Business Week: Business Leadership This website includes numerous short articles about business managers who have succeeded and failed at leadership. Many of them draw conclusions about the way people in authority should communicate with others. In fact, leadership and communication are interchangeable in many of these articles.
Executive Planet This website offers advice for business managers who must conduct business in an unfamiliar culture. Using a traditional view of culture, visitors to the site are invited to explore a destination country (i.e., a “culture” in this view) to learn how businesspeople there dress and act.
The Office Life: The Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary Your textbook emphasizes the importance of language and jargon in fostering expectations and socializing people to the world of work. This website lists hundreds of words and phrases—many submitted by businesspeople—that are overused or misused in the world of business.
Workplace Bullying Institute Workplace bullying is a form of employee-abusive communication. This website provides research on the scope of the problem, updates on policies to reduce the incidence of bullying, and advice on handling a workplace bully.
Activities
Take the following quiz on business etiquette, noting your score and the questions you missed. Come to class ready to discuss, and perhaps defend, your answers.
Read five to seven mission statements of Fortune 500 companies, highlighting words and phrases indicating whether the writers of the statement take a traditional or a relational view of organizations. Who do you think the intended audience is—managers, employees, workers, regulators, or someone else?
Read about workplace surveillance policies. Then, research whether your state has a workplace privacy law. Do the statistics on surveillance surprise you? Is surveillance unfair? Given your experiences and observations as an employee, what surveillance technology and policies would you put in place if you owned a business?
Visit and read the information about workplace “slacking.” The article cites a number of reasons employees say they slack at work. Are these valid reasons for slacking at work? Do you think that workers today slack more than they might have before electronic media/technology was available to so many workers? Why or why not? Would you be a slacker in the workplace? If you would, how would you justify it?
