Towards a comprehensive inventory of efficiency in business presentations

Abstract

While workplace communication is a well-established field in communication studies, empirical research based on samples of communication processes taking place in actual organisations is still scarce. Although a distinct line of research on meetings has recently emerged and established itself as “meeting science”, another ubiquitous communication setting, regarding business presentations have received far less attention. In this paper, we argue that a general-purpose theory and a corresponding measuring instrument for the evaluation of the impression made by a presentation on the audience would greatly enhance our understanding of the factors that determine the efficiency of presentations. We present the theoretical framework and the indicators in such an inventory, which we have developed based on the educational literature on public speaking. The construction of this instrument also generated a set of hypotheses about how a speaker’s personality traits may be related to various aspects of the impression made by the speaker.