International Journal of Business Communication

The focus of this article is a macro theoretical paradigm for management communication, which clarifies relationships among the factors that in fluence persuasion. Specifically, the paper includes a strategic model for making choices among persuasive options. According to the model, choices about communication messages and media are a function of the relative force (effectiveness, efficiency, and quality) o f the available options. A compari son of the strength of the given choices provides an assessment of relative force. The force o f a specific option, in turn, arises from the message sender's persuasive goals and receiver's probable response.

Business communication research on reader analysis has stagnated. This article examines why current business communication theory and practice makes new inroads into reader analysis difficult. To account for this lack of new critical thinking, the article assesses the field's confusion about critical terminology, its poor heuristics for assessing readers, its oversimplified cases, and its misleading message classification system. In addition, the article explores a new factor in reader analysis—readers' perceptual sets—as a way o f more accurately modeling the dynamics of the writer-reader relationship.

Research on distinguishing real and implied readers raises the question o f whether writers are aware of this distinction. The terms real and implied are defined, and their emergence as issues for debate is detailed. The study is then described and hypotheses for investigation are posed: Are professional writers aware of real and implied readers; does a writer's way of perceiving a reader affect contextual development; do shifts occur in writers' conceptions of reader; are writers' perceptions of readers linked to a sense of genre and explained by principles of cognitive processing? Suggestions for further research are provided.

Because business communication texts take a product-oriented approach to arrangement, business writers tend to overlook the value of context-specific arrangements. Teaching arrangement inductively, however, offers an alternative to the standard imitation of text models. Initially pioneered by the Greek rhetorician Isocrates, the inductive method stimulates individual rather than formulaic responses to the problems of organization. Inductively-trained writers also come to see arrangement as a powerful element in persuasive dis course.

The authors report the findings of programmatic research on the perceived seriousness of communication barriers to learning across five pedagogies. The theoretical basis and general method are related. Consistent findings over five studies have uncovered a generalized ordering of specific concerns as well as dimensionality of learning barriers. Discipline-specific differences do not appear to be present, but method and male-female differences are evident. The findings suggest that pedagogical research bound by discipline or univer sity may be more generalizable than previously thought.