Hasil untuk "Business communication. Including business report writing, business correspondence"

Kent L. Beck

A. Ndou

Small, Medium, and Micro Enterprises (SMMEs) are key drivers of economic growth, employment, and local development in South Africa. In rural areas such as the Vhembe District Municipality, however, these enterprises face significant challenges in maintaining efficient supply chains, largely due to weak supplier relationships. This study examines the relationship between supplier management and supply chain performance among SMMEs in this region, addressing the limited empirical evidence in rural contexts. A quantitative approach, guided by a positivist paradigm, was used. Data were collected from 200 SMME owners and managers across agriculture, retail, and manufacturing using structured questionnaires. Analysis through SPSS produced descriptive statistics on supplier practices and performance outcomes. Findings indicate that many SMMEs struggle with delivery reliability, product quality, and communication. Only 41.5% of respondents reported timely deliveries, while 35.5% found supplier communication effective. Strategic practices, including supplier involvement in planning and cost-reduction collaboration, remain underutilized. Newer businesses showed greater adoption of digital tools, and women-led enterprises emphasized long-term relationships. The study concludes that strengthening supplier relationships through training, digital integration, and collaboration can improve supply chain performance and resilience among rural SMMEs.

M. Jalilvand, Jamileh Ataei

Artificial intelligence (AI) plays a crucial role in executing marketing tasks such as identifying risks, targeting customers, advertising brands and optimizing pricing for maximum profit. In today's digital age, AI's presence in communication and marketing channels has had a substantial impact. Experts and scholars contend that the growing use of AI in analyzing big data, employing machine learning, analyzing social media, making algorithmic decisions, modeling and simulating has significantly influenced brand presentation in the global market. As a result, AI greatly changes brand preferences, marketing strategies and customer attitudes. This research primarily aims to explore the persuasive effects, methods, advancements and challenges of implementing AI in digital branding. To address the research questions, a two-phase qualitative study has been conducted. The study's first phase involved a systematic literature review. The databases Scopus and Web of Science were used, resulting in an initial collection of 3,983 studies. These studies were then filtered through Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses, including an evaluation of titles and abstracts, quality assessment and the application of ten specific criteria, ultimately narrowing the selection to 78 articles. In the second phase, 17 experts in AI and digital branding were selected for semi-structured interviews. The data from both phases were analyzed by thematic analysis. Key themes related to the application of AI in branding include scalable computational algorithms, machine learning, reinforcement learning algorithms, search algorithms, operational automation, recommendation algorithms, data interpretation and processing, human–computer interaction algorithms and AI-based platforms. The transformations due to AI in branding involve dynamic digital marketing, changes in distribution channels, personalized brand communications, dynamic pricing, adaptive business strategies, enhanced cybersecurity, development of internal and external databases, improved customer experiences, strengthened brand positioning and status, advancements in organizational processes and systems, improved decision-making quality, brand globalization, the creation of digital business models and added value creation. This is the first study to use a multi-method qualitative approach to explore the functionalities of AI in branding.

Hanan AlMazrouei, Francisco Javier Alvarez-Torres, Giovanni Schiuma et al.

Purpose This study examines the intricate relationships between organisational creativity (OCR) and its influence on key workplace factors, including work–life balance (WLB), remote working (RW), organisational climate (OC) and management support (MSE). In the evolving post-pandemic work environment, understanding how creativity impacts employee well-being, adaptability in remote work settings and overall organisational dynamics is crucial. This study aims to identify both the benefits and challenges associated with fostering creativity in modern workplaces and how these factors collectively shape productivity and organisational excellence. Design/methodology/approach A quantitative research design was applied, focusing on employees within the banking sector. Data were collected through a structured survey administered to 190 randomly selected respondents. The study used partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) using SmartPLS 4.0 to analyse the reflective interconnections among OCR, WLB, RW, OC and MSE. This methodological approach enabled a comprehensive examination of the complex interactions influencing creativity within organisations in a post-pandemic context. Findings The findings highlight a significant positive relationship between OCR and both RW and MSE, suggesting that creativity enhances workplace flexibility and encourages proactive managerial involvement. However, the study also identifies negative associations between creativity and WLB, as well as OC, indicating that while innovation fosters growth, it can also contribute to blurred work–life boundaries and workplace tensions. These results underscore the need for organisations to strategically integrate WLB, RW and OC into business excellence frameworks to prevent burnout and disengagement while maintaining an environment conducive to creativity and long-term success. Research limitations/implications Several limitations should be acknowledged. Firstly, the study is context-specific, focusing on a single industry and geographic setting, which may limit the generalisability of findings. Secondly, reliance on self-reported data introduces the possibility of response bias, including social desirability bias. Thirdly, while validated measurement scales were used, the complexity of creativity may not be fully captured through quantitative metrics alone. Future research should explore broader industry contexts, incorporate objective data collection methods and investigate potential mediating and moderating factors to deepen the understanding of OCR’s role in modern work environments. Practical implications To sustain creativity without negatively impacting employee well-being, organisations should adopt balanced approaches that incorporate flexible work arrangements, robust technological support for remote work and open communication strategies. Transformational leadership should play a pivotal role in fostering an innovative yet supportive workplace culture. Furthermore, investment in creativity-driven training programmes can enhance retention and productivity while maintaining an OC that promotes collaboration and minimises friction. Social implications This research highlights the broader societal implications of OCR, particularly its influence on employee well-being and workplace culture. In the context of increased remote work, fostering creativity must go hand in hand with inclusivity and efforts to reduce workplace isolation. Organisations should consider the long-term social impact of creative processes by prioritising a work culture that values both innovation and employee well-being, ultimately contributing to a more sustainable and supportive professional environment. Originality/value This study provides a unique contribution to the literature by offering a holistic examination of how OCR interacts with WLB, RW, OC and MSE in the post-pandemic era. Unlike previous studies that explore these factors in isolation, this research integrates them within a unified framework, providing practical insights for organisations navigating digital transformation and evolving workplace structures. The study’s findings offer valuable guidance for balancing innovation with employee well-being to drive sustainable business success.

Punit Kumar

The rapid growth of Financial Technology (FinTech) has transformed the financial services landscape, offering digital convenience, speed, and inclusion. Simultaneously, increasing environmental awareness has led businesses to adopt more sustainable practices. This study investigates the intersection of these two trends by evaluating how FinTech companies implement sustainable marketing strategies and how these efforts influence financial performance and environmental outcomes. Using a mixed-method research approach, including literature review and a structured online survey of 75 FinTech users primarily aged 21–30, the study reveals that sustainability-focused features—such as paperless transactions, carbon tracking, and green investment options—are increasingly recognized and valued by users. Over 50% of respondents reported choosing a FinTech service based on its sustainability initiatives, and nearly half indicated a willingness to pay a premium for eco-conscious financial services. However, the findings also highlight a communication gap, with many users unsure of the actual environmental efforts made by FinTech firms. The study concludes that integrating sustainability into FinTech marketing not only enhances customer engagement and brand trust but also contributes to long-term profitability and environmental responsibility. Practical recommendations are offered to help FinTech companies align their digital strategies with sustainability goals for more impactful and credible green finance innovation

Lawrence W. Abrams

It is time to move on from attempts to make the pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) reseller business model more transparent. Time and time again the Big 3 PBMs have developed opaque alternatives to piece-meal 100% pass-through mandates. Time and time again PBMs have demonstrated expertise in finding loopholes in state government disclosure laws. The purpose of this paper is to provide quantitative estimates of two transparent insurance business models as a solution to the PBM agency issue. The key parameter used is an 8% gross profit margin figure disclosed by the Big 3 PBMs themselves. Based on reported drug trend delivered to plans, we use a $1,200 to $1,500 per member per year (PMPY) as the range for this key performance indicator (KPI). We propose that discussions of PBM insurance business models start with the following figures: (1) a fixed premium model with medical loss ratio ranging from 92% to 85%; (2) a fee-for-service model ranging from $96 to $180 PMPY with risk sharing of deviations from a contracted PMPY delivered drug spend.

Gbenga Femi Asere, Musa Ali Abdulrahman, Friday Oboba

The quick headway of Data and Correspondence Innovation has reformed different areas of the economy, including the work market. As of late, the expansion of online stages and computerized innovations has worked with the rise of new types of business and work courses of action. These stages associate laborers with likely businesses, giving open doors to remote work and adaptable timetables. The capacity to associate all around the world has added to the development of the gig economy, empowering people to participate in work without customary business contracts. This exploration researches the effect of ICT-empowered stages on work creation in various monetary areas, analyzing the degree to which these stages have impacted the extension of remote work potential open doors. It additionally investigates the difficulties and valuable open doors related with remote work in the computerized economy. Factors, for example, task plan, installment structures, specialist independence, and computerized abilities will be analyzed to comprehend what these stages mean for work quality, pay soundness, and profession improvement. Also, the review researches the job of government strategies and guidelines in elevating fair admittance to open positions on these stages. This exploration will add to the current writing on the advanced economy and illuminate policymakers, experts, and laborers on procedures to saddle the maximum capacity of ICT-empowered stages for work creation and comprehensive financial development.

Ran YI

Yujia Bao, Ankit Parag Shah, Neeru Narang et al.

This paper introduces Fortune Analytics Language Model (FALM). FALM empowers users with direct access to comprehensive business analysis, including market trends, company performance metrics, and expert insights. Unlike generic LLMs, FALM leverages a curated knowledge base built from professional journalism, enabling it to deliver precise and in-depth answers to intricate business questions. Users can further leverage natural language queries to directly visualize financial data, generating insightful charts and graphs to understand trends across diverse business sectors clearly. FALM fosters user trust and ensures output accuracy through three novel methods: 1) Time-aware reasoning guarantees accurate event registration and prioritizes recent updates. 2) Thematic trend analysis explicitly examines topic evolution over time, providing insights into emerging business landscapes. 3) Content referencing and task decomposition enhance answer fidelity and data visualization accuracy. We conduct both automated and human evaluations, demonstrating FALM's significant performance improvements over baseline methods while prioritizing responsible AI practices. These benchmarks establish FALM as a cutting-edge LLM in the business and media domains, with exceptional accuracy and trustworthiness.

Georges Dupret, Konstantin Sozinov, Carmen Barcena Gonzalez et al.

Making ideal decisions as a product leader in a web-facing company is extremely difficult. In addition to navigating the ambiguity of customer satisfaction and achieving business goals, one must also pave a path forward for ones' products and services to remain relevant, desirable, and profitable. Data and experimentation to test product hypotheses are key to informing product decisions. Online controlled experiments by A/B testing may provide the best data to support such decisions with high confidence, but can be time-consuming and expensive, especially when one wants to understand impact to key business metrics such as retention or long-term value. Offline experimentation allows one to rapidly iterate and test, but often cannot provide the same level of confidence, and cannot easily shine a light on impact on business metrics. We introduce a novel, lightweight, and flexible approach to investigating hypotheses, called scenario analysis, that aims to support product leaders' decisions using data about users and estimates of business metrics. Its strengths are that it can provide guidance on trade-offs that are incurred by growing or shifting consumption, estimate trends in long-term outcomes like retention and other important business metrics, and can generate hypotheses about relationships between metrics at scale.

Tracy Tam, Asha Rao, Joanne Hall

Small businesses are increasingly adopting IT, and consequently becoming more vulnerable to cyber-incidents. Whilst small businesses are aware of the cyber-security risks, many struggle with implementing mitigations. Some of these can be traced to fundamental differences in the characteristics of small business versus large enterprises where modern cyber-security solutions are widely deployed. Small business specific cyber-security tools are needed. Currently available cyber-security tools and standards assume technical expertise and time resources often not practical for small businesses. Cyber-security competes with other roles that small business owners take on, e.g. cleaning, sales etc. A small business model, salient and implementable at-scale, with simplified non-specialist terminologies and presentation is needed to encourage sustained participation of all stakeholders, not just technical ones. We propose a new UML class (Small IT Data (SITD)) model to support the often chaotic information-gathering phase of a small business' first foray into cyber-security. The SITD model is designed in the UML format to help small business implement technical solutions. The SITD model structure stays relevant by using generic classes and structures that evolve with technology and environmental changes. The SITD model keeps security decisions proportionate to the business by highlighting relationships between business strategy tasks and IT infrastructure. We construct a set of design principles to address small business cyber-security needs. Model components are designed in response to these needs. The uses of the SITD model are then demonstrated and design principles validated by examining a case study of a real small business operational and IT information. The SITD model's ability to illustrate breach information is also demonstrated using the NotPetya incident.

Csilla Margit Csiszár

The widespread adoption of digital technologies in enterprises remains limited, prompting concerns over the sluggish pace of technological integration. Numerous articles emphasize the urgency of accelerating digital transformation and embracing new technologies. This paper focuses on identifying and examining obstacles hindering the effective utilization of digital tools and technologies in business settings. It conducts a comprehensive assessment of two primary aspects - external and internal factors - through a combination of secondary research and a comparative analysis of primary research findings. The research draws on data from diverse sources, including the ESTAT data repository, surveys on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) usage and e-commerce in enterprises, and the European Commissions report on Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs), start-ups, scale-ups, and entrepreneurship. By shedding light on these obstacles, this paper aims to provide valuable insights that can facilitate the successful implementation of digital technologies in enterprises.

Harsh Dandge, Meghana P. Lokhande, Viraj Jadhao et al.

Language remains as a communication between two people while allowing them to understand and express each other's emotions, ideas, and views. In light of the globalization of the IT business, platforms that support several languages have become a standard. Text recognition is one of the most researched topics and is done with the help of Deep Neural Networks (DNN). People find it easy to read text, but computers have a hard time doing it. However, there are also several challenges associated with creating and managing multilingual websites, including: Content creation, Technical implementation, implementing a multilingual website can be technically challenging, content optimization, Maintenance and updates. By taking a paragraph as input and processing the handwritten English characters, the article hopes to convert them into a computer-readable format paragraph with support for symbols and cursive writing, then train a neural network system to do so. Machine Learning algorithms (LSTM, FLITE, VAD, etc.) are studied for the various multilingual language conversion. The model is based on numerous natural language processing concepts and was created by adding multilingual capabilities to Google's previous Speech Recognition model. The article aims to develop a multilingual recognition model that will make it possible for non-readers to interact with digital devices in their native tongue.

D. J. Whalen, Charles Drehmer

Business communication teachers navigate a constantly changing pedagogical geography shaped by technology and breakthrough discoveries in linguistics, psychology, and neurobiology. My Favorite Assignment is designed to speed new teaching methods to the classroom. This article gives readers 11 teaching innovations on report writing, intercultural communication, and analysis and critical thinking debuted at the 2022 Association for Business Communication’s (ABC) 87th Annual International Conference in Tampa, Florida, USA. Additional support materials—instructions to students, stimulus materials, slides, grading rubrics, frequently asked questions, and sample student projects—are downloadable from the ABC and DePaul University Center for Sales Leadership websites.

Sharon Croxford, Emma Stirling, S. Mcleod et al.

Abstract Aim The aim of this study was to explore nutrition professionals' perspectives of nutrition graduates' employability skills, and knowledge and skills required in the industry to understand gaps in undergraduate nutrition curriculum. Methods Nutrition professionals (n = 26) across Australia were approached to participate in semi‐structured interviews via telephone in 2018. Interviews were transcribed verbatim, data analysed using thematic analysis, and results interpreted and discussed. Results Nine participants across six work environments completed interviews. Common work roles were identified in their diverse areas of practice: nutrition educators, food developers, team members, and business leaders. Nutrition professionals identified that, in addition to evidence‐based discipline knowledge, key skills and knowledge needed for their roles were interpersonal communication, including writing and listening. Participants highlighted the need for employability skills to be embedded within curriculum with emphasis on professional skills, business skills and discipline‐specific skills in communicating complex science messages to a range of audiences. Networking, and formal and informal work‐integrated learning were viewed as important vehicles for developing required skills. Participants expected that universities develop curriculum to address gaps; however, reflection by the academic researchers suggested this should be a joint role. Conclusions Early career planning, professional skill development, work experience and networking opportunities should enhance graduate employability.

Santiago Andrés Azcoitia, Nikolaos Laoutaris

"Data" is becoming an indispensable production factor, just like land, infrastructure, labor or capital. As part of this, a myriad of applications in different sectors require huge amounts of information to feed models and algorithms responsible for critical roles in production chains and business processes. Tasks ranging from automating certain functions to facilitating decision-making in data-driven organizations increasingly benefit from acquiring data inputs from third parties. Responding to this demand, new entities and novel business models have appeared with the aim of matching such data requirements with the right providers and facilitating the exchange of information. In this paper, we present the results and conclusions of a comprehensive survey on the state of the art of entities trading data on the internet, as well as novel data marketplace designs from the research community.

Shumin Deng, Chengming Wang, Zhoubo Li et al.

Business Knowledge Graphs (KGs) are important to many enterprises today, providing factual knowledge and structured data that steer many products and make them more intelligent. Despite their promising benefits, building business KG necessitates solving prohibitive issues of deficient structure and multiple modalities. In this paper, we advance the understanding of the practical challenges related to building KG in non-trivial real-world systems. We introduce the process of building an open business knowledge graph (OpenBG) derived from a well-known enterprise, Alibaba Group. Specifically, we define a core ontology to cover various abstract products and consumption demands, with fine-grained taxonomy and multimodal facts in deployed applications. OpenBG is an open business KG of unprecedented scale: 2.6 billion triples with more than 88 million entities covering over 1 million core classes/concepts and 2,681 types of relations. We release all the open resources (OpenBG benchmarks) derived from it for the community and report experimental results of KG-centric tasks. We also run up an online competition based on OpenBG benchmarks, and has attracted thousands of teams. We further pre-train OpenBG and apply it to many KG- enhanced downstream tasks in business scenarios, demonstrating the effectiveness of billion-scale multimodal knowledge for e-commerce. All the resources with codes have been released at \url{https://github.com/OpenBGBenchmark/OpenBG}.

S. O'Neill, R. Pidcock

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is widely regarded as the most important and authoritative source on climate change, its impacts and how to tackle the rising emissions that drive it. With this authority comes a responsibility to ensure the information is communicated effectively to policymakers, citizens and those who rely on the information for their lives and livelihoods. How the IPCC communicates the information in its reports via its official materials (e.g. Summary for Policymakers, presentations, FAQs), through different channels (e.g. interaction with journalists, social media, outreach events in different countries) and to its main audience of policymakers as well as others (including media, business, NGOs, education) has been the subject of intense analysis in the past. How different types of evidence are included in IPCC reports, particularly indigenous and local knowledge, is also a rich vein of discussion. Similarly, the representativeness of the leadership, staff and author teams in terms of gender, geographical balance and diversity of expert perspectives is key to ensuring all voices are heard and all relevant evidence is considered. The IPCC has a long history of asking the research and global communications communities for input to its evolving communications strategy. In 2016, the IPCC convened an Expert Meeting on Communication, which led to a number of recommendations to enhance IPCC communications activities, strategy and capacity (IPCC 2016; see also Lynn and Peeva, this issue). With the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) cycle nearing completion,1 now is an important moment to, once again, take stock of the evolving IPCC communications strategy, a time to critically reflect on successes, challenges, lessons learned and best practice for future reports. We also intend for this Topical Collection (TC) to speak to other institutions

J. Mirabent

Sandrine Roginsky, Josianne Millette, Valérie Lépine