Media organizations have been challenged during the past decade to embrace the digital development and completely change their business models. When advertisement revenues transferred from print outlets to digital platforms, traditional newspapers were facing the road to decline. Organizational change to comply with the digital transformation became a prerequisite to survival. Research establishes that organizational changing is a dynamic process that takes place in communication (Jian, 2011). When leaders and members talk about and envision strategic path choices and objectives, the change process has already started (Grant & Marshak, 2011; Johansson & Heide, 2008a, 2008b). Studies mostly focus on communication and discursive action from an internal perspective and illustrate how leadership communication, such as messages, stories, narratives; and members’ sensemaking, tension management and resistance to change influence organizational change (Christensen, 2014; Schulz-Knappe, 2019; Sivunen & Putnam, 2019; Whittle, Mueller, & Mangan, 2009). Positive communication is important to emotional buy-in, learning and transformation, since it promotes commitment, trust and optimism that produces the desired transformational effect (Muthusamy, 2019).
However, we have less knowledge on how leaders’ and members communication on organizational change is reflected outside the organization, in the surrounding media landscape. In this paper, it is argued that organizational changing and change communication is not an isolated internal process, but rather that the external communication taking place in the surrounding organizational context is an important part of the change process itself. Therefore, it is important to study how change and change communication within an organization is portrayed outside the organization.
The present study focuses on how the leadership communication and culture in a Swedish media organization is reflected in the press during the change process. Material used for the analysis consists of articles in the Swedish industry press as well as the union press. The total number of articles about the media organization is close to 1,000 articles from the industry and union press during the period of change between 2012 and 2018. Through a qualitative discourse analysis of leaders’ and members’ public statements on the change process, important challenges and dilemmas during the change are revealed. The findings illustrate that several serious problems in the media organization are exposed in the press, such as invisible and defecting leaders, poor work environment characterized by a silence culture, distrust and disrespect, experiences of harassment and oppression, and feelings of anxiety and frustration. The discussion centres around the influence these reflections on change from the outside perspective may have on leaders and members that are already positioned in a difficult situation. The probability is suggested that the external communication on organizational change can contribute to forming the self-identities and images of the future for both leaders and members. Thus it is proposed that the negative power of words surrounding the changing media organization is aggravating the crisis and making the change more difficult.
2023.