Words and Organizations: A Discursive Study of the British House Journal, 1900-2015.

Abstract

Company magazines originated in the United Kingdom and the United States towards the end of the nineteenth century and have been a constant feature of the large-scale corporation in both countries. The paper historically examines the growth and development of company magazines in Britain, studying a broad array of house journals in both the private and the public sector. Its main focus is to examine how company magazines contributed to the development of corporate culture in corporations via the development of the concept of corporate cultural communication. It does so from a process of genealogy and discursive analysis. It argues that company magazines have developed three foundational discourses in British corporations, those of industrial welfare, industrial relations and marketing. The relative mixture of these discourses has been a key ingredient in organizational and corporate cultures. While the emphasis of these discourses have changed over the period, they have remained constant throughout., thus...