Imagined Corporate Communities: Historical Sources and Discourses
Rowlinson, MC; Heller, M
Date: 7 May 2019
Article
Journal
British Journal of Management
Publisher
Wiley for British Academy of Management
Publisher DOI
Abstract
Corporations can be conceptualized as imagined communities, in which a sense of
community is created through textual media rather than face-to-face communication.
Historically the press, and newspapers in particular, provided texts through which nations
could be imagined as communities. By analogy, historically company magazines can ...
Corporations can be conceptualized as imagined communities, in which a sense of
community is created through textual media rather than face-to-face communication.
Historically the press, and newspapers in particular, provided texts through which nations
could be imagined as communities. By analogy, historically company magazines can be seen
as texts in which corporations were imagined as communities of employees. Company
magazines were ubiquitous in large corporations by the second half of the 20th century, and
many continue in print or online. Three enduring discourses of ‘imagined corporate
communities’ are identified from a sample of company magazines from four UK
organizations for 1955, 1985, and 2005 — Royal Mail; Cadbury; the BBC; and HSBC
(formerly Midland Bank) — as well as periodicals for the professional bodies of magazine
editors. These discourses explain the perceived role of company magazines and can be
described as: ‘esprit de corps’, in which the corporation is imagined as an extended family,
public school, or tightly knit military unit with its own distinctive spirit; ‘democratic polity’,
where employees are seen as citizens and the magazine represents an independent voice
holding management to account; and ‘brand community’, where the magazine’s readers are
imagined as ambassadors for the brand along with consumers.
Management
Faculty of Environment, Science and Economy
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