Academic outputs
February was a very successful month for the project in terms of academic outputs. We had submitted two papers to major 4* global academic journals and were given a revise and resubmission (R&R) for both of these. For non-academic colleagues, this means that we have been asked to make revisions to the articles which will be considered by anonymous reviewers from the journal before they accept the paper for publication.
During the publishing process it is very rare for a paper to be accepted for publication without revisions. In our case we have three reviewers for each paper who all asked for revisions! Happily, the R&R’s are moderate and we feel confident that we can make the necessary changes. When they are accepted, we will announce the publications.
In addition, our paper to the prestigious European Group for Organization Studies (EGOS) was accepted, and Michael will be going to the EGOS Conference in Athens in July where he will be presenting on repair focused deinstitutionalization. In this presentation, we examine the removal of the company magazine as the primary means of communicating with employees in the 1960s and 1970s and its replacement by Internal Communication, which used a range of integrated communication channels. We have case studies for this paper from the Industrial (Welfare) Society, the Post Office, British Rail and the Midland Bank.
We have also had the same paper accepted for the annual conference of the Association of Business Historians which will be held in Queen’s University Belfast in June. We have also had a panel accepted at the same conference on the history of IC where we have three speakers, which includes Emily.
Emily has been busy working on analysing the source material for the EGOS paper, including content analysis of three case studies: British Rail, the Post Office, and Midland Bank. She has been creating different ‘codes’ for the content of the magazines and newspapers from these archives from 1945 until the early 2000s. Early findings indicate an interesting shift from welfare-focused content towards more marketing, including a bigger focus on holidays and leisure time.
One important shift we have identified concerns format: from the 1960s, companies switched from magazines to newspapers, which closely resemble tabloids. The Post Office launch Courier and British Rail, Rail News, for example. This new format dramatically changes the tone, style and look of what is being communicated with employees. Read more about this in our source of the month for March.
Outreach and engagement
Michael was also busy in February with speaking engagements. On 12 February, Michael was invited to The Barings Archive Academic Workshop which was organised by ING Barings Bank in the City of London. Michael was one of the keynote speakers as this fascinating workshop which included archivists, trustees of the archive, employees (past and present) of the bank and researchers. Michael spoke on the history of London clerical workers, which was his original research for his PhD, though internal communication was mentioned!
Following Michael, Kirsty Peacock, a PhD student at the University of Oxford, spoke on the history of female clerical workers in the City of London, particular in relation to technology. To close, Dr John Orbell, business historian and former archivist at Barings, gave a fascinating paper on the history of George White, who was a senior clerk at Barings from 1834 to 1873. It was a marvellous day.
Michael was also invited onto the podcast of Workgrid in the USA. Workgrid are a major corporation who produce and design digital work solutions for employees and the digital workplace. Michael spoke on the history of IC and the history of the impact of technology on work, particularly in relation to the office. This is an extremely important topic, given the rise of Artificial Intelligence and its impact on work, intranets, employee experience and IC. It was a great experience and the first time we have spoken about our work on a podcast in the United States. The podcast will go live soon. We would like to thank Robert Ryan and Frank Pathyil for inviting us onto the podcast.
This coincides with work we have been doing on the history of intranets, including a forthcoming podcast in our series with the intranet expert Suzie Robinson from ClearBox Consulting, which we will cover in more detail next month.
The first podcast hosted by Emily was released in February, in which she spoke to historian and writer Dr Scott Anthony about the intersections between IC and PR, the history of PR in the postwar period, as well as the future of communication in an age saturated with propaganda.
Forward planning: exhibition and workshop
We have now started productive conversations about the planned exhibition at Northumbria University with our project partners, including Boots, Unilever, the British Library, the Institute of Internal Communication, and Simply Communicate. This exhibition for the general public, as well as academics and practitioners – which we hope will take place in November 2025 – will showcase findings from the project as well as archival holdings from our partners, including the aforementioned company magazines and newspapers.
To coincide with the exhibition, we are also planning a workshop, which will be open to academics and practitioners to give papers about both the history and contemporary state of IC. We will keep you posted on the progress on both events in the coming months!