Organisational culture within local media and how cultural beliefs shape strategic decisions

This paper is concerned with understanding organisational culture within local news media organisations. It explores the conflict faced by local news organisations between journalistic values and commercial imperatives. The paper considers how cultural beliefs within organisations shape strategic decisions and is based on the theoretical approach that the cultural paradigm of an organisation shapes its future strategies in the digital age.

The analysis is based on an empirical study carried out in the county of Kent in the south east of England. The research involves case study analysis of media organisations; comprising data gathered from interviews with stakeholders working for the media organisations, company data and observational data such as office location. Interviews participants were recruited from across both organisations in commercial, journalistic and support roles to develop insight into cultural differences within an organisation. The theoretical approach is not to compare and contrast the organisations but to give insight into how different legacy elements, management and ownership models have shaped the organisations digital transformation and strategies today.

A key emerging finding from the analysis is that organisational culture is a useful concept to understand changes and strategies of local news media organisations during the last decade as it reveals the conflict between the need to serve the local community from within the locale versus the commercial imperative to reduce costs through the centralisation of resources. It considers how local media organisations have adopted digital news production practices which have resulted in the relocation and centralisation of both physical offices and the journalists employed within them. The paper is concerned with how stakeholders have adopted digital elements alongside legacy practices to offer a new way of delivering local news content across numerous platforms whilst still serving the local community and maintaining traditional paid copy sales.