Client-oriented correspondance

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This Problems in the field discusses the problem of insufficient collaboration between writing practice in organizations on the one hand and research into writing processes and document design on the other. From writing process research there are few impulses to make connections with relevant theoretical models (e.g. Human performance improvement, organizational communication) to create a fertile basis for investigating and improving real organizational writing processes. Research results in document design turn out to be hardly translatable into everyday practice. This is an important issue as experimental research may indicate that popular ideas about what is effective in letters don't seem to hold. Our own research shows that the effect of politeness strategies may be far less important than using the right arguments. But how can we get the practitoners to accept this. Two final questions: Are textual strategies subject to temporal and/or cultural change? And secondly: How do people appreciate specific media choices: is it, e.g., acceptable to answer a letter with an e-mail or a phone call?.