Introduction Special Issue BPCQ “AI in Business Communication”

In the 2 years since the publication of Artificial Intelligence in Business Communication: The Changing Landscape of Research and Teaching (Getchell et al., 2022) in this journal, we have seen an exponential growth of interest in the field. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become the focus of discussion in business, including business communication. The public release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT sparked an explosion of research on AI in various disciplines. What seemed like an idea for the future in the beginning of 2022, or even in 2019 when we started working on the above-mentioned article, has been turned into a reality by ChatGPT.

As business communication researchers, instructors, and practitioners, we are confronted with this new reality in all areas of our professional lives. Yet, we often lack in-depth knowledge and experience in using AI, and as is often the case, technological developments are seemingly outpacing our ability to acquire theoretical and practical knowledge.

Rigorous research therefore becomes an important building block in informing us about AI, its opportunities and challenges, and providing teacher-scholars with fundamentals that are applicable across contexts to help us understand AI now and in the future. BPCQ has published insightful research on AI in business communication in the last few years. One important strand of research tackled questions around teaching AI-enabled business communication. Topics of interest included teaching content, the didactics and methods, assignments, and assessments. Contents where instructors need to incorporate AI include team communication (Mehra et al., 2024) and resumes (Lookadoo & Moore, 2024). Riapina (2023) offers a practical guide to teaching AI in business communication, and suggests using AI for simulations, role-playing, and interactive presentation assessments. For rethinking their assignments, instructors received a lot of inspiration at the 2023 Annual Conference of the Association of Business Communication in Denver, CO. Artificial Intelligence was the theme of many sessions, a workshop, and the My Favorite Assignment format (Whalen et al., 2024). Finally, assessments are a major point of discussion. Scenario-based assessment is one suggestion discussed in BPCQ to help maintain integrity of assessments (Nickerson & Davidson, 2024).

Other than maintaining assessment integrity, business communication instructors incorporate AI in their teaching to equip students with the needed competencies to succeed in an AI-driven workplace. Cardon et al. (2023) and Cardon et al. (2024) offer insights into the skills required in the workplace of the future and create a model of AI literacy for business communication students. Authenticity is one part of their AI literacy model, which has become so prevalent in many workplaces and other settings that BPCQ has published a closer look on the concept in the context of professionalism (Coman & Cardon, 2024).

Most articles on AI in BPCQ focus specifically on Generative AI. Before the advent of Generative AI, most AI was analytical. Generative AI is grounded in the same probabilistic machine learning models, but it creates novel, coherent, and contextually relevant content that is hardly distinguishable from human-generated content (Feuerriegel et al., 2024; Grimes et al., 2023). While Generative AI is multi-modal and can generate text, video, audio, and code, its primary use case in many professional settings is creating textual content. Generating text is at the core of what many of us in business communication teach and research. Thus, Generative AI is impacting the core of our discipline, and requires us to think, act, teach and research in novel ways.

The articles in this Special Issue represent a wide variety of themes and research strands. They are deeply rooted in the discipline but also look beyond disciplinary boundaries to incorporate a variety of research results. Two articles in this Special Issue have a clear focus on teaching business communication with AI (DeVasto & Palmer, 2024; Sharma, 2024). They investigate composing with AI, audience orientation, and critical thinking.Another set of articles focus on the developing ethical and regulatory frameworks for AI use (McElroy & Girdharry, 2024; Lentz, 2024; Moore & Lookadoo, 2024). Finally, one article taps into the field of human-AI-interaction (Cardon & Marshall, 2024).

AI literacy is one of the novel learning goals that entered higher education curricula after the launch of ChatGPT. DeVasto and Palmer (2024) offer empirical insights into how to teach AI literacy in the business communication class room. Findings indicate that students who analyzed AI output developed a more critical understanding of AI’s limitations and strengths, while those who collaborated with AI often overlooked its deficiencies that were covered up by the polished style. The results suggest that analyzing AI-generated content may be more effective for teaching business writing principles than direct collaboration with AI.

Sharma (2024) suggests a bibliotherapy approach to teach critical thinking in the AI age. Traditional assignments, such as essays, are widely discussed with regard to their ability to teach critical skills and assess student learning. In an action research design, the author designs, implements, and tests an AI-assisted approach to critical thinking. Results show significant improvements in learning when students used AI as an assistant and coach in their learning journey.

Girdharry and McElroy (2024), using the notion of assemblage as heuristic, offer a relational theory of ethics. The value of assemblage theory, they argue, is in its ability to offer a foundation for understanding student experience: “Assemblage thinking helps us remember that students’ individual experiences are as unique as they are varied, which means that their perspectives and their values are likewise varied. We believe that tracking students’ understandings of ethics and AI is crucial, particularly in the context of the evolving landscape of educational technology” (p. xx) . Through interviews of students, this article helps business communication educators better understand the nature of ethics from the student perspective and gives practitioners greater understanding when approaching the issue of AI use in their classrooms.

Lentz (2024) discusses the challenges of teaching ethical authorship in the age of AI, particularly in business communication classrooms. The author traces the history of authorship, intellectual property, and academic integrity, highlighting how disruptive technologies like AI are forcing a reconsideration of these concepts. Lentz proposes a definition of ethical authorship that encompasses using AI responsibly while reflecting an author’s values and creating audience-centered communication. Using a moral motivation framework, the author encourages teaching practices that promote ethical decision-making skills to prepare students for a workplace where AI use is increasingly common, while still maintaining academic integrity and respecting intellectual property rights.

Cardon and Marshall (2024) explore professionals’ attitudes toward granting human-like roles to AI, particularly in business communication contexts. Findings show that comfort levels with AI in various roles differ significantly based on usage frequency. Daily AI users are generally comfortable with AI in roles like research tool, personal assistant, creative partner, and even teammate or performance coach. In contrast, infrequent AI users express discomfort with AI in most roles beyond basic tools. The authors suggest that as AI capabilities advance, professionals who use AI frequently are more likely to view human-AI collaboration as plausible and natural. The research has implications for leaders, managers, and educators in preparing for and addressing the social and psychological impacts of increasingly human-like AI in the workplace.

Moore and Lookadoo (2024) offer hands-on advice for creating policies on AI use in the higher education classroom and beyond. An analysis of 102 AI policies showed that successful policies are audience-oriented, clearly communicated, and grounded in an overall AI strategy. Business communication instructors seeking to initially include or revise their AI policies for their syllabi receive step-by-step guidance that is rooted in an empirical analysis.

The six articles of this Special Issue are a reflection of the themes that are top of mind for many business communication instructors, researchers, and professionals at the moment. They provide inspiration and actionable recommendations for our scientific community and beyond. Other highly relevant research areas that we were not able to include in this Special Issue are AI’s impact on the Business Communication teaching profession, legal considerations, and AI and Business Communication scholarship. Cardon et al. (2023) presented an initial perspective of Business Communication instructors on the benefits and challenges in AI-assisted writing. This work can serve as a basis for exploring how our profession needs to evolve to stay current and serve the education of future business professionals in an AI age. We encourage more research in these areas for future issues of BPCQ.

Legal considerations, such as intellectual property rights, are an important addition to the policy and ethical considerations that are included in this Special Issue. The European AI Act is the first (inter-)national law that addresses the legal aspect of AI. Administrators, companies, and researchers call for regulation of AI. We recommend that the Business Communication discipline develops a research-backed perspective on legal aspects of AI and Generative AI.

Finally, we call for a discussion around AI and Business Communication scholarship. Other disciplines have published editorials and research articles on their perspectives on AI (references). Business Communication scholarship needs to evolve with the development of AI to remain relevant within the own community but also beyond. The challenges of AI are similar across disciplines. We can learn from other disciplines and inform other disciplines to increase our impact.

We recognize a certain tension between scholarly rigor and, as we mentioned earlier, the challenge of keeping up with a rapidly changing technological environment. However, we call on journal editors and authors to work to maintain the standards for peer-reviewed work and ensure qualification of reviewers even if this means taking a bit more time to publication for some manuscripts. We recommend providing other outlets for research on AI that circumvents peer review and has a more rapid review process, clearly separating out different types of scholarly work for the audience of practitioners and scholars. That way, people understand the limitations of the work in a given channel and will be able to use the information appropriately. Maintaining the quality of scholarly products will help teachers and scholars better understand the signal through the noise. Providing more practical outlets for work in progress will help the discipline keep up with the impacts of changing technology.

If we continue to produce and publish rigorous research that is grounded in theory and advances theory, we will strengthen our discipline to serve our community even better and to serve as a valuable resource for related disciplines that we overlap with significantly. The ABC European Regional Conference 2025 has the conference theme “Building Bridges between Business Communication and Management.” Our rigorous and cross-disciplinary perspectives will allow us to build these much-needed bridges.