Technically professional communicators? (Savage)

Savage wonders whether technical communication has reached the level of a profession. Although he notes that progress has been made, and continues, he sounds skeptical. I have to agree. Technical communication can't be explained as distinctly as law, medicine, or teaching. Those are professions that, while one may follow a circuitous route to, have fairly distinct requirements to practice. The common practice of technical communicators entering the occupation from other fields doesn't strike me as inherently nonsensical, much less wrong.

Maybe it's useful to question why an occupation develops into a distinct profession, in addition to how. Lawyers, doctors, and teachers have responsibilities to a wider public, at least theoretically, as Faber argued. This is why we have strict licensing standards for them. It wasn't always so. Go back a century, and a degree or two may be dropped. Two centuries ago, a practitioner may have needed nothing more than an apprenticeship, or membership in the educated gentry class. The standards that we now associate with professionalization developed because society demanded it of these people, with whom we trust our legal representation, health, and education, respectively.

Is the same demand there for technical communicators? I'm not so sure. This in no way diminishes the importance of good technical documentation. As Savage notes, the dismissive attitude of simply shipping cheap, quickly-written documents can seriously damage an organization's products and reputation. But this doesn't quite meet the measure of licensing and certification that the recognized professions use. As I said in my response to Faber, knowledge is becoming increasingly specialized. If the specialists themselves don't have the time or ability to communicate as well or as receptively as they used to, society should demand that our communicators be credentialed.

Professional communication (Faber)

The notion of “the professions” that Faber uses in his article is interesting, but also comes across as very quaint. This probably has some relation to the issue (as he considers it) of increasing de-professionalization of the fields he considers. It’s a seductive quality to have for a job, to be able to trace it back to the medieval notion of guilds of practitioners jealously guarding their secrets. But I think the era of doctors, lawyers, and academics being separate and elite has long since passed. I’m not entirely sold on Faber’s position that this is largely, or even partly, due to the use of “professional communication” as a “catchall term,” divorced from his definition of the professions.

I’m glad Faber brings up information availability as a factor in de-professionalization. I can’t tell if Faber views this as more negative than positive. It’s true that a professional message can be “immediately subject to ridicule or challenge” (326), but is this uniformly bad? When it leads to children not being vaccinated because their parents simply refuse to heed the advice of doctors, it’s probably detrimental. But do we really want to go back to a time when access to “elite knowledge” was privileged? This doesn’t need to coexist with disrespect of professionals’ pronouncements. Isn’t it possible that greater access to knowledge can make a general audience more receptive and understanding of professionals, as opposed to “priests” passing down mystical knowledge?

As we enter an era of wider access to knowledge, it is also an era of greater specialization of knowledge. It takes a higher degree of precision and a narrower focus to make discoveries or expand human understanding. This is a natural product of centuries of invention and expansion of knowledge. If anything, we need professionals more than ever to explain what they do to audiences. A century ago, a medical doctor probably could have understood the broad strokes of the average physics journal article. Not likely today. What happens when the average person theoretically has access to the sum of human knowledge, but can’t understand most of it? Some space must always exist for professional communication.

Faber, B. (2002). Professional Identities: What is Professional about Professional Communication? Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 16, 306-337.

Industry Report

Abstract
The scientific technology industry creates software for use by scientists and engineers. Drawing on the examples of National Instruments and a practicing scientist-turned-software-developer, an overview of the the industry's professionals, their skills, and duties, is presented. An examination is then given of how technical communicators work within the industry.

Full report

Social Media (Cornelissen Ch. 14)

I thought Cornelissen’s last chapter was a decent ending to the book. Continuing from the last two chapters, I felt he finally showed more of the critical eye that I had been looking for in earlier chapters. The subject, social media, is also something that looks toward the future. I think it could have been woven more into earlier chapters as well. How companies respond to issues and crises by social media isn’t a point for future consideration. It’s happening right now.

As rude as Nestle’s Facebook spokesperson was in Cornelissen’s case study, I found it refreshing that a massive corporation suddenly spoke in a blunt, conversational manner. It feels more honest than the bland press releases we usually get. It’s just too bad this person had to be so rude. Immediately after reading the chapter, a friend shared a link to a petition to boycott a large company for its water use in drought-stricken California. The company: Nestle.

I wondered how the multinational was responding to this issue. Well, the response seems to be a little more mature this time. In response to a post promising the company is “looking back” on the year, so it can “continue to do better”, several people posted links to articles criticizing Nestle for pumping water out of San Bernardino National Forest. The company account responded with more-or-less identical posts linking to an official response to the allegation.

Nestlé US is looking back so we can continue to do better. Read about how we’re putting more good in food, our sustainability efforts, community partnerships, and more: http://bit.ly/1j90T6Y

Posted by Nestlé on Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Another post invited readers to look into Nestle’s “commitments to environmental sustainability.” One person asked whether “So, are you as a company going to take any accountability for the drought in California and your part in taking so much water when they cannot afford to waste or take one drop more?” The company assured her that they “share [her] concern for conserving water in California and around the world” and linked to a Q&A about the company’s operations and the California drought. Another person responded with a link to a YouTube video of the Nestle CEO allegedly calling water “not a human right.” The company account replied by charging that “this article takes our Chairman’s views out of context. He certainly believes that everyone, everywhere should have access to water” before linking to an interview with the CEO. The use of the phrase “this article” in response to a video tells me it’s another canned reply.

Did you know 25 of Nestlé's factories in the US achieved zero waste to landfill status this year?It gets better: We’ve...

Posted by Nestlé on Friday, October 9, 2015

I am, by nature, deeply cynical about these matters. However, regardless of Nestle’s actual policies, I’ll give the company credit for clearly improving its social media communication over what Cornelissen depicted in his case study. It may be impossible to respond to each critical post (and there are many), but they appear to be doing their best to come across as straight-forward. The official statements and Q&A’s linked from the social media account aren’t even all that terrible. I suppose we should be thankful for small (PR) blessings.

Corporate citizens and leaders (Cornelissen Ch. 12 & 13)

These two chapters took on a more critical analysis than in previous chapters. Cornelissen’s case studies of British Airways’ leadership changes (234-7), and Kraft’s takeover of Cadbury (252-4) involved the kind of contentious situations that are part of corporate reality, including layoffs and strikes. I was pleased to read Cornelissen point out that simply giving lip service to corporate social responsibility (CSR) wasn’t effective. As he points out, most organizations’ non-profit-driven commitments come in the form of “glossy social and environmental reports that are often more about style than substance” (245). I think genuine CSR takes commitment to organizational change and strong leadership, and not just public relations.

I suspect most organizations treat CSR as an additive change. A food company may set up scholarships for nutrition science majors, or a utilities company may commit to an initiative making “green jobs.” These actions may making positive differences, but they may also just be a way to offset an otherwise-negative reputation on social responsibility. To qualify for Cornelissen’s definition of a true corporate “citizen,” I think changes need to be substitutive, and that takes both transformational leadership to drive, and transactional leadership to implement. How likely is it that companies will truly commit to the triple bottom line, when just meeting financial needs can be difficult?

Cornelissen mentions the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), which sets reporting standards on many CSR metrics for organizations. While a noble initiative, this is a non-governmental organization whose standards organizations are not obligated to adhere to. I perused GRI’s website, and the output largely looks like the glossy reports that are so easy to put out and overlook. I think the best that can be said is that these reports provide documented commitments that organizations can be judged against. But again, this is an NGO. Any commitments are voluntary. Our commitments as actual citizens are not subject to our whims. Without strong leadership commitment to organizational change that drives CSR, corporate citizenship is just an idea.

Cornelissen, J. (2014). Corporate Communication: A Guide to Theory & Practice (4th ed.). London: SAGE. 

Responding to transgressions (Cornelissen Ch. 10 & 11)

In reading Cornelissen’s chapters on issues management and crisis communication, I looked for connections between both areas. His approach seems to focus on defensive actions companies can take, whether proactively or reactively. As a result, I don’t see as full of a discussion of transgressions (206) as they deserve. How does a company environmentally scan for harmful actions it may take? Cornelissen writes mostly from the viewpoint of how companies can identify and swat those pesky stakeholders who might oppose corporate policies.

I wondered how a crisis like General Motors’ ignition switch scandal, in which a known defect lead to over 100 deaths, could have been scanned for. Does a decade-long cover-up fall into either DESTEP or SWOT scans (183-4)? It is strictly technological, and is certainly a weakness, but probably not in the ways Cornelissen defines those terms. The fact is, this is a crisis that born of a very poor response to another crisis, which was simply a result of poor engineering and management.

I’m surprised at how matter-of-factly Cornelissen presents denial, excuses, and attack and intimidation as legitimate strategies to respond to a crisis (208). Yes, companies can and do respond in those ways, but surely we should consider them unfortunate exceptions. Cornelissen devotes nearly three full pages to Tata’s response to a terrorist attack, a crisis it had no part in causing (211-3). He gives two thirds of a page to the Maclaren pushchair scandal, a product defect causing serious harm (203). He focuses this case study on lamenting the impact to the company’s reputation for a defect that was known about for 10 years.

I’m trying to connect this discussion to the previous chapter on employee communication. Yes, companies should have contingency plans on how to communicate externally during a crisis. But surely the biggest takeaway from a transgression is to improve internal communication. I think these crises, which are not uncommon, deserve a richer discussion. Reputation is important, but defensive responses won’t prevent the same issues from re-occurring.

Cornelissen, J. (2014). Corporate Communication: A Guide to Theory & Practice (4th ed.). London: SAGE.