report into

[James Harbeck]

I've noticed "report into" in place of "report to" in a corporate
restructuring description -- as in "[manager X] will report into
[manager Y]" and "[manager Y] will report into me."

I find that "will report into" gets 43,500 Google hits. ("Will report
to" gets 3,770,000, but of course not all of those are parallel to
this usage.)

I'm inclined to think this is a result of a slight shift in the
conceptualization of the relationship -- boss as destination or
repository rather than just as recipient or node -- but it could also
be a shift in the way "to" is seen; it might be that it's not firm or
emphatic enough anymore, or that it's seen as ambiguous (perhaps as
temporally bound).

James Harbeck.

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