How organizational leadership and boundary spanners drive the transformation process of a local news media organization

Abstract

Local news media organizations should not only focus on restructuring, but also on revitalization to maintain their vital function in local communities. Although organizational leaders do understand the need for a transformation, they do not always succeed in making the organizational transformation. Drawing on the literature of boundary spanning in combination with the organizational literature on leadership, this study aims to understand how organizational leaders can foster the organizational transformation. This study examines to what extent organizational leaders can empower and facilitate boundary spanners to overcome the institutional boundaries in the transformation process of a local news media organization. Evidence comes from in-dept interviews with journalists, non-journalists and managers from a regional news media organization in transformation in the Netherlands. Our findings show that the effectiveness of boundary spanners depends on how organizational leaders set organizational goals and organize the reward system. Furthermore, nominated boundary spanners with a coaching logic are more effective than spanners with an authoritarian logic to transform a hierarchical organization into an agile network organization. Another finding is that the introduced scrum methodology to improve organizational agility and innovativeness only works effectively with diverse teams.