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The following is an introductory profile of the fastest growing firms over the three-year period of the study listed by corporate reputation ranking order. The business activities in which the firms are engaged are outlined to provide background information for the reader.

Information technology is a facilitator in knowledge diffusion by enabling individuals to communicate directly in personal exchange. This includes interactive communications through newsgroups and discussion groups. Two discussion groups were analysed, the Social Work Discussion Group SOCWORK, and ABUSE‐L, a professional forum for child abuse issues. Three types of communication were identified: information transfer, requests for information and discussion of issues. The discussion of issues was the main type of communication in both discussion groups, followed by the request for information and then information transfer. Communications in the discussion groups were dominated by a small number of people. Policy issues were the main topic of discussion in both groups. The control of information technology by academics appears to limit the participation of social work practitioners in determining the agenda of the discussion group or the contents of the communications. Social worker practitioners have not increased their access to information even though the technology to make it accessible exists.

Business research identified communications apprehension as a problem for improving communication skills. Research has indicated that communication skills are very important to employers in hiring and promotion decisions. This study provides empirical evidence as to whether the accounting program has contributed toward lowering the level of communications apprehension on two groups of accounting students: those who are entering the program and others who are exiting the program. Findings show that there is no significant difference between the level of communications apprehension between the groups when they entered the program and the time when they exited the program, raising a question of the potency of the accounting program in alleviating the communications apprehension of accounting students. Some remedial measures have been suggested.

This paper aims to examine the online communications, symbolism and imagery of 35 community crime prevention and crime watch groups across Canada to explore how these groups organize themselves and assess the resulting community actions.

Contributing to digital criminology, gathering data from open access platforms such as Facebook and online platforms such as websites, the authors analyse communications from community crime prevention and crime watch groups in 12 Canadian cities. The authors used qualitative content analysis to explore the types of posts to assess trends and patterns in types of ideas communicated and symbolized.

Whilst such groups bring the community together to help promote community safety, the groups may also encourage stereotyping, shaming and even vigilantism through misrepresenting the amount of crime occurring in the community and focusing on fear. The authors demonstrate how crime prevention becomes sidelined amongst most of the groups, and how intense crime reporting and the focus on fear derail actual community development.

The current study is limited to two years of posts from each group under examination. Interviews with members of online community crime prevention and crime watch groups would provide insights into the lived experience of regular users and their reasons for interacting with the group.

Given some of the vigilante-style the actions of such groups, the authors would suggest these groups pose a governance problem for local governments.

Community crime prevention and crime watch groups are not a new phenomenon, but their activities are moving online in ways that deserve criminological research. The authors contribute to the field of digital criminology by researching how online communications shape community crime prevention organizations and how ideas about regulation of crime and social control circulate online. The authors also explain how this community crime prevention trend may contribute to issues of vigilantism and increased transgression.

This paper aims to explore the benefits of using faculty focus groups as an early component of a scholarly communications program with suggestions for planning and conducting sessions, recruiting participants and analyzing outcomes.

The paper is based on the authors' use of focus groups in the initial stages of organizing a scholarly communications program at Kansas State University.

The paper finds that focus groups are an effective method to begin identifying scholarly communication issues that resonate with faculty on a particular campus. Focus groups can be helpful in targeting efforts to begin a scholarly communications program.

Focus groups are effective in generating insights, opinions and attitudes and are low cost in terms of time and resource commitments.

There is very little in the literature about using faculty focus groups to start a campus scholarly communication program. This paper provides practical and useful information that other libraries can use to incorporate this method into their planning.

Describes the Grace Project, its goals and scope. The aim of Grace is to build distributed group communications tools within an Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) networking environment. Grace provides the foundations for a globally distributed system for cooperative working based on information sharing within activity and organizational domains. Introduces a conceptual model of group communications derived from analysing sample activities. Outlines architecture of Grace and explains the use of existing OSI services. Examines two prototype activities: a Help desk in detail and Computer Conferencing in outline. Discusses the implications of trying to control the access to the above type of tools. Briefly describes the status of group communications standardization.

In many countries today there is a debate on how to improve accounting to recognise also the non‐material value of companies. As a contribution to this debate, the Swedish Public Relations Association has initiated a project to develop the know‐how of how a company's profits and value can increase through investments in information, communications and relationships. The project applies also to the public sector and other organisations.

A communication diary was used to gather data on the oral communication of a small high school staff. The data were analysed to gain information on the patterns of communication in the organization. It was found that communication concerning school policy was an important activity of teachers—more so, in fact, than communication of a private and personal nature. Within the school hierarchy high status persons ranked high in communication on personal and private matters. The most senior members of the hierarchy seemed to be isolated from the personal or informal communication net. The results appear to have some implications for the allocation of teachers to staff rooms.

This study examines the relative efficacy of groups in both virtual and traditional face-to-face courses, as well as differences in group dynamics between the two delivery methods. We surveyed students in online and traditional classroom sections of the same intermediate-level cost accounting course about their perceptions of group processes, general satisfaction with group work, learning outcomes, and group communications. Traditional classroom students were more positive about their group processes and learning outcomes than were online students. They also were more likely to agree that the learning benefits of group work outweighed the costs, (e.g., uneven and inefficient work distribution.) Our findings suggest that instructors who use groups in online courses should specifically consider the potentially negative effects of such factors as workload imbalances when designing group learning activities so that learning objectives are not adversely affected.

Looks at new communications technologies, such as videoconferencing systems, which have enabled the creation of “virtual organizations” and “virtual teams”. Investigates the hypotheses that both “social presence” and “media richness” associated with a communication medium used to support geographically‐dispersed software development teams, will have a significant impact on team productivity, perceived interaction quality, and group process satisfaction. Results supported the predicted superiority of the face‐to‐face setting over the videoconferencing setting with regard to team productivity. They also indicated that a communication medium characterized as high in both “media richness” and “social presence” can engender a greater sense of interaction quality. There were no significant differences between the face‐to‐face and videoconferencing settings for group process satisfaction.