Perspectives: Revisited

In this issue the exploration of articles across the SAGE publications looks at different facets of business and professional communication education, research into market intelligence and market researchers’ usage of technology, design-thinking, and the development of entrepreneurship in small cities. Also, and what I expect to be a recurring theme in forthcoming research articles, I look at articles that investigate or compare different business and management factors to the responses to the recent Covid pandemic. Such a global health crisis with its impact on societies, politics, cultures, and individuals will be studied and dissected for years to come. Generally, I try not to delve into too much detail on these articles, but I do try to highlight elements that either interest me or that connect to the use of business information, or how the articles connects to business librarians and information professionals. My hope is that these broad-stroke summaries will spark an interest in going to read the actual articles. In the first article from the Business and Professional Communication Quarterly by Lentz et al. (2020), the authors investigate different factors that impact business and professional communication instructors focusing on teaching, job satisfaction, salary, rank, promotion, administrative support, student concerns and several others. The research was to identify specific, common areas of need; areas of diverse needs; gather data for improving the academic environment; articulate steps for advocating for healthy teaching environments; and to learn what ABC (Association for Business Communication), the professional organization, can do to advocate for those who teach business and professional communication. A survey was sent to members of ABC to gather input on these issues. The results reported on the students’ issues, general support, workplace factors, and resources. Key factors included concern about students’ mental wellbeing, and their general lack of preparedness for such a course. Support comes predominantly from colleagues and department heads, less so from deans. The amount of grading, number of classes and size of classes are all issues of concern from the respondents. The consensus was that instructors had enough resources to do their job. The study identified some of the demographic characteristics of the respondents, their perceived areas of strength and need, and ways ABC could support those strengths and needs. I found many elements of this research relatable to the librarian profession. There were definite commonalities with their perceptions of support and student preparedness. Also, the overall importance and relevance of the work they do; with the provision of teaching a necessary set of skills that is applicable in many situations is very similar to business librarians teaching business research skills. The differing levels of support are another similar factor that we share as we deal with a variety of constituents that support or ignore us. The second article from the same journal and issue by Moshiri and Cardon (2020) focused specifically on a survey collecting a variety of factors and demographics related to business communication courses. The factors included course sponsorship, positioning, delivery, outlook, social media and technology coverage, diversity, and critical thinking. Most interesting are the assignments: business writing, business presentations, corporate communications, ethics, research papers, corporate social responsibility, proposal and grant writing, crisis management, and others. Generally, these types of assignments are very informationintensive. The results of the survey showed that diversity coverage is lacking within the courses while critical thinking is included significantly throughout the assignments. Specific elements with the assignments include ‘recognizing important relationships among various pieces of information’, ‘solving problems’, ‘evaluating evidence of authority’, ‘deducing conclusions from information or data provided’, ‘making correct inferences from data’, and ‘interpreting whether conclusions are warranted based on given data’. There is a connection between the ability to seek and use information and the ability to present it effectively. It is these types of assignments that make collaborating with business communication instructors a valuable partnership for librarians. I expect that we will see many research articles like these next two in the coming months and years as