International encyclopedia of organizational communication

For no particular reason, I started re-reading Tristram Shandy for personal pleasure, while simultaneously ploughing through the International Encyclopedia of Organizational Communication out of an earnest sense of duty to the readers of Reference Reviews. The two books have become thoroughly intertwined in my mind.

Communicating within organizations is the very essence of being human. Communicating is what humans are good at. All the anthropological evidence suggests that humans live and work most effectively in groups of 80 to 150 people. This is very much larger than the viable groups of our nearest relations – chimpanzees and bonobos. One...