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Caught in the midst of an information revolution,
today's business managers and scholars are trying to assess
the likely effects of the sweeping changes now taking place
in technology and in organization. In Control through
Communication JoAnne Yates looks back to the last major
shift in the use of communication and information -- and
writes the first full and detailed account of the process
by which modern managerial systems came to be created within
the American business system.
Focusing on the evolution of corporate communication
as an integrated whole, Yates examines its functions, technologies,
and genres. First in railroads and then in manufacturing
firms, managers discovered that they could capture the benefits
of growth only by replacing informal and primarily oral
management methods with more systematic modes, heavily dependent
on written communication.
During the years from 1850 to 1920, with
the rise of a new philosophy of management which enrolled
efficiency and system, internal communication came to serve
as a mechanism for managerial coordination and control.
Grounding her work in case studies of the Illinois Central
Railroad, Scovill Manufacturing Company, and E. I. du Pont
de Nemours & Company, Yates traces how quill pens and
pigeonholes gave way to the telegraph and typewriters, stencil
duplicators and vertical filing systems that aided in creating,
copying, storing, and retrieving documents. Whole new types
of communication developed. Without the memoranda, reports,
employee manuals, and in-house magazines that we now take
for granted, the modern corporation could not not have evolved
to its present form.
JoAnne Yates teaches management communication
and runs the communication program at the Sloan School of
Management of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
She is founder and coeditor of Management Communication
Quarterly.
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