Shaping a corporate identity from below: The role of the BAT Bulletin

Abstract

Existing studies that have explored the use of company journals as a mode of corporate communication during the early 20th century have invariably adopted an instrumentalist view of these publications. Company journals have been seen as a means of projecting to employees a top-down view of organizations. This article identifies a counter-example in which the origins of a company journal, the BAT Bulletin , are seen to arise as the result of an initiative stemming from the employees themselves. These antecedents gave the BAT Bulletin a high degree of legitimacy amongst staff and provided the company with an important means of establishing a unified corporate culture across a disparate group of international operating companies. Over time, however, the contents of the journal gradually became more conventional, and it was eventually closed down when the strategy of international integration ceased to be a desirable corporate objective during the 1930s.

Keywords

British American Tobacco Co.cigarettes corporate headquarters World War One Hugo Cunliffe-Owen international corporate integration James B. Duke tobacco industry

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