It is with great regret that we have to inform you that Dr Joe Chick, our research fellow and valued colleague, left the research project at the end of August. Joe left to join the University of Leicester. He will be joining the School of Archeology and Ancient History where he will be working on a major medieval history research project. The position is much closer to Joe’s home and to his research area. Unlike Mick and I, Joe is a medieval historian. We are very sorry to see him go, as I am sure you all will be. His contribution to the Institutional History of Internal Communication in the UK research project has been immense. In addition to the vast research he has carried out in over ten archives, his work on communication, dissemination, webinars and stakeholder engagement has been superb and beyond our expectations. His podcasts, case studies, research blogs, presentations and engagement with the internal communication community in the UK (where he formed many close friendships) have been popular and deeply appreciated. This will leave a lasting legacy to the history of IC in the UK and to its work and professionalisation. In addition, before he left, Joe wrote an incredibly important academic article on the history of IC and the uses of history in IC. This will soon be submitted to a world leading academic journal where Joe’s work will continued to be felt. We will be holding interviews for Joe’s replacement in two weeks. Hopefully we can find someone who can approach his level of expertise, knowledge and warmth. In the meantime, our podcasts and source of the month features will be briefly suspended, but will be resumed once our new colleague is in position. We wish Joe all the best in the future.
In relation to the project, August has been a very busy and productive month. In addition to Joe writing up our first academic article of the project, Michael attended the Academy of Management (AoM) in Chicago. The AoM is the largest and most prestigious management conference in the world with over 12,000 attendees. It was a four day conference from 9-13 August. At the conference Michael presented two papers on The Development of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Internal Labour Markets in the Twentieth Century in the UK and USA, and Marking History and Making History: Temporal narratives and Strategic Communication. The first paper made the important link between the development of internal CSR in the UK and USA (initially in the form of industrial welfare) and the development of internal labour markets where employees were given long term employment with career paths and were heavily invested in. The emergence of IC in the twentieth century can be seen as part of this development of internal labour markets. Communicating with employees, who were seen as valuable resources, was an important part of industrial welfare and the nascent field of personnel management. One of the two case studies in the presentation was the development of IC in Britain in the first half of the twentieth century. In the second presentation, based on the academic article which Joe has written, we focused on how IC has throughout its history written about its organization’s histories. It has used the past as an important resource to create organizational cultures and identity, engage employees and develop and implement strategy. We make the important distinction between Making History where IC uses the past to commemorate the organization in the present, and Marking History, where it uses the past to legitimate strategic plans and organizational change for the future. Both papers were well attended and were very well received. Valuable feedback was given in both.
Research has also continued this month at the Postal Museum Archives in London, one of our valued project partners. As sometimes fortuitously happens in archival research, the Postal Museum has more documents than was originally anticipated. This has necessitated extended research in their superb archive. When we first carried out research at the Postal Museum Archive in 2015 for our initial British Academy/Leverhulme Small Grant on the History of Company Magazines in Britain, 1945-2015, we only found a limited (but very valuable) number of archival sources. Since then, the Postal Museum has catalogued and made available more of its historical resources, which included a huge collection on internal communication at Royal Mail and the Post Office. This includes research into internal communication in the 1960s, the formation of its internal communication structure in the 1970s and internal communication campaigns in the 1980s. This is by far the richest archive we have found on the history of IC in the UK and allows us to comprehensively map for the first time the emergence of IC as an institutional and managerial practice. It now appears that IC (as opposed to its earlier manifestation as company magazines and staff representation committees) theoretically emerged in the 1960s, with important work from the Industrial Society, began to establish IC committees and departments in pioneering organization in the 1970s, and fully emerged, with sophisticated IC campaigns in the 1980s. This confirms earlier research carried out on the archives on British Rail and the BBC in May, June and July.
We plan to carry out research at GlaxoSmithKline and HSBC in September, at the Prudential in October and at Shell in November. Our archival research will then be finished though we will continue with our oral history research. Please do contact us if you want to be interviewed for our project.