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Steve Murray, HIST 0647
Joanne Yates, "Internal Communications Systems in American Business
Structures: A Framework to Aid Appraisal," American Archivist
48 (Spring 1985): 141-58.
Internal Communications Systems in American Business Structures
Yates uses the tripartite model of American business communication developed
for her subsequent Control Through Communication to offer archivists
a new, researcher's perspective on current appraisal practices for the records
of manufacturing and transportation corporations and to suggest modifications
that will provide better documentation of the structure of companies and
of the functions of their internal components. Yates argues that current
appraisal thinking is based on vague, problematic standards that function
fairly well for truly hierarchical bodies such as governments but fail to
accommodate the decentralized complexities of modern corporations. The description
of the three business structures is redundant of Control Through Communication
and will be summarized very briefly here, but Yates's advice to archivists
makes this article a valuable additional reading.
Three American business structures:
- Traditional, owner-managed small firm dominant before 1880 and still
existing today.
- Larger, functionally departmentalized firm that developed in late nineteenth
century.
- Multi-divisional firm with autonomous divisions based on products or
geographical regions, first developed in 1920s.
Yates's critique of current appraisal methods:
- Standard work on appraisal of business records is Ralph M. Hower's
"The Preservation of Business Records," Bulletin of the Business
Historical Society 11 (October 1937): 43. Hower suggests preserving
records that document functions, documenting changes in organizational
structure, and being familiar with company's administrative history, but
he does not discuss in depth how to determine connection between administrative
structure and documents.
- Standard work on appraisal in general is Schellenberg, who stresses
documenting the functions of an organization but does not perceive documents
as part of a dynamic system themselves. Vague definition of evidential
value provides no guidelines for making practical appraisal decisions.
Like Hower, Schellenberg calls for understanding of administrative history
but provides no guidance on understanding that history's relationship to
records.
- Widely practiced "tip-of-the-iceberg" approach is likely
derived from Schellenberg. Archivists preserve records from the top level
of a presumably hierarchical structure, in which all information eventually
reaches the top in an abbreviated format. Some supplement executive records
with random or systematic samples of records from lower levels. Both practices
fail to maintain a complete picture of systems that operate through downward,
upward, and lateral communication.
- In a functionally departmentalized company, the corporate office records
contain only aggregate data from departmental functions, not the records
of communications that actually control the reported function. Would need
to process records from "one or two levels lower."
- In a decentralized multifunctional corporation, the corporate office
records "would have virtually no information on a particular function"
because it receives only data for use in comparative assessments of divisions.
Researchers need records from at least two levels down, the department
within a division.
- Archivists too often consider routine documents such as reports and
forms as unimportant, but they are important for establishing context in
which information is gathered for making management decisions.
Yates's suggestions for archivists:
- Appraisal strategies should be designed to retain documents that reveal
the structure of the communications system.
- Different appraisal strategies should be used for the records of companies
of different basic structures.
- In a decentralized, multidivisional company, "it makes more sense...to
document a single division and the central office than to cut off a horizontal
layer."
- Within departmentalized or divisional company, archivists "should
try to capture the structure of the communication system by saving strategic
vertical selections...as well as horizontal layers of documents at the
top of the hierarchy or the bottom." Yates thinks of these vertical
selections as "core samples" that illustrate upward and downward
flows but are not representative of other vertical flows.
- To deal with problem of bulk at lower levels in the system, archivists
should look for "nodes of change" in a function to document more
heavily.
- Finding aids should explain appraisal choices and the relationships
of the retained records to those not retained.
- Archivists would serve researchers better by thoroughly documenting
a few companies with good sets of records than by documenting only the
top offices of many companies.
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