In response to last week’s Scoble-Israel-Vogels story (summarized here), a few folks have posted on the value of blogging in the corporate setting. In this post, Tim Bray of Sun Microsystems provides one of the best (and simplest) explanations I’ve found (thanks to Scoble for the link):

There’s a word for companies that base all decisions on ruthless quantitative ROI metrics: Bankrupt. I’m an engineer and value numbers, but in business, sometimes anecdotal evidence is all you’ve got, and the anecdotal evidence that blogging produces good results for some companies is pretty voluminous. You don’t want to hear it, that’s your privilege; me, I tend to want to consider all the inputs.

As a thought experiment, replace the word “blogging” with “email” or “conference presentation” or “teleconference” or “sales presentation”. Or “barroom conversation” for that matter.

[Q]ualitatively, blogging requires no new policies and introduces no new risks. If your employees are going to say stupid things in public, you’ve got a management problem and a policy problem, not a blogging problem.

Other bloggers who have weighed in:

Shel Israel: Why Amazon Should Blog
Dennis Howlett: Scoble, Amazon and my ROi
Jeremiah Owyang: How to measure the value of Corporate Blogging

Update:
Dennis Howlett: The ROi Conundrum