Digital Journalism

ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rdij20

Reengineering Journalism: Product Manager as

News Industry Institutional Entrepreneur

Allie Kosterich

To cite this article: Allie Kosterich (06 Apr 2021): Reengineering Journalism: Product
Manager as News Industry Institutional Entrepreneur, Digital Journalism, DOI:
10.1080/21670811.2021.1903959

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2021.1903959

Published online: 06 Apr 2021.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 1134

View related articles

View Crossmark data

Citing articles: 6 View citing articles

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rdij20
DIGITAL JOURNALISM
https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2021.1903959

ARTICLE

Reengineering Journalism: Product Manager as News

Industry Institutional Entrepreneur
Allie Kosterich
Communications and Media Management, Fordham University Gabelli School of Business, Bronx,
NY, USA

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
The current media environment demands a continuous stream of Product managers; business
products ready to meet audience needs, and the emergent role of journalism;
of product manager serves to prioritize those needs by providing professionalization; news
a holistic perspective on a news organization’s goals. Product industry; employ-
ment histories
managers meet a crucial business imperative of journalism by
bringing new skillsets into the newsroom to help bridge the div-
ide of the varying operating logics and align priorities among edi-
torial, business, and technology departments. Thus, the increasing
popularity of the product manager across news organizations
serves as a prime example of the reengineering of journalism’s
institutions. While much scholarship explains how journalism’s
institutions evolve with regard to digital transformation, less
focuses on the specific impact to the business of news and the
role of actors as embedded yet still responsible for change. This
article frames journalism’s product managers as institutional
entrepreneurs to better understand how actors can promote
change and reengineer journalism’s longstanding professional
boundaries. A unique dataset of product manager employment
histories from a sample set of news organizations in both the US
and UK is systematically analysed to examine hiring patterns,
training backgrounds, degree of professionalization, and organiza-
tional field structure, shedding light on the enabling conditions of
institutional entrepreneurs.

An article in media trade publication Digiday claimed, “Product managers have

become the must-have new hire for publishers” (Willens 2018). The article focuses on
an increasingly popular role in newsrooms across the globe responsible for developing
and assessing new content and revenue opportunities ranging the gamut from news-
letters, to mobile apps, to membership programs, to specific components of a com-
pany’s website. See, for example, how quickly major news organizations turned out
standalone coronavirus products such as The New York Times’s interactive product
tracking global virus and vaccine development1 or Propublica’s various coronavirus
news apps.2 Other examples of news products include BBC’s chatbots,3 newsletters,
and standalone websites. Today’s digital and mobile-first media environment demands

CONTACT Allie Kosterich akosterichsalomone@fordham.edu

ß 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 A. KOSTERICH

a continuous stream of products ready to meet audience needs, and the product man-
ager serves to prioritize them by providing a holistic perspective on an organization’s
goals and strategies.
In striving to meet the news industry’s business imperative of recognizing new
approaches to identifying and understanding audience needs, product managers
reframe news as an array of digital products and work across silos to bring new skill-
sets into the newsroom (Royal et al. 2020). According to New York Times CEO Mark
Thompson, “the single biggest reason” for the company’s recent financial success—in
2019, they generated more than $800 million in digital revenue, surpassing one of
their corporate goals set four years prior—was the increasing control given to digital
product managers (Scire 2020). Product managers are an emergent role for news-
rooms, introducing new expertise that helps bridge the divide, and coordinate and
align the priorities among the differing operating logics of editorial, business, and
technology departments. As technological developments, coupled with associated eco-
nomic realities and social changes, continue to disrupt the established practices of the
news industry, the emergence and popularity of the product manager across news
organizations serves as a prime example of the reengineering of longstanding journal-
ism institutions (Aaronson 2018).
While there is a long history of scholarship explaining how journalism’s institutions
come into being, remain stable, and/or evolve with regard to digital transformation
(Ananny and Crawford 2015; Lowrey 2012), few have focussed on the specific impact
to the business of news (Nielsen 2018) and on the role of actors as embedded in the
institutional field, yet still responsible for institutional change (for several notable
exceptions, see Ananny and Crawford 2015; Hermida and Young 2019; Kosterich 2020;
Usher 2016). Following Hardy and Maguire (2008) who question how actors can pro-
mote new practices if they are subject to institutional pressures, this research draws
on the scholarship on institutional entrepreneurs to analyse product managers
in news.
Institutional entrepreneurship refers to actors who have an interest in particular
institutional arrangements and the ability to garner resources to change them
(Maguire, Hardy, and Lawrence 2004) by creating new systems of meaning that con-
nect disparate forms together (Garud, Jain, and Kumaraswamy 2002). Institutional
entrepreneurship is thus a framework that reintroduces agency into institutional analy-
ses of organizations and enables an attending to the ways in which actors strategize
to influence their institutional contexts (Lawrence and Suddaby 2006). It is an apt lens
through which to analyse the rise of journalism’s product managers and the reengin-
eering of journalism’s institutionalized boundaries through their backgrounds, experi-
ences, and skillsets.
In following calls to interrogate careers in media (Deuze 2011), the people who do
the work (Kreiss and Saffer 2017), and the differences among them (Kosterich and Ziek
2020), this research examines journalism’s product managers as institutional entrepre-
neurs by systematically analysing their hiring patterns, and the enabling conditions of
educational training background, professionalization degree, and organizational field
structure. This article does so with a case study of product managers from news
organizations in both the US and UK while also explaining the differences among
 DIGITAL JOURNALISM 3

these conditions between the two countries. Analyses are conducted on a unique
dataset of product manager employment histories and contribute to scholarly conver-
sations by: (1) mapping the emergence, growth, and impact of product managers
within the broader news industry; (2) investigating the reengineering of institutional-
ized professional boundaries in journalism; (3) providing a cross-national comparison.
In sum, this article draws on institutional entrepreneur theory to explore journalism’s
product managers as change agents in response to digitization, but also as a nascent
reengineering of the relationship among the editorial, technology, and business silos
of a news organization.

Product Manager as News Industry Institutional Entrepreneur

An institutional change approach is often used in management and organizational
sociology research to better understand evolution in professions. Institutional change
is precipitated by triggers in the external environment such as social, technological, or
regulatory pressures that disrupt stabilized practices of an industry and create an
opportunity for the emergence of new entrants who introduce new ideas, possibilities,
and efforts at change (Greenwood, Suddaby, and Hinings 2002). Recent scholarship
within journalism studies has too applied an institutional change approach to examine
how external social, technological, economic, and political forces shape institutional-
ized structures within the field (see, e.g. Lischka 2020; Napoli 2014). Lowrey (2011)
found that news organizations tend to reinforce institutional norms while struggling
to innovate during uncertain times; specifically, organizations were decoupling internal
production processes from external manifestations of industry trend adoption. Legacy
news organizations struggled to incorporate new digital processes into news produc-
tion (Naldi and Picard 2012) and journalists struggled to adapt well to innovation
because of their strong institutionalized norms, which often conflicted with change
(Ryfe 2012).
A common thread throughout this scholarship is a focus on the way that journal-
ism’s profession, policies, and practices evolve (or don’t evolve) with regard to the
external environment. This article seeks to build on the small but growing area of
work that focuses on the specific role of actors as embedded in the institutional field
of journalism and yet, still responsible for change. It draws on notions of institutional
entrepreneurship to analyse journalism’s product managers and introduce a consider-
ation of agency, power, and interests capable of explaining the creation of new insti-
tutionalized arrangements within a traditionally institutionalized professional field. To
do so, the remainder of this section details a theoretical framework and associated
research questions for understanding journalism’s product managers as institutional
entrepreneurs by building on the scholarship of emergent actors in digital journalism
and the theoretical tenets of institutional entrepreneurs.

Emergent Actors in Digital News

Much of the research on emergent actors and institutional change situated in the
management and organizational sociology literature, which has worked on these
4 A. KOSTERICH

phenomena across industries, focuses on initiators of institutional change and those

coming from outside the traditional boundaries on an industry. As peripheral players,
these new entrants are more adept at developing ideas of change, as they are less
likely to be connected to established players and therefore less constrained by institu-
tional norms and practices (Hardy and Maguire 2008). Within the context of the news
industry specifically, technological disruption such as the developments of digital,
social, and mobile media, compounded by economic turmoil made for extremely
uncertain times (Sylvie 2018; Young and Carson 2018). Tension and changing market
conditions are often stimuli for the possibility of new professional forms (Powers
2012). As such, there is no dearth of recent scholarship on emergent and evolving
actors in digital journalism.
The development of digital technologies provided an opportunity space for new
actors with different skillsets and experiences to enter the field of journalism such as
in the case of BBC News Online, a team comprised of both journalists and technolo-
gists that reconfigured traditional journalistic practices (Hermida and Young 2019).
Similarly, outsiders with non-journalistic backgrounds entered the fray of news with
the rise of visual journalism (Lowrey 2002). One can look back even further in journal-
ism’s history to see changing patterns of influence on journalistic norms with the
1930s emergence of photojournalists (Zelizer 1995) or later, bloggers (Eldridge 2019).
Eldridge (2019, p. 858) frames these emergent actors as “interlopers,” defined as a
“subset of digitally native media and journalistic actors who originate from outside the
boundaries of the traditional journalistic field, but whose work nevertheless reflects
the socio-informative functions, identities, and roles of journalism.” Belair-Gagnon and
Holton (2018b, p. 72) call them “strangers,” or those who “did not belong in journal-
ism from the beginning and are importing qualities to it that do not originally stem
from the journalistic profession.” Across this research, no matter the terminology used
to categorize these emergent actors, scholars have continued to explore how journal-
ists perceive and interact with these emergent actors, or outsiders.
The dominating theme across this literature is the tendency for new actors with
new areas of expertise to be met with resistance and tension in several important
ways. First, as can be seen with the introduction of photojournalism in the early 20th
century, resistance manifests in the form of questioning whether new actors can prop-
erly fulfil the role of journalist (Zelizer 1995). Second, as in the case of the introduction
of visual journalists, tensions emerge concerning subgroup status and the right to
make decisions in the news production process (Lowrey 2002). Third, resistance comes
in the form of devaluing an emergent expertise as non-journalistic, as is evident in the
case of the emergent actors who work in newsroom web analytics (Deuze 2003;
Petre 2015).
There is indeed an increasing influence of actors that do not fit into the traditional
definition of journalist, yet are still involved in the production processes of journalism
(Tandoc 2019). More recently, the news industry saw a rise of interactive journalists
who produce work with a combination of software programming and storytelling skills
(Usher 2016). Some of this work falls into the purview of data journalists who integrate
traditional forms of public interest journalism with novel approaches rooted in the
advances of big data, analytics, and computing capabilities (Hermida and Young
 DIGITAL JOURNALISM 5

2019). Elsewhere, collaboration between traditional journalists and technology applica-

tion designers is increasingly encouraged to generate new news technologies (Ananny
and Crawford 2015) and the training of hybrid programmer-journalists (Royal 2012).
There is also an increasing presence of journalists focussed on social media content
(Chadha and Wells 2016) and audience analytics utilized to better calibrate newsga-
thering activities (Anderson 2011) and produce news (Belair-Gagnon and
Holton 2018a).
Taken together, these more recent developments represent the emergence of a
new form of newswork beyond the transition from print to digital and towards the
integration of news and data, analytics, and/or mobile and social platforms (Kosterich
and Weber 2019a, 2019b). These “news nerds,” as Kosterich (2020) calls them, are
specific newsworkers working at the intersection of traditional journalist jobs and
technologically intensive jobs that were historically separate. News nerd jobs (e.g. jour-
nalist-programmer, interactive journalist, engagement editor) can be understood as
the precursor to product managers and the evolving state of news (Royal 2016) and
are indeed representative of changing journalistic norms, practices, processes, and
business models.

Product Managers
Product management has a long history in other domains, with a specific origin in
software development (Royal et al. 2020). The rise of big data and ubiquitous internet
wrought a business imperative to more efficiently and effectively target multiple audi-
ences in a personalized way (Sonderman 2016). This necessitates a shift away from
big, expensive tech projects and towards new ways of creating smaller, more agile,
and more user-centric audience-facing products; product managers are responsible for
developing the strategy, defining the requirements, and monitoring the on-going
delivery of them (Newman 2017). In doing so, product managers reengineer the boun-
daries of traditional news industry silos by bringing together business, editorial, audi-
ence, and technology needs.
As Lewis and Westlund (2015) explain, news organizations are historically comprised
of three distinct and highly specialized groups: journalists, such as reporters, editors,
and producers who craft the news; technologists, which includes technicians, systems
designers, system engineers and programmers who develop and maintain the IT struc-
tures involved in newswork; and businesspeople such as marketers, sales associates,
and customer relationship managers who fulfil the administrative aspects of news-
work. While product planning and product marketing have long existed in some incar-
nation throughout the news industry (van den Bulck, Tambuyzer, and Ackx 2011),
what has changed is the way that technology has enabled an ever-evolving set of
digital platforms and products to connect with audiences (Newman 2017). Today’s
product manager works to restructure the taken-for-granted boundaries between edi-
torial and tech, which was long-seen as a support function. While hybrid editorial-
managers too have a more recent history in newsrooms opening up business silos to
news production (Andersson and Wiik 2013, 2014), what is new here is the blurring of
boundaries of all three of these specialized departments and others as product
6 A. KOSTERICH

managers are responsible for strategy, prioritization, testing, and metrics, and the gen-
eral integration of user, business, and tech imperatives (Royal et al. 2020).
As emergent actors, journalism’s product managers have yet to be deeply probed
in scholarship. One exception is Royal (2016) who conducted a survey of the field in
its primacy, which helps shed light on their roles and responsibilities. In general,
respondents expressed that solving problems, creating value, and collaborating across
cross-functional teams were the primary goals of a product manager. Products under
their purview included—but were not limited to—websites (including special project
sites), mobile apps, news apps, social platforms, content management systems, and
even advertising and subscription tools. In an effort to accomplish their goals, a var-
iety of processes are utilized—many of which also have origins in software develop-
ment. These include, for example, prototyping, design thinking, and agile
methodologies such as working in sprints (short, set periods of time during which a
certain task is completed and reviewed) and scrums (iterative teamwork approach)
(see, e.g. Drury and O’Dwyer 2013).
In sum, as news companies produce a wide variety of both internal and external
products to meet ever-changing business imperatives, new actors with new skillsets
have emerged to support their development and management (Royal et al. 2020).
Drawing on expertise in editorial content, audience analytics, technological interactiv-
ity, design and visualization, and business strategy, these actors work to bridge and
align the priorities among various departments. As such, product managers serve as a
prime example of the reengineering of journalism’s longstanding, institutionalized
boundaries of editorial, technology, and business departments.

Institutional Entrepreneurs
A crucial question in the institutional literature is how certain actors are able to
change institutions in spite of the strong disposition towards uniformity and equilib-
rium (Holm 1995). Building on DiMaggio’s (1988) definition, the notion of institutional
entrepreneur was introduced to account for actors that initiate divergent changes and
actively participate in the implementation of these changes (Battilana, Leca, and
Boxenbaum 2009). Institutional entrepreneurs are described as agents who have an
interest in particular institutional arrangements and the ability to garner resources to
change them (Maguire, Hardy, and Lawrence 2004). They are in a sense a type of
change leader, but distinct from those of the management literature in that the influ-
ence and power of institutional entrepreneurs is premised on the enablers and con-
straints of an institutional environment. As such, an institutional entrepreneur
framework is important for attending to the ways in which interested actors strategize
to influence their institutional contexts (Lawrence and Suddaby 2006) and is an apt
lens through which to analyse the rise of journalism’s product managers, especially in
an attempt to decipher the determinants of these actors—who they are, where they
came from, and what skills they bring to the table.
A review of the literature in the relatively nascent domain of institutional entrepre-
neurs shows that the major contributions can be broken down into those on the
nature of the entrepreneur, the mechanisms of institutional entrepreneurs, and the
 DIGITAL JOURNALISM 7

determinants of institutional entrepreneurship. According to Beckert (1999), institu-

tional entrepreneurs are “analytically distinguished” as they are reflective in their
undertaking of change and their ability to envision new ways of doing (p. 786).
Indeed, they challenge the status quo and even institutionalize new processes and
practices in their favour (Pacheco et al. 2010). Motivations for action can be functional
or economic, but they can also be driven by political forces or social pressures (Oliver
1992). Institutional entrepreneurs pursue their varying motivations towards institu-
tional restructuring within organizations, fields, or more macro contexts (Pacheco
et al. 2010).
In an effort to implement institutional change, entrepreneurs devise and effectuate
through a variety of mechanisms that can be distilled into categories: cooperation and
collective action, political tactics, and framing (Pacheco et al. 2010). According to
Fligstein (1997, p. 397) institutional entrepreneurs are “actors with social skills” and
“the ability to motivate cooperation of other actors by providing them with common
meanings and identities.” The development of new inter-actor relationships is a com-
mon goal and is often achieved through collective action and the communication of
rationale for change (Hardy and Maguire 2008). They collaborate with other actors,
taking advantage of joint interests to work together to influence macrolevel institu-
tions (Zucker 1988).
Political tactics including incentivization and coalition building are another strategic
mechanism of institutional entrepreneurs in creating change (Leblebici et al. 1991).
According to Levy and Scully (2007), institutional entrepreneurs are strategic conveyers
of power that organize and move a collective group to action by changing the organ-
izational and discursive forces that make up their respective fields. As such, institu-
tional entrepreneurs are agents of political collective change that is much more
disaggregated and discursive than a social movement (Pacheco et al. 2010).
Framing tactics have also been identified as an important strategic tool for institu-
tional entrepreneurs (Battilana, Leca, and Boxenbaum 2009) as they seek to portray
their new institutional arrangement as ideal (see, e.g. Rao 1998). These kinds of fram-
ing mechanisms create legitimacy for new institutions and practices by connecting
them with commonly accepted ideas, processes, and narratives (Pacheco et al. 2010).
Narrative specifically has been found to be a popular mechanism for institutional
entrepreneurs in effectuating change (Zilber 2007).
The third key strand of work on institutional entrepreneurs engages the determi-
nants of these actors, or their enabling conditions. It is the focus of the research at
hand and will be outlined in the following section in an effort to better understand
the rise of journalism’s product managers, who they are, where they came from, and
what skills they bring to the table.

Product Managers as Institutional Entrepreneurs

Within the context of journalism, however, the institutional entrepreneur approach has
yet to be applied as an analytical framework. Boyles (2016) introduces intrapreneurship
in journalism, which is the process of embedding start-ups and their corresponding
energy, culture, and ethos of change within newsrooms. Holton (2016) builds on this
8 A. KOSTERICH

concept to analyse freelance journalists as an instance of “intrapreneurial informant,”

or outsiders that break traditional journalistic norms to produce content, engage with
audiences, and build out struggling business models. It is worth noting, however, that
intrapreneurs do not necessarily succeed in making change due to conflicts in institu-
tional logics as in the case when new intrapreneurs adopt an audience-oriented logic
of experimentation and efficiency which can often clash with the traditional journalis-
tic logic that prioritizes production workflows and news formats (Belair-Gagnon, Lewis,
and Agur 2020).
Later, Hermida and Young (2019) astutely argue that journalists with “blended”
roles such as those at the intersection of traditional and emergent, computationally
driven goals act as institutional entrepreneurs. Sylvie (2018) furthermore contends that
all news organizations need this type of entrepreneurial role in which actors manage
the institutionalized definition of news (and the associated processes and structures of
producing it). Taking these ideas one step further in applying the notion of institu-
tional entrepreneur as an analytical framework to the context of journalism and the
specific case of product managers thus enables further understanding on who, how,
and why specific actors are able to restructure institutional arrangements.
As mentioned above, the extant literature on institutional entrepreneurs provides
some insight into their determinants. According to Battilana, Leca, and Boxenbaum
(2009), an understanding of these enabling conditions is imperative as it helps resolve
the paradox of “embedded agency,” or the tension of how actors bound in an institu-
tionalized field can drive change (Holm 1995). Within the literature, enabling condi-
tions of institutional entrepreneurs can be summarized within four main categories:
legitimacy mechanisms (Beckert 1999; Garud, Jain, and Kumaraswamy 2002), profes-
sionalization characteristics (Dorado 2005; Maguire, Hardy, and Lawrence 2004), field
structure (Greenwood and Suddaby 2006; Hensmans 2003), and social position (Oliver
1992; Zilber 2002). Consideration of these enabling conditions sheds light on the
determinants of product managers to act as institutional entrepreneurs in reengineer-
ing of journalism’s long-standing professional boundaries.

Legitimacy of Institutional Entrepreneurs

Legitimacy is the taken-for-granted perception of appropriateness or understanding of
reality (Suchman 1995), and is a central component in institutional change
(Greenwood, Suddaby, and Hinings 2002). Maguire, Hardy, and Lawrence (2004) found
that institutional entrepreneurs were successful due to their own legitimacy, which
allowed them to bring various stakeholders together in an effort to gain access to
diverse resources. Institutionalization of something new is often aided by legitimacy
efforts that make the case via moral or normative, pragmatic, or cognitive efforts
(Suchman 1995).
In the context of journalism’s product managers, legitimacy can be considered in
the moral form as “prevailing normative prescriptions” (Greenwood, Suddaby, and
Hinings 2002, p. 60) such as in the case of education and training. Historically, product
managers comes from technology fields with degrees in computer science or business
(Gordon 2020). News organizations notoriously lack capabilities for training and
 DIGITAL JOURNALISM 9

development of emergent skillsets, as well as the necessary diverse talent in-house

(Borchardt 2018). An alternative is to hire product managers trained outside of journal-
ism; however, these actors enter the field lacking moral legitimacy—knowledge of
journalism’s norms and rules of the game, which can create tension, conflict, and fail-
ure (Royal et al. 2020). Thus, this work is interested in exploring the educational back-
grounds of product managers as an indicator of moral legitimacy for institutional
entrepreneurs as exemplified in the first research question:
RQ1: As an enabling condition of institutional entrepreneurs, what are the moral
legitimacy determinants of product managers in news?

Professionalization of Institutional Entrepreneurs

Research shows that professional characteristics of institutional entrepreneurs such as
their background and industry experience (Garud, Jain, and Kumaraswamy 2002) influ-
ence whether or not they engage in institutional entrepreneurship (Pacheco et al.
2010). Kraatz and Moore (2002) found that leaders who work in one company with a
particular practice are more likely to implement that practice at their next company.
Prior organizational experience engenders an expertise that makes new practices
appropriate and thus supports the institutional entrepreneur action.
In the context of news, there is indeed precedent as new actors from outside the
field enter to initiate institutional change. In creating the occupational subgroup of
interactive journalists, Usher (2016) found several of the early actors came from tech-
nology fields. At the organizational level, Hermida and Young (2019) also found “a mix
of ‘old hands’ and ‘new blood’ from outside the organization was key to success” for
the then emergent BBC online journalism team (p. 3). While actors from external fields
play a role in initiating change, ongoing change was found to be conducted by those
from within the field of news itself (Kosterich and Weber 2019b). The second research
question is thus poised to interrogate the degree of field-crossing and professionaliza-
tion in the context of journalism’s product managers as institutional entrepreneurs:
RQ2: As an enabling condition of institutional entrepreneurs, what are the
professionalization characteristics of product managers in news?

Structure of the Organizational Field

In discussing the enabling conditions of institutional entrepreneurs, the actor can be
both an individual or an organization (Hoogstraaten, Frenken, and Boon 2020); either
way, the structure of the organizational field matters. The degree to which an institu-
tion can be changed is dependent on the structure of the organizational field and the
positions of the entrepreneurs within which it operates (Greenwood and Suddaby
2006). Central organizations are familiarized and integrated with the institutions of a
field, which can often impede their recognition of alternative practices (Pacheco et al.
2010). Peripheral organizations are less connected to other organizations and therefore
more likely to be exposed to alternative practices (Hardy and Maguire 2008), question
the value of institutions, and thus promote change (Greenwood and Suddaby 2006).
10 A. KOSTERICH

Periphery organizations are less embedded, which can foster divergence in social
expectations in favour of discussion and debate and providing the space for institu-
tional change (Zilber 2002).
In the context of news and specifically change related to news nerd jobs, research
finds that early institutional change occurred within peripheral organizations; however,
major legacy news organizations quickly became and remained the most central as
training grounds and hubs change agents (Kosterich and Weber 2019b). While periph-
eral organizations may have the flexibility and willingness to try new things, central
organizations tend to be larger with more resources, which perhaps offers an advan-
tage in fostering institutional entrepreneurs. This work is thus poised to consider the
field structure of news organizations with regards to hiring journalism’s product man-
agers as presented in the third research question:
RQ3: As an enabling condition of institutional entrepreneurs, what is the field structure of
product managers’ news organizations?

In sum, this research aims to examine an instance of institutional entrepreneurs in

journalism by systematically analysing the overall hiring patterns, educational training
backgrounds, degree of professionalization, and organizational field structure related
to product managers in news. In an effort to apply a cross-cultural comparative lens
to the phenomenon at hand, this work will also document and explain the differences
in these processes between two countries (the US and the UK). As such, the analysis is
conducted to answer the following fourth and final research question:
RQ4: Are there any differences in the enabling conditions of institutional entrepreneurs
across countries such as in the case of the product managers in US news organizations as
compared to those in UK news organizations? If so, what are those differences?

Method
The aforementioned research questions are addressed through analysis of a dataset
on product manager employment histories emanating from a case study of news
organizations in the US and the UK, which is a starting point for cross-cultural com-
parison and are both testbeds for ongoing change in journalism due to the diversity
of organizations, different size of media markets, and interactions with other indus-
tries. The list of news organizations came from a Reuters Centre for the Study of
Journalism report on news in the US and Europe (Simon and Graves 2019)4 as pub-
lished lists are often used as a viable sampling frame when it is not possible to get an
accurate count of the total population (Ornebring and Mellado 2018). The result was a
list of 49 news organizations (35 US and 14 UK) representing a cross-section of sectors
including national and regional newspapers, weekly newsmagazines, public service
broadcasters, and digital-born news websites.
Employment histories of product managers working for the sample news organizations
were creating by collecting public data from LinkedIn. Prior research has utilized LinkedIn
data to examine the technological professionalization of political campaign staff (Kreiss
and Saffer 2017) and journalists (Kosterich and Weber 2019b). A search was conducted for
each of the organizations in the dataset and information was recorded manually in a
 DIGITAL JOURNALISM 11

separate database for any employee in a product manager position.5 Position job titles,
organizations, location, and dates of employment were collected for employment histor-
ies. Gender and training information including undergraduate degree, graduate degree,
and certifications were also collected. Data collection occurred from May 2020 to June
2020. Data were anonymized immediately after completion of recording.
Next, organizations and training information were categorically coded in order to
summarize the data. Organizations were coded by industry based on common mission
through the company’s website and LinkedIn page. Due to the nature of the product
manager position, undergraduate and graduate degrees were coded to reflect one of
four categories: journalism/mass communication, business/management, computer sci-
ence/information technology, other.6

Social Network Analysis

The research questions focus on understanding the individual and organizational
determinants of institutional entrepreneurs. To answer these questions, data were col-
lected on educational and professional work histories of news product managers in
journalism. This unique employment dataset lends itself to social network analysis
(SNA), which is widely used to study workforce change and employee movement
between jobs, organizations, and industries (Kosterich and Weber 2019b). Specifically,
SNA is a research method and theoretical approach that allows for the analysis of the
connection between two entities (nodes) based on a common relationship (edge)
(Borgatti and Foster 2003). Data were converted from database format to network for-
mat in which product managers are connected to news organizations when they work
at that company. This two-mode network was then converted to a one-mode network
of organizations in which The New York Times is connected to The Washington Post
when Employee A leaves the former and goes to work for the latter. A one-mode net-
work was also generated to visualize the industry origins of product managers. Here, if
Employee A is currently in a product manager at a newspaper, and had a previous
position in technology, it would be possible to say there is a relationship between
newspaper and technology based on the movement of that product manager from
one industry to the other. Separate networks were generated for the employees of US
and UK organizations to allow for cross-national comparison.
Together with descriptive statistics, the following network transformations and
measures were used to examine the product manager employment network. Degree,
outdegree, and betweenness centralities (see, Ognyanova 2016) were conducted with
iGraph (Handcock et al. 2008) in the open source R framework (R-Core-Team 2015).
Gephi, an open source visualization tool (Bastian, Heymann, and Jacomy 2009) was
also used for network visualization.

Degree Centrality
Degree centrality is a measure of a node’s popularity within the network based on the
number of connections it has with others in the network (Wasserman and Faust 1994).
The number of connections provides a good proxy for the level of importance in a
12 A. KOSTERICH

network (Cherven 2015) and indicates which organizations are most important within
a network. These measures were conducted on the product managers employment
network to better understand field structure as a determinant and enabling condition
of institutional entrepreneurs. Furthermore, in directed networks (as opposed to undir-
ected networks), it is possible to measure both in-degree (the number of incoming
ties) and out-degree (the number of outgoing ties) centrality. Out-degree centrality
measures were calculated on the industry networks for product managers in an effort
to better understand professionalization as an enabling condition of institutional
entrepreneurs.

Betweenness Centrality
Betweenness centrality measures a specific version of importance within a network; in
this case, it represents the extent to which a node (e.g. organization) serves as a
bridge between other nodes within the network (Cherven 2015). Thus, betweenness
centrality can serve as a signal of an organization’s influence (Freeman 1978) or con-
trol over the network flow. In other words, a high betweenness centrality indicates
that an organization was one through which a large number of journalists passed dur-
ing the course of their careers. Betweenness centrality was calculated with the iGraph
routine for betweenness centrality (see, Ognyanova 2016) and provides further insight
into the overall field structure of the product manager employment network.

Results
In an effort to answer the three research questions on enabling conditions of institu-
tional entrepreneurs in the context of product managers in news, as well as the fourth
research question comparing these determinants across two countries, employment
data were collected for product managers at each of the 49 news organizations in the
sample set. Of the US news organizations, eight are newspapers, four are newsmaga-
zines, six are digital natives, and one is a public service media organization. Of the UK
news organizations, 24 are newspapers, three are newsmagazines, one is a digital
native, and two are public service media organizations. Together, this variety provides
a sample of news organizations that covers major sectors of the industry, as well as
varying organizational sizes from regional to national to global.
Employment histories were collected for a total of 271 product managers (202 cur-
rently based in US organizations, 69 currently based in UK organizations). This resulted
in 1,272 lines of data (jobs). In the US, the percentage of newsroom employees that
are product managers ranged from 0% (e.g. several of the smaller, regional newspa-
pers) to 1.61% at Yahoo News (M ¼ 0.41%, SD ¼ 0.005). In the UK, the percentage of
employees that are product managers ranged from 0% (e.g. regional newspapers and
several newsmagazines) to 1.16% at the Financial Times (M ¼ 0.37%, SD ¼ 0.004).
The male to female ratio of product employees at news organizations in the US
ranged from 0 (e.g. when there was at least one male product employee and zero
female product employees at a news organization such as in the case of the Seattle
Times) to 2.33 at the L.A. Times, and even cases that were undefined such as the
 DIGITAL JOURNALISM 13

Boston Globe, which had at least one female product employee and zero male prod-
uct employees (M ¼ 0.65, SD ¼ 0.62). The male to female ratio of product employees at
news organizations in the UK ranged from 0 (e.g. when there was at least one male
product employee and zero female product employees at a news organization such as
in the case of the Independent) to three at Channel 4 (M ¼ 1.13, SD ¼ 1.11). Additional
summary data are provided in Table 1.

Educational Training of Product Managers

The first research question seeks to understand the institutional entrepreneur enabling
condition of legitimacy—particularly that of moral, or normative, legitimacy. To better
understand this determinant in the case of product managers in news, educational
training backgrounds of news product managers were analysed across three indica-
tors: undergraduate degrees, graduate degrees, and certifications. Summary data on
educational training of product managers are available in Table 2.
The breakdown of educational training across all three indicators was quite compar-
able between product managers in the US and UK.7 In the US, while an undergraduate
education in journalism, media, or communication was the most common, only 16%
of news product managers had this degree. It was the most common undergraduate
education in the UK as well, with a slightly higher percentage (19%) of news product
managers having a degree in journalism, media, or communication. In both counties,
the second most popular undergraduate degree was business or economics (US 
13%; UK  16%) and the third was computer science or information technology (US 
11%; UK  12%).
The results were quite comparable with regards to graduate level education train-
ing as well. About one-third of product managers in each country had a graduate level
education degree (33% in the US; 31% in the UK). Interestingly, at the graduate level,
a business degree (i.e. MBA) was the most common educational training for product
managers in both countries (US  12%; UK  10%). The second most common in the
US was a graduate degree in journalism (US  8%; UK  3%); however, the second
most common in the UK was actually a graduate degree in computer science or infor-
mation technology (US  5%; UK  6%).
As far as education outside of the traditional confines of undergraduate and gradu-
ate education (e.g. certifications), many of the results were quite comparable across
countries here as well. For instance, 25% of product managers in both the US and the
UK have a certification in product management and 6% of product managers in both
the US and the UK have a certification in scrum. The biggest disparity across educa-
tional training between product managers in the two countries is with regard to certif-
ications in agile methods. This was the third most common certification for product
managers in the US (2%), but the second most common certification for product man-
agers in the UK (9%). The average number of certifications for product managers in
both countries was quite comparable (US  0.68 certifications; UK  0.62
certifications).
14 A. KOSTERICH

Table 1. Summary of product manager employment data.

HQ Founded Type of media Employees9 Product employees M:F
Aberdeen Press & Journal UK 1748 Regional newspaper 147 0.00% –
BBC News UK 1922 Public service media 2980 0.23% 1.33
Channel 4 UK 1982 Public service media 1471 0.54% 3
Telegraph UK 1855 Upmarket newspaper 1064 0.28% 0.5
Express & Star UK 1874 Regional newspaper 14 0.00% –
Financial Times UK 1888 Business newspaper 1815 1.16% 0.75
Guardian UK 1907 Upmarket newspaper 1558 1.09% 1.83
Independent UK 1986 Digital, domestic 349 0.57% 0
Liverpool Echo UK 1879 Regional newspaper 76 0.00% –
Manchester Evening News UK 1868 Regional newspaper 126 0.00% –
Economist UK 1843 Newsmagazine 773 1.03% 1
The Spectator UK 1828 Newsmagazine 79 0.00% –
The Times UK 1785 Upmarket newspaper 642 0.31% 1
The Week UK 1995 Newsmagazine 10 0.00% –
Arizona Republic USA 1890 Regional newspaper 558 0.00% –
Atlantic USA 1857 Newsmagazine 439 1.37% 1
Boston Globe USA 1872 Regional newspaper 1061 0.09% UNDEF
BuzzFeed USA 2006 Digital born, int’l 1378 0.94% 1.17
Charlotte Observer USA 1886 Regional newspaper 354 0.00% –
Chicago Tribune USA 1847 Regional newspaper 1225 0.00% –
Cleveland Plain Dealer USA 1842 Regional newspaper 382 0.00% –
Dallas Morning News USA 1885 Regional newspaper 1013 0.20% UNDEF
Denver Post USA 1892 Regional newspaper 407 0.00% –
Detroit Free Press USA 1831 Regional newspaper 251 0.00% –
Houston Chronicle USA 1901 Regional newspaper 982 0.00% –
HuffPost USA 2005 Digital born, int’l 1299 0.31% 0.33
Kansas City Star USA 1888 Regional newspaper 424 0.00% –
LA Times USA 1881 Upmarket newspaper 1799 0.56% 2.33
Mashable USA 2005 Digital born, int’l 141 0.71% 0
Mercury News (San Jose) USA 1851 Regional newspaper 273 0.00% –
Miami Herald USA 1903 Regional newspaper 692 0.00% –
Minneapolis Star Tribune USA 1867 Regional newspaper 959 0.63% 0
New York Daily News USA 1919 Regional newspaper 520 0.00% –
New York Times USA 1851 Upmarket newspaper 5420 1.16% 0.58
New Yorker USA 1925 News magazine 404 0.50% 1
Newsweek USA 1933 News magazine 292 0.00% –
NJ Star Ledger USA 1832 Regional newspaper 335 0.00% –
NOLA Times-Picayune USA 1837 Regional newspaper 53 0.00% –
NPR News USA 1970 Public service media 1653 1.03% 0.06
Oregonian USA 1850 Regional newspaper 320 0.00% –
Orlando Sentinel USA 1876 Regional newspaper 520 0.00% –
Philadelphia Inquirer USA 1829 Regional newspaper 800 1.00% 1
Politico USA 2007 Digital born, int’l 589 0.68% 0.33
Seattle Times USA 1896 Regional newspaper 777 0.13% 0
Time USA 1923 News magazine 452 0.44% 1
Vox USA 2003 Digital born, int’l 806 1.24% 0.67
Wall Street Journal USA 1889 Business newspaper 4339 0.16% 0.75
Washington Post USA 1877 Upmarket newspaper 2662 1.50% 0.74
Yahoo News USA 1996 Digital born, int’l 372 1.61% 2
Average 124 (years) 919 0.40% 0.75
Notes.
organizations with at least one male product employee and 0 female product employees.
organizations with at least one female product employees and 0 male product employees.

Industry Experience of Product Managers

The second research question seeks to interrogate the institutional entrepreneur ena-
bling condition of professional experience. To better understand this determinant in
the case of product managers in news, one-mode industry networks were created to
 DIGITAL JOURNALISM 15

Table 2. Training backgrounds of product managers.

US PMs UK PMs
UG Journalism, Comm, Media 16% 19%
UG Computer Science/IT 11% 12%
UG Business, Econ 13% 16%
Grad Journalism 8% 3%
Grad CS/IT 5% 6%
Grad MBA 12% 10%
Product Management Certification 25% 25%
Scrum Certification 6% 6%
Agile Method Certification 2% 9%
Avg. Certifications 0.68 0.62

Figure 1. Visualization of product manager job feeder industries (US)12.

analyse the connections between current product manager positions and the indus-
tries of the prior position. Figure 1 shows the visualization for product managers cur-
rently based in US news organizations and Figure 2 shows the visualization for
product managers currently based in UK news organizations. Table 3 provides a
16 A. KOSTERICH

Figure 2. Visualization of product manager job feeder industries (UK)13.

Table 3. Top five industries by out-degree10.

US organizations UK organizations
Tech 5.25 Newspaper 2.03
Newspaper 4.97 Public media 1.48
Digital media 2.47 Tech 1.45
Publishing 1 Broadcast media 0.55
Business services 0.97 Publishing 0.52

summary of the top five most central industries based on out-degree centrality within
each network.
Together, the visualizations and table provide an overview of the industries and
sectors represented by any field-crossing prior to current product managers positions
in news. It is important to note that while tech is the darkest blue and thus has the
greatest number of outgoing edges to other industries in both the US and UK net-
works, when considering the weight of each edge (i.e. the number of connections to
other industries multiplied by the weight of each one), newspapers and public media
 DIGITAL JOURNALISM 17

have greater outdegree scores for the UK network (i.e. thicker edges/self-loops in the
visualization).
Further clarification is provided by analysing the out-degree scores in Table 3. Out-
degree centrality scores indicate the most centrality scores indicate the most central
industries based on their outgoing activity. In other words, a higher outdegree score
indicates an industry from which more product manager jobs emanated. In the US,
tech has the highest outdegree score, followed by newspapers and digital media. This
reinforces the finding that news product managers in the US are driven primarily by
those with professional experience outside the news industry itself but followed
closely by those from within the industry.
The results in the UK are quite different. In the product manager employment net-
work in the UK, newspapers and public media have the highest out-degree scores.
Here, product managers in news are driven primarily by those from within the news
industry itself and only secondarily by those with tech industry experience. Overall,
media is responsible for four out of five of the top central feeders of employees in
current news product manager positions in the UK.

Centrality of News Organizations

The third research question seeks to interrogate the institutional entrepreneur ena-
bling condition organizational field structure. To better understand this determinant in
the context of product managers in news, one-mode organizational networks were
generated for product managers currently based in each country to provide a snap-
shot of the field structure and the organizations that are central to the hiring flow of
journalism’s product managers. Figure 3 shows the visualization for product managers
currently based in US news organizations, which includes 425 organizations and 1,538
instances when a product manager moved between two organizations. Figure 4 shows
the visualization for product managers currently based in UK news, which includes
134 organizations and 496 instances when a product manager moved between two
organizations.
These figures provide a snapshot of the organizations that are most central, as well
as those that occupy a more peripheral role in the product manager employment net-
work; the size of each organization corresponds to its degree centrality. A high degree
centrality generally indicates organizations that are likely to be important within a net-
work. As expected, the most visibly central organizations in the network are the sam-
ple organizations (e.g. New York Times, Washington Post, NPR in the US and BBC,
Financial Times, Channel 4 in the UK) as many product managers pass through organi-
zations during their careers.
Aside from the sample news organizations, the visualizations also reveal some less
expected structural patterns. For instance, the overtly thick lines from Facebook,
Google, and Apple in the US network indicate there is a particularly high amount of
employee crossover between these tech companies and the New York Times. While
the US network visualization also highlights the importance of legacy news organiza-
tions as central players in the product manager employment network, digital natives
Buzzfeed and Vox are notable exceptions, which shows their powerful role in the
18 A. KOSTERICH

Figure 3. Visualization of organization by organization network (US)14.

hiring and turnover of US news product managers. This indicates while these organiza-
tions are not directly at the centre of the network, they do exert influence because of
the flow of employees through these organizations.
In the UK, the network visualization portrays a much more overtly media-based
story with the central players covering an array of media sectors. For instance, print
organizations such as the Financial Times, the Economist, and the Guardian as well as
broadcast organizations such as the BBC and Channel four are central in the hiring
and turnover of UK product managers. Indeed, in the UK network, employee crossover
tends to be more siloed within the news industry itself.
These observations are further supported when looking at the actual degree cen-
trality scores in Table 4, which provides a summary of the top five most central organ-
izations based on two separate measures of centrality: degree and betweenness. Here
again, one can see that the most central organizations according to degree centrality
score in the US product manager employment network are quite consistently
legacy news organizations. In fact, four out of five of the organizations are legacy
 DIGITAL JOURNALISM 19

Figure 4. Visualization of organization by organization network (UK)15.

Table 4. Top five organizations by centrality11.

Degree centrality
US organizations UK organizations
New York Times 0.70 BBC 0.71
Washington Post 0.40 Financial Times 0.67
NPR 0.23 Channel 4 0.41
LA Times 0.11 Economist 0.32
Philadelphia Inquirer 0.10 Guardian 0.23
Betweenness centrality
US Organizations UK Organizations
New York Times 54361.18 Financial Times 4853.84
Washington Post 27142.19 BBC 3038.78
NPR 11661 Guardian 2669
Apple 9521.12 Channel 4 2418.45
Vox 8926.27 Economist 2278
20 A. KOSTERICH

newspapers; three out of five of the news organizations are considered national with
the other two being major regional newspapers. The most central organizations
according to degree centrality score in the UK product manager employment network
are also consistently legacy news organizations with two print-based media and three
broadcast media—all with at least national, if not global reach. In general, these
organizations are responsible for the majority of the hiring of product managers in
each network.
An examination of the betweenness centrality scores in Table 4 supports provides a
similar perspective with some interesting and noteworthy differences.8 In the US net-
work, while four out of five of the top organizations are news and mostly overlap with
those with the highest degree centrality scores, one is a tech company (Apple). This
implies that Apple occupies a central role as a “pass through” organization, meaning
that journalism’s product managers are likely to pass through the company during
their careers. In the UK network, the top five most central organizations based on a
measure of betweenness overlap completely with those based on a measure of
degree. This implies that the most important news organizations for hiring in the UK
product manager employment network are also those that are most important as far
as “pass through” or turnover.

Discussion
This analysis provides an assessment of the enabling conditions of institutional entre-
preneurs via a case study of product managers in a sample of US and UK news organi-
zations. As the data show, some of the findings associated with enabling conditions of
institutional entrepreneurs were to be expected, but several were quite suprising. The
following sections discuss the theoretical and practical implications of each enabling
condition and the differences among them between the US and UK case studies.

Moral Legitimacy as an Enabling Condition of Institutional Entrepreneurs

Prior work highlights the importance of moral legitimacy for institutional entrepre-
neurs as they initiate change (Pacheco et al. 2010), specifically via normative align-
ment such as is the case with education and training. Only a small percentage of
product managers have an undergraduate degree in journalism and an even smaller
percentage have a graduate degree in journalism – each less than the percentage typ-
ical of journalists as a whole (Weaver et al. 2007; Weaver and Willnat 2012). As product
managers reegineering the boundaries among editorial, technology, and business
departments of the newsroom, it would be expected that moral legitimacy would still
emanate from the field within which they operate (i.e. journalism). On a practical level,
however, these findings show that in the case of news product managers, moral legit-
imacy as an enabling condition may emanate from a different normative domain (e.g.
as in the case of an MBA at the graduate level).
Interestingly, the most common educational indicator of moral legitimacy is a certi-
fication in product management. It is important to note that this kind of training cur-
rently exists outside the traditional boundaries of an undergraudate or graduate
 DIGITAL JOURNALISM 21

degree and depending on the certifying organization, can be expensive and thus even
inaccessible to some. What is relevant here, however, is the connection to recent calls
in the lierature for academia to adapt to a reconceptualization of the journalist
profession (Royal et al. 2020; Sonderman 2016) by, for example, integrating more
product-focussed training. In practice, as product management becomes an increasing
imperative for the sustainable business of news, this is an potential area of focus for
those dedicated to reinvigorating and/or adapting academic journalism programs.
As far as the differences between product managers in the US and the UK, two are
important for further discussion. First, while the most popular graduate level degree
was an MBA for product managers in both countries, the second most common
degree differed. In the US, a graduate degree in journalism was more common and in
the UK, a graduate degree in computer science or information technology was more
common. This too says something about moral legitimacy as an enabling condition of
institutional entrepreneurs—while enacting change in a field, specifically in a case that
involves transposing domains from one field into another, from which field does the
moral legitimacy emanate? It seems, as is the case here, that might vary across coun-
tries depending on the ethos of newsroom culture. More research is needed across
varying countries to further investigate this finding.

Professionalization as an Enabling Condition of Institutional Entrepreneurs

Out-degree centrality measures were used to assess the enabling condition of profes-
sionalization of product managers as institutional entrepreneurs. The high levels of
field-crossing in the aggregated US network signify uneven professionalization of
product managers, which is consistent with the research on institutional entrepreneurs
who typically build from diverse experiences, knowledge, and skillsets to offer fresh
perspective to a field. On a practical level, this indicates that prior experience from
outside the news industry—particularly in the related field of tech—plays an import-
ant role as an enabling condition of institutional entrepreneurship and change
throughout the news industry at large.
The UK product manager employment network, on the other hand, does not have
the same high degree of field-crossing and instead reflects a higher degree of profes-
sionalization. In other words, the UK product managers have a higher rate of being
career newsworkers. While this limits the exchange of new skills and knowledge, these
institutional entrepreneurs benefit from familiarity with the existing tenets of
the industry.
It is also worth noting that of current product managers, 42% of immediate prior
jobs were from outside the news industry in the US network compared to 35% in the
UK network. This tells a different story than the aggregated network particularly in the
case of the US, which shows a large influx of product managers from industries out-
side of news (e.g. tech). Examining only the jobs immediately preceding current prod-
uct manager positions indicates a small, but still noteworthy migration from other
areas of expertise. In practical terms, this signifies that journalism’s product managers
are currently driven more often from within the news industry—especially over time,
and particularly within the UK network—rather than drawing on expertise from
22 A. KOSTERICH

outside the industry in other areas such as technology. This finding is consistent with
prior work on institutional change in news, which found that while it is often initiated
by external actors, it tends to be furthered over time from within the field.

Field Structure as an Enabling Condition of Institutional Entrepreneurs

Prior work discusses the importance of the structure of the organizational field within
which entrepreneurs operate as a determinant for change (see, e.g. Greenwood and
Suddaby 2006). In general, the field structure of US news organizations is more spread
out as institutional entrepreneurs come from organizations at the periphery. The field
structure of UK news organizations, in comparison, is more centralized.
In addition, to further assess the enabling condition of field structure for institu-
tional entrepreneurs, two centrality measures were calculated in the product manager
employment networks. In both the US and UK networks, news organizations alone (as
opposed to tech organizations or organizations from other sectors) tend to be more
influential as far as the hiring and turnover of product manager jobs (i.e. highest
degree centrality scores). The degree centrality scores also point to the importance of
The New York Times and to a lesser extent, The Washington Post, as training grounds
for US product managers in news. The same can be said of the importance of the BBC
and to a lesser extent, The Financial Times, as training grounds for UK product manag-
ers in news.
Interestingly, these findings would counter expected theory, which points to organ-
izational age and size as inhibitors of institutional entrepreneurship and resistance to
change (Stinchcombe 1965). This can perhaps be practically explained by the relation-
ship of organizational size, age, and revenue. It is well known that older organizations
tend to be larger with more resources. This, coupled with the legitimacy that comes
with older organizations themselves, offers an advantage in hiring the necessary prod-
uct managers. Thus, these findings related to the enabling condition of field structure
have important implications for both theory and practice. In the case of product man-
agers in news, central organizations that are the established and entrenched players
of the news industry are indeed an enabling condition for institutional
entrepreneurship.
In terms of betweenness centrality, all five of the top organizations in the UK net-
work are news. In the US network, Apple as a tech company is also included as a
most central organization along with other news organizations. In practical terms, this
means that both news organizations and tech organizations are influential as bridges
through which product managers move throughout the US network. In general, this
indicates that the field structure is more centralized around news in the UK as com-
pared to the US.
In the US network, while tech companies are not at the centre of the network in
terms of hiring activity, they do exert influence within the product managers employ-
ment network due to the flow of employees through these organizations. Tech com-
panies thus play a critical role as far as influence in training and experience for
product managers that go on to work in US news organizations. While the field struc-
ture and hiring patterns found in the US network are expected along theoretical lines
 DIGITAL JOURNALISM 23

as actors in less embedded organizations within a field are more likely to enact institu-
tional change, they do have some noteworthy practical implications. Once again, tech
culture and ethos are infused into that of the profession of journalism. Any change in
the agreed upon understanding of the journalism profession can of course impact the
production of news, organizational performance, and importantly, society’s perception
of the institution itself, which continues to be called into question (Carlson 2017).
Thus, an intricate understanding of these changes as detailed in this article
is imperative.

Limitations
While the results here have important contributions to both existing theories of insti-
tutional entrepreneurship and existing knowledge about the profession of journalism,
there are of course a number of limitations to the study. The unique employment
dataset does not capture the full scale of the news indstry; rather, it represents a caset
study of 271 product managers from 49 news organizations in the US and UK. An
important next step in this research stream is to collect a more comprehensive sample
of product managers at news organizations across the globe in an effort to capture a
wider range of product manager employment histories, allow for more of a cross-
country comparison, and thus more accurately reflect the industry as a whole.
In addition, data collected is based on information from LinkedIn profiles, which are
voluntary, possibly distorted, self-reported presentations and certainly not agreed
upon historical records. There are also different incentives for users to participate on
LinkedIn, which leads to concerns regarding an unknown sampling frame and poten-
tial estimation bias (Horton and Tambe 2015). Prior research, however, suggests that
larger sample sizes help mitigate some of these concerns (Tambe 2014).

Future Research
As a nascent role in news organizations across the globe, product managers provide a
multitude of avenues for future research in addition to the global expansion and
cross-cultural comparison addressed above with regard to limitations. Specifically, in-
depth interviews should be conducted to further understand the strategies product
managers use as institutional entrepreneurs to enact change within a news organiza-
tion and establish legitimacy of their domain throughout the industry. Building on the
literature on framing, for example, an examination of the mechanisms used in the pro-
cess of institutional entrepreneurship would help shed light on how these emergent
actors fit into changing journalistic boundaries, which is central to understanding their
influence on newswork and the journalism profession at large.

Conclusion
In sum, product managers are an emergent and increasingly imperative role for news
organizations as they strive to meet the business demands of a continuous stream of
products ready to engage audience needs. Product managers serve to prioritize these
24 A. KOSTERICH

needs by providing a holistic perspective of a news organization’s goals, bringing new

skillsets into the newsroom and aligning the differing operating logics of editorial,
business, and technology departments. In doing so, they serve as a prime example of
the reengineering of journalistic institutions.
In an effort to shed light on the role of enabling conditions for institutional entre-
preneurs, a unique dataset was created from which to analyse the hiring patterns,
educational training, professionalization, and organizational field structure of the nas-
cent role of product managers in news organizations in both the US and the UK. In
conducting these analyses, this work thus provides an empirical approach to theory
building regarding the ways that the business of journalism is responding to digitaliza-
tion through the reengineering of long-standing professional boundaries. Indeed,
when industries begin to adapt, change is often first seen at the professional level
where the nature of work responds in a more micro manner to broader social, eco-
nomic, and technological forces (Muzio, Brock, and Suddaby 2013). In the context of
institutional entrepreneurs in the news industry, the relationship between the produc-
tion of journalism and the business of journalism is reengineered as product managers
represent the crossing of traditionally institutionalized professional boundaries.
This analysis of institutional entrepreneurs during a time of strategic and structural
change sheds light on a new domain within an industry, how it might differ across
organizations and across countries, and what that means the business of digital jour-
nalism at large. Specifically, institutional entrepreneurs require real power within
organizations to enact and maintain change—product managers in news organizations
need visibility and control to do the work necessary to meet changing audience
demands and business imperatives. Further, the reengineering of professional bounda-
ries leads to new interdependencies and collaboration may require the compromising
of traditional institutional logics (see Belair-Gagnon, Lewis, and Agur 2020)—product
managers bring in new backgrounds and perspectives, and an openness to experi-
mentation should be central to the organization in an effort to foster adaptation to
the methods by which readers now want to consume news. It is also important to
note that product managers are difficult to acquire as the average salary exceeds
$123,000 per year and companies across industries compete for them (Willens 2018).
Findings show that US news organizations in particular would benefit from more
home-grown (i.e. within the news industry) training programs for product managers.
Finally, it is clear that product managers are an increasingly important role within
news organizations; however, the news industry and the business of jourunalism at
large now must adapt to incentivize these institutional entrepreneurs to stay by focus-
sing on retention, career paths, and hiring people into top management positions
who understand the product space and the benefits of using it to meet the ever-
changing demands of the audience.
Acknowledging the rise of new actors and the important changes in educational
training (i.e. moral legitimacy) and work experience (i.e. professionalization) they bring
into the field suggests that product managers act as institutional entrepreneur to
reengineer journalism’s longstanding professional boundaries. Together with organiza-
tional centrality (i.e. field structure), these enabling conditions manifest in different
ways as determinants for actors to enact change in institutionalized fields. A focus on
 DIGITAL JOURNALISM 25

the career and network histories of product managers thus highlights the interactions
and relationships that comprise news organizations and the movement towards more
flexible, overlapping, and non-siloed knowledge and expertise.

Notes
1. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/world/coronavirus-maps.html
2. https://www.propublica.org/newsapps
3. https://bbcnewslabs.co.uk/projects/bots/
4. The sample for the Reuters report included national and regional newspapers with the
highest print circulation, weekly newsmagazines with top circulation/reach, public service
media based on reach for TV news, and digital born websites with the highest reach for
each country according to national official sources (Simon & Graves, 2019).
5. Collected positions also include similar jobs such as product director or VP of Product;
however, for the sake of brevity and clarity, this article generalizes these positions as
product manager.
6. Data collection and coding were guided by the author’s non-participant observation at a
handful of industry events that focused on the topic of product managers in news such as
SRCCON and ONA Summer Series: Women in Product. These events also help add context
to the overall research.
7. It is worth noting that chi-square tests were also conducted to investigate if there was a
statistically significant dependence between any of the three educational training variables
and product manager country. Results for each test were nonsignificant. This further
supports the conclusion that there is no difference in the educational training of product
managers in US news organizations compared to those in UK news organizations.
8. These network measures duplicate each other somewhat, but it would be possible for one
organization to be highly central based on degree and only connected to one other
organization, which would result in a relatively low betweenness centrality score.
9. Data reflect the number of employees on LinkedIn at the time of data collection.
10. Centrality scores are normalized and edge weights are considered in all cases to control
for network size and allow for comparison.
11. Centrality scores are normalized and edge weights are considered in all cases to control
for network size and allow for comparison.
12. The visualization illustrates the movement of aggregated US based product manager jobs
among industries. The current industry for each product manager job is included and a
directed tie is present to connect from the industry of the prior product manager job.
Industries nodes are sized and colored by out-degree (i.e., a bigger and darker blue node
has more outgoing connections). Connections are also colored according to edge weight
and self-loops are included. In order to aid in clarity, the diagram is filtered to show only
those nodes with a degree greater than six. The Fruchterman Reingold algorithm was
applied to create this layout.
13. The visualization illustrates the movement of aggregated UK based product manager jobs
among industries. The current industry for each product manager job is included and a
directed tie is present to connect from the industry of the prior product manager job.
Industries nodes are sized and colored by out-degree (i.e., a bigger and darker blue node
has more outgoing connections). Connections are also sized according to edge weight and
self-loops are included. In order to aid in clarity, the diagram is filtered to show only those
industry nodes with a degree greater than three. The Fruchterman Reingold algorithm was
applied to create this layout.
14. Organizations are represented by blue nodes and shaded and sized according to degree.
Edges are also shaded and sized according to weight. In other words, the more
connections (shared product managers) that exist between two companies, the thicker
26 A. KOSTERICH

and the darker blue the edge. In order to aid in clarity, the diagram is filtered to show
only those nodes with a degree greater than three. The Fruchterman Reingold algorithm
was applied to create this layout.
15. Organizations are represented by blue nodes and shaded and sized according to degree.
Edges are also shaded and sized according to weight. In other words, the more
connections (shared product managers) that exist between two companies, the thicker
and the darker blue the edge. In order to aid in clarity, the diagram is filtered to show
only those nodes with a degree greater than one. The Fruchterman Reingold algorithm
was applied to create this layout.

Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

References
Aaronson, B. 2018. From bridge role to product thinking. https://www.niemanlab.org/2018/12/
from-bridge-roles-to-product-thinkers/
Ananny, M., and K. Crawford. 2015. “A Liminal Press: Situating News App Designers within a
Field of Networked News Production.” Digital Journalism 3 (2): 192–208.
Anderson, C. W. 2011. “Between Creative and Quantified Audiences: Web Metrics and Changing
Patterns of Newswork in Local US Newsrooms.” Journalism: Theory, Practice & Criticism 12 (5):
550–566.
Andersson, U., and J. Wiik. 2013. “Journalism Meets Management.” Journalism Practice 7 (6):
705–719.
Andersson, U., and J. Wiik. 2014. “New Demands on Editorial Leadership: Perceived Changes in
Swedish Newspaper Management.” Observatorio 8 (2): 1–16.
Bastian, M., S. Heymann, and M. Jacomy. (2009). “Gephi: An Open Source Software for Exploring
and Manipulating Networks.” Paper presented at the International AAAI Conference on
Weblogs and Social Media.
Battilana, J., B. Leca, and E. Boxenbaum. (2009). “How Actors Change Institutions: Toward a
Theory of Institutional Entrepreneurship.” Academy of Management Annals 3 (1): 65–107.
Beckert, J. 1999. “Agency, Entrepreneurs, and Institutional Change: The Role of Strategic Choice
and Institutionalized Practices in Organizations.” Organization Studies 20 (5): 777–799.
Belair-Gagnon, V., and A. E. Holton. 2018a. “Boundary Work, Interloper Media, and Analytics in
Newsrooms.” Digital Journalism 6 (4): 492–508.
Belair-Gagnon, V., and A. E. Holton. 2018b. “Strangers to the Game? Interlopers, Intralopers, and
Shifting News Production.” Media and Communication 6 (4): 70–78.
Belair-Gagnon, V., S. C. Lewis, and C. Agur. 2020. “Failure to Launch: Competing Institutional
Logics, Intrapreneurship, and the Case of Chatbots.” Journal of Computer-Mediated
Communication 25 (4): 291–306.
Borchardt, A. 2018. Getting real about talent and diversity. https://europeanjournalists.org/wp-
content/uploads/2020/01/Getting-Real-About-Talent-and-Diversity-%E2%80%93-10-
Recommendations-2.pdf
Borgatti, S. P., and P. C. Foster. 2003. “The Network Paradigm in Organizational Research: A
Review and Typology.” Journal of Management 29 (6): 991–1013.
Boyles, J. L. 2016. “The Isolation of Innovation: Restructuring the Digital Newsroom through
Intrapreneurship.” Digital Journalism 4 (2): 229–246.
Carlson, M. 2017. Journalistic Authority: Legitimating News in the Digital Era. New York, NY:
Columbia University Press.
Chadha, K., and R. Wells. 2016. “Journalistic Responses to Technological Innovation in
Newsrooms: An Exploratory Study of Twitter Use.” Digital Journalism 4 (8): 1020–1035.
 DIGITAL JOURNALISM 27

Cherven, K. 2015. Mastering Gephi Network Visualization. Birmingham, UK: Packt Publishing.
Deuze, M. 2003. “The Web and Its Journalisms: Considering the Consequences of Different Types
of Newsmedia Online.” New Media & Society 5 (2): 203–230.
Deuze, M. 2011. Managing Media Work. Thousand Oaks: SAGE.
DiMaggio, P. J. 1988. “Interest and Agency in Institutional Theory.” In Institutional Patterns and
Organizations, edited by L. G. Zucker, 3–22. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger.
Dorado, S. 2005. “Institutional Entrepreneurship, Partaking, and Convening.” Organization Studies
26 (3): 385–414.
Drury, M. L., and O. O’Dwyer. 2013. “An Investigation of the Decision-Making Process in Agile
Teams.” International Journal of Information Technology and Decision Making 12 (6):
1097–1120.
Eldridge, S. A. II. 2019. “Thank God for Deadspin”: Interlopers, Metajournalistic Commentary, and
Fake News through the Lens of “Journalistic Realization.” New Media & Society 21 (4):
856–878.
Fligstein, N. 1997. “Social Skill and Institutional Theory.” American Behavioral Scientist 40 (4):
397–405. (
Freeman, L. C. 1978. “Centrality in Social Networks: Conceptual Clarification.” Social Networks 1
(3): 215–239.
Garud, R., S. Jain, and A. Kumaraswamy. 2002. “Institutional Entrepreneurship in the Sponsorship
of Common Technological Standards: The Case of Sun Microsystems and Java.” Academy of
Management Journal 45 (1): 196–214.
Gordon, R. 2020 (February 18). 7 Reflections on SRCCON: Product. https://knightlab.northwest-
ern.edu/2020/02/18/srccon-product-2020/index.html
Greenwood, R., and R. Suddaby. 2006. “Institutional Entrepreneurship in Mature Fields: The Big
Five Accounting Firms.” Academy of Management Journal 49 (1): 27–48.
Greenwood, R., R. Suddaby, and C. R. Hinings. 2002. “Theorizing Change: The Role of
Professional Associations in the Transformation of Institutionalized Fields.” The Academy of
Management Journal 45 (1): 58–80.
Handcock, M. S., D. R. Hunter, C. T. Butts, S. M. Goodreau, and M. Morris. 2008. “Statnet:
Software Tools for the Representation, Visualization, Analysis, and Simulation of Network
Data.” Journal of Statistical Software 24 (1): 1–11.
Hardy, C., and S. Maguire. 2008. “Institutional Entrepreneurship.” In The Sage Handbook of
Organizational Institutionalism, edited by R. Greenwood, C. Oliver, K. Sahlin, & R. Suddaby,
198–217. Thosand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Hensmans, M. 2003. “Social Movement Organizations: A Metaphor for Strategic Actors in
Institutional Fields.” Organization Studies 24 (3): 355–381.
Hermida, A., and M. L. Young. 2019. Data Journalism and the Regeneration of News. London:
Routledge.
Holm, P. 1995. “The Dynamics of Institutionalization: Transformation Processes in Norwegian
Fisheries.” Administrative Science Quarterly 40 (3): 398–422.
Holton, A. E. 2016. “Intrapreneurial Informants: An Emergent Role of Freelance Journalist.”
Journalism Practice 10 (7): 917–927.
Hoogstraaten, M. J., K. Frenken, and W. P. C. Boon. 2020. “The Study of Institutional
Entrepreneurship and Its Implications for Transition Studies.” Environmental Innovation and
Societal Transitions 36: 114–136.
Horton, J. J., and P. Tambe. 2015. “Labor Economists Get Their Microscope: Big Data and Labor
Market Analysis.” Big Data 3 (3): 130–137.
Kosterich, A. 2020. “Managing News Nerds: Strategizing about Institutional Change in the News
Industry.” Journal of Media Business Studies 17 (1): 51–68.
Kosterich, A., and M. S. Weber. 2019a. “Careers in Modern Professional Journalism: A Case Study
of NYC Journalist Network Histories 2011–2015.” Journalism Practice 13 (8): 982–987.
Kosterich, A., and M. S. Weber. 2019b. “Transformation of a Modern Newsroom Workforce: A Case
Study of NYC Journalist Network Histories from 2011 to 2015.” Journalism Practice 13 (4): 431–457.
28 A. KOSTERICH

Kosterich, A., and P. Ziek. 2020. “Media Operations: A Reorientation of Newsworker

Categorisation.” Journal of Media Business Studies 17 (3-4): 317–331.
Kraatz, M. S., and J. H. Moore. 2002. “Executive Migration and Institutional Change.” The
Academy of Management Journal 45 (1): 120–143.
Kreiss, D., and A. J. Saffer. 2017. “Networks and Innovation in the Production of Communication:
Explaining Innovations in U.S. electoral Campaigning from 2004 to 2012.” Journal of
Communication 67 (4): 521–544.
Lawrence, T. B., and R. Suddaby. 2006. “Institutions and Institutional Work.” In Sage Handbook of
Organization Studies, edited by S. R. Clegg, C. Hardy, T. B. Lawrence, & W. R. Nord, 2nd ed.,
215–254. London: Sage.
Leblebici, H., G. R. Salancik, A. Copay, and T. King. 1991. “Institutional Change and the
Transformation of Interorganizational Fields: An Organizational History of the U.S. radio
Broadcasting Industry.” Administrative Science Quarterly 36 (3): 333–363.
Levy, D., and M. Scully. 2007. “The Institutional Entrepreneur as Modern Prince: The Strategic
Face of Power in Contested Fields.” Organization Studies 28 (7): 971–991.
Lewis, S. C., and O. Westlund. 2015. “Actors, Actants, Audiences, and Activities in Cross-Media
News Work.” Digital Journalism 3 (1): 19–37.
Lischka, J. A. 2020. “Fluid Institutional Logics in Digital Journalism.” Journal of Media Business
Studies 17 (2): 113–131.
Lowrey, W. 2002. “Word People vs. picture People: Normative Differences and Strategies for Control
over Work among Newsroom Subgroups.” Mass Communication and Society 5 (4): 411–432.
Lowrey, W. 2011. “Institutionalism, News Organizations and Innovation.” Journalism Studies 12
(1): 64–79.
Lowrey, W. 2012. “Journalism Innovation and the Ecology of News Production: Institutional
Tendencies.” Journalism & Communication Monographs 14 (4): 214–287.
Maguire, S., C. Hardy, and T. B. Lawrence. 2004. “Institutional Entrepreneurship in Emerging Fields:
HIV/AIDS Treatment Advocacy in Canada.” Academy of Management Journal 47: 657–679.
Muzio, D., D. M. Brock, and R. Suddaby. 2013. “Professions and Institutional Change: Towards an
Institutionalist Sociology of the Professions.” Journal of Management Studies 50 (5): 699–721.
Naldi, L., and R. G. Picard. 2012. “‘Let’s Start an Online News site.’ Opportunities, Resources,
Strategy, and Formational Myopia in Startups.” Journal of Media Business Studies 9 (4): 69–97.
Napoli, P. M. 2014. “Automated Media: An Institutional Theory Perspective on Algorithmic Media
Production and Consumption.” Communication Theory 24 (3): 340–360.
Newman, N. 2017. The Rise and Rise of Product Management. https://www.bbc.co.uk/academy/
en/articles/art20130722141956221
Nielsen, R. K. 2018. What is it that Journalism Studies is Studying These Days? A Lot About
Newsrooms, Less About Everybody Else in the News Ecosystem. https://www.niemanlab.org/
2018/05/what-is-it-that-journalism-studies-is-studying-these-days-a-lot-about-newsrooms-less-
about-everybody-else-in-the-news-ecosystem/
Ognyanova, K. 2016. Network Analysis and Visualization with R and Igraph. http://www.kateto.
net/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/NetSciX_2016_Workshop.pdf]
Oliver, C. 1992. “The Antecedents of Deinstitutionalization.” Organization Studies 13 (4): 563–588.
Ornebring, H., and C. Mellado. 2018. “Valued Skills among Journaists: An Exploratory
Comparison of Six European Nations.” Journalism 19 (4): 445–463.
Pacheco, D. F., J. G. York, T. J. Dean, and S. D. Sarasvathy. 2010. “The Coevolution of Institutional
Entrepreneurship: A Tale of Two Theories.” Journal of Management 36 (4): 974–1010.
Petre, C. 2015, May. “The Traffic Factories: Metrics at Chartbeat, Gawker Media, and the New
York Times.” Tow Center for Digital Journalism. https://www.cjr.org/tow_center_reports/the_
traffic_factories_metrics_at_chartbeat_gawker_media_and_the_new_york_times.php
Powers, M. 2012. “‘In Forms That Are Familiar and yet-to-Be Invented’: American Jounalism and
the Discourse of Technologically Specific Work.” Journal of Communication Inquiry 36 (1):
24–43.
R-Core-Team 2015. R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing (Version 3.1.3).
www.R-project.org
 DIGITAL JOURNALISM 29

Rao, H. 1998. “Caveat Emptor: The Construction of Nonprofit Consumer Watchdog

Organizations.” American Journal of Sociology 103 (4): 912–961.
Royal, C. 2012. “The Journalist as Programmer: A Case Study of The New York Times Interactive
News Technology Department.” Paper presented at the The international symposium for
online journalism, Austin, TX.
Royal, C. 2016. “Managing Digital Products in a Newsroom Context.” ISOJ journal. https://isoj.
org/research/managing-digital-products-in-a-newsroom-context/
Royal, C., A. Bright, K. Pellizzaro, V. Belair-Gagnon, A. E. Holton, S. Vincent, D. Heider, A. Zielina,
and D. Kiesow. 2020. “Product Mangement in Journalism and Academia.” Journalism & Mass
Communication Quarterly 97 (3): 597–616..
Ryfe, D. M. 2012. Can Journalism Survive? An inside Look at American Newsrooms. Cambridge,
MA: Polity Press.
Scire, S. 2020. Readers Reign Supreme, and Other Takeaways from The New York Times end-of-
Year Earnings Report. https://www.niemanlab.org/2020/02/readers-reign-supreme-and-other-
takeaways-from-the-new-york-times-end-of-year-earnings-report/
Simon, F. M., and L. Graves. 2019. Pay Models for Online News in the US and Europe: 2019
Update. https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2019-05/Paymodels_for_
Online_News_FINAL.pdf
Sonderman, J. 2016. “Best Practices for Product Management in News Organizations.” American
Press Institute. https://www.americanpressinstitute.org/publications/reports/white-papers/
product-management-best-practices/single-page/
Stinchcombe, A. L. 1965. “Organizations and Social Structure.” In Handbook of Organizations,
edited by J. March, 153–193. Chicago: Rand McNally.
Suchman, M. C. 1995. “Managing Legitimacy: Strategic and Institutional Approaches.” Academy
of Management Review 20 (3): 571–610.
Sylvie, G. 2018. Reshaping the News: Community, Engagement, and Editors. New York: Peter Lang.
Tambe, P. 2014. “Big Data Investment, Skills, and Firm Value.” Management Science 60 (6):
1452–1469.
Tandoc, E. C. Jr.2019. “Journalism at the Periphery.” Media and Communication 7 (4): 138–143.
Usher, N. 2016. Interactive Journalism: Hackers, Data, and Code. Champaign, IL: University of
Illinois Press.
van den Bulck, H., S. Tambuyzer, and S. Ackx. 2011. “Readers’ Responses to Product þ Strategies
of Print Media Brands: Increasing Readership or Commoditization of Print Media?”
International Journal on Media Management 13 (1): 71–85.
Wasserman, S., and K. Faust. 1994. Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications. Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press.
Weaver, D. H., R. A. Beam, B. J. Brownlee, P. S. Voakes, and G. C. Wilhoit. 2007. The American
Journalist in the 21st Century: U.S. News People at the Dawn of a New Millennium. New York,
NY: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Weaver, D. H., & L. Willnat (Eds.). 2012. The Global Journalist in the 21st Century. New York, NY:
Routledge.
Willens, M. 2018. ‘There’s a huge demand’: Why product manager is the new pivotal role at pub-
lishers. Retrieved from https://digiday.com/media/product-manager-pivotal-role-publishers/
Young, S., and A. Carson. 2018. “What is a Journalist? The View from Employers as Revealed by
the Job Vacancy Advertisements.” Journalism Studies 19 (3): 452–472.
Zelizer, B. 1995. “Journalism’s ‘Last’ Stand: Wirephoto and the Iscourse of Resistance.” Journal of
Communication 45 (2): 78–92.
Zilber, T. B. 2002. “Institutionalization as an Interplay between Actions, Meanings, and Actors:
The Case of a Rape Crisis Center in Israel.” Academy of Management Journal 45: 234–354.
Zilber, T. B. 2007. “Stories and the Discursive Dynamics of Institutional Entrepreneurship: The
Case of Israeli High-Tech after the Bubble.” Organization Studies 28 (7): 1035–1054.
Zucker, L. 1988. Where Do Institutional Patterns Come from? Organizations as Actors in Social
Systems. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger.