Abstract

All magazines are organizational in the sense that they are produced by organizations, but organizational magazines are intended for employees of the organizations that produce them—and according to research on organizational magazines, they may inform, instruct, entertain or even provide collective meaning for employees. Organizational magazines may be supplied to and read by various parties outside the organization, such as customers or shareholders, but their primary audience is internal rather than external. ¹ With the rise of the large-scale modern corporation, in both the private and public sectors, in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth century, the number of organizational magazines increased as they became institutionalized as a genre of communication. ² Like other magazines, however, their continued existence is threatened by the digital revolution and the competing forms of media, with many organizations abolishing magazines and replacing them with executive blogs and podcasts as well as e-mail. ³