Although each of The Carlson School of Management’s seven different departments and nine majors has individual writing expectations that are specific to its field, writing in the business professions does share many universal traits. Marketers, accountants, financiers, and managers all need to be able to write clearly, accurately, concisely, and persuasively for professional audiences. They need to be able to effectively use professional formats like email, memos, decks, reports, proposals, graphics, and presentations and have the ability to form and support an argument that caters to the needs of the readers. In A Guide to Plain English Arthur Levitt, the former Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, notes that professional writing “uses words economically and at a level the audience can understand. Its sentence structure is tight. Its tone is welcoming and direct. Its design is visually appealing. A plain English document is easy to read and looks like it’s meant to be read.”

When students, faculty and our business affiliates (a group made up of alumni, recruiters, mentors, and our governing board members) were surveyed regarding their opinions about the most important characteristics of writing across business disciplines, they reported the most important traits of business writing to be: descriptive, analytical, concise, and persuasive.

The Carlson School of Management faculty generated the following list in response to the question, “With which writing abilities should students in this unit’s major(s) graduate?”

Carlson faculty agree that graduation-level students in the school's majors should be able to demonstrate the following four clusters of writing abilities:

Write with clarity:

• Articulate a position in a central thesis
• Summarize ideas, texts, or events effectively
• Communicate information using graphics and/or visuals that are appropriate to the audience and content

Write persuasively:  

• Employ audience-relevant theories, concepts, data and/or evidence to justify conclusions or recommendations
• Base arguments and conclusions on situational and/or organizational context
• Recognize and addresses counter-arguments or alternatives

Write analytically:

• Identify an organization's key competencies using an analytical framework
• Base analysis on disciplinary theories

Use appropriate languages and formats:

• Organize effectively—put most important arguments first; sequence persuasively
• Write in ways that are designed for easy reading (skimming, headings, bullets)
• Use plain English; avoid unnecessary words
• Use an engaging style
• Use correct grammar, spelling, and mechanics
• Use correct citation formatting to provide source information

In addition to developing a menu of grading criteria in rubric form from which Carlson faculty members and instructors can select and adapt items, Carlson faculty members developed a series of guidelines relevant to the development and use of grading rubrics. See both below.

CLARITY

PERSUASION

ANALYSIS

LANGUAGE/FORMAT

Guidelines for using the rubric/menu

Do:

• Discuss the rubric with students. Help them understand your expectations, and highlight examples of
• “strong,” “acceptable,” and “weak” writing if you can.
• Consider adding student-chosen criteria. Students may have keen insights, so be willing to update or
• negotiate the rubric as needed.
• Make sure that language on the rubric is clear. Rubric language is often abstract, and students may need
• some clarification or rewording.
• Help students use the rubric formatively—planning for their assignment, assessing their efforts so far, and reflecting on feedback.

Don’t:

• Use rubrics exclusively as a summative scoring tool. In other words, don’t use the rubric only to assign a final score.
• Assume that rubrics are always self-explanatory. The more students engage with the rubric, the more effective it will be.
• Overlook possible issues of reliability, equity, and validity. Time will often reveal a rubric’s weaknesses. For instance, the rubric might fail to measure what it was intended to measure, or even disadvantage some students unfairly.

With its first-edition Writing Plan, Carlson School of Management developed online modules for brief supplemental writing instruction in core courses. The online modules can be used in any course that features student writing. In the second-edition Writing Plan, Carlson faculty began testing a common writing rubric (above) based on faculty-developed assessment criteria specifically targeting writing-intensive capstone courses. Also, Carlson has developed a Writing that Works website of business writing resources including tutorials, Writing podcasts, videos, and links for students and instructors.  

Carlson’s third-edition Writing Plan incorporates writing discussions into an ongoing program of lunchtime teaching talks and adds a series of additional writing assessments to better measure students’ growth as writers through the curriculum and into their major tracks.