Projectification in the Media Industries

Projectification in the Media Industries

21

Rolf A. Lundin and Maria Norba¨ck

21.1

What Is a Project Really?

To analyse and describe the effects that projects have on media industries and vice versa, the concept needs to be defined and scrutinised. What does a ‘project’ look like? The easy way to answer that question is to reference well-known texts in the field. The Project Management Institute has supplied a well-cited definition: ‘A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result’ (Project Management Institute, 2013: 3). This is from the so-called PMBOK Guide which is now into its fifth edition! Each word has intended emphasis. Time is important (since the effort is temporary) as well as the task (the focus of the endeavour). The element of uniqueness can and has been debated because each project is unique to varying degrees, although similarities exist so that some projects are fairly similar. The origin of project management can be traced to the engineering sciences (see e.g. Pinney, 2001), leading some to suggest that a plan for how to achieve the desired results (i.e. it is undertaken) in an efficient way with a minimum use of scarce resources is also characteristic (cf. Packendorff, 1995). The notion of efficiency in project work has been the main focus for most classical project management textbooks (like Meredith & Mantel Jr., 2000), with the support of professional organisations (for practising project managers, like the Project Management Institute, PMI). Various ways of developing and ensuring project efficiency have been developed and spread, mainly for engineers by PMI. Attempts to construct good project management and work procedures account for a R.A. Lundin (*) Media Management and Transformation Centre, J€onk€oping International Business School, J€ onk€ oping University, J€onk€oping, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] M. Norba¨ck Gothenburg Research Institute, Gothenburg University, Gothenburg, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] # Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 G.F. Lowe, C. Brown (eds.), Managing Media Firms and Industries, Media Business and Innovation, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-08515-9_21

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focus on planning techniques, and addressing various and typical concerns that project managers have over the life cycle of projects has been at the heart of what the professional project management organisations (like PMI) have been doing. The scope of projects is undergoing a change in relation to the traditional way of regarding projects, and this is where projectification comes in. To our knowledge the term projectification was used for the first time by Midler (1995) who was covering the case when the development of a new car model changed from being handled in the line of Renault to be separated and handled as a project.

21.1.1 The Project as a ‘Plan’ or an ‘Organisation’ Understanding about what a project really is has developed over time and is no longer confined to the traditional engineering context. Research on projects has covered a wider area of concerns. In a seminal article, Packendorff (1995) scrutinised articles on projects in research-oriented journals published before 1995 and found that the use of the word ‘project’ in research settings could be roughly divided into two fairly separated groups distinguished between ‘project as plan’ and ‘project as organisation’. Project as plan refers to projects of an engineering type, which are characterised by the task, the time allotted to complete the task, the people and other resources needed to do the project, and (most importantly) the plan to go from where it starts to where we are to be when it is done. The managerial task is to do this as efficiently as possible in the sense that the task is completed on or even before the expected delivery time and/or with less used resources than included in the plan. This is the normative, how-to-do-it version, although not to say cookbook version. The alternative conceptualises project as a temporary organisation. Whereas research work on project as plan is mainly concerned with giving advice about achieving higher efficiency to practitioners, the alternative focuses on what people actually do when they work in projects or manage them. That approach has subsequently been reformulated as a focus on project-as-practice. What happens in a temporary organisation as a result of its character as an organisation, albeit a temporary one? The approach is mainly descriptive and the ambition seeks explanation for improved understanding of development over time. The two approaches to project conceptualisation are the manifestation of different research activities in engineering and the social sciences. But this also implies that a project manager needs to take a stand on how to regard the task. The approach can be either to regard it as a ‘plan’ or as an ‘organisation’. Andersen (2014) has made the point that the person responsible has to make a deliberate choice. In general, one might prescribe that the use of the project as plan approach is appropriate when the project is well defined, where uncertainties are not particularly strong and where the understanding of what the project is all about is undisputed for those who will work with it. On the other hand, if the task is not well defined and there is lack of consensus about the task and/or on the process and

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objectives, then an organisational perspective is more appropriate. But it is important to remember that what a project is about evolves and is developed as the project process moves forward—a phenomenon called ‘progressive elaboration’. In practice, then, the two approaches should not be thought of as clear-cut and exclusive. A key implication is that the best a project manager can do is to remain flexible and to balance the two approaches and do so based on the situation at hand project by project or indeed phase by phase within a project. As noted, project as organisation is characterised by an implicit assumption that the organisation of a project will be inherently temporary, a stance that is more descriptive than normative as also mentioned. Researchers preoccupied with this approach tend to be based in business studies or the more general social sciences rather than those based in engineering. In the past the focus of this kind of research tended to be on how these temporary organisations could be understood for organisational theory. Since there are so many different types of social scientists, the variation in studies related to this approach is a lot wider than in the first approach (as a plan). Although the project as organisation approach was born in what is nowadays considered project-as-practice (Blomquist et al., 2010; S€ oderholm, 2008), there are practical implications for how to manage projects. The essential differences are illustrated in Table 21.1. Task is the raison d’eˆtre for the project. Time speaks for itself, we think. Transition is about what happens in the project over time. A fourth dimension concerns management or leadership, with the planned approach characterised by formal and more traditional management practice and the latter a team-based practice. The table demonstrates how the two alternatives differ (for detailed discussion, see the 1995 article by Packendorff). A few typical examples of the two types in connection with media will be helpful. An example of the project as plan approach is shooting a TV show. In general, the efficiency requirement dominates and in that respect TV production companies are very good indeed. There is persistent pressure to get the task done at standards and on time. A typical example of the temporary organisation approach is in strategy development work in media companies, which nowadays is often related to technological or market changes. Most of the time strategy work isn’t amenable to being handled as a programmable effort, and the task might even be abandoned before any reasonable conclusion has been reached. But whether we look at the typical practices as plan oriented or organisation oriented, media companies tend to be ‘project based’. Most people have adopted the word ‘project’ to meet their needs for communication in daily life and aren’t really concerned about the detailed variations in Table 21.1 Comparing characteristics of project As Task Time Transition Team leader

Plan Given Predetermined Accordance with plan Project manager (PM)

Temporary organisation Given but often adapted over time Aspired but depending on evolution Adjusted to circumstances PM open to informal leadership

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meaning. For most, perhaps, the general meaning is about doing something as a ‘focused endeavour’. There is often a plan but perhaps not very elaborate. An undertaking is described as a project if it is a named endeavour. Although in project management literature the definition of the task needs to be very precise, in practice it is often enough to have a reasonably clear direction. If the focus of a project is to save an endangered species, for example, then the task is inherently imprecise because it is very difficult to know when the species will no longer be endangered or precisely when the threshold to non-endangered is crossed. One can only know if the project has come to a complete failure and the species is now extinct. This idea that a project is a focused direction rather than a fixed goal to be achieved has been treated using a concept taken from the military in connection with peace-supporting or peace-keeping operations (Lundin & S€oderholm, 2013). When scrutinising peace-supporting operations run by the United Nations, we find they are initiated using a very vague description of the end goal for operations. The task is referenced as the ‘end state’, and the particulars are worked out and adapted over time as changes occur. So, for example, the project to guarantee peace and stability in the Congo develops over time as a result of the various (and often unpredictable) activities of the government, of the rebels and of the UN itself. So one characteristic is that knowledge and capability grow as a result of learning from ongoing practice. Examples of such open-ended approaches to project work are evident in the media field as well. The efforts are involved in the BBC’s Creative Futures project, which is an internal BBC venture concerning how the future should be tackled. It includes reinventing the BBC’s outputs for a digital era and was important in the context of charter renewal in 2004 and is a relevant example of a case when the direction is clear but no definite end point is set initially. Thus as we have seen in the varied examples, media industries practice all the various approaches to project work, from those where demand for efficiency is very high to the other extreme where creativity and freethinking is a must. In some cases there is a precise plan, but in many cases only a clear direction. The end results or goals are often figured out in a process of progressive elaboration, meaning these are keyed to learning and knowledge development as the project evolves. But projects of all the varied types we find in media industries are typically based on temporary organisations, however long or short the ‘temporary’ aspects—there is a start date and mostly also an end date. Each project is managed as an entity. This is what is labelled as project management or management of a project. But when there are many projects of various kinds as in the example above, management by projects might be an appropriate concept to describe what the leadership of the organisation needs to do (cf. Gareis, 1991). In what sense, then, are projects in the media industries more precise in comparison with the general guidelines and characteristics alluded to above? The answer depends very much on what characterises particular industries. In general, most organisations and companies in media need to be both efficient and effective—that is, in a sense, the crunch point that makes project work in media industries potentially unique compared with more general societal development

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projects. At this point it is useful to address the phenomenon of ‘projectification’. We need to have a fair understanding of the origins of the idea and levels of projectification in society at large.

21.2

Projectification: A Trend

As mentioned already, Midler (1995) most likely was the first one who used the concept ‘projectification’ in a scholarly context in describing how the development of a new car model was transformed at Renault. For this car manufacturer, the idea implied a fundamental shift from handling car development efforts in the traditional line organisation to handling it as a project with a definite start point and an end point and with the focus on the end result of product development. Nowadays, almost all product development or innovation efforts are organised as projects, not only at Renault but at most car producers in the world. The terminology indicates an aspiration to make the development process more rational in the sense of being more streamlined and systematic and requires a change in focus for the time aspect as well as use of other resources. The same ambitions have been spreading to a lot of industries, not only in manufacturing but also in construction where work seems to have been done in a project-based manner all along (even though the specialist terminology was not used). Thus, projectification has ramifications going well beyond product development in individual companies and in companies in other fields related to the historical development of project management. There is a projectification trend not only for operations in individual companies or organisations but also related to society at large. The projectification trend is parallel to the development of professional organisations specialised in project management. By far the most influential is the Project Management Institute (PMI), a US-based organisation whose membership has almost exploded during the last decade. PMI started from 0 in 1969 and now counts around half a million individual members worldwide. There are also others like IPMA (International Project Management Association), which is primarily European. IPMA is an association of national associations with no individuals as members and with a size in headcount that varies widely year by year, but it has also been increasing. These professional organisations promote the development of the project management field by certifying project managers and by accrediting project management programmes at educational institutions. The statement that projects are more prevalent nowadays compared to earlier periods in the past is certainly regarded as true. The rapid growth of membership in the project management profession is one kind of ‘proof’ of that. Although there are inherent difficulties in measuring the prevalence, one possible explanation is that the word ‘project’ is more used in daily life. It has become an ‘in word’ or ‘buzz term’ not only among engineers and business people but also among people in general. We sometimes hear people talking about ‘working on their marriage’ or an

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important relationship as a project or an endeavour related to self-improvement as a project. One effect of this general popularity and related dispersion into different applications is that the definition has become blurred, especially in the light of the prescriptions put forward by professional organisations and scholars in the area. Thus, the projectification of various industries is affected by general trends in society, by professional organisations (trying to convert proselytes in new industries) and by industry-related characteristics. A major factor explaining the growing popularity of projectification among the general public hinges also on the remarkable successes that engineering projects have enjoyed in producing results on time and according to predetermined specifications. It is evident to most that many major accomplishments around the world affect the thinking of those involved. The trend is aligned with the development of managerialism as well. A strong belief in the efficacy of projects has developed as a consequence of the push for productivity and the expanding role of information technology adoption. At this point we can relate the general concept to media and describe developments in these industries.

21.3


Traditionally many media industries have been project based, especially in the production mode. This would include television and film (DeFillippi, 2009; Lundin & Norba¨ck, 2009; Sydow, 2009), video game development (Davis, 2011), the recording industry (Wikstr€om, 2009) and book publishing (Greco, 2005). Previously in these industries, production projects took place within a company, as in the Hollywood studio system that organised production as a series of projects as a kind of ‘portfolio’ undertaken under the same company roof where media workers were hired on permanent contract by the studio. Public broadcasting corporations liked the BBC in Britain and SVT in Sweden were organised to facilitate production by permanent employees working in-house (Ku¨ng-Shankleman, 2000; Norba¨ck, 2012). For some time, however, project production of content has been standard for film and TV (Perren, 2011: 156), not only in the USA but also in Europe and elsewhere. Studies from Germany (Windeler & Sydow, 2001) and the UK (Starkey, Barnatt, & Tempest, 2000) show how production of film and TV content is being organised in networks where many different organisations are cooperating, instead of under the roof of one, big organisation. Bilton (2011: 37) describes this change in production logic: Here creative and media enterprises have moved from value chains to value networks, based on clusters of firms and individuals working together. /. . ./ Many of these changes in the value chain reflect industrial restructuring, usually summarized under the heading of post-Fordism. The term describes a shift from vertically integrated firms to networks of smaller, specialized firms collaborating together, a shift from mass production to customization, and a shift in the balance of power from producers to consumers, driven by

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changing technologies, changing markets, legal and political challenges to monopolies, and the emergence of a more sophisticated and discriminating consumer.

The discussion points to another mechanism for projectification as this relates to efforts to bring more efficiency into big organisations by adapting or changing the production logic. Rather than working with large integrated firms where production staff is permanently on payroll, many small individual companies provide flexibility to the production process as the commissioning organisation (such as a TV broadcaster or a film studio) can hire the specialists needed for the short duration of a particular project without having to employ them full time. It is not only in the screen-based media industries that projects have become the dominant organising mode. Increasingly also other media industries that have not typically been regarded as ‘project based’ are becoming ‘projectified’ as so much of the work in these industries is done in project forms. As noted earlier, this applies to both production and strategic work. Even in newspapers, work (both kinds) that traditionally has not been organised in projects is now handled in project-like forms, such as strategic development projects that are set up for a limited period of time or production work of a specific digital application or print supplement that is organised in projects with a limited time span and specifically assigned production resources (Raviola, 2010). The saying in the media industries in general is now that ‘know-who’ becomes as important as ‘know-how’ in these increasingly project-network structured industries (Bilton, 2011), since the competence to put together a good project group becomes an important skill for media professionals. The drivers of projectification in the media industries are manifold, but the most important include decreasing financial resources (caused by diminishing ad revenues, decrease in product sales as subscription and purchasing declines and decrease in public financing as budgets tighten), customisation of media content and technological development. The combination has encouraged (some might say forced) media organisations to look for new business models, including new partnership arrangements with other media actors and organisations in other industries where activities are often organised in project forms. Changes in media industries have also meant increased competition (lower barriers of entry and traditionally ‘non-media’ actors entering the industry) that has increased cost for quality content and talent (Ku¨ng, 2007). Projectification of activities in media organisations (as well as in networks outside the organisation) allows for decreased fixed costs for labour as well as increased flexibility. Another contributing factor is the deregulation trend in many European labour markets that has facilitated a boom in commercial staffing agencies that make it easier for media organisations to use itinerant personnel (Bergstr€om, 2003).


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21.4

Project Networks

The project literature has described how ‘project networks’ (Sydow & Staber, 2002; Windeler & Sydow, 2001) or ‘latent organisations’, as Starkey et al. (2000) call them, evolve in industries where projects are the prevailing approach to organising production. Manning (2005: 410) described project networks as ‘dynamic sets of project-based inter-organizational and inter-personal relationships which sustain beyond particular projects.’ The commissioning organisation in charge of the endeavour is part of a broader project network consisting of long-term and reciprocity-based relationships between firms that are legally autonomous but functionally interdependent. As the case in single projects, activities in a project network are limited in duration. But since networks form on the basis of previous projects as well as on the anticipation of future ones, project networks come to have a more continuous and enduring character—hence the rationale for referring to them as ‘latent organisations’. In this sense, project networks provide both flexibility and stability for conducting activities such as the production of media content, and they allow for customisation and specialisation of content as well as the skills of producers. In the television content production industry, project networks are a common way of structuring production within the industry (see Davis, Vladica, & Berkowitz, 2008; Starkey et al., 2000; Windeler & Sydow, 2001 for examples from Canada, the UK and Germany, respectively). Past experience and future anticipation in collaboration help to coordinate the projects and create norms and routines. Davis et al. (2008) report findings from a study of Canadian independent TV producers that show these producers find the organising and management of projects as relatively unproblematic (at least compared to other issues such as business and product development or marketing). Other studies (e.g. Lundin & Norba¨ck, 2009) support these findings and show that small independent TV producers (with dozen or fewer employees) can organise large production projects with relative ease once they secure contracts from buyers. This relies on their extensive knowledge and relationships with other small firms and freelancers in the industry. Project networks are also a common feature in advertising, film and game production industries. Kerr (2011: 225) found that ‘game production networks flow beyond firm boundaries, and certain functions are outsourced (e.g., human resources, middleware, testing, marketing, community support, content creation)’, but noted the paucity of studies of these kinds of networks and how they are managed. As for other media industries, such as news and magazines, where production projects have not traditionally been the modus operandi for the production of goods and services, there are signs indicating a projectification of these industries (Bilton, 2007; Gill, 2011; Singer, 2011). Bilton highlights the complexity, specialisation and individualisation of skills and labour in media production industries and how this has created a production industry with very high levels of self-employment and many small businesses. He writes that:

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. . .microenterprises and individuals converge around temporary projects—the projectbased, flexible, and unpredictable nature of creative projects makes this more efficient than working in large, permanent organizations. Advertising, film, and television have long been characterized by this mode of working, with networks of specialists collaborating for one project, breaking up, and regrouping around the next one. (Bilton, 2011: 38)

The organising of production in project networks has a bearing on the mode of employment and the character of work in the media industries. Where production is increasingly organised in such networks instead of as internal labour markets with comparatively stable hierarchies, the labour markets have been made external and groups of professional media workers have become flexible suppliers to media industries described as an ‘hourglass’ shape where there is a handful of big companies, a few middle-sized organisations and many small producers (Born, 2004; Deuze, 2007; Randle, 2011). As the organising logic in the media industries changes from a hierarchical, bureaucratic mode to a dispersed or ‘distributed’ project mode, the logic of employment and work changes. The mode of working in project networks poses special demands on the individual media worker. We next elaborate what the ‘network competencies’ mean for the individual worker and for the media organisation.

21.5

Project Network Competencies

The organising logic of project networks, as stated earlier, means that ‘know-who’ becomes as important as ‘know-how’ (Bilton, 2011). This is as true for producers looking to put a crew together to make the best possible product—be it a programme, film, campaign, book, or game—as it is for workers in the industry aiming to secure the next contract. Gill writes about how the organising principles in the ‘new media’ sector seem to be based on informality: . . .informality is the structuring principle on which many small and medium-sized new media companies seem to operate: Finding work, recruiting staff, and getting clients are all seemingly removed from the formal sphere governed by established procedures, equal opportunities legislation, or union agreements and located in an arena based on informality, sociality and “who you know”. (Gill, 2011: 256)

This approach is increasingly prevalent not only in sectors renowned for precarious labour markets, especially new media, film and television, but increasingly also for the news industry (newspaper, magazines, broadcast). In the West journalists are faced with a very different employment and production logic than was characteristic even a decade ago. Deuze and Fortunati (2011: 111) demonstrate that although there are still many news reporters employed full time by one company, there is an evident trend in journalists nowadays having to ‘parachute in for a period of time to work on a certain aspect of a project (a special issue or supplement, a specific program or reportage, a part of a news Web site)’. Thus, news media organisations are also headed in the direction of a project-based

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orientation. Like in the TV and film industries, the production of news is being transformed by organisations that are downsizing and outsource their production facilities and instead commission and package news that is produced by other companies and freelance external workers. To offer an example, the chief editor at the Swedish daily newspaper SvD has argued that newspapers need to start imitating broadcasters in terms of outsourcing the production of their content. She highlighted sports news and said that newspapers ought to focus on the analysis and compilation of sports news, not the actual production of articles covering sports events (Samuelsson & Kare´n, 2013). If this trend takes off, the historical vertically integrated news media organisations will disintegrate and become aggregators and distributors of news content produced by others and mainly capitalise instead on their respected brand names for implied trustworthiness and prestige while cutting fixed costs and increasing flexibility. Such a development puts pressure on both workers and managers in media industries and will require specific competencies to be successful in this new projectified world. For the individual media worker, this means that she/he needs to either be in possession of a very specific, sought-after skill or talent that differentiates her/him from other workers in the labour market or that she/he should make sure to be part of what Blair (2003) calls ‘semi-permanent work groups’ that migrate from project to project. In such a group, the responsibility of generating continued jobs for the entire group usually falls heavily on the most senior and experienced members of the team (in film this is typically the director or first photographer) who, having secured a job in a new project, takes the whole group along (Randle, 2011).

21.6

Project Careers and Management in the Media: ‘Life Is a Pitch’ and ‘Know-Who’

The nature of the increasingly projectified media industries means that media workers will be increasingly occupied with managing their careers in detail and as ongoing practice. That will involve continually finding new projects to work in, as well as individually having to update their skills and competencies (which, in bureaucratic organisations, used to be the responsibility of the employer). In her study about workers in new media, Gill (2011) characterises their lives as ‘a pitch’ because they must constantly be on the lookout for a new gig and pitching themselves to get it, either as an applicant for something announced or acting in an entrepreneurial manner when spotting a potential opportunity. The boundary between work and private life (if ever actually valid) is dissolved. Georgina Born (2004) offers an example in her study of the BBC and the UK TV market. An independent producer apparently moved his child to the same kindergarten attended by a commissioner at the BBC in hopes of forming a connection that might secure a commission. Deuze (2007) calls this work-life structure ‘the portfolio career’,

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where one is only as good as the last job and a livelihood is the responsibility of the individual worker, rather than the employer as historically understood in organisational and contractual terms. For the management of media organisations, the key to success in a projectified industry is the ability to bring together workers of all types and manage business opportunities, which often depend on new technology, in order to create a viable enterprise. As Deuze and Steward put it: ‘. . .in an age of remix and convergence culture and cross-media and multiplatform integration, bringing together the work of others in a meaningful and creative way seems not just a valuable but increasingly crucial skill’ (Deuze & Steward, 2011: 8). Ku¨ng (2008) expects the media industries to become less a cultural field and more ‘business oriented’ as a rule because of such great need for new and innovative business models. Media managers will have to be more business savvy and entrepreneurial than in the past; it is no longer sufficient to be ‘just’ an expert in their baseline profession (e.g. journalism). With this development, it follows that a keener understanding of technology and constant sensitivity to spotting the opportunities new developments create are crucial for the success of media managers already today and even more in the future. As Ku¨ng (2008: 221) observed: ‘A news organization, for example, needs to understand developments in citizen journalism and social networking sites, mobile content, interactive television, free newspapers and podcasting. To name but a few’. Other media management skills that will be increasingly valuable are in the area of ‘contract and negotiation’ (Norba¨ck, 2012). Those are needed for securing the growing range and amount of contracted labour and dealing with rights management issues. In the era when media companies employed their own makers and made most of the products in-house, the employer owned the rights to those contents by default. In the era and context of projectification, intellectual property rights are of utmost importance because ownership and the proceeds must be divided among the involved parties, and this is handled according to increasingly intricate revenue sharing models. In a media industry with many platforms and windows of distribution, some media content has a long shelf life (see Anderson, 2006 for discussion about the ‘long tail’) and can be repackaged and resold repeatedly. This means that talent agents and actors with royalty-collecting functions become even more important in a projectified media industry and are therefore factors that media managers must deal with on a regular basis. As stated earlier, drivers of projectification in media industries are mainly the perceived need for these organisations to reduce fixed costs that are largely linked with personnel, facilities and equipment in order to increase the latitude for flexibility. The responsibility for career progression, pensions, job security and professional development are transferred to the individual worker and small independent producers. When companies are commissioning content from independent producers, they can and often do make higher demands and exert more pressure because the supplier is conceived as a subcontractor, implying a very different relationship than companies have with employees (Christopherson, 2011; Norba¨ck, 2012; Randle, 2011).

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While this construct certainly brings evident advantages for incumbent media organisations, there are also risks keyed to the increase use of projects involving competencies from outside the organisation and reliance on ‘casual labour’ (Deuze, 2007). The characteristic loyalty and related worker motivation that companies have enjoyed, and to an extent counted on, will be harder to find. Valuable talents previously secured by long-term contract commitments are free to go where they choose and when they like and may be also harder to contract even on a temporary basis—and when available, potentially at higher cost. Temporary labour can be expected to pursue the most stimulating professional opportunities and to chase the biggest fees. Media organisations in a projectified industry will be hard pressed to sustain competitive advantage based on employed competencies—an issue of essential concern in a resource-based view of the firm (see Conner & Prahalad, 1996). However, it is conceivable that future competitive advantage may arise from the type and robustness of a firm’s project network and the management competencies that are essential to that, as discussed earlier. The ability to sustain a project network that can recognise, create and exploit new business opportunities is already of evident general importance. But another danger in the projectification of personnel may be more difficult to offset. The unsecure working conditions can undo the capabilities for higher and more sophisticated degrees of creativity. As Ku¨ng (2007, 2008, 2011) reports, precarious working conditions appear to be rather detrimental to creativity because much of that capability is environmental and relational. Yet another thorny problem relates to the trustworthiness of media companies, something especially important to news organisations. When such organisations no longer have the type of internal control that they once had over producers of content and the production process, they run a more pronounced risk of running afoul in scandals when people connected to them are found out as unethical practitioners, for example, as in the New York Times case where a reporter was found out fabricating stories over a long period of time (Sullivan, 2013). Such scandals will most likely hurt the value of media companies by eroding prestige and damaging credibility associated with their brands, which are proving to be an important competitive advantage in the media landscape (Chan-Olmsted, 2006; Ots, 2008; Tungate, 2004).

21.7

If Projectification Is Where the Media Industries Are Going, What Does This Mean for Media Management?

In this chapter we have argued that a developing trend in the media industries is evident in the increasing projectification of content production, and this has many and diverse implications for media management today and even more for professional practice in the future. Although the roots of this trend are in the traditional project-based industries of TV, film and advertising, it has been deepening there

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and spreading to industries not characterised by this mode of production until now. What does the trend mean for the researching and teaching of media management? What do media managers need to know to be successful at their jobs in this context? And what does it mean for professional media workers? Media managers in charge of content production will need to become more ‘project fluent’, both in the sense of having expertise in knowing how to assemble projects and in how to manage them as a process and professional practice. Media managers in many cases will work less with in-house employees and more with diverse and scattered networks populated by small firms and individuals. Media managers must therefore develop some mastery of skills and competencies not only in production but also in many areas that aren’t traditional for media companies. We have highlighted a few, including skills in negotiation and communication, scanning for opportunities, managing networks and so forth. We could add multiplatform knowledge and understandings and respect for audience participation (e.g. utilising the audience as cocreators (Norba¨ck & Raviola, 2013). Certainly there is need for greater skill and fluency in acting in an entrepreneurial fashion, such as finding new and innovative ways of collaborating with advertisers (Aris & Bughin, 2009; Ku¨ng, 2011). Professional media workers need to become accustomed to, even comfortable with, the fact that a projectified logic in production means that one cannot only be excellent at what he/she does in the ‘know-how’ of making content, but needs to develop other skills and competencies that are necessary for cumulative success in a project context. Again, this obviously involves requirements to think and act more entrepreneurially and to learn how to handle the dynamics of collaboration. It will also inherently mean developing competence in networking (the ‘know-who’). Media firms need to adapt to rapid and ongoing changes in technology, customer preferences and consumer behaviour, advertising business models, globalisation of content and consumption and so on (Aris, 2011; Ku¨ng, 2011). That has been obvious for some time now. Firms need to adjust to a changing environment and need to develop new business opportunities and wean themselves from faltering business models. They need to keep track of varied important actors that include not only competitors but also policy makers, regulators, workers, advertisers and suppliers. The urge to renew and to do so swiftly is therefore strong—arguably stronger as a package than in many other industries. We have argued that the projectification of production processes is an increasing feature of media industries. This may also become a useful idea and characteristic for other, more strategic activities in media industries. Given the present popularity of the project approach to work, projectification may well come to represent most of what is done at the management level in media companies. What does ‘management by projects’ provide in terms of new levels of efficiency and effectiveness in media industries? In the light of our discussion about networking, there is evidently room for more experimentation in the field. However, previous research results (e.g. Lundin & Norba¨ck, 2009) suggest that project competence does not easily spill over from one area (for instance, content production) to other management areas (like strategy formulation). This suggests a need to renew managerial processes in

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these industries in order to renew many and significant activities routinely conducted by the media firm. Arguably, applying management by projects on a grand scale may be a useful, even necessary, mechanism to achieve that change. How to preserve what is good today and combine it with what is possibly needed for tomorrow (Aris, 2011) is the key challenge that media management faces. And we conclude by observing that there will certainly be other routes that can be taken and that everything won’t realise its best results in a project-based approach. Projectification has limits.

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