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Chapter Guides
This section provides information about the chapters in the textbook and suggested solutions and answers
for the activities. Each Chapter Guide includes the following items:
Chapter outline
Lecture notes, with the Learning Objective included for each major section in the
chapter
Answers to highlight box questions
Answers to Test Your Knowledge questions
Answers to Apply Your Knowledge questions
Answers to Practice Your Skills activities
Example solutions to cases (complete example solutions for short-message cases; solution guidelines for
long-message cases)
Part 1: Understanding the Foundations of Business Communication
The first three chapters give students a general understanding of why good communication skills are
important in business, how today’s communication is enhanced through technology (particularly the
revolution in mobile communication), why effective interpersonal communication can be difficult, how
communication is used in teams, and how it can overcome intercultural barriers. As you present this
material, try to stimulate students to personalize basic concepts. Encourage them to think about their own
careers and the communication skills they’ll need to be successful. Ask members of the class who have
work experience to comment on the communication requirements and challenges they have encountered.
Chapter 1: Professional Communication in a Digital, Social, Mobile World
Chapter 1 emphasizes the importance of effective communication, explains what it means to
communicate in a professional context, describes the communication process model and the ways social
media are changing the nature of business communication, outlines the effects of the mobile revolution,
advises students on how to use communication technology effectively, and offers guidance for making
ethical choices as a business communicator.
CHAPTER OUTLINE
Understanding Why Communication Matters
Communication Is Important to Your Career
Communication Is Important to Your Company
What Makes Business Communication Effective?
Communicating as a Professional
Understanding What Employers Expect from You
Communicating in an Organizational Context
Adopting an Audience-Centered Approach
Exploring the Communication Process
The Basic Communication Model
Barriers in the Communication Environment
Inside the Mind of Your Audience
How Audiences Receive Messages
How Audiences Decode Messages
How Audiences Respond to Messages
The Social Communication Model
The Mobile Revolution
The Rise of Mobile as a Communication Platform
How Mobile Technologies Are Changing Business Communication
Using Technology to Improve Business Communication
Keeping Technology in Perspective
Guarding Against Information Overload
Using Technological Tools Productively
Reconnecting with People
Committing to Ethical and Legal Communication
Distinguishing Ethical Dilemmas from Ethical Lapses
Ensuring Ethical Communication
Ensuring Legal Communication
Learning Catalytics is a “bring your own device” student engagement, assessment, and classroom
intelligence system. It allows instructors to engage students in class with real-time diagnostics. Students
can use any modern, web-enabled device (smartphone, tablet, or laptop) to access it. For more
information on using Learning Catalytics in your course, contact your Pearson Representative.
LECTURE NOTES
Section 1: Understanding Why Communication Matters
Learning Objective 1: Explain the importance of effective communication to your career and to the
companies where you will work.
Communication is the process of transferring information and meaning between senders and receivers,
using some form of media transmitted through a communication channel.
The essence of communication is sharing—data, information, insights, and inspiration.
Communication Is Important to Your Career
Improving your communication skills may be the most important step you can take in your career.
Even great ideas won’t go anywhere without great communication.
As you take on leadership and management roles, communication becomes even more important.
The changing nature of employment is putting new pressure on communication skills, because you
have to take responsibility for managing your own career.
If you learn to write well, speak well, listen well, and recognize the appropriate way to communicate
in any situation, you’ll gain a major advantage that will serve you throughout your career.
Communication Is Important to Your Company
Effective communication helps businesses in numerous ways:
A stronger sense of trust between individuals and organizations
Closer ties with important communities in the marketplace
Opportunities to in,uence conversations, perceptions, and trends
Increased productivity and faster problem solving
Be/er financial results and higher return for investors
Earlier warning of potential problems
Stronger decision making
More persuasive marketing messages
Greater employee engagement
What Makes Business Communication Effective?
Stakeholders are groups affected in some way by the company’s actions: customers, employees,
shareholders, suppliers, neighbors, the community, the nation, and the world.
When communication breaks down, the results can range from time wasting to tragic.
To make your communication efforts as effective as possible, focus on making them practical, factual,
concise, clear, and persuasive.
Section 2: Communicating as a Professional
Learning Objective 2: Explain what it means to communicate as a professional in a business context.
If you don’t have a lot of work experience yet, meeting the expectations of a professional environment
might require some adjustment.
Professionalism is the quality of performing at a high level and conducting oneself with purpose and
pride.
Professionalism can be broken down into six distinct traits:
Striving to excel
Being dependable and accountable
Being a team player
Demonstrating a sense of etiquette
Making ethical decisions
Maintaining a positive outlook
Understanding What Employers Expect from You
Today’s employers expect you to be competent at a wide range of communication tasks:
Digital information ,uency—recognizing information needs, using efficient search
techniques to locate reliable sources of information, and using gathered information
ethically
Organizing ideas and information logically and completely
Expressing ideas and information coherently and persuasively
Actively listening to others
Communicating effectively with people from diverse backgrounds and experiences
Using communication technologies effectively and efficiently
Following accepted standards of grammar, spelling, and usage
Communicating in a civilized manner
Communicating ethically, even when choices aren’t crystal clear
Managing your time wisely and using resources efficiently
Using critical thinking, evaluating evidence completely and objectively in order to form logical
conclusions and make sound recommendations
Communicating in an Organizational Context
In the formal communication network, ideas and information flow along the lines of command in
three directions: downward, upward, and horizontally.
In the informal communication network, often referred to as the grapevine or the rumor mill,
communication occurs outside the formal network; social media now play a huge role.
Adopting an Audience-Centered Approach
An audience-centered approach involves understanding and respecting the members of your audience
and making every effort to get your message across in a way that is meaningful to them.
It is also known as adopting the “you” attitude, in contrast to messages that are about “me.”
Etiquette encompasses the expected norms of behavior in any particular situation.
Section 3: Exploring the Communication Process
Learning Objective 3: Describe the communication process model and the ways social media are
changing the nature of business communication.
Even well intentioned communication efforts can fail.
By understanding communication as a process with distinct steps, you can improve the odds that your
messages will reach their intended audiences and produce their intended effects.
The Basic Communication Model
By viewing communication as a process, you can identify and improve the skills you need to be more
successful:
The sender has an idea.
The sender encodes the idea as a message.
The sender produces the message in a medium.
The sender transmits the message through a channel.
The audience receives the message.
The audience decodes the message.
The audience responds to the message.
The audience provides feedback.
Considering the complexity of this process, it should come as no surprise that communication efforts
often fail to achieve the sender’s objective.
Note: This model, based on Claude Shannon’s classic information theory model of communication,
isn’t necessarily a completely accurate or robust representation of how human communication works,
but it is valuable as a starting point to get students thinking about message encoding, transmission,
decoding, and feedback.
Barriers in the Communication Environment
Messages can be disrupted by a variety of communication barriers:
Noise and distractions, including multitasking
Competing messages
Filters, both human and technological
Channel breakdowns
Everyone in an organization can help minimize barriers and distractions.
Take steps to insulate yourself from distractions, including disconnecting from constant message
feeds and updates.
Inside the Mind of Your Audience
For an audience member to receive a message, the receiver has to:
Sense the presence of a message
Select it from all the other messages clamoring for attention
Perceive it as an actual message
Five habits will increase the chances that your messages will be sensed, selected, and perceived:
Consider audience expectations.
Ensure ease of use.
Emphasize familiarity.
Practice empathy.
Design for compatibility.
A received message doesn’t mean anything until the recipient decodes it and assigns meaning to it.
There is no guarantee that the receiver will assign the same meaning that the sender intended.
Audiences tend to extract the meaning they expect to get from a message.
Culture plays a huge role in how messages are decoded.
Individual beliefs and biases influence the meaning that audiences extract from messages.
Selective perception occurs when people distort threatening or confusing information to make it fit
their perceptions of reality.
Differences in language and usage influence received meaning.
Individual thinking styles affect message decoding.
Audience members will respond in the way you’d like them to if they:
Remember the message long enough to act on it
Are able to respond as you wish
Are motivated to respond
The Social Communication Model
The basic communication model shows how a single idea moves from one sender to one receiver.
In a larger sense, it also helps represent the traditional nature of much business communication, which
was primarily defined by a publishing or broadcasting mindset.
In contrast to the publishing mindset, this new social communication model is interactive and
conversational.
Customers and other groups are now empowered through social media, which transform passive
audiences into active participants in the communication process by allowing them to share content,
revise content, and respond to content, or contribute new content.
The social communication model changes business communication in profound ways:
Customers and other stakeholders participate in, in,uence, and often take control of
conversations in the marketplace.
They rely on each other for information about products, offer technical support, and even
participate in group buying using social tools.
Social media tools can increase the speed of communication, lower communication costs, improve access
to pockets of expertise, and boost employee satisfaction.
A hybrid approach is emerging in which some communications follow the traditional approach and
others follow the social approach.
Section 4: The Mobile Revolution
Learning Objective 4: Outline the challenges and opportunities of mobile communication in business.
Some experts predict that mobile communication will change the nature of business and business
communication even more than social media have.
Firms on the leading edge of the mobile revolution are working to integrate mobile technology throughout
their organizations.
The Rise of Mobile as a Communication Platform
Mobile is now the primary Internet-access technology for millions of people.
Mobile has become the primary communication tool for many business professionals, including a
majority of executives under age 40.
Continuous, intimate mobile connectivity can start to resemble a continuous stream of conversations
that never quite end, which influences the way businesses need to interact with their stakeholders.
Companies that work to understand and embrace mobile, both internally and externally, stand the best
chance of capitalizing on this monumental shift in the way people communicate.
How Mobile Technologies Are Changing Business Communication
Mobile necessitates some obvious changes in communication practices, such as the need to deal with
smaller screens and different input methods.
Many users expect websites to be mobile friendly, so many companies are adopting a mobile-first
approach in which they design to fit the needs of mobile users. This typically involves simplifying
screen designs and changing navigation controls to accommodate touch-based swiping maneuvers.
Other changes brought about by mobile are often deeper and sometimes more subtle:
Mobile users expect to have immediate access to information and the ability to stay
connected to their various social and business networks.
Constant or radical connectivity is a mixed blessing, as it can prevent people from
healthy disengagement from work.
Mobile users are often multitasking, which means they are distracted, and therefore
ge<ng through to them is more challenging.
Mobile communication has put pressure on traditional standards of grammar,
punctuation, and writing in general.
Mobile devices can serve as sensory and cognitive extensions.
Mobile devices create a host of security and privacy concerns (e.g., employees who want
to use their personal devices for business-network access).
Mobile tools can enhance productivity and collaboration.
Mobile apps can assist in a wide variety of business tasks.
Mobile connectivity can accelerate decision making and problem solving.
With mobile capabilities such as cameras, accelerometers, and GPS, the communication
experience can be made more engaging.
Section 5: Using Technology to Improve Business Communication
Learning Objective 5: List four general guidelines for using communication technology effectively.
Today’s businesses rely heavily on technology to facilitate the communication process.
To use communication technology effectively, you need to:
Keep technology in perspective.
Guard against information overload and information addiction.
Use technological tools productively.
Disengage from the computer frequently to communicate in person.
Keeping Technology in Perspective
Remember that technology is simply a tool—a means by which you can accomplish certain tasks.
Technology is an aid to interpersonal communication, not a replacement for it.
Technology has business value only if it helps deliver the right information to the right people at the
right time.
Guarding Against Information Overload
The overuse or misuse of communication technology can lead to information overload, in which
people receive more information than they can effectively process.
Information overload makes it difficult to discriminate between useful and useless information,
lowers productivity, and amplifies employee stress both on the job and at home.
As a recipient, use the filtering features of your communication systems to isolate high-priority
messages that deserve your attention; be wary of subscribing to too many feeds; focus on the
information you truly need to do your job.
As a sender, reduce information overload by making sure you don’t send unnecessary messages;
indicate the priority of messages to help receivers know how to react to them.
Using Technological Tools Productively
In the “information technology paradox,” information tools can waste as much time as they save.
Inappropriate web use not only distracts employees from work responsibilities, but can also leave
employers open to lawsuits.
Social media can expose confidential information or damage a firm’s reputation in the marketplace.
Employers need clear policies that are enforced evenly for all employees.
Knowing how to use tools efficiently can make a big difference in your productivity.
Managers need to guide and train their employees in productive use of information tools.
Reconnecting with People
Even the best technologies cannot truly match the rich experience of person-to-person contact.
Reconnect in person, or at least over the phone, from time to time in order to maintain positive
working relationships.
Section 6: Committing to Ethical and Legal Communication
Learning Objective 6: Define ethics, explain the difference between an ethical dilemma and an ethical
lapse, and list six guidelines for making ethical communication choices.
Ethics are the principles of conduct that govern behavior within a society.
Ethical communication:
Includes all relevant information
Is true in every sense
Is not deceptive in any way
Examples of unethical communication include:
Plagiarism
Omi<ng essential information
Selective misquoting
Misrepresenting numbers
Distorting visuals
Failing to respect privacy or information security needs
The widespread adoption of social media has increased the attention given to the issue of
transparency.
Class discussion question: Have you ever contributed to “social media outrage” (using your social
media accounts to boost the anger about a contemporary issue by forwarding it, liking it, etc.) without
stopping to think who might’ve originated the message or what the originator’s motives might’ve
been?
Distinguishing Ethical Dilemmas from Ethical Lapses
An ethical dilemma involves making a choice when the alternatives aren’t completely wrong or
completely right:
Two con,icting alternatives that are both ethical and valid
Two alternatives that lie somewhere in the vast gray area between right and wrong
An ethical lapse is a clearly unethical choice.
Ensuring Ethical Communication
To ensure ethical communication, three elements need to be in place and to work in harmony:
Ethical individuals
Ethical company leadership
The appropriate policies and structures to support employees’ efforts to make ethical choices
A code of ethics is an explicit written policy of ethics guidelines that helps employees determine what
is acceptable.
Ethics audits monitor ethical progress and point out any weaknesses that need to be addressed.
Every employee has the responsibility to communicate in an ethical manner.
In the absence of clear guidelines, ask yourself the following questions about your business
communication efforts:
Have I defined the situation fairly and accurately?
What is my intention in communicating this message?
What impact will the message have on those who receive it or who might be affected by it?
Will the message achieve the greatest possible good while doing the least possible harm?
Will the assumptions I’ve made change over time? That is, will a decision that seems ethical
now seem unethical in the future?
Am I comfortable with my decision? Would I be embarrassed if it were printed in tomorrow’s newspaper
or spread across the Internet?
Ensuring Legal Communication
In addition to ethical guidelines, business communication is also bound by a wide variety of laws and
regulations, including the following areas:
Promotional communication. Marketing specialists need to be aware of the many laws that
govern truth and accuracy in advertising.
Contracts. A contract is a legally binding promise between two parties, in which one party
makes a specified offer and the other party accepts.
Employment communication. A variety of local, state, and federal laws govern
communication between employers and both potential and current employees.
Intellectual property. In an age when instant global connectivity makes it e5ortless to copy
and retransmit electronic 0les, the protection of intellectual property (IP) has become a
widespread concern.
Financial reporting. Finance and accounting professionals who work for publicly traded
companies must adhere to stringent reporting laws.
Defamation. Negative comments about another party raise the possibility of defamation, the intentional
communication of false statements that damage character or reputation. (Written defamation is called
libel; spoken defamation is called slander.)
Transparency. To help audiences make informed decisions, various laws now require communicators to
disclose financial relationships and other factors that could influence the presentation of their messages.
Class discussion question: Should companies be allowed to advertise to children who are too young
to make fully-informed choices? If there should be a cutoff age, what should it be and how would it
be enforced?
HIGHLIGHT BOX: THE FUTURE OF COMMUNICATION
The Internet of Things
Encourage students to view communication in its broadest sense. For example, digital devices and
systems might carry on a “conversation” among themselves that previously would’ve taken place between
two or more humans in some form. Rather than someone with a clipboard or digital scanner checking
inventory in a warehouse or retail store and submitting some form of report for a supervisor to read, the
products themselves may be able to communicate their status to an inventory-management system that
automatically reorders stock as needed. This is still business communication in the sense that vital
information and meaning is being shared across the organization, but there are no longer human beings
involved and no writing or reading takes place.
HIGHLIGHT BOX: DIGITAL+SOCIAL+MOBILE: TODAY’S COMMUNICATION
ENVIRONMENT
It’s All Fun and Games—and Effective Business Communication
1. Refer students to the coverage of communication ethics in “Commi<ng to Ethical and Legal
Communication.” They should conclude that gami0cation is ethical if it doesn’t distort or hide
information audiences need in order to make informed decisions. For example, if a personal finance
game app offered by a bank or credit card company minimized the negative consequences of credit
risk in such a way that it prompted consumers to make unwise decisions, this could be considered
unethical. This question can also be a good entry point for a larger discussion about the ethics of
persuasive communication.
2. Student answers will vary.
COMMUNICATION CHALLENGES AT JETBLUE
Individual Challenge
Students should frame their responses using the discussion of effective business communication in “What
Makes Business Communication Effective?” and “Adopting an Audience-Centered Approach” from the
chapter. They should be sure to evaluate the content and style of the Twitter exchange separately from the
decisions or circumstances that prompted the exchange. For instance, if a traveler tweeted to complain
about some aspect of company policy, students should evaluate the nature of the company’s response, not
the policy itself.
Team Challenge
Student answers will vary but they should take into consideration the standards of professional
communication discussed in the chapter. Students with limited work experience may not yet appreciate
the effect of communication that is too casual for a business context, but they can use the information in
the chapter to get a sense of what appropriate business communication looks and sounds like. Their
comparisons of the two companies’ communication efforts should be based on specific word, phrase, and
punctuation choices, rather than vague observations.