No one will ever be able to identify and manage all of his or her organization's risks. Although you can't predict every disaster, you can ask the right questions and put strategies in place to ensure the survival of your business. "It is becoming increasingly evident that the knowledge of disaster recovery efforts must be accessible to far more than the (IT) experts Achieving success can only be found through the collective effort of a united public, its leaders and organizations." - Barack Obama, United States Senator "Progressive organizations with sound leadership now include business continuity and enterprise risk management as key parts of meeting stakeholder expectations and achieving organizational strategic objectives." - Michael G. Oxley, Vice Chairman, NASDAQ Michael Croy, an expert in risk assessment and disaster recovery, helps leaders understand what is needed to sustain business today. Through real-life examples, you'll understand what could affect your company-lost data, pandemics, terror threats-and by implementing plans for when something does happen, you're doing everything possible to ensure that employees still have jobs, customers are served, and stakeholders continue to support the company. Take the first step in proactively managing your company in good times and bad and ask yourself, Are We Willing to Take That Risk?

Get a solid grasp of the methods, processes, and issues surrounding marketing communications and develop your career with an industry-leading text that blends theory with contemporary marketing practice. Marketing Communications, 9th edition by Fill and Turnbull is the leading text that introduces you to the key topics of the subject. Ideal for undergraduate and postgraduate students in Marketing and related fields, this textbook guides you through the processes and actions of engaging audiences with brands, products, and services, from theory to practice. From introducing the subject and setting learning expectations to analysing and interpreting consumer behaviour, this latest edition follows a clear, streamlined structure that focuses on the strategic and tactical aspects of how brands engage audiences. With an approachable style and language that is easy to understand, the text delivers a rich blend of academic and practitioner materials that will help you understand the complexities of marketing communications. The book includes examples of contemporary, innovative marketing practices drawn from some of the world's leading brands and agencies, allowing you to explore the theories and ideas and acquire critical insight into the marketing communications landscape. The plethora of useful features and examples will encourage you to discuss and consider multiple interpretations around the major topics, providing you with the tools you need to develop your career in the field. Marketing Communications is recognised as the authoritative text for professional courses such as The Chartered Institute of Marketing and is supported by the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising.

Now in its 10th edition, English Skills with Readings emphasizes personalized learning to address student deficits in grammar and mechanics. Throughout the book, students are exposed to examples of writing that reflect the three key realms of their lives - personal, academic, and workplace. Seeing these different types of writing helps students understand the critical way in which writing will have an impact on the many facets of their lives. English Skills with Readings continues to encourage new writers to see writing as a skill that can be learned and a process that must be explored. The four skills, or bases, for effective writing are as follows: * Unity: Discover a clearly stated point, or topic sentence, and make sure that all other information in the paragraph or essay supports that point. * Support: Support the points with specific evidence, and plenty of it. * Coherence: Organize and connect supporting evidence so that paragraphs and essays transition smoothly from one bit of supporting information to the next. *Sentence skills: Revise and edit so that sentences are error-free for clearer and more effective communication. The four bases are essential to effective writing, whether it be a narrative paragraph, a cover letter for a job application, or an essay assignment. The new edition also includes a new and updated focus on information literacy, working with sources and writing research papers, making this a powerful and flexible text for students and instructors alike.

Recipient of the 1988 Outstanding Research Publication Award from the Organizational Communication Division of the Speech Communication Association Organizations cannot function without one vital component--communication. With the rapid expansion of corporations and technology, the quickly evolving field of organizational communication has undergone enormous, unprecedented growth . . . and change. Handbook of Organizational Communication is the first volume to pull together many loose threads in various strands of thinking and research about organizational communication. Its renowned contributors are leading scholarly pioneers in the field--drawn equally from organizational behavior and management studies and from communication. From this multidisciplinary perspective, they analyze research, theory, and applications--considering wherever possible communication phenomena at the appropriate multiple levels of analysis (dyadic, group, organizational, and extra-organizational). Authors also provide valuable, original insights into directions for future research and theory in their respective areas. Handbook of Organizational Communication is a milestone in the creation and shaping of this new area of academic scholarship with practical applications. It will both establish and point the way toward new theories and empirical work that will advance a young and exciting field. This volume will be an essential tool for all professionals and students in organizational communication, management, organizational behavior, and organization studies. "The editors have done a superb job of conceptualizing the work. In addition, their section previews are quite extensive and serve to integrate beautifully the material that follows. This book may well become a classic graduate text much in the genre of the Redding and Sanborn book of twenty-five years ago. It is comprehensive, well organized, well researched, and quite well written. The authors and editors are to be congratulated on their fine product." --Administrative Science Quarterly "An invaluable resource. . . . Authors do a fine job of surveying even the most recent research in their areas; some offer exciting suggestions for further research." --Quarterly Journal of Speech "Finally, someone has pulled together the fragmented pieces of organizational communication research. This book integrates and synthesizes these sundry organizational communication perspectives. Without a doubt, the Handbook is the preeminent reference book for organizational communication. "Unquestionably, this book should be on the shelf of everyone interested in organizational communication. Whether one is just beginning the study of organizational communication or one is an established scholar, The Handbook of Organizational Communication is a necessary resource." --Management Communication Quarterly "An extremely thorough, carefully selected set of papers which as a whole form a first-rate indication of the state of the art. I would recommend this book to anyone who is seriously interested in organizational communication, be they a social scientist, a practicing manager, an information manager, or just an interested member of an organization. It is a unique and outstanding work and should have a place on the bookshelves of many offices in a wide array of different organizations. Researchers in the area will find this work extremely pertinent to their activities." --Journal of Applied Systems Analysis

Since the height of the privatization debate in the 1990s, changes in government policy have resulted in significant transformation in the public sector. Some organizations have made the transition from government bureaucracy to business venture successfully; others have struggled to relinquish their traditional bureaucratic culture. In this book, Pillay and Bilney explore the cultural changes occurring within the public sector and the effects that government mandated change initiatives have actually had. The culmination of this book was due to the subject expertise and guidance of Professor Robert Jones at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia. It provides perspectives on the efficacy of cultural change in the Australian public sector, and explores the practical implications for society and government as it seeks to entrench the culture of the citizen as customer. It is particularly useful for researchers and organizations searching for ways to improve service delivery within the confines of particular market positions.

"Susan Crossman has created one of the most comprehensive books on writing ever written. Whether you're writing a business report, an essay or a full-length novel, Crossman offers invaluable advice on making the process move more smoothly and efficiently. She also provides insightful tips on avoiding writer's block. If you want to be a truly effective and successful writer, this is the book you need."
- Michael B. Davie, author "Winning Ways "
Solid, expert advice from a professional writer and author of several critically acclaimed books. From tips on overcoming writer's block and engaging your audience to focusing on specific markets, Susan Crossman, also author of " Shades of Teale " and "Passages to Epiphany," delivers insightful commentary that will help anyone become a more efficient, effective and successful writer. Of tremendous benefit to business writers - and to anyone crafting works of fiction and non-fiction - a must-read
- Manor House Publishing Inc.
Susan Crossman on "The Write Way": "We all recognize that writing is a creative process but we also tend to think of the physical process of writing as a mechanical skill that takes good grammar and a decent vocabulary and somehow blends them all together to create clear communication. That's not a bad start but decades of experience have taught me that writing with impact is much more complex. This book provides tips on: - How to structure your written work - How to write with style and - How to engage an audience - Avoiding and overcoming writer's block - Writing for key markets and marketing your writing in a highly effective manner I hope The Write Way will help you write with more clarity and conviction and I also hope that it will make the task of writing that much more enjoyable."

We live in world increasingly shaped by risk, a fact underscored by recent events in the financial markets, science and technology, environmental policy and biosecurity, law enforcement and criminal justice. Risk assessment has become a central concern of governments, organisations and the professions, and the communication of risk is a crucial part of professional work. Exploring how risk is discursively constructed across these domains is therefore central to our understanding of how professional practice affects people's lives. Communicating Risk takes up this challenge, with contributions from leading researchers and practitioners that examine key issues of risk communication across diverse professional domains.

This book features not only the latest trends but also academic and industry practitioner stakeholders' perspectives on language and functional role issues facing the rapidly developing corporate communication (CC) profession in the Greater China region. The book also explores the implications for Western societies that cross-culturally engage with Chinese partners in CC practices. The book's chapters are oriented on five main themes, namely: Development of the CC Profession, Bilingual Practices in Corporate Communication, Corporate Social Responsibility, Employee Communications, and Media Discourse & Persuasive Communication. The first two cluster themes feature a review of the PR/CC profession's evolutionary path to its current status as a more distinct and diversified CC profession emphasizing the role of language and particularly the bilingualism phenomenon, whereas the other cluster themes, which adopt the perspectives of academics and those of CC practitioners, span from cross-cultural, profession-wide and bilingual communication issues to applications of heuristic knowledge within industry-specific workplace contexts.

An organization's brand is its most distinctive feature - it is a mechanism for coordinating resources around its vision or mission. Organizations in the Face of Crisis offers a new and unique approach to the treatment of threats to an organization and its brand. In this volume, key concepts associated with crisis events are presented and analysed. Examination of ' brand trauma, ' the potentially debilitating effects of a crisis on an organization, reveals the pervasive nature of a crisis' effects and offers why these effects can haunt a brand and its stakeholders long after the crisis has passed. Tafoya also illustrates ways an organization's core network can be shaken by the emergence of a new network brought on by a crisis. This network, a 'stakeholder swarm', functions to meet its own needs often by challenging the make-up, control and flow of information, and even threatening the effected organization's very existence. Case studies and diagnostic tools are used to demonstrate the effects of a crisis on an organization and its brand, and to provide insight and strategies on managing the crisis at hand as well as the long-term effects that may be linked to the crisis and its occurrence. This volume will appeal to stakeholders on all sides of a crisis: from an organization's managers, employees, customers or clients and to diverse fields of study including law, medicine, religion, military, law enforcement and regulation.

Companies are often their own worst enemies. We work in disconnected functional and geographic silos, making it impossible to achieve end-to-end effectiveness. We struggle to make optimal decisions due to our overwhelming lack of quality information. In Optimize Now (or else ), David Fisher identifies the source of many of these problems and attacks them at their core. He explores the critical importance of processes and information that represent both the root of our problems and our greatest opportunity for dramatic improvement. He introduces new leadership in the Chief Process and Information Officer and the Process and Information Department, and specifies how to position these roles for enterprise-wide success. He further introduces the Enterprise Optimization Framework, an innovative, metric-driven decision-making framework, to ensure decisions are no longer based on gut feel but rather on quantitative expected outcomes. Finally, he explores the do's and don'ts of outsourcing and information technology with specific guidance on how these resources can be utilized to advance end-to-end optimization. It's time to put an end to our own misery. downward spiral to Enterprise Extinction. Survival is at stake. We must Optimize Now (or else ).

This book will enable students, researchers and practitioners with some background in applied linguistics and/or (business) communication to engage with most of the issues raised by the multidisciplinary field of business discourse. To applied linguists new to business communication, and to researchers with a business background and with an interest in language and communication, this book offers accessible, varied and well-documented material inspired by practice-shaping research in business contexts. The latest developments in research methodology are discussed through problem-solving case-studies; issues emerging from the field such as the role of new technology and of globalisation, are showcased to stimulate research projects that reflect the multicultural and multimedial reality of the corporate world. Readers are encouraged to adopt a reflexive, and where possible, multi-disciplinary and collaborative mode of action that is one of the strengths of business discourse research in practice. The book also illustrates the benefits of sustained dialogue and field-led applications across allied disciplines.

A new way of approaching start-ups which encourages a more flexible plan that allows for uncertainty and change
Business plans do not allow for the unexpected. Often written at the outset of a new business proposal, there is little room for change or learning from experience once the venture is underway.
Beyond the Business Plan provides 10 new principles for starting a new business venture which guarantee the flexibility to face any uncertainties. These principles can be used as an alternative to a traditional business plan or even alongside one allowing it to adapt when needed. This book does not dictate how to run a business but provides the insight needed to overcome unforeseen obstacles, to adapt, grow, and change as necessary. This fresh approach teaches how to be responsive to uncertainty and demonstrates that flexible development can navigate the changing world economy better than any business plan.

Recent advances in Web 2.0 technology enable new leadership processes and guidelines that can create great value for organizations. In this important new book - the first title in the new Brookings series on Innovations in Leadership - management expert Jackson Nickerson proposes a combination of processes and guidelines utilizing Web 2.0 technology, which he refers to as Web 2.1, that will not only lead and direct change in an organization but actually accelerate it. He calls this set of processes and guidelines "ChangeCasting," and it should be an important part of any organization's leadership toolkit. Leading Change in a Web 2.1 World provides fresh insights into why people and organizations are so difficult to engage in change. It explains how web-based video communications, when used in accordance with ChangeCasting principles, can be a keyway to building trust and creating understanding in an organization, thereby unlocking and accelerating organizational change. Nickerson introduces us to two Fortune 1000 firms facing dire economic and competitive circumstances. Both CEOs attempted extensive organizational change using web-based video communications, but one used ChangeCasting while the other did not - Nickerson details how ChangeCasting produced positive financial results for the former. He also discusses how ChangeCasting principles were used so successfully by the Barack Obama presidential campaign in 2008. The insights presented here will be invaluable to business executives, public officials, students of management and organizations, and anyone who needs to take organizational change from the drawing board to successful implementation and replication.

Is it the greatest fear of all? Numerous surveys attest to the now well-known fact--the vast majority of people are more afraid of public speaking than any other experience, even death. With its unique approach, Scared Speechless turns your fear around by providing a step-by-step guide to successful speech making. To help prepare you for your next speech, some of the topics Rebecca McDaniel explores are nervousness and fears; persuasive, informative, impromptu, and extemporaneous speaking; topic choice; and learning the library. She also covers speech preparation; supporting your thesis; introductions and conclusions; delivery techniques; visual aids; choosing a topic; and organizing, supporting, and delivering your speech. Each chapter explains the process, illustrates with examples, and provides exercises to try out your new-found skills. Whether you are a student or a professional, the logical chapter sequence and the clear guidelines provided will ease you through the process. Scared Speechless is the perfect text for beginning speech classes and the essential guide for any professional who needs to improve his or her public speaking skills. With her extensive experience as a teacher of public speaking, McDaniel leaves no area uncovered and helps you go far beyond your fear of public speaking to become an accomplished presenter.

Since September 11, 2001, long-standing debates over the nature and proper extent of executive power have assumed a fresh urgency. In this book eleven leading scholars of American politics and political theory address the idea of executive power.

How to increase your visibility and maximize your success through powerful, proven communication techniques How can you make the media work for you? How can you master interviews so that your points are the ones an audience remembers? How can you give presentations that do not just convey information but also promote you as a leader? How can you develop listening habits that will substantially enhance the entire communication process? What are the challenges and opportunities of public personhood inside and outside the workplace? Power Communications: Positioning Yourself for High Visibility teaches people-from corporate CEOs to civic leaders to designated spokespersons-how to enhance their positioning and maximize their success. Chapter by chapter, the reader learns how to master public visibility in the workplace, the professional arena, and the community. The reader gleans ways to create proper perceptions in the minds of the public and the media. The book also details how high-profile people can lead others by mastering the total power communications process-effective presentation of message, constructive listening, and executive or community action. In addition to learning how to create and maintain positive public personhood, the reader also learns specific methods and channels for dispersing important messages. This book focuses on proactive techniques that address the full spectrum of needs and issues that go into establishing and sustaining a public identity. Power Communications is an irreplaceable resource for corporate executives, top and middle management, elected officials, heads of organizations, governmental representatives, official spokespersons, and public relations and marketing professionals. To many people, communicating itself creates a daunting challenge. Power Communications helps its readers turn challenges into exciting opportunities.

Today every business is an e-business, and whether you are selling golf outings over the Internet or manufacturing the carts, there is no escaping the fact that every aspect of organizational design is profoundly affected by the new rules of the electronic economy. What many people and organizations overlook, however, is the degree to which these new rules are requiring a fundamentally different style of leadership. In E-Leader , Robert Hargrove identifies the new mindset and skills that leaders must develop in order to thrive in a world where wealth is built on relationships and experiences, not products or even technology. The old model of leader as "steward," protecting the company's brands and assets, is being replaced by a model of leader as "entrepreneur," searching constantly for new sources of wealth creation establishing creative ventures with suppliers, distributors, and even competitors and discovering new ways to attract, retain, and nurture talent- all at the speed of light. E-Leader captures the energy of the mavericks who are redefining leadership on the electronic frontier and shows managers in all types of organizations how to manage for the future, not for the past or even the present.

Ability and skill are important, but they are not everything. Equally important is how you communicate yourself--your competencies and achievements--to others. Teacher and consultant Richard Picardi takes a long, thoughtful look at the things we all need to understand in order to allow our ideas to be heard and understood in today's noisy, hotly competitive organizations. He covers not just the skills of putting your ideas, recommendations, and analyses in writing, but also the other way in which effective communication is accomplished: nonverbally. He shows you the internal and external roadblocks to effective communication and how to break through them.

In Part I, Picardi analyzes the nature of verbal and nonverbal communication. He shows how to recognize and remove internal and external barriers to effective communication and create messages that get the results you want. He then focuses on the specific goals of business communication, showing how the concept of change interacts with all forms of communication--in fact, how change is implicit in them. Picardi lays out the elements of organization that are essential in creating reader-based messages, then explains how to compose the clear, forceful sentences and paragraphs to express them. Later, in Part III, he presents his system of text boxes, showing how to write typical business memos and letters, using direct and indirect patterns of writing to demonstrate different types of messages you want to communicate, and ends with a systematic method to revise and improve upon first drafts. He goes on to apply the principles of reader-based communication, effective organization, and clear expression to proposal and report writing. He shows how proposals differ from reports and how to write both effectively. For training and development specialists, the book provides the material you need to teach these skills to others.