When JOMBS and emma team up

When JOMBS and emma team up, good things ought to happen. In this particular case, we are happy to present this special issue of a selection of papers that were presented at the annual conference of the European Media Management Association in Hamburg in May 2015.

The connection between the Journal of Media Business Studies (JOMBS) and the European Media Management Association (emma) is not new, given that emma is likely the most active international academic network in the field of media management and economics, and JOMBS is one of the leading international, academic journals in this field. In fact, many of the authors who publish in JOMBS are also members of emma. In late 2014, a formal bond was added to this connection as JOMBS became the flagship journal of emma, which further developed the relationship between the two. Since then, every emma member receives an online JOMBS subscription with his or her emma membership. Additionally, Ulrike Rohn became an additional Associate Editor to JOMBS, jointly elected by the JOMBS board and the executive board of emma. She serves as a communication channel between JOMBS and emma.

For those readers who are not familiar with emma, the European Media Management Association is a network of researchers and anyone interested in the field of media management. As a not-for-profit, academic organisation, it supports research, scholarship, and the practice of media management. emma has around 150 members from across Europe and around the world. With its annual conference and biannual doctoral summer school, it is likely the most vivid and productive academic association in the field of media management and economics.

The annual emma conference, in particular, facilitates communication between emma members and attracts academics from all over Europe and overseas to exchange research on current topics relevant to the management of media organisations and industries. It seems obvious that such a marketplace for empirical and theoretical research can also serve as a resource pool for potential papers that are of interest to readers of the Journal of Media Business Studies.

Hence, we are happy and excited to present the first JOMBS special issue to arise from an emma conference. This special issue contains three papers that, in their earlier versions, were presented at the 2015 annual emma conference in Hamburg. All full papers that were submitted to the conference hosts by a given date were considered for publication. Based on a double-blind review process involving at least two referees, we, Ulrike Rohn and Christian Wellbrock, as guest editors of this special issue, identified the best papers and invited their authors to submit their manuscripts to JOMBS, where the papers underwent at least one more round of double-blind reviews. The result of this process is this special issue.

All three articles revolve around the topic of development and sustainability in the media business, which is not a coincidence. As is traditional for annual emma conferences, the hosts of the conference did not only invite participants to submit full papers on general issues in the field of media management and economics, but they particularly encouraged participants to submit full papers on a specific predefined thematic focus. For the 2015 conference, conference hosts Christian Wellbrock and Michel Clement especially invited papers on issues related to development and sustainability in the media business. The ongoing structural changes within the media industries that challenge to establish new forms and strategies that enable media organisations to continue to develop sustainably make this a very timely topic. While some media businesses seem to master this challenge, others struggle with finding ways to create and maintain positive development and sustainability.

Each of the three papers in this special issue focuses, in its own specific way, on issues of development and sustainability in the media business.

Sven-Ove Horst and Rita Järventie-Thesleff look at how media managers and other employees construct the meaning of transformational change and emergent strategy. Through interviews with representatives of a print-focused European media organisation, they identify three organisational narratives that help to make sense of emergent and ongoing change and assist in the process of strategic wayfinding.

Also addressing formational change, Joaquin Cestino and Rachel Matthews ask why strategy innovation is rare in the regional news industry. Focusing on the historic case of the provincial press in England, they provide a conceptually integrated understanding of the lock-in of legacy regional newspapers by building upon various approaches: the knowledge-based view of the firm, the path-dependence theoretical perspective, and the field of business model studies.

In her paper, Naomi Sakr focuses on Egypt. Studying three innovatively managed Egyptian news outlets in the adverse political climate from 2013 to 2015, she offers observations on the nature of sustainability. Based on interviews with key representatives of these news outlets, as well as analysis of press coverage and other relevant documents, she concludes that, in adverse political environments, narrow economic sustainability criteria, focused on profitability and survival, may give a misleading picture of the sustainability of journalism that is supportive of democratic practice.

Each paper offers a close-up look at one specific issue that is relevant to media development and sustainability. With their differences and similarities, they represent the diverse spectrum of papers presented at emma conferences. The fact that all three are based on qualitative methods, however, is a mere coincidence, as much research presented at emma conferences follows a quantitative approach.

We, Ulrike Rohn and Christian Wellbrock, as the editors of this special issue, hope that you will enjoy reading this issue as much as we enjoyed reading the authors’ submissions and working with the authors and reviewers. Since this is an issue that derived from very interesting and thought-provoking presentations at an emma conference, we do hope that you will find the published papers a useful source of information that invites you to further reflections and ideas. In general, we hope that the papers in this special issue encourage further research on the development and sustainability of the media business.

Enjoy this special issue, and we hope to see you at one of the upcoming annual emma conferences!