ABSTRACT
The very mission of business organizations is to adapt ceaselessly to, but also shape, a moving world. In this respect, their essence is much more the process of “organizing” than the institution “organization” (Czarniawska, 2008). There even exist some organizations aimed at organizing all the others, like governments, consulting agencies, professional associations, and trade press. Among these organizations, the latter deserves particular attention. At the turn of the 20th century, the rise of modern companies was accompanied by a parallel proliferation of some journals and magazines, which proposed to help businessmen share their experiences and build the common language they needed to promote, exchange, standardize, and forward some new kinds of business practices. These journals were oriented toward general business and managerial issues, of course, like System, The Magazine of Business, a publication launched in 1903 by the businessman and Harvard Professor Arch Shaw (System later became the well-known Business Week). But trade press journals also flourished as a series of publications specialized in different business sectors (automobile, architecture, retailing, etc.; Laib, 1955).
