Employee communication, in the beginning ...

I've been looking for it for almost two decades, and now that I've found it, I'm savoring it—and I hope you'll savor it with me, bit by bit, as I make my way through.

It's the first book on employee communication—written before the birth of most communication practitioners and our communication buzzwords, habits of thought, sacred cows, tired arguments, lost causes and artificial limitations.

Plainly titled Sharing Information with Employees and published in 1942 by the Stanford University Press, it's written by an Alexander Heron, about whom all I know so far is that he was a "Director of Industrial Relations for a large and far flung enterprise." ("Industrial relations" was a department without a precise modern-day equivalent, which generally oversaw the relationship between management and labor.)

The introduction, by a Paul Eliel of Stanford and signed Jan. 8, 1942, claims that a survey of business literature revealed not a single previous book about "sharing information with employees."

... strange as it seems, while all of our general or special works on labor relations, personnel management, and similar subjects have discussed in great detail how to employ specific techniques, none of them have more than touched on the most fundamental of all techniques in labor management: how to convey information to employees. None of them have ever thought it necessary to attempt to answer such questions as: How do you tell employees what you are doing or proposing to do? How do you tell them about the business in which they are engaged? How do you tell them the importance of the project on which they are working?

And it's in his introduction that Eliel introduces the first potentially debatable idea, by claiming: "Implicit throughout Mr. Heron's treatment is consideration of the business as a social institution as well as an organization designed to carry out economic objectives."

Before our first proper installment in this series—which I grandly hope through my commentary and our discussions will amount to a white paper—can we all agree to stipulate that corporations (to which we give so many of our precious hours and so much of our hearts' blood, whose products and services we use, and whose vast resource-taking and refuse-making we live with, whose varying financial stability makes and breaks our livelihoods and sometimes our very lives) are social institutions and not mere economic engines?

Or can we not?

Comments

[Kristen]

My immediate reaction to this question was: "Well, it depends on your definition of 'social institutions'" so I went looking for a definition, and here's what I found on Wikipedia (which I'm not a fan of, but which had the best definition I could find):

Social organization or social institution, refers to a group of social positions, connected by social relations, performing a social role. It can also be defined in a narrower sense as any institution in a society that works to socialize the groups or people in it. They are patterns of relationships (Role, Status) which are expected to be maintained as per certain rules and regulations, with a focus and functions to be performed, and to bring about social change/order. Eg. family, religion, economy, polity.

Social organizations can take many forms, depending on the social context. For example, in the business context a social organization may be an enterprise, company, corporation, etc. Commonly, experts officially recognize these five major social institutions that have been evident in some way in every civilization in history: government, religion, education, economy, and family.

To give a simple example: productive institutions are dependent on educational institutions for a skilled workforce, educational institutions are dependent on the government for their funding, and government institutions, in turn, rely on productive institutions to create wealth to finance government spending. Sociologists call this institutional interdependence.

I really like that last parargraph, because it clearly illustrates in one (admittedly, run-on) sentence, the interdependence between the key aspects of any effective social structure, and the need for ALL the components to work cooperatively for the whole to keep humming along.

[Kristen]

Gaaa! All those words, and I just realized I didn't actually answer your question!

I think corporations SHOULD be social institutions, they NEED to be social institutions, but my experience in 25 years of working in exclusively corporate environments, particularly in the last 10 yrs, leads me to believe that many corporations AREN'T functioning like social institutions, at least not at the moment.

[David Murray]

Kristen:

"I think corporations SHOULD be social institutions, they NEED to be social institutions, but my experience in 25 years of working in exclusively corporate environments, particularly in the last 10 yrs, leads me to believe that many corporations AREN'T functioning like social institutions, at least not at the moment."

My point: Because of their significance in the life of our society, these organizations are social organizations, whether they are effective ones or not, whether they acknowledge their social responsibility or not.

Can we start there?

[Kristen]

I absolutely agree with that!

[Rueben]

I'd agree with that, David. In fact, it's arguably much more true today than it was in 1942.

[Ron Shewchuk]

I think much of our social interaction today happens at work. Although many workplaces are flawed, dysfunctional, even soul-destroying places, they are social institutions. And each one has its own government, religion, education, economy, and family. Many corporate leaders ignore this and think of their businesses more like a plough that can be endlessly dragged through the ground rather than a society that needs to be nurtured and maintained. I am really looking forward to the nuggets I'm sure you're going to find in that book.