An Analysis of Communication Efficiency Between High-Impact and Bureaucratic Written Communication

Abstract

Efficient written communications have become increasingly important to public and private sector managers faced with reading an ever-increasing number of documents. This study asseses the communication efficiency associated with two writing styles: a high-impact style and the traditional bureaucratic style still favored by many managers. A total of 262 naval officers stationed at the Pentagon and abroad ships in the San Diego area participated in this study. The results show that the high-impact style takes 17%-23% less time to read than the bureaucratic style, produces better message comprehension, and is less likely to need rereading.

The Effect of High-Impact Writing on Decision Making Within a Public Sector Bureaucracy

“…Previous research (Suchan & Colucci, 1989) has shown that readers better comprehend information in HI rather than LI documents. Also, Rogers and Brown (1993) found that readers responding to a HI document better comply with instructions than those reading its LI counterpart.…”

“…In fact, researchers have even attempted to correlate the readability of a company's annual reports with its financial performance (Courtis, 1986;Jones, 1988;Subramanian, Insley, & Blackwell, 1993). These stud-ies continue despite the large body of research that disputes their value (Selzer, 1981;Stevens, Stevens, & Stevens, 1992;Suchan & Colucci, 1989). Shelby (1992) best summarizes researchers' misgivings about these formulas' value: Readability skeptics believe that formulas tap superficial characteristics of documents; that statistical methodologies are inappropriate for studying writing effects on readers in complex organizational systems; that formulas may correlate with comprehensibility, but they do not predict comprehension ease or difficulty; and that readability is an internal construct existing in the mind of the reader.…”

“…Even researchers (Karlinsky & Koch, 1983;Martindale, Koch, & Karlinsky, 1992;Suchan & Colucci, 1989) who have shifted the source of where comprehension is located from the document to the reader have used laboratory and pseudo-laboratory settings that remove readers' interactions with documents from the rich organizational contexts that shape document interpretation and use. In essence, what Chin (1994) has called "context of use" is missing from these studies: how the reader and the organization are going to use the document, the reader's interaction with the organizational environment and the influence it has on how the document is read, and the eflfect of prior docucaents on the reading and use of the current document.…”

From Text to Context: An Open Systems Approach to Research in Written Business Communication

“…For exampie, Kariinsky andKoch (1983), Martindaie, Koch, andKariinsky (1992), and Suchan and Coiucci (1989) use information recaii -the number of correct responses to questions about the information content of documents written in different styies -to measure document effectiveness. This methodology implies that document effectiveness can be measured by readers' relative ability to extract information from, a document and thus correctly respond to questions about it.…”

The Influence of Organizational Metaphors on Writers' Communication Roles and Stylistic Choices

“…These factors are important because, as research has shown, they affect readers' ability to process documents efficiently (Felker, Redish, & Peterson, 1985;Guillemette, 1987;Haviland & Clark, 1974;Kieras, 1981;Redish, Battison, & Gold, 1985;Seigel, 1978;Selzer, 1983;Suchan, 1989). However, these studies do not adequately address the complex array of contextual factors that influence a document's creation, and, just as importantly, affect organizational writers' willingness to alter their composing processes and the organization's language norms.…”