Conference Presentations by Sven-Ove Horst
Papers by Sven-Ove Horst
Journal of Media Business Studies, 2019
This paper problematizes the applicability of traditional top-down strategic planning in a contin... more This paper problematizes the applicability of traditional top-down strategic planning in a continuously changing media industry and builds a practice-theoretical perspective for analyzing strategy emergence. Through a qualitative analysis of 22 interviews, with media professionals and consultants of a German-based print magazine company, we identify a jointly enacted practice that we call “shared inquiry”. This practice includes recursive and adaptive strategizing actions towards (1) searching and learning (actions of employees), (2) facilitating and questioning (actions of managers), and (3) guiding and reflecting (actions of consultants). We demonstrate how these actions form a mechanism through which media managers create the conditions to cope with continuous change and how they manage in order to achieve strategy emergence both locally and on an organization-wide level. Ultimately, we show how strategic actions can be mapped in a continuum that supports “responsive coping”.
Current strategic media management has a tendency to draw on design or planning schools and focus... more Current strategic media management has a tendency to draw on design or planning schools and focus primarily on competitive advantages, industry development, and strategic positioning. However, the way in which strategies emerge from everyday practices is poorly understood. To this end, we build a theoretical lens from the narrative approach to strategy-as-practice and the concept of “wayfinding”, and study how organisational narratives can help both managers and employees to construct meaning around emergent strategy during ongoing transformational change. Through interview data of an empirical case study, we identify narratives on three fronts – about (1) employees, (2) managers, and (3) the market – and elaborate on how these narratives may give meaning, offer guidance, and provide an actionable basis from which to find a way through ongoing transformational change. Our study contributes to the research on strategic media management by showing how narratives can help to make sense of emergent strategy and the way organisations find their way through ongoing change.
International Journal of Media Management
This paper continues and extends the emerging scholarship of strategic media management by examin... more This paper continues and extends the emerging scholarship of strategic media management by examining the day-to-day challenges that media managers face when managing strategic renewal in traditional print-oriented media firms. The aim, in particular, is to shed light on the tensions and paradoxical situations that middle managers need to deal with in contexts where taken-for-granted industry recipes and well-established business practices have become problematized as a result of industry-wide technological and cultural change. Based on an empirical case study, the paper identifies and elaborates on three interconnected paradoxes, rooted in the history of the company and past decisions of its top-management: (1) balancing employees’ needs for stability with organizational needs for change; (2) bridging employees’ needs for security and tradition and the organizational need for learning and taking risks; as well as (3) reconciling employees’ needs to ‘focus on themselves’ with organizational needs to collaborate for collective success. Theoretically, the paper contributes to the literature by working towards a new paradox perspective on managing strategic renewal in media organizations. This theoretical perspective is offered as an interpretive framework for empirically exploring and critically examining the dynamics and complexities of strategic media management in the continuously changing business environments of the industry.
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Conference Presentations by Sven-Ove Horst
Papers by Sven-Ove Horst