The British house magazine 1945 to 2015: The creation of family, organisation and markets

Abstract

This article examines the history of British house magazines from 1945 to 2015. It discusses their content, audience and function within companies. From tools of internal public relations, house magazines switched to being used as mediums of industrial relations in the 1960s and 1970s, and by the late 1980s were increasingly applied to the creation of corporate identity, organizational culture and internal marketing. They were also forced to accommodate the rise of internal communications and electronic media. The paper discusses the rise and relative decline of the British house magazine, and ends by asking whether it has a future.