanics, and amount of relevant work experience. The recruiters rated the résumés to indicate their willingness to interview the students. We found that recruiters in the two fields—engineering and marketing—valued quite different writing features. When we subsequently asked students in business writing and technical writing classes to rate the same résumés, we found that they underestimated the importance of various writing features. Generally, however, students' ratings resembled those of the recruiters in their respective disciplines. This study documents how students can improve their résumés and provides insight into the variations of discourse practices in professional disciplines.
The Best of Both Worlds
Authors: BARBOUR DENNIS H.
Published: March 2007

This article describes a dual grading process, initiated to expose students to collaborative evaluation and to verify instructor evaluation. Each group was assigned a case, with directions to print five copies of its response. I evaluated one copy, then distributed four blank copies to another group for evaluation. The group reviewed the paper and assigned a grade. I collected the graded responses, attached my graded copy, and returned the two graded copies to the composing group. Receiving feedback from both teacher and students reinforced the students' confidence in the evaluation process while teaching them important lessons on audience expectations.
Teaching Professional Writing Rhetorically
Authors: GALE FREDRIC G.
Published: March 2007

Writing and speaking rhetorically means directing one's words to a particular audience for a particular effect; teaching rhetorically includes appealing to students' interests and experience. Writing teachers frequently use scenarios for that purpose. In this article, the author introduces the unified case method as an improvement on the traditional case method and reports on the use of this rhetorical method in a professional writing class. Specifically, the author used a single, complex scenario throughout the semester so that all the writing assignments were situated in the same fictional world. The students reacted enthusiastically to the method, and their writing was more successful.
A Dialogical Model for Business Correspondence
Authors: MENDELSON MICHAEL
Published: March 2007

Despite the fact that letters and memos are the most prevalent forms of written discourse in the business community, there has been little theoretical study of professional correspondence as a distinct rhetorical genre. A theory of correspondence as a form of dialogue can, however, be constructed with the help of two very different scholars, Erasmus and Bakhtin. Erasmus, the Renaissance humanist, offers a pragmatic guide to the practice of dialogue in correspondence, and Bakhtin, the twentieth-century Russian philosopher of language, provides theoretical concepts that define the nature of dialogical communication. The present article combines the ideas of both scholars into a unified theory of business correspondence and then presents both a set of guidelines and a model for the practice of dialogical correspondence.
Women and the Profession of Technical Writing
Authors: DRAGGA SAM
Published: March 2007

In the United States, the majority of technical writers and technical writing teachers are women. Their dominance of the profession has several causes, including the attractiveness of writing jobs for women, widespread associations of women and superior writing ability, the social acceptability of women in writing jobs, and occupational segregation. Women's dominance of the profession brings with it the risk of diminishing wages and prestige. To avoid this depreciation of the field, professional associations ought to equip technical writers and technical writing teachers with information regarding satisfactory salaries and working conditions, and teachers ought to communicate this information to their students.
Ethnographic Research in Business and Technical Writing
Authors: CROSS GEOFFREY A.
Published: March 2007

Two widely disseminated approaches impose reductive boundaries on ethnographic research by privileging one context of meaning over other essential contexts. The first, emphasizing statistical validity, privileges the research community by recommending that the ethnographer's data analysis via coding agree with that of other raters from the research community. The second asserts that the ethnographer who comes closest to validity comes closest to presenting only the subject's point of view. Ethnography, however, comprises four essential, overlapping contexts: the phenomenal context (that which is observed/recorded), the site's cultural context (the subjects' outlook), the research community context, and the researcher's interior context, shaped by experience and education. Each of the four vantages has dominating tendencies, but if one does dominate to the exclusion of others, the reductive result is data-centered, thin description; subjects-centered groupthink; research community-centered groupthink; or researchercentered solipsism. Although all contexts of meaning are important, none should fully eclipse the others.
Recontextualizing Writing
Authors: CROSS GEOFFREY A.
Published: March 2007

What roles does writing play in larger communications also involving physically discrete but related texts of other media? How may the properties of what we normally consider writing be modified in such communications? The intermedial context of much workplace writing has been largely overlooked. This study of an insurance company's communication department describes how (a) three written products served as parts of larger messages in multiple media campaigns, (b) an attempt to combine composing processes for print and video failed, and (c) conflicting generic and stylistic properties of other media caused an intermedial graft to fail. The author's study shows that in the right circumstances, a multiple media “overtext” can override some of the rules that govern what and how one communicates in an individual medium. When a written text is involved, its nature may change as it forms symbiotic relationships with texts of other media.
“It's like a Prison in there”
Authors: ZAK MICHELE WENDER
Published: March 2007

When a vehicle maintenance unit of a public transit agency underwent extensive demographic diversification of its work force, original workers escalated the symbolic actions and language patterns traditionally used to establish and maintain hierarchy in that workplace. Taken literally and seen as malicious by new workers, the shoptalk and horseplay became vehicles for internal power struggles that led the organization toward dysfunction and even violence. Management responded by stepping up structural control and punishment. The managers failed to acknowledge and provide for the need of newly diverse discourse communities in this workplace to negotiate a new order in which sufficient shared meaning and agreed-upon language and behaviors could be constructed.
Responding to Work-Force Diversity
Authors: LIMAYE MOHAN R.
Published: March 2007

Research in business disciplines about work-force diversity has been inadequate in terms of precise conceptualization and theoretical grounding. Two psychological paradigms from training literature (cognitive and affective) are examined here, but, because of their inability to explain the sources and significance of organization-level change, sociological paradigms about dominance and intergroup dynamics are presented as viable theoretical supplements. Substantive sharing of power with diverse or nontraditional employees hitherto marginalized in U.S. organizations is proposed as one potentially effective response to managing work-force diversity. Systemwide structural changes in U.S. organizations of today are recommended for optimizing diversity.
An Easy Outlining Approach for Producing Solidly Structured, Audience-Directed Reports
Authors: WAGNER BRIAN J.
Published: March 2007

The major problem with report writing is not primarily due to poor grammar or mechanics—often blamed by the technical community. The real problems stem from lack of, or poorly developed, point and audience awareness. Such problems can render reports useless for the audience and for the author. These major deficiencies and many lesser deficiencies, however, can be avoided effectively and painlessly if authors follow a simple outlining approach in writing their reports.
Videoconferencing in the Business Curriculum
Authors: HILDEBRAND JANET E.
Published: March 2007

As more and more companies use videoconferencing to conduct business, training students to communicate through this medium becomes increasingly important. With the rapid development of videoconferencing, business schools should investigate equipment purchase, for it may be within their budgets. Focusing on student learning aspects, this article presents six aspects of business school videoconferencing: (a) a rationale for using videoconferencing in the business curriculum, (b) a description of the Videoconferencing Center in the Texas Christian University business school, (c) budgetary considerations and resources, (d) learning objectives for student videoconferencing, (e) sample business videoconferences for class purposes, and (f) essentials for successful student videoconferences.
Collaboration between Writers and Graphic Designers in Documentation Projects
Authors: MIREL BARBARA , FEINBERG SUSAN , ALLMENDINGER LEIF
Published: March 2007

Few, if any, studies on collaboration examine interactions between software manual writers and graphic designers. This study analyzes these collaborations, inquiring into the ways in which writers' and designers' processes of collaboration directly affect the form and substance of a finished manual. We argue that when these developers have dialogue, draft iteratively, and jointly make decisions, they produce manuals that could not possibly be developed through linear, assembly-line collaborative processes. We characterize three possible models of collaboration—assembly line (linear drafting), swap meet (iterative drafting and joint problem solving), and symphony (codevelopment in every aspect)—and use as a case study our own collaboration in developing a manual, detailing the concerns that writers and designers bring to a manual project. Analyzing our collaboration as an example of a swap-meet model, we examine four design problems that we faced and explain the ways in which our collaborative processes uniquely shaped our solutions to these problems.
A Legal Discourse Community
Authors: GRIGGS KAREN
Published: March 2007

This article reviews recent studies of legal discourse and nonacademic writing and presents the results of a historical case study of an environmental public policy. The author examined the rhetoric of public sector communication to show how an Indiana water quality standards administrative law was socially constructed as it was written collaboratively in two cycles by members of a text-centered legal discourse community. Key findings describe a dynamic discourse community with changing writing roles among government employees, lay members of the audience, and water pollution control board members. The social and political context surrounding this collaborative effort delayed formal adoption of the water quality standards in the public sector. Controversial provisions of the law stimulated social and political actions, including legislation, and in the process delayed rulemaking.
Reader-Focused Text Evaluation
Authors: DEJONG MENNO , SCHELLENS PETER JAN
Published: March 2007

This article presents a review of the literature on reader-focused text evaluation. First, an account is given of the document characteristics that can be evaluated. Then the possible functions of evaluations are considered, a distinction being made between verifying, troubleshooting, and choice-supporting research. Finally, an overview is presented of methods appropriate for the various document characteristics and evaluation functions. Relevant research findings on the methodological strengths and constraints of each method are discussed.
Genre and Technical Translation
Authors: EUBANKS PHILIP
Published: March 2007

Carolyn Miller's definition of genre as “social action” has become widely accepted in writing studies; this acceptance has prompted troubling questions about the teaching of professional genres. Because current research emphasizes Miller's reconceptualization of “exigence” as a socially construed need for particular kinds of writing and talk (155-58), some researchers now suggest that unless a genre's social exigence can be fully replicated in the classroom, the genre cannot be taught effectively. Genres, however, entail several kinds of exigence: social exigence that prompts generic writing; social exigence that is reflected in the generic text; textual exigence that shapes the rhetorical situation; and what I call educational exigence, an exigence that prompts writers to learn explicitly how to compose generic texts. Educational exigence was evident in the writing processes of two technical translators who composed in a variety of genres, both familiar and unfamiliar to them. The translators not only responded to educational exigence but also followed a well-considered strategy for gathering information about generic texts.
Teaching American Business Writing in Russia
Authors: HAGEN PATRICIA
Published: March 2007

This article describes the writer's experiences teaching American business writing in Russia and attempting to find documents for comparison of Russian and American approaches to business communication. She discovered that most documents common in the United States are rare or nonexistent in Karelia, where in many ways organizational culture is oral culture; documents exist largely to show to officials rather than to communicate with customers, clients, superiors, or subordinates. Although Hall's model of high-context communication accounts for some cultural differences between Americans and Russians, it is important to note the differences between Russians operating in official mode and in personal mode to understand the amount of explicitness and directness appropriate in various situations.