Having blogged several times in recent days about the benefits and virtues of encouraging corporate employees to write “open” blogs aimed at people in the external marketplace, I have to acknowledge a recent survey that illustrates the potential Dark Side of blogging. Ian Delaney alerted me, in a recent posting on his twopointouch blog (which he, in turn, had picked up from a blog posting by John Kotsier), of a recent poll by the Attention Company (details of which are available here, and which is well worth reading), which asked participants if they agreed that “It is appropriate to share the following on a blog or website:”

1. Praise of your organization (72%)
2. Events or activities in your organization that are already public knowledge (71%)
3. Opinions about the performance of your organization (39%)
4. Opinions about your competitors (33%)
5. Events or activities in your organization that are not yet public knowledge (16%)
6. Trade Secrets (8%)

Well, obviously we don’t have any problems with the first two items on the list. And blogging one’s opinions about the performance of your own organization, and about your competitors, can either be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on what kind of opinions are expressed, and how they’re articulated. Indeed, even blogging about “events or activities in your organization that are not yet public knowledge” could be okay — if the employee is blogging about good things, and/or events/activities so insignificant that it doesn’t really matter whether they became public knowledge yesterday, today, or tomorrow.

But blogging about trade secrets — which 8% of the poll respondents apparently felt was appropriate — is obviously a more serious matter. In case you thought I had completely lost my senses with my earlier endorsement of an overall encouragement of corporate blogging, I certainly do not think it’s appropriate for employees to blather, willy-nilly, about their employers’ trade secrets. Indeed, once they do so, it’s no longer a “secret,” and their employer may well have lost whatever legal protection that had, in terms of copying or replication by competitors.

And in the same vein, it could be disastrous for employees to blog their opinions about their own organizations, or their competitors, if their statements are incorrect, misleading, libelous, obscene, or otherwise inappropriate. And it doesn’t take too much imagination to see how disastrous it could be for an employee to blog about events or activities in their organization that are not yet public knowledge.

But before we use these depressing poll results as a justification to ban all forms of corporate blogging, let’s ask a simple question: would these employees have the same attitude, and exhibit the same behavior, using other forms of communication — e.g., e-mail messages, newspaper columns, magazine articles, conference presentations, television interviews, or whispered secrets to The New York Times? Of course, there is something different about blogging: the blogger controls the content and format of the information, and once it’s been uploaded to the Internet, it’s available for anyone to read (whether or not anyone actually bothers to read it is a different question). By contrast, e-mail messages are only read by the people to whom you explicitly send the messages (though they can forward the message to their friends, who forward it to their friends, ad nauseum). And newspaper columns, magazine articles, and conference presentations only reach their intended audience if the publisher feels like publishing it.

And perhaps because blogging is different, in these various ways, people are behaving differently (and less rationally) than they would with other, more familiar and established, “media” for the expression of their ideas. I can easily imagine that to be the case with teenagers, and possibly even twenty-something young adults who are fresh out of college and just entering the work force. It’s a little more difficult for me to imagine that professional employees in their thirties and forties would have the discipline to avoid blabbering about trade secrets in a professional/scientific journal, but would disclose the details of those same trade secrets in a blog. But the experience of blogging is a bit heady, at first, and maybe I should just accept the fact that people occasionally behave in bizarre ways.

But if you accept the proposition that most people behave in a consistent fashion most of the time, then it follows that a company should have a consistent policy to encourage appropriate communications, and discourage inappropriate communications, in all forms of media. If it’s a big company, I would expect that policy to be articulated in the employee handbook, or whatever propaganda that HR department gives to new employees. If it’s a small company, I would expect the policy to be articulated orally, and I would expect managers to depend on the common sense of their employees. As an employee in a software company, for example, I should have enough common sense not to stand up in front of an audience of a hundred people (including my company’s competitors) at a professional conference, and blabber about the confidential details of our company’s forthcoming product. If I did so, in a moment of naivete or stupidity or rage or revenge, I’d expect to be fired on the spot. Same thing if I disclosed the information by email. Same thing if I disclosed it in a blog posting.

In many large organizations, employees understand that they must receive corporate approval before they publish an article in a professional journal, or give a presentation at a professional conference, or agree to be interviewed by a media journalist. But they don’t need, nor do they bother asking for, permission to send email messages to individuals outside the corporate boundary (they may be restricted from doing so via Web-based email services like Gmail or HotMail, but that’s a slightly different issue). I believe that bogging is more like email than publishing an article, or giving a conference presentation.

Here’s another way to look at it: in many small and medium-sized companies, junior employees need formal approval for articles, interviews, and presentations; but senior employees (managers, and “professional” employees above a certain level) do not. I don’t know if there’s a consistent policy in most Fortune 100 companies about this sort of thing, but in small and medium-sized companies, I wouldn’t expect a Vice President to have to tolerate the bureaucracy and inconvenience of formal permission before giving a speech, an interview, or an article. But I would expect a junior programmer, or a junior salesperson, to get such approval; and perhaps that same expectation should be extended to blogging as well.

And perhaps we might consider extending such a policy to different categories of employees. Arguably, I wouldn’t expect the receptionists, the accounting clerks, and the mailroom employees to be blogging, just as I wouldn’t expect them to be writing articles, giving conference presentations, or granting interviews. But how far do you extend this policy, and what are the risks that it could turn into a “caste system” form of discrimination? If you’re a manufacturing company, do you allow your white-collar workers to blog, but forbid your blue-collar workers from doing so? Remember, more and more of these people (though probably a smaller percentage of blue-collar workers) have access to PC’s, terminals, workstations, and Internet-enabled handheld devices as part of their day-to-day job … which means that they’re already emailing their friends and colleagues within the organization, as well as their customers, suppliers, and others outside the corporate boundary. So if they can email, why can’t they blog?

Admittedly, all of these considerations suggest that it can be dangerous to promote a simplistic attitude of, “Blogging is good! Let everyone blog — everyone, everywhere, all the time!” Yes, blogging can backfire; yes, it can be abused; yes, companies should think about the details, and establish reasonable policies to minimize the chances of abuse. And yes, those who blog inappropriately should be reprimanded, punished, or even fired — just as they should be for inappropriate communication through other channels.

All I ask is this: let’s not throw out the baby with the bath water. Notwithstanding the concerns about possible misuse, I believe very strongly that blogging can be, and is, a very powerful positive form of communication between employees and the outside world, and that employers really do benefit from it in the vast majority of cases.