Some comments on the book Business communication today

Courtland L. Bovee & John V. Thill (2000), Business Communication Today, Prentice Hall, USA.

As clearly presented in the Preface of the book, this 6th edition of Business

Communication Today provide insights into real-life business situations in a lively,

friendly, and conversational style. This edition "...captures the dynamics of business

communication like on other textbooks...". After the course, I myself as a MBA student

confirm this self-statement of the authors.

This piece of writing simply gives three personal comments on carefully selected issues

that the book does not covers or does not covers in details. It is important to emphasize

at the very beginning that these three comments are based on my own assessments.

This might not true in the view of the authors. These three comments are drawn from

my own anger, only.

More emphasis on intercultural communication is probably necessary

I recognized that the book has discussed the importance of cultural differences in

business communication in chapter 1, Understanding the Difficulties Involved in

Intercultural Communication, pp. 25 and the whole chapter 3, communicating

Interculturally, p. 60-89. Given the importance of cultural differences in business

communication, I found in these chapters not enough desirable information on

intercultural communication.

First, the book does not clearly explain elements of a culture

The section titled as Understanding Culture and Cultural Differences relatively lack of

information. I expected a more detail explanation of what a culture is, anyway? In this

section, the authors present the definition of culture and subcultures without defining

element of cultures.

I found more persuasive explanation of elements of cultures in Charles W.L Hill (1999),

International Business, Chapter III. I also found more informative presentation of

elements of a cultures in John J. Wild, Kenneth L. Wild, and Jerry C.Y. Han (1999),

International Business, Chapter II, and also in Philip R. Cateora, and John L. Graham

(1999), International Marketing, from Chapter III to Chapter VII. According to these

books, there are generally elements of cultures, including (i) Aesthetics; (ii) Values and

Attitudes; (iii) Manners and Customs; (iv) Social Structure; (v) Religion; (vi) Personal

Communication; (vii) Education; (viii) Physical and Material Environments;

From page 64 to page 71 of the book, the authors represents Recognizing Cultural

Differences. In this section, some elements of cultures are explained and compared

with the others. However, I found these not as clear as some other aforementioned

books do.

Second, Information on How Culture Influence Behaviours of People also needs to be

provided more

In Chapter II of the book, the authors represents cultural differences without detail

investigation of how cultural differences might be problematic in business

communication. To this extent, I expected that the authors have incorporated the

Kluckhohn-Strodtbeck Framework and the Hofstede Model and applying these

models in analyzing how cultures differ from one another.

In addition, I also found very interesting explanation of how cultural differences

influence people behaviours in business negotiations in Philip R. Cateora, and John L.

Graham (1999), International Marketing, Chapter 19. There, the authors reprinted the

survey result by John L. Graham (1996), International Business Negotiations, pp. 69-91.

Business Negotiation is a very important issues of business communication, But

this issue is not incorporated in the book

The book provides very very useful, I must say, principles, techniques, and suggestions

for improvement in terms of writing a large number of business paper including

messages, letters memos, e-mail, employment messages, reports, proposals... and of

making oral presentations, of using internet and other high-tech equipment for modern

business communication. This inspired me to think of the question: are there any

business activities in which a businessman have to be competent at all of the

aforementioned? The answer came to me was: probably yes, when conducting a

business negotiation, I have to know nearly all of these above techniques. As a results,

a new question came surprisingly to me: why the authors do not incorporate business

negotiation as a very important issue in daily business communication?

As a matter of fact, negotiations are an omnipresent activity in doing business as

business activities such as business plans are almost always implemented through

negotiations with target customers, business partners, and even other rivalry

competitors. Given the great importance of business negotiation in business

communication, I suppose that separate chapters on business negotiation should be

added to the book. These chapter would incorporated the principles, techniques of oral

presentation, team work communication and so on in a continuous attention to cultural

differences. This addition would be very great for international business people, who 3

have to deal with problematic issues of business communication in an international

context that is full of cultural distinctions.

To that extent, I found very easy-to-understand presentation in Philip R. Cateora, and

John L. Graham (1999), International Marketing, Chapter 19 titled as Negotiating with

International Customers, Partners, and Regulators. In this chapter interesting problems

of cultural stereotypes, self-reference criteria are clearly explained. I also found a good

comparison of negotiation styles of the Japanese and the American, highlighted with

constant preference to cultural differences between the two countries.

E-commerce raise new issues in business communication

Chapter 10 of the book prepresents a comprehensive introduction on Internet and

using Internet for business communication. This is one of various attempts by the authors to make the 6th edition providing information as latest as possible. This might

be one of the most distinguished features of the book.

Internet is the environment for the recent mushrooming of electronic commerce

transactions. According to UNCITRAL (the United Nation Committee on International

Trade Law), the term commerce in present e-commerce covers a ever wide range of

activities from exchange of goods and services, distribution arrangements, agent

agreements, factoring, leasing, construction, consultancy, engineering, investment,

banking operations, insurance, joint-venture arrangement, business contracts, and

transportations. In other words, e-commerce includes all types of electronic exchanges

related to commercial activities. According to IDC (International Data Corp.) there are

presently more than 1300 application of e-commerce, and that the values of electronic

transactions would be up to US$ 1300 billion in 2003. 4

Given the great importance of e-commerce in a very near future, it is necessary for to

understand how business communication in electronic transaction differs from other

traditional transactions (the words traditional is here used to refer to all other business

activities that are not conducted through electronic transactions). The distinguished

feature of business communication in e-commerce is all communication types are

conducted through internet or other kinds or wide area networks (LAN). There are

almost no face-to-face interaction between the firm and its target customers, business

partners. Business communication does then rely heavily on technological equipments

and the competencies of the firms in communicating though electronic methods.

In this light, I found a little more satisfactionary explanation in John J. Wild, Kenneth L.

Wild, and Jerry C.Y. Han (1999), International Business, in the first section of the book

tittled as E-Business Updates.

Regard to business communication in e-commerce, I suppose that it is the new

challenge to any textbook on business communication. This drastic change of business

communication practice should clearly be added to the next edition of the book.