Media Management During COVID-19: Behavior of Swedish Media Leaders in Times of Crisis

Figures & data

Table 1. Background of the sample of media managers (n = 196).

Background information		Frequencies
Gender	Female	93
	Male	101
	Prefer not to say	1
Age	≤35	9
	36–50	86
	≥51	99
Years as a manager	Less than 1 year	2
	1–3 years	19
	4–6 years	24
	7–10 years	27
	10 years or more	122
Years within the company	Less than 1 year	8
	1–3 years	26
	4–6 years	21
	7–10 years	27
	10 years or more	113
Type of manager	Top management (publisher, editor-in-chief, and other editorial)	47
	Non-editorial manager (technology, business and development, marketing, HR, etc.)	81
	Middle management (editorial)	56
	Non-manager (team leader, project manager, etc.)	8
Type of media company	Public service broadcaster	50
	Commercial TV or radio	10
	National newspaper	13
	Regional or local newspaper	50
	Digital native company	21
	Other	52

Table 2. Frequencies, means and standard deviations for the perceived performance of certain leadership tasks during crisis. Prompt: To what extent do you … ?. Scale: 1: Not at all to 5: To a very large extent.

Items	To a very large/large extent	Means	SD
You have mastered technology for digital meetings	92%	4.39	.747
You have been able to be transparent about the functionality of your organization	90%	4.32	1.104
Digital meetings fulfill their purpose	83%	3.98	.854
You feel confident about leading remotely	56%	3.62	1.279
In your opinion, you are good at coaching employees remotely	74%	3.36	1.172
Your leadership has changed	55%	3.27	1.19
Your workload has increased	40%	3.1	1.258
You have personally been worried about the crisis	15%	2.24	1.096

Table 3. Crisis management leadership tasks. Prompt: During the crisis, I have … Scale: Yes or No.

Tasks	Frequencies	N
Participated in remote meetings	94%	183
Hosted remote meetings	92%	179
Had the authority to take my own decisions about how to adapt	77%	150
Implemented decisions about adaptations from others in my organization	62%	121
Supervised others who manage work remotely	53%	104
Had meetings across the organization with other managers/managing groups	52%	102
Participated in the crisis management group of my organization	43%	83
Worked with HR tasks to a larger extent than before the crisis	36%	71
Had to carry out furlough and lay-offs	32%	63
Participated in networks with other organizations because of the crisis	22%	42
Not experienced any notable difference in terms of how we work in my organization	17%	34
Worked with technological tasks to a larger extent than before the crisis	15%	30
Worked with editorial tasks to a larger extent than before	15%	29
Headed the organization's crisis management group	13%	25
Worked with market-oriented tasks to a larger extent than before	10%	19

Table 4. Means and standard deviations for leadership behavior items.

Leadership style	Items	Agree (%)	Means	SD
Directive	I make the majority of the decisions that concern my employees	33	3.59	1.306
	I have to lay out goals and guidelines in order for my employees to get things done	12	2.75	1.298
	I expect my employees to follow my instructions precisely	13	3.18	1.167
	I let my employees know what will happen if their work is unsatisfactory.	5	2.24	1.247
	I try to monitor team members very closely	15	2.99	1.299
	I require employees to submit reports of their assigned work	6	2.05	1.213
Supportive	I try to develop close personal relationships with my employees	37	3.88	1.073
	I demonstrate concern for my employees	46	4.27	.820
	I believe my employees’ feelings are as important as the task on hand	21	3.56	1.037
	I rely on what I learn from my employees and use each person’s talents	31	3.93	.907
	I work hard to ease tensions whenever they arise.	41	4.07	.967
	I encourage employees to talk to me about personal problems	23	3.60	1.047
Inter-personal	I personally help employees when it is clear their workload is too high.	34	3.94	1.017
	I take the initiative to help orient employees even though it is not required.	25	3.81	.962
	I lend a helping hand to my employees when needed.	56	4.44	.733