The owner-market fit and responses to competing logics

Abstract

This study investigates how the owner identity of media organisations affects their response to competing professional and market logics. To this end, a qualitative comparative multiple case study was conducted in the European news media sector. Our findings suggest that not only owner identity, but also the field position of the organisation is associated with particular market choices and the priority that is given to one market over another. This in turn has consequences for the degree of tension between coalitions with competing logics. Additionally, we find that the best owner-market fit for prioritising the democratic role of the press is a journalist employee cooperative that mainly serves a subscription market. Previous research on logics has addressed the role of ownership but did not include customer and employee cooperatives. Therefore, our findings provide important new insights.