The Strategic Challenge of Continuous Change in Multi-Platform Media Organizations—A Strategy-as-Practice Perspective

Abstract

This paper focuses on the complexities of managing multi-platform strategies in the complex and highly dynamic environments of contemporary media markets. Based on a comparative case study of two Nordic media organizations, the paper identifies and articulates two sets of practices through which strategy is managed in the continuously changing print and online environments. While the practices that guide strategy development of print publishing tends to be content driven, brand constrained, commercially steered, and top-down monitored, strategizing for online platforms tends to be more technology driven, brand inspired, interactive, and entrepreneurial. For multi-platform media organizations this type of situation is challenging because the incremental and radical innovations that they pursue are platform specific, instead of aiming at exploitation and exploration on both platforms. To succeed in the market, the paper thus argues, multi-platform media organizations need to develop strategies and organizational practices that allow them to be truly ambidextrous-to pursue both incremental and radical change-on all platforms.

The practice of shared inquiry: how actors manageforstrategy emergence

“…Research in the field of strategic media management aims at approaching and conceptualizing organizational challenges, so that practitioners can work successfully towards developing their organization's future in strategic manner (Achtenhagen & Raviola, 2009;Järventie-Thesleff et al, 2014;Küng, 2010;Maijanen & Jantunen, 2014;Mierzejewska & Shaver, 2014;Oliver, 2013). This research often focuses on the organizational level, and elaborates how to carefully select an environment, build core competencies, or design longterm strategies (Colapinto, 2010;Küng, 2008;Vukanovic, 2009), such as new multiplatform or content strategies (Goyanes & Dürrenberg, 2014).…”

“…Essentially, a practice-theoretical perspective on strategy emergence shifts attention to the day-to-day activities and practices through which strategies and changing realities are managed in organizations (Järventie-Thesleff et al, 2014). Therefore, practitioners' actions are strategic when they submit to the rules of their practice from which a sense of future potential emerges (Chia & Holt, 2006, p. 647).…”

“…This future brings new products, business models and cultural practices (Achtenhagen, 2017;Deuze, 2012;Evens, Raats, & von Rimscha, 2018;Küng, 2017a;Lowe, 2016;Mierzejewska & Shaver, 2014;Wirtz & Elsäßer, 2017) and drives organizations to become more entrepreneurial (Will, Brüntje, & Gossel, 2016) and more adaptive (Baumann, 2013). Essentially, this rapid and continuous change, which characterizes both the strategic environment and internal structures, workprocesses and practices of media organizations (Daniels & Hollifield, 2002;Ekdale, Singer, Tully, & Harmsen, 2015;Järventie-Thesleff, Moisander, & Villi, 2014;Picard, 2009), makes traditional approaches to strategic planning often quite ineffective. In consequence, media organizations need to develop new approaches and patterns of strategic thinking (Daidj, 2018, p. 111).…”

Ambidextrous tensions: Dynamics of creative work in the media innovation process

“…Although there is a branch of research on ambidexterity in innovation studies, studies utilizing the concept of ambidexterity in the context of research on media innovations and media management are scarce (see Järventie-Thesleff, Moisander & Villi, 2014). Our objective is to approach this gap by examining the following research question: What are the central tensions of the media innovation process in an ambidextrous organizational context that should be considered in media management?…”

Business model innovation in news media organisations – 2018 special issue of the European Media Management Association (emma)

“…Media management research has addressed the difficulties for news media organisations regarding managing strategic renewal (Horst & Järventie-Thesleff, 2016;Horst & Moisander, 2015) and becoming ambidextrous (Järventie-Thesleff, Moisander, & Villi, 2014;Virta & Nando, 2017), but only little media management research has looked at transformational change from a business model innovation perspective. Céstino and Matthews (2016) build further on path dependency to explain the persistence of the newspaper business model and stress that "path un-locking" entails innovation in an organisation's value creation logic.…”