Mandatory Draft

Alexander Masada Corey
RHET:1030:0055
9/11/15
Writing as an Economics Professor
Writing within the business profession isn’t just a way to land a job or impress co-workers with a spectacular pitch, writing is an essential part of the communication of ideas. You can’t make it into a job without strong writing skills, you can’t move upwards in a corporation, and you can’t convince others to meet with you or that your ideas are worth their time. In the workplace, writing can open doors for you or shut them before you know where they are and this rule holds true for writing as an economics professor. To help connect the significance of traditional business writing to the profession of economics professor, I interviewed Professor John Solow. From the interview with Professor Solow, I learned that although he works in an office environment different from that of a corporation, the skills required to efficiently communicate ideas to peers and present information in understandable, respectful, and persuading ways are vital in the majority of day to day work.
Non-Academic Writing
Something that all professionals and even all people should know how to do in this day and age is how to write an e-mail. E-mails are, of course, a non-academic writing and are a means of communication that nearly every worker finds themselves using daily. Although all people should know how to write an e-mail, there are guidelines that can improve an e-mail and take it to the next level. These guidelines have quickly become the standard in professional communications and employees are expected to know how to properly respond to e-mails and use them as a tool to increase the efficiency of communication. One of the most important things you need to be able to do via e-mail is communicate information effectively, “Find attached the email marketing course you requested. As I said on my website, I’ll keep sending updated versions of the course from time to time” (Oladiran n.d.). This excerpt from a sample e-mail reply does an excellent job of communicating the information and relevant details in an easy to understand way. This is a very important skill in the business field because time is a valuable resource to everyone involved in your communications. As Professor Solow said in our interview, “Most of my day is writing or reading, I can spend fifty percent of my day writing when I’m teaching, and I spend more time reading and writing when I’m not teaching a course”. The large amount of time spent reading and writing means that you need to be able to use your writing effectively, especially in e-mails in order to save time for everyone involved in the communications process.
Another important part of non-academic writing in the professional teaching field is a memo. Memos are used to communicate larger pieces of information, not unlike a lengthier e-mail and because of this, it is important to know how to condense information and provide visual cues on what information is important in a memo. For example, in this fictional memo from Shorenstein Center, “As part of a general deficit reduction problem, the city should take steps to raise the non-resident income tax rate from ½ to 1%. Several strong arguments exist for raising the non-resident income tax rate”. The use of bolding to highlight a key point allows people to skim a memo and gain the key facts while still offering the option to read the full text to those who have more time, or feel that a point from the text is unclear to them personally. This highlighting technique, when used correctly, allows a larger audience to gain the most benefit from a single memo without sacrificing time or information. This style of writing is important to those working as professors because memos are an important means of communication on campus as I learned from Professor Solow, “I spend about forty percent of my day involved with various University of Iowa services which include writing memos and reports”. Much like e-mails, memos can quickly eat up a large part of a professor’s day and so keeping them short but still providing full and informative content is a must.
The final and perhaps most important point about all non-academic writing in business is remembering to maintain respect for the subject and audience of a communication. This applies especially to e-mail communications, as it’s easy to get carried away or forget that such a casual means of communication is still considered to be a part of the professional world. A good example of someone forgetting the professional context of an email comes from this example I found from Protrans International, “Wow, Willow, these guys must be real boneheads if they can’t use our software. I’ll forward some instructions for these deadbeats to you, and you can send it to them in the morning”. This is a great example of someone getting caught up in a situation and failing to maintain a respectful standard in their communication. A failure to maintain respect in a conversation, even about those not involved, is important to avoid due to the nature of professional communication where anyone, including the client, could be included as a copy on an e-mail. This was also brought up in the interview with Professor Solow who, “recently served on the review board for the dean of another college at the University”. These kinds of reviews covers things like the professionalism of the candidate in addition to how well they do their job day to day.
Academic Writing
Academic writing in business is less diverse than non-academic writing by nature, and it tends to focus more on the communication and support of complex ideas communicated over many pages of long reports or papers on various subjects. An economics professor like Professor Solow uses their position to both teach and research economics which means that in his job he has both built new ideas and also taken the time to synthesize the ideas into teachable lessons. The difference between a report and a lesson in the classroom is generally the removal of extraneous details and development of simple examples that can be explained in fewer pages than a full report.
Academic reports in business consist of research done on a subject, analysis of the research, and a theory based on the results of that analysis. Although many papers can repeat papers or seem nearly redundant when compared to others, each paper seeks to prove a different principle through the analysis of a situation. The idea that each paper is slightly different can be seen from Timsilina (2014),”In this section we present the CGE model developed for the study and the necessary data. Instead of presenting the detailed description of the CGE model, we focus on the aspects where the paper attempts to make a methodological contribution”. This quote is an example of the author of the paper focusing on a subject area where they can make a specific contribution. This is important in academic writing because the point of the writings are to be able to focus on specific ideas and present them effectively to your audience. During the interview with Professor Solow, he mentioned the same idea, “We use descriptive writing to document and identify logic”. As a writer trying to present a new idea based on research and other established principles, it is important to establish the scope of what you are trying to prove, in order to better guide your reader and make your communication more effective.
While writing an academic report for business, you also need to keep your mind on the integration of outside ideas into your own writing. This is where the idea of building on the research of others comes into play because you need to be able to use respected ideas to support your own conclusions drawn from your research. A strong example of incorporating outside ideas can be found in Livingston’s report on The Economics of Glyphosate Resistance Management in Corn and Soybean Production (2015), “Because both the literature and our simulation results suggest that using glyphosate by itself is the main factor underlying the evolution of glyphosate resistance, estimating the impacts on production costs, yields, and returns of using this practice is critical” (23). By stating that previous literature supports the conclusions that he drew from his own simulation, he adds credibility to his own work and the subsequent conclusions that he draws from it. Credibility is key in analytical writing, without credibility your research, analysis, and conclusions are worthless and will be disregarded. This is important because the point of research, according to Professor Solow, is, “To be clear and concise with evident purpose” and to “make an impact”. The use of outside sources and respected opinions adds to the credibility and context of your own research and analysis and is, therefore, essential to a business report.
The idea of academic synthesis in business is of great importance because it is from the synthesis of multiple ideas and reports that applicable models are drawn. This is especially important to teaching professionals because even if they are not writing their own textbooks, they need to have a deep understanding of what they are teaching. A deep understanding of a subject allows the communication of an idea in a building fashion, by introducing ideas that build on one another and can better teach students. A useful report from Linda L. Zhang (2015) on multitype platforming provides an excellent sample of the synthesis of outside ideas, “While these papers provide rich information about product platforms, they do not discuss the above mentioned platform concepts, such as process platforms, layout platforms, flexible platforms, function–technology platforms, multibranded platforms” (1). Zhang identifies the strengths and shortcomings of other reports and papers, and sets the reader up for a shorter and applicable version of the information provided by these other papers. This kind of writing combines both the efficiency that was the major focus of non-academic business writing with the important information and outside support of an academic report, while also presenting the information in a useful way. This style of writing represents all of the ideas for what Professor Solow feels makes his own writing strong, “Efficiency... Evident Purpose… Explanation”. The fact that Professor Solow shares the same values that this report is based on enforces the importance of synthesis and creation of applicable lessons in academic business writing.
In conclusion, the ability to write efficiently, respectfully, and purposefully is very important in the world of an economics professor. The time that you can save others and save yourself is a valuable factor in a professional environment and part of what adds value to an employee. The ability to teach others and teach yourself will allow you to excel in professional writing, especially as a teacher.