23237: The History of Internal Communication and Employee Voice

Friday, July 25, 2025

11:00 - 13:00 CEST (GMT+2)

Location: Bella Center: MR6

Session Type: PDW (workshop)
Orientation: Research
Shareable link: https://cdmcd.co/AB7Wq7

Participant(s)

MH

Michael Heller

Brunel Business School, Brunel U. London
MR

Michael Rowlinson

U. of Exeter, United Kingdom
CH

Charles Edward Harvey

Newcastle U., United Kingdom
MM

Mairi Maclean

U. of Bath, United Kingdom
KA

Katsuki Aoki

Meiji U., Japan
KT

Kevin D. Tennent

U. of York, United Kingdom
AS

Andrew D A Smith

Birmingham Business School, U. of Birmingham, UK, United Kingdom
ER

Emily Rees Koerner

Northumbria University, United Kingdom

Internal Communication is the strategic and operational use of communication by management within organizations which treats employees as stakeholders (Welch & Jackson, 2007). It serves a number of functions that include the transfer of operational information, the communication and explanation of strategy, the facilitation of organizational change, the enhancement of labour and industrial relations, the improvement of employee engagement, the internal marketing and branding of products and services, the curation of organizational memory, and the construction of organizational culture and identity. It is now a global institutionalized and standardized managerial practice which has developed a number of institutional structures over the last hundred years that include professional associations, qualifications, journals, media, conferences, technology and codes of practice. From its origins in company magazines, memos and staff representation councils in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth-centuries, it has advanced into a strategic practice, which counsels and is used by CEO’s and senior management. Yet unlike cognate professions such as marketing, public relations and human relations, it is one which has not developed an institutional history, and it is a managerial practice whose past remains obscure and unchartered (Tedlow, 1990; Marchand, 1998; Kaufman, 2008). In this PDW, through a series of four presentations which cover the UK, USA and Japan we aim to uncover some of the history of IC and explore its impact on the history of management, organizations, and employment.