We like to wish everyone a Happy New Year. May 2026 bring joy and success to everyone!
We have had a very productive and momentous four months on the project which is beginning to see the beginnings of the fruition of its research. The addition of Professor Alan McKinlay to the team and the knowledge and experience he has brought in organizational theory and business, management and organizational history has calibrated the project and expanded its scope and impact. Alan has provided vital experience in developing impact case studies and has helped us write up our proposal for Northumbria University. Impact case studies are vital for the 2029 Research Excellence Framework (REF), being worth twenty-five percent of total output. A strong impact case study is worth more, for example, than a top 4* publication. Our project has huge impact potential in relation to our ten project partners whom we work closely with and our broader relationship with the professional field of internal communication. In particular, our work on unearthing the 150 years old history of IC, of raising historical awareness within the IC field and of demonstrating the value of using organisational and employee history within IC content all aim to strengthen professional identity within IC and augment the prestige of the field. Alan has helped us hone this contribution into a pungent impact proposal which we will submit in January to Northumbria University as part of its REF 2029 Exercise.
And we are already beginning to see our research having impact within the world of IC. Our research featured in the Institute of Internal Communication’s (IoIC) recent White Paper, The Future of Internal Communication and was explicitly referred to in the report. The IoIC emphasised the importance of having a grasp of the past of the practice of IC in order to understand its strategic impact in the present and future. This is a core aim of our project. We are also writing a feature article for the IoiC’s magazine Voice which will be published in its April edition. This will summarise the project’s research and will present a five stage model of the history of IC which will align each of its historical phases with changes in management theory and the broader social, cultural and economic environment. The fifth stage refers to the future of IC where we draw heavily on the IoiC’s white paper. We strongly hope the article and its model (which we will upload onto our online resources tab on our website) will be of use to the IC profession. Finally, our research featured in Emma Bridger and Lee Smith’s new book People First Internal Communication which came out at the end of 2025. It formed an important part of the first chapter which focused on the history of internal communication and emphasised the role that early IC played in creating communities in companies and organisations in the past. It is great to see our work already beginning to inform writing and knowledge in the IC field.
We are also very happy to announce that our first paper from the project has been accepted for publication in the global and prestigious journal Business History. The paper is entitled, ‘Marking History and Making History: Genres of Internal Historical Narratives in Rhetorical History’. The paper is based on a study of a sample of company magazines from Boots, the BBC, Unilever and Cadbury over the course of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries and covers one hundred years of history. In the paper we demonstrate how company magazines, a core historical element of IC, were vital in forging organisational identity and culture through their commemoration of the past of organisations, and also how they were played a crucial future role by communicating past narratives to legitimise changes in strategy. Company magazines have thus been central in Marking History – i.e. in commemorating the past in organisations, and in Making History – in legitimating change for the future. This demonstrates the strategic role that IC has played in companies in Britain over the past hundred years. The article also applies genre theory to reveal four distinct types of internal historical narratives that organisations have applied in using the corporate past to manage the present and future.
The project has now essentially finished its archival research. We plan to visit the archives of the IoIC, Unilever and Boots in early 2026 to look at some final items, but in the main the archival work is finished and we are now focusing on analysing and writing up our historical data. We carried out a last piece of major archival research in October and November where we looked at the McKinsey files at the Post Office Museum and the BBC Written Archives centre. One key new finding of the research is that the major companies where we found IC being developed in the 1960s and 1970s – the BBC, Midland Bank, British Rail and the Post Office – all received major consultancy work from the American firm McKinsey which was expanded rapidly in the UK during this period. A central management philosophy that McKinsey brought to the UK was Management by Objectives (MOB) which was developed by the management theorist Peter Drucker in the 1950s and rapidly spread in the UK in the 1960s and 1970s. MOB argued that companies should not focus purely on making a profit, but should identify core strategic objectives for this company such as growing market share, improving productivity, lowering operating costs and enhancing social relationships. This would still create a profit, but this profit would be far more sustainable and strategic. MOB also argued that all employees, from top to middle management to office and shop floor workers needed to have their own objectives. These were normally developed with their line manager during an annual review, a new HR practice which MOB introduced. Employee objectives had to tie into broader organisational objectives. Crucially these objectives and how they aligned with the organisation had to be clearly communicated to all employees. Here we see a clear strategic basis for internal communication, which MOB and the McKinsey reports stressed. It is also striking how closely the IC reports we have found in the 1960s and 1970s at the BBC, British Rail, Midland Bank, Post Office and Industrial Society resembled the language and discourse of MOB. This is a major find which partially explains the emergence of IC in the UK in the 1960s and 1970s.
We have also been very busy over the last four months attending and planning events. Michael visited the UNITE 25 conference in October in Nashville, Tennessee organised by the intranet provider Unily. This was a major two day event which featured speakers, panels and roundtables on IC and customer experience from a number of major corporations that included British Airways, Johnson & Johnson, Adecco, American Airlines, Pearson, Estee Lauder, Denstu, Shell and the Boston Beer Company, all of whom are clients of Unily. AI, intrants and IC were major themes of this stimulating two day event where we gained further major insights for the project and continued to develop relations within the IC community. We also re-connected with Jenni Field and Advita Patel from the Chartered Institute of Public Relations who are major partners for our research. We are also busy planning a one day conference on IC and History at Brunel Business School, Brunel University London on May 19, 2026. This will feature two keynote speakers, presentations and a closing panel discussion. We have major speakers from the world of IC that include Marc Wright, Jenni Fields, Rachel Miller, Lee Smith, Cat Barnard, Barbara Phillips, Katie Macaulay and Howard Kreis. We also have important global scholars from organization studies and management history presenting who include Michael Aldous, Andrew Perchard, Charles Harvery and Mairi Maclean. This will be an excellent event which will focus on the history of IC in the UK and will be the first conference to be held on this vital topic. The conference has already attracted a great deal of attention from IC practitioners who will be attending. There are still spaces. Please contact Michael on Michael.Heller@Northumbria.ac.uk and for further information go to our Events tab on our website.
2026 will be another busy year for the project which we are looking forward to. We are currently working on four papers which we aim to submit in 2026. We will also begin the writing of the hotly anticipated book on the history of IC in the UK in the latter half of 2026 which we aim to finish by the end of 2026 for publication in 2027. This is primarily targeted at the IC profession and will be the first history of the profession and its practice in the UK. We will also be attending a large number of professional and academic conferences where we will further disseminate the findings of our project. Here again is to 2026 and to success, health and happiness!