Liberty Newspaper – case study explained

Organizational variables

- Division
- Coordination
- Differentiation
- Liaison
- Dominant actors
- Centralization/decentralization decision making
- Mission/system goals
- Prevailing goals
- Dominant configuration
- Organizational life cycle

How many periods do we consider?

2 possibilities
moving from one stage to another (A -> B -> C) or superposition (something from A and B
combined)
you have different units, A,B,C and you characterize them (juxtaposition)

3 periods:

1. Family-owned company
- Conflicts between the shareholders
2. Control and one shareholder
- Redefining the way of working
3. Coming back to family-owned company
- Peaceful, disappearing conflicts

1st phase: family-owned 2nd phase: shareholder control

Work division Work division

- Vertically low: Autonomy, they can choose their
subjects (experts)
- Horizontally high: very specialized, they work on
specific topics; everyday their work is writing
articles
- Horizontally low: they are asked to write
on multiple articles without their decision;
they are not specialists anymore
- Vertically high: they don’t have autonomy
anymore; they are told what to do

Coordination Coordination

Standardization of skills; experts with large Growing standardization of work processes

autonomy (length, hour of delivery, time sheets,
forms to fill in) – formalized procedures
Differentiation
Differentiation
Input based: CEO; Editor (Operations); Finance;
Marketing; (functions) Input based: CEO; Editor (Operations);
Finance; Marketing; Printing; IT (functions)
 They create the IT and Printing department
-> technical constraints based on internal
constraints

Liaison mechanisms
Liaison mechanisms Crisis committee – project team (temporary
Informal relationships group); when they found the solution, the
group is dissolved

Actors
Management core; shareholders, alliances
Actors with the Marketing Director; people don’t
The journalists -> operational core like the IT department (high level of
digitalization) – standardizing the work of
the printers => constrains

Centralization
Low ; autonomy of journalists in operational tasks
and involved the strategic decisions (mergers,
editions etc)
Mission/system goals
Mission goals: specialized information for
decision makers, politicians, intellectuals, focus
on quality
Centralization
High: more and more rules, less possibilities
for the journalists to take part in the
decisions
Mission/system goals
System goals: efficiency, changing the
mission; they are not a newspaper
anymore, they print everything
Journalists move from operational to
logistic support

Configuration
Configuration Machine – influence of the shareholders
Professional (instrument)

Organizational life cycle

Organizational life cycle Redefinition of the organization
Maturity -> Decline

3rd phase: family owned again -> come back at the professional stage with shareholders being a
little bit more in charge