Week One Discussion

Week One Discussion
Please refer to "Guide for Participation" located in the Course Home Unit.
Topic 1 -- The Cost and Worth of Communication in Business
After you finish your readings for Week 1, post a message in the discussion thread below in which you provide your commentary, applying the guidelines on the WORTH of communications, especially human communications, in today's business environment, and the COST of workplace communications problems. Discuss these issues as they are related to today’s private sector, government (military and civilian), and non-profit workplaces. Provide support from your readings in the text, your own experience, and your research and readings elsewhere, including the Web.
NOTE: See the "Guide for Participation" for this course . You'll be posting your comments here in the discussion thread, so they should be legible and grammatical.
Every day we hear of the impact of communications on business and other organizations. Share your findings, insights and experiences with us!
Also: If possible, try to pin a $ amount on your examples. As a "tickler," how much does it cost, on the average, to compose and send out a letter from a manager of one company to a manager (or executive) of another? The worth of communication in the business world is very high. There are places and things that you do that the communication is only with a machine. Are you the type of person that would rather go through the self check out at the grocery store just to avoid talking or communicating with a human? I personally will go through the lane with a person because I thrive on interaction with people. I don’t always have perfect grammar or speak with the most perfection but that isn’t necessary when you are just having a small conversation with someone checking out your groceries. However, when it comes to my professional life, which right now is interviewing for job, my vocabulary is a large part of my getting hired. I certainly couldn’t go into an interview and talk with them the way I have small chit chat with the cashier at the local grocery store. The worth of my communication with the interviewer has to be high in order to be considered for the position.
To me communication comes at different levels. There is the person to person and or writing. They both have a cost one is higher than the other at times and depending on the business that is being looked at.
Now to put the cost of communication into the perspective. If I was to go into an interview and just casually speak with the interviewer, even though my resume was perfect, it would be a waste of both of our time and would cost the company the time and money that was put aside for the interviewer. Communication costs go all the way from the first interview with a perspective employee to the actual hiring and the HR doing all the paperwork that goes with it or not hiring and letters of choosing another person for the said job opportunity.

Topic 2 -- Plagiarism: Diagnosis and Prevention
Ethical communication in business and elsewhere includes giving proper credit to the work of others. In both workplace and academic settings, plagiarism (representing the words, ideas, or perspectives of others as your own) is a serious breach of ethics.
In this discussion thread, you should provide your classmates with useful techniques for preventing and detecting plagiarism.
Begin your commentary by providing a clear and specific one-paragraph definition of plagiarism as an unacceptable technique for professional writing as it applies to your major field of study and your present or intended career path.
In your definition, provide a documented source for your definition, using the MLA, APA, or Chicago Manual of Style format. See our course Webliography for some good sites.
Then you should follow that definition with at least two or three techniques that writers can use to detect and prevent plagiarism, and therefore make their writing less risky to themselves and their employers.
As a "tickler," see if you can tell what techniques might be used in this class to detect plagiarism.

Dictionary.reference.com defines plagiarism as:
1.an act or instance of using or closely imitating the language and thoughts of another author without authorization and the representation of the author’s work as one’s own, as by not crediting the original author.
2. a piece of writing or other work reflecting such unauthorized use or imitation.

I am a non-traditional student and when I attended another college I had a hard time doing the citations of writings correctly and was accused of plagiarism. I have since learned how to do the citations, hopefully well enough to not get accused of it again.
There are several sites on the web that I personally use just to be sure that the citations are correct. In my past employments my tasks never consisted of anything that would be part of plagiarism. Most of my jobs were just doing route entries and following the guidelines of my job in the accounting field. Do I think that there could be plagiarism in the accounting field? Yes, an example would be for someone to write up a financial analysis and for someone else to take credit for the work.

plagiarism. (n.d.). The American Heritage® New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition. Retrieved June 05, 2015, from Dictionary.com website:http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/plagiarism