Handling management ideas: Gatekeeping, editors and professional magazines

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SCAMAN-882; No. of Pages 15

Handling management ideas: Gatekeeping,editors and professional magazines

Jurriaan J. Nijholt a,*, Stefan Heusinkveld b, Jos Benders c

aRotterdam School of Management, Department of Strategic Management and Entrepreneurship,The NetherlandsbVU University Amsterdam, Department of Management and Organisation, The NetherlandscKU Leuven, Centre for Sociological Research (CESO), Belgium

Scandinavian Journal of Management (2014) xxx, xxx—xxx

KEYWORDSManagement fashion;Management ideas;Business media;Gatekeeping;Dissemination

Summary While business media are important in the transfer of management ideas, there hasbeen little attention to the question how media-internal processes shape the way the mediaaddress these ideas. Our study shows how editorial norms and routines at professional magazinesinteract with external pressures to produce a unique process of gatekeeping management ideas.Our findings show that editors’ perceptions of an idea’s newsworthiness are vital in gatekeeping.Nonetheless, the role of the media in the dissemination of management ideas is criticallydependent on resource constraints and the related influence of external authors and advertisers.Whereas resource-rich magazines can follow a logic of autonomy and independence, magazineswith fewer resources are more inclined to collude with management intellectuals, consultingfirms and advertisers to create interest in certain management ideas.# 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Introduction

A growing literature addresses the population-level diffusionand organizational-level handling of ‘management ideas’(Sturdy, 2004; Røvik, 2011). This field of study has paidparticular attention to the actors engaged in the productionside of the market for management ideas (Abrahamson,1996; Kieser, 1997), such as consulting firms, managementgurus and business media (Abrahamson & Fairchild, 1999;Suddaby & Greenwood, 2001). For instance, studies have

Please cite this article in press as: Nijholt, J. J., et al. Handling manScandinavian Journal of Management (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.10

* Corresponding author at: Rotterdam School of Management,Erasmus University, Burgemeester Oudlaan 50, 3062 PA Rotterdam,The Netherlands. Tel.: +31 10 408 1996.

E-mail address: [email protected] (J.J. Nijholt).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scaman.2014.03.0030956-5221/# 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

highlighted how consulting firms develop new products andservices around promising ideas (Heusinkveld & Benders,2005; Kieser, 2002). Work on management gurus has focusedon how they convince and attract audiences through publicperformances and production of management bestsellers(Clark & Greatbatch, 2004; Clark & Salaman, 1998; Great-batch & Clark, 2003).

As for the business media, various studies have highlightedhow their attention to popular management ideas, measuredby article counts, tends to display bell-shaped curves (Car-son, Lanier, Carson, & Guidry, 2000). As such, media output isoften understood as an empirical means to visualize thenotion that management ideas can be subject to a fashionlifecycle (Abrahamson, 1996; Benders, Nijholt, & Heusink-veld, 2007; Gill & Whittle, 1993). Also, an important streamof research has developed our understanding of the role of

agement ideas: Gatekeeping, editors and professional magazines.16/j.scaman.2014.03.003

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scaman.2014.03.003


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2 J.J. Nijholt et al.

the media in the production and dissemination of manage-ment ideas (Mazza & Alvarez, 2000; Ruling, 2005). Abraham-son (1996), citing Hirsch (1972), suggests that business mediaform an important ‘strategic checkpoint’ for producers ofmanagement ideas, since they perform a gatekeeping role(Hirsch, 1972, p. 643) which may block or facilitate thefurther dissemination of ideas. To date, research has offeredfew details about how business media perform this gate-keeping role, beyond the statement that it is likely that themedia play ‘principally cooperative games’ (Kieser, 1997, p.57), with other management fashion-setters seeking publi-city. This gives rise to a view of the business media asrelatively compliant and accommodating mouthpieces for‘fashion-setters’ such as consultants, gurus, or professionalassociations invested in the successful diffusion of particularideas (Abrahamson, 1996; Ax & Bjørnenak, 2005; Swan, New-ell, & Robertson, 1999; Swan & Newell, 1995). Insights fromthe field of media sociology, however, suggest that such aview is starkly at odds with the professional norms of thenews media (cf. Shoemaker & Reese, 1996, p. 33) whereintegrity and independence from owners, advertisers andsources appear to be highly valued.

Given a lack of empirical and theoretical attention to theproduction of business media contents, we need betterinsight into how processes within the media shape the wayin which they relate to management ideas. Ruling, forinstance, has emphasized the importance of conductingmicro-level studies that ‘‘look at editorial choices and deci-sion making’’ (2005, p. 193). This is against the backdrop of amore generally expressed need for finer-grained conceptua-lizations of backstage processes in the production and dis-semination of management ideas (Clark, 2004; Clark &Greatbatch, 2004). Gaining further insight into the produc-tion of media content is not only important because thebusiness media can ‘draw widespread attention to progres-sive management rhetorics championing particular manage-ment techniques’ (Abrahamson, 1996, p. 269), but alsobecause they influence corporate agendas (Carroll, 2010)and can define, frame and (de)legitimate events and corpo-rate activities (Grafstrom & Windell, 2011; Hellgren et al.,2002; Vaara, Tienari, & Laurila, 2006; Vergne, 2011; Zavya-lova, Pfarrer, Reger, & Shapiro, 2012).

In this paper, we aim to address this gap in our under-standing by reporting on a qualitative study of editorialprocesses in business media. Our study focuses on profes-sional magazines. These practitioner-oriented magazinesaim to inform targeted professional groups on managerialtopics and form a recognizable category of publications in thefield of business media (Barley, Meyer, & Gash, 1988; Raub &Ruling, 2001). While earlier work has addressed the role ofprofessions in the diffusion and legitimation of managementknowledge, the role of editorial processes at these associatedprofessional magazines has not been studied (Ax & Bjørne-nak, 2005; Frenkel, 2005; Raub & Ruling, 2001; Scarbrough,Robertson, & Swan, 2005; Shenhav, 1999; Swan et al., 1999;Swan & Newell, 1995). With a typical publication frequencyof once a month and clearly delineated audiences, thesemagazines are a type of publication distinct from daily, mass-oriented business newspapers or scholarly journals (Barleyet al., 1988). Professional magazines have been shown tocontribute by far the largest proportion of print media outputon popular ideas (Abrahamson & Fairchild, 1999; Heusinkveld


& Benders, 2001), making them an especially salient contextfor this study.

In studying editorial decisions, we draw on a media sociol-ogy perspective (Schudson, 2003; Shoemaker & Reese, 1996),and in particular on the notion of gatekeeping (Donohue,Tichenor, & Olien, 1972; Hilgartner & Bosk, 1988; White,1950). The professional magazines central to our study arenot among the traditional ‘news organizations’ generallystudied in the field of media sociology, whose business isto deliver highly topical event-driven news to mass audi-ences. Nonetheless, both these categories of media areengaged in the production of symbolic content (Hirsch,1972), and as such our analysis is informed by the literatureon news gatekeeping. Specifically, we use existing insightsinto the role of norms, organizational routines and field-levelpressures in news selection (Boyle, 2001; Carroll & McCombs,2003; Hilgartner & Bosk, 1988; Hjarvard, 2008; Tuchman,1973). By drawing insights from this tradition and applyingthem to our current empirical setting of professional maga-zines, we show how editorial norms and routines at profes-sional magazines interact with the specific pressures in thisdistinct organizational field, resulting in a unique process ofgatekeeping management ideas.

Building on these results, our study makes three contribu-tions. First, prior work on management fashions has assumeda ‘principally cooperative’ role of business media withrespect to other management fashion-setters (Abrahamson,1996; Carson et al., 2000; Kieser, 1997). Such a depiction ofthe role of the business media fits a parsimonious descriptionof ‘management fashion setters’ but has also led to a sim-plified understanding of how and why ideas are processed bythese media. Drawing from existing theory on news organiza-tions in our exploration of professional magazines, the pre-sent study extends prior research by showing thatapplications of the norms of newsworthiness are subject tospecific tensions which stem from attempts to reconcilethese invariant norms with the interests of various knowledgeentrepreneurs. Second, our study provides a more compre-hensive view of how processes of gatekeeping in relation tomanagement ideas may vary, as it identifies different ways inwhich editors seek to address these tensions and by showinghow these are systematically associated with magazineresource constraints. Third, our research furthers insight intothe possibilities and limitations of the use of business mediadata in studying the prevalence and longevity of particularideas, emphasizing the need for greater sensibility to theeditorial processes that shape media content.

Theory

Business media and management ideas

To date, two central approaches can be distinguished in theresearch on the role of business media in relation to theproduction, dissemination and popularity of managementideas. The first significant approach can be subsumed underthe rubric of management fashion research. This line ofresearch focuses on variations over time in the volume ofmedia output, as measured by article counts, thereby con-sidering business media primarily as an empirical means tostudy the evolving popularity of particular ideas (see, for



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Handling management ideas 3

example, Abrahamson, 1996; Abrahamson & Eisenman, 2008;Carson et al., 2000; Gill & Whittle, 1993; Kieser, 1997; Spell,2001). Given the fashion literature’s preoccupation with thesubstantive and enduring effects of short-lived hypes (Røvik,2011; Sturdy, 2004), empirical material that shows sucheffects is a central concern. The enormous difficulties inacquiring data about the usage of ideas in organizationalpraxis, mean that article counts are frequently used as aproxy for diffusion (Clark, 2004; Swan, 2004). However, asCarson et al. note, article counts have also been interpretedas measuring ‘interest’ in a fashion (2000, p. 1149). ‘Interest’might refer to either the production or consumption sides ofthe market for management ideas. For instance, Abrahamson(1996, p. 257) described his analysis of articles on QualityCircles in the ABI Inform database as a ‘bell-shaped popu-larity pattern of QCs among fashion setters’ [italics added].However, authors have also interpreted article counts asrepresenting demand-side interest (Braam, Benders, & Heu-sinkveld, 2007; Guillen, 1994). For instance, Benders and vanBijsterveld (2000, p. 55) address the ‘reception pattern’ oflean production in Germany by distinguishing publications inacademic, managerial and non-managerial magazines, lead-ing them to suggest that ‘the German discussion of leanproduction was in the first place one by practitioners’.

A second central approach places more emphasis on theconceptualization of the role of the business media in rela-tion to management ideas — above and beyond offering aconvenient proxy for idea popularity (Benders et al., 2007).Specifically, business media are often understood as disse-minators of management ideas (Faust, 2002; Mazza &Alvarez, 2000; Ruling, 2005; Sahlin-Andersson & Engwall,2002) since they can potentially attract widespread attentionfrom the managerial masses (Abrahamson, 1996). It is the-orized that intensive attention from the media is a necessarycondition for an idea to become fashionable (Kieser, 2002)and that the media might have an agenda-setting function formanagerial audiences (Nijholt & Benders, 2007). Broadersociological discussions have addressed a process of ‘media-tization’ of society and culture, where the media exert anever-increasing influence (Hjarvard, 2008). Moreover, thebusiness media can offer a socially accepted languagethrough which the production and consumption of a manage-ment idea takes place (Furusten, 1999; Mazza & Alvarez,2000). These media thus function as a channel through whichmanagement knowledge is propagated by different profes-sional groups (Frenkel, 2005; Raub & Ruling, 2001; Scar-brough et al., 2005; Shenhav, 1999).

Scholars studying the role of the media in the productionof management ideas have started to consider this role as adecision-making process. Drawing on Hirsch’s (1972) model ofcultural production, Abrahamson (1996) suggests that busi-ness media form an important ‘strategic checkpoint’ forproducers of management ideas, since they perform a gate-keeping function (Hirsch, 1972, p. 643) which might block orfacilitate further dissemination of ideas. More recently, the-orists have indicated how these decision-making processesfeature a variety of ‘backstage actors’ such as book editorsand ghostwriters who contribute to the selection and proces-sing of ideas that have a potential to generate a mass appeal(Clark & Greatbatch, 2004). Key backstage actors alsoinclude the editors in charge of the various publicationsreporting on popular ideas (Clark, 2004; Ruling, 2005).


However, research offers less detail on how editors performthis role beyond the assumption that it is likely that mediaplay ‘principally cooperative games’ (Kieser, 1997, p. 57),thereby suggesting a view of the business media as a rela-tively compliant and accommodating mouthpiece for otheractors such as gurus and consultants. Along with the empiri-cal interest in these actors come calls for more attention tovarious other ‘backstage processes’ in the production anddissemination of management ideas (Clark, 2004; Clark &Greatbatch, 2004; Ruling, 2005). In order to take up thischallenge we outline a gatekeeping perspective below.

Gatekeeping

To better understand the editorial processes in businessmedia we draw on insights from media sociology (Schudson,2003; Shoemaker & Reese, 1996), and in particular theconcept of gatekeeping (Carroll & McCombs, 2003; Donohueet al., 1972; Hilgartner & Bosk, 1988; Shoemaker & Vos,2009; White, 1950). In the context of our study, theseperspectives alert us to the fact that media organizationsdo not simply record and transmit external events. Instead,individual news items and broader issues featured on maga-zines’ agendas for longer periods are subject to activelymanaged processes of selection and rejection. As such, thegatekeeping metaphor in the context of media sociologyessentially refers to the function of news selection. Withinthis domain, scholars have related processes of news selec-tion to (1) norms of newsworthiness (Galtung & Ruge, 1965)and (2) social processes on various levels that shape howthese norms are enacted (Schudson, 2003; Shoemaker &Reese, 1996).

First, media sociologists have traditionally emphasizedthat news selection is governed by norms held by mediaprofessionals (Clayman & Reisner, 1998; Kjaer & Langer,2005; Shoemaker & Vos, 2009; Stephens, 1980). These areunderstood as relatively invariant norms used to evaluateissues and events in terms of their newsworthiness. News-worthiness is an audience-oriented cognitive construct thatdirects journalists and editors in their gatekeeping role(Lester, 1980; Shoemaker & Reese, 1996; Weimann & Brosius,1991). In traditional news media, issues compete for a limitedamount of space, so media professionals will need to rankissues in terms of their newsworthiness. They subsequentlyaward space to those they judge the most newsworthy at anygiven moment. While definitions of the elements of news-worthiness vary across sources and empirical settings, newsitems must, in the perception of decision makers, displayelements such as impact, interest, conflict, unusual, time-liness and proximity to some order of magnitude in order tobe deemed worthy of uptake (Deephouse & Heugens, 2009;Galtung & Ruge, 1965; Hilgartner & Bosk, 1988; Shoemaker &Reese, 1996; Shoemaker & Vos, 2009; Stephens, 1980).

Second, whether newsworthy issues are ultimately trans-mitted as news and how this is done depends on socialprocesses across several levels of analysis (Berkowitz,1990; Schudson, 2003; Shoemaker & Reese, 1996). White’s(1950) landmark study of a wire news editor at a regionalnewspaper, for instance, focuses on individual characteristicssuch as the experience and attitudes of the editor to explainwhy he rejected 90% of all news messages received through



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the wire. At the organizational level, various routines shapethe way in which editors select issues and items (Clayman &Reisner, 1998; Tuchman, 1973). Routines are habitual, appro-priate and patterned practices used by media workers andcompanies to organize their work (Shoemaker & Reese, 1996,p. 57). One important routine for news organizations, forinstance, consists of reliance on pre-existing agendas. Deci-sions on newsworthiness do not have to be made by eachindividual editor for each individual item, as editors can referback to decisions made earlier within the news organization.As a result a consistent agenda for the outlet emerges overtime. But there is also a reliance on decisions made outsidethe news organization, by other news organizations. Newsworkers look to others to determine the newsworthiness ofissues, so that a process of ‘inter-media agenda setting’emerges (Boyle, 2001). There is a specific role here forhigh-status news outlets (Vergne, 2011), such as the NewYork Times and Washington Post, which have exceptionalpower to legitimate certain issues and events as ‘news’ forlower-status news organizations (Shoemaker & Reese, 1996).

Finally, a central concern of the field of media sociologyinvolves the impact of influences from outside of news organi-zations on editorial decision-making (Clayman & Reisner, 1998;Molotch & Lester, 1974; Schudson, 2003). A continuing concernin media studies is the extent to which the news media are freeto report without censorship by national governments (Shoe-maker & Vos, 2009). State-owned media, in particular, are likelyto be subject to such outright interference. But in many free-market democracies, where governments are less inclined toattempt to control over independent and autonomous media,other sources of influence may be prevalent, such as those ofspecial interest groups and advertisers (Shoemaker & Reese,1996). First, if special interest groups are able to raise significantsupport from their constituents, they may be in a position toinfluence the media agenda through the organization of events(Boorstin, 1971; Hjarvard, 2008) and the production of well-timed press releases relating to the issue of interest. In doing so,the interest group not only ensures that the issue at handbecomes newsworthy, but it also gets to control the primaryflow of information to the media (Shoemaker & Reese, 1996;Westphal & Deephouse, 2011). Advertisers are a second suchsource of influence. Since most mass media are financed throughadvertising income, the advertisers potentially have the clout toinfluence media content (Williams, 1992). There has specificallybeen much interest in the power of advertisers to suppressmedia content that paints the company or its products in anunfavourable light, such as the long tradition of the mostpowerful U.S. tobacco companies attempting to block mediaattention on the health hazards of smoking (Bagdikian, 1989;Shoemaker & Reese, 1996; Williams, 1992). Nonetheless, giventhe wide array of potential advertisers to which the mass mediahave access, it is said ‘no single advertiser can truly wield a vetopower’ (Gitlin, 1983, p. 254).

In the context of our study of editorial processes in profes-sional magazines, it becomes evident that management ideaspresent themselves to editorial staff as issues that may or maynot be considered worthy of selection. As such, this opens upthe empirical question of how the traditional elements ofnewsworthiness relate to the gatekeeping of managementideas. Furthermore, the theoretical overview above alertsus to the potential influence of specific routines of and pres-sures on professional magazines in processes of gatekeeping.


Methods

Professional magazines

This study aims to further our understanding of gatekeepingin relation to management ideas. We do so based on quali-tative in-depth interviews with editorial staff at what we callprofessional magazines. Professional magazines are practi-tioner-oriented magazines aimed at informing targeted pro-fessional groups on managerial topics (Barley et al., 1988;Raub & Ruling, 2001). These magazines thus encompass tradejournals and more general managerial magazines. They areoften glossy, full-colour publications and typically have amonthly publication frequency. We submit that these practi-tioner-oriented publications form an especially importantcontext in which to study backstage processes in the produc-tion and dissemination of management ideas (Clark, 2004;Clark & Greatbatch, 2004; Ruling, 2005). They are seen asrepresenting distinct ‘speech communities’ since they areoften geared to audiences with specific professional interestsand can be affiliated to professional associations (Barleyet al., 1988; Raub & Ruling, 2001; Scarbrough & Swan,2001). The relatively prolific output of professional maga-zines, specifically when compared to academic journals, isdue to their generally more frequent publication. Also, theyfeature shorter, and therefore more, articles in any givenissue. By way of illustration: a search on the term ‘manage-ment’ in the ABI-INFORM Complete database (http://search.proquest.com/abicomplete, 25 October, 2013)yielded a total of 4.7 million combined hits from the sourcetypes ‘trade journals’ and ‘magazines’, but less than amillion from the source type ‘scholarly journals’.

Informant selection

In line with other studies on the diffusion of managementideas, we keep the national context constant (cf. Abrahamson& Fairchild, 1999; Braam et al., 2007; Guillen, 1994; Mazza &Alvarez, 2000). The context of our study is the Netherlands,which in terms of audience size is comparable to the Scandi-navian countries and many of the smaller European nationaland lingual areas. Whilst we recognize that our focus on asingle country might limit the possibilities for empirical gen-eralizations, we posit that it also increases our ability to attaina theoretically richer insight into the processes of gatekeepingin relation to management ideas in at least two different ways.First, we suggest that the Dutch context, given its relativelysmall potential readership, is one with relatively strong con-straints on earnings of professional magazines. As such, wewould expect any relationship between outside influences andeditorial decision-making to be more pronounced — to theextent that routines allow for cost efficiencies and outsideinfluences come with advertiser pressures. Second, anotherconsideration for choosing this particular context was that theauthors had in-depth knowledge of the specific institutionalsetting, and this provided opportunities to find theoreticallyrelevant informants, gain their support, and interpret andcompare the data (see below).

While controlling for any influences from the wider insti-tutional context by conducting the study within nationalboundaries (Mazza & Alvarez, 2000), we used a further set


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Figure 1 (a) Dutch CRM articles in OLC, 1999—2006. (b) DutchLean articles in OLC, 1992—2008. (c) Dutch Risk Managementarticles in OLC, 1992—2008.


of selection criteria for determining which informants wouldallow us to learn most about editorial gatekeeping (Stake,1995; Yin, 1994). First, informants needed to (1) have thefunction of editor(-in-chief) at a Dutch-language professionalmagazine, and, in that function, (2) informants needed to bedemonstrably responsible for gatekeeping managementideas. To ensure these criteria were met, we decided todo article counts for a set of recently popular managementideas (Benders et al., 2007) using the Dutch-language OnLineContents bibliographic database. For each of the collectionsof articles dealing with popular ideas, we could identify andrank those magazines that contributed most articles to thesesets. This strategy enabled us to identify the editors of thoseparticular magazines and to select a group of informants whowere demonstrably knowledgeable about, and involved with,editorial decision-making regarding management ideas.

Second, in order to further increase our chances of dis-covering relevant concepts, we used a complementary set ofcriteria that imposed some variety between theoreticallyrelevant informants (Glaser & Strauss, 1967, p. 62; Miles &Huberman, 1994, p. 28; Stake, 1995). First, we selectedthree different management ideas typically associated withrelatively divergent professional backgrounds. These wereLean Management (LM), Customer Relationship Management(CRM), and Risk Management (RM). As shown by the articlecounts represented in Fig. 1a—c, all these ideas were theobject of some public discourse in the Netherlands (cf.Kieser, 2002), but the size and timing of their particularcurves are divergent. These represent only a selection ofthe various ideas that had achieved some popularity in theyears surrounding the study period.

Third, from the magazines that published most articles oneach of these ideas, we selected a final set of magazines thatshowed variety on key elements such as professional back-ground, staff size, circulation, and number of paying sub-scribers (see Table 1). Our focus on a single national context,as explained above, ensures comparability on these charac-teristics (see also Kjaer & Langer, 2005). We use the numberof paying subscribers as a proxy for resource richness. Fromthese magazines, we interviewed the editor-in-chiefs, withone exception: Magazine C3, which publishes IT-relatednews, had an uncharacteristically large staff size, whichprompted us to interview three of its editors.

Data collection and analysis

We conducted semi-structured interviews in which we talkedto editors of professional magazines about (1) the specificmanagement ideas that were instrumental in informantselection, (2) their perceptions of management ideas ingeneral, and (3) the influence of relevant norms, routinesand pressures in how they performed their gatekeeping role.These three themes were considered relevant a priori, butwe allowed new themes to surface. Because CRM, LM and RMwere demonstrably salient as well as recently popular, weoften referred back to those examples when asking questionsabout editorial decision-making processes. However, we alsoasked informants for contrasting or corroborative examplesof other management ideas they had engaged with in theircareers, and also how they expected their decisions woulddiffer from those of other Dutch professional magazinespublishing on the same topic. Interviews lasted 75 min on

Please cite this article in press as: Nijholt, J. J., et al. Handling management ideas: Gatekeeping, editors and professional magazines.Scandinavian Journal of Management (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scaman.2014.03.003


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Table 1 Respondent selection and magazine characteristics.

Informant Management idea Magazine subject Staff size Issuesper year

Circulationa Payingsubscribers

C1 CRM CRM 1 6 4500b 1.5K (low)C2 CRM Marketing 3 10 11,000 8.5K (high)C3 (C3a, C3b, C3c) CRM IT 14 50 74,000 40K (high)R1 Risk Management Accounting 1 9 5200 3K (med)R2 Risk Management Quality management 1 10 2400 2K (med)L1 Lean Management Logistics 1 10 1000 1K (low)L2 Lean Management Business processes 4 8 4000b 3.5K (med)L3 Lean Management Quality management 2 6 1700 1.5K (low)

Notes.a Data from HOI Institute for Media Auditing in the Netherlands, unless stated otherwise.b Data as reported in interview.


average. Additional telephone interviews were held with twoof our informants, lasting 25 min on average. The interviewswere recorded, transcribed in full, and subjected to aninformant check.

We performed a first round of analysis, using (variationsof) the terminology of our informants to create descriptive‘in vivo’ codes (Strauss & Corbin, 1990, p. 69). Noting seg-ments in which the informants described their role as ‘gate-keepers’, our identification of common patterns (Yin, 1994)resulted in an initial and fairly straightforward account of thecentral concepts in the regular flow of editorial processes,including the most central norms of newsworthiness. For thesecond round of analysis, we focused on segments wherevariation was found in these descriptions. The previous ‘invivo’ codes were clustered into more general themes thatdescribed variation as well as likely causes of this variation.Here, a number of routines and pressures emerged that couldbe seen influencing editorial processes. At that point, wesearched for and used insights from existing literature oninfluences on media content from outside media organiza-tions (Dearing & Rogers, 1996; Shoemaker & Reese, 1996) inorder to refine our interpretations. Together this allowed usto specify variations in routines and pressures and theirimpact on editorial decision-making against the backgroundof variations in the financial constraints of the differentmagazines. We came to draw relationships by creating avariety of ‘simple data displays’ (Miles & Huberman,1994). In a third round of analysis these emergent themesand insights were verified with the interview data. Thisoffered the possibility of saturating some thinner categoriesand properties, and finding quotes that illustrated thesecategories adequately.

Results

Moving iteratively between insights from the literature onmedia sociology and our analysis of the interview data, ourfindings indicate that, in their gatekeeping role, editors areguided by widely shared norms of newsworthiness. At thesame time, informants indicated the existence of organiza-tional routines as well as external pressures that impact theirdecision-making with respect to the items and issues to beselected for publication.


Norms of newsworthiness

At professional magazines, as in other forms of media,selection decisions need to be made concerning the issuesand specific news items that will make it to the final pub-lication. Because professional magazines usually have a smallstaff, decision-making power with regard to news selectiongenerally rests with the editor-in-chief. The quote belowhighlights the centrality of the editor:

‘‘There are always entire hordes in front of the gates.Hordes that want to come in. [. . .] There is only a tinygate, and everybody who wants to come in must pass me,the editor-in-chief. And in 1999, there was a large groupstanding in front of the door — mainly consultants [. . .] —and they were pounding the gates, yelling: ‘CRM is impor-tant for marketing, you should write about this, you shouldexplain your target audience what this is.’ And how doesthat work? I start thinking: ‘What are the implications formarketing, is it really important to them, is it a newconcept? Is this valuable to marketers in practice?’ Aset of criteria that you take into account.’’ [C2]

Note that use of the ‘gatekeeper’ analogy was unprovoked.The quote shows that editors’ selections are based on theirperceptions whether the issues can be considered newswor-thy. This judgement of newsworthiness is made by upholdingvarious norms of newsworthiness and analyzing the extent towhich news issues and items contain elements that meetthese norms. Two general categories of norms can be recog-nized: deviance and significance (see Table 2).

DevianceThe first category of norms emerging from our data involvesdeviance (see Table 2). This refers to the extent to which anissue can be portrayed as significantly different from ‘nor-mal’ ideas and practices. We found three key elementscomprising this norm, namely (1) novelty, (2) controversyand (3) the unusual. First, novelty, in the context of profes-sional magazines, refers to the extent to which a manage-ment idea is perceived as being innovative or new to theaudience. Thus, an editorial perception of novelty increasesthe likelihood that an idea will be taken up on the magazine’sagenda. Furthermore, individual articles need to be novel as



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Table 2 Norms of newsworthiness.

Norms Key elements Informant concepts and illustrative examples

Deviance Novelty Not published elsewhereLook, a story can be new, and of particular interest to our readers, but if competing magazineshave published about it then I would rather prefer a more exclusive topic because I haveenough alternatives. [C2]Reflections on new developmentAt a certain moment you may be fed up with Risk Management as a key topic. But if newlegislation is underway, companies will implement new things and have to decide what to dowith it. So important occasions such as changes in legislation will increase a topic’s news valueand provide an incentive for us to reflect on it. [R2]Addition to existing discussionIf for the hundredth time people submit something on ‘Lean Six Sigma in six steps’ then I thinkwe’ve seen that so many times, please come with something new. However, I still publish thingson Lean but not these basic things. It has to go further: applied in a new branch, a new sector,additional applications, how to involve people in companies? [L3]

Controversy Failed implementations[We published] many stories on CRM in practice. [. . .] And then big market researchers from theU.S. said: ‘This percentage of CRM implementations fails.’ And that’s interesting to us, that isnice to write about: you’d speak to vendors and ask them how much of that is true. [C1]Critical perspectivesI try to write critically about the supply of concepts because not everything that is promoted isgood. For instance there is a lot of competition in the market for CRM software. Then I writeabout how one product may be better than the other. [. . .] Then the reader can decide whetheror not someone has a good story. [L2]

Unusual Unexpected outcomesCRM is considered a given, everybody knows that and a lot of companies are working with it.That does not alter the fact that CRM may cause remarkable problems or can result innoteworthy outcomes. Research shows that companies still deploy CRM improperly: as if it is acard-index box. That is very nice to write about. [C3c]

Significance Prominence General field interestWe have always written critically about BPR and argued that it overstates its promisessignificantly. But the moment such a topic is a hype because everybody talks about it, you needto write about it, whether you agree or not. So we try to cover everything that is significant inthe field, even though it may be just a hype. [C3c]AuthorityCurrently we publish less about CRM. But at the same time I just accepted one CRM article onCisco. Cisco had a story about how they use CRM in the way they approach their clientsetcetera. But we have accepted it because the interviewee was a top-manager of thatcompany who I did not know before. I found this a very interesting given. [C2]

Proximity Broad fit with occupation[There are] consultants who simply have a place in the magazine. Is that journalism? No, it’snot journalism, but it’s — maybe they are more like columns or something. In any case it isinformation from marketers for marketers. [C2]Direct implications for readersIf the large stock market listed companies use Risk Management also smaller firms will paymore attention to it. And all of a sudden they seek to include a Risk paragraph in their annualreports. As a result a large number of projects are initiated and they want to tell and publishabout their projects. [R2]


well, in the sense that they should be unique and not bepublished elsewhere:

‘‘Something may be a really new story, but if [magazine X]or [magazine Y] already has it, then I’ll pass it up. BecauseI have enough choice, so I’d rather pick something thatonly we have.’’ [C2].

This interpretation of novelty is driven by the fact that profes-sional magazines are generally not in the business of providing


event-driven, highly topical news. Since these magazines arepublished far less frequently than daily newspapers or televisednews (see also Table 1), editors described the type of news theyoffer as instructive, analytical and reflective ‘background in-formation’. For instance, one editor explained:

‘‘Our magazine has one issue every two months, so wecannot do much with hard news. So, that’s why we havesaid that it would be interesting if we would take stock of



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current events and provide more of a reflection onit.’’ [L3]

A final concept associated with novelty relates to whetherarticles are perceived as adding to ongoing discussions. Theanalysis revealed that although magazines publish differentarticles on a similar idea, they emphasize the importance ofadding novel insights to what has been published earlier:

‘‘Of course, I won’t publish a poorly written story. But themost important criterion is that it has to add to the thingsthat have been published on a topic before. This could be anew perspective, a new vision on the subject, or someonewho has gone three steps beyond what has been done untilnow with CRM or any other idea. If I receive a manuscriptwhich includes nothing new, then I tell the author: sorry,nice article but it adds nothing, so unfortunately I cannotdo anything with it.’’ [L2]

A second key element of deviance is controversy. Our infor-mants indicated that issues are considered more newsworthywhen they discuss controversial aspects such as failed imple-mentations of ideas and practices, and when they havecritical perspectives that challenge the claims associatedwith an idea. One editor gave an illuminating example ofhis magazine’s take on controversy:

‘‘If I hear that something has gone seriously wrong in thedeployment of a concept, for instance when a supplierproudly announces that the Ministry of Defense will workwith our ideas while other sources mention that a monthlater, the Ministry of Defense has decided to cancel theproject, then it has my attention. In that case I’ll go to theMinistry and I will ask: what has happened, everybodyseemed to be very enthusiastic a month ago? And wedefinitely will write about these issues.’’ [L2]

In light of the importance of controversy, editors valuecritical perspectives on the introduction and use of newideas. Editors perceive articles as critical when they alertreaders to disadvantages and possible pitfalls in the use ofmanagement ideas. They see articles of this kind as anopportunity to present the magazine itself as an independentand critical medium.

‘‘When consultancies submit a manuscript on a fashion-able topic, I will be interested in it because it would begood for the readers to be knowledgeable about theexperiences and principles of it. However, I always seekto find additional material of people who are critical aboutit. In this way we try to develop a balanced picture. In abrochure people will expect a sales story, but in a special-ist magazine they look for a more thoughtful piece.’’ [L3]

The final key element associated with norms of deviance isthe notion of the unusual. This concerns the extent to which apiece is understood as being an exception to normal mana-gerial ideas and practices. It can also apply when events takea different turn from what might have been expected. Oneeditor emphasized that unexpected outcomes are consideredas newsworthy, thereby enhancing the likelihood that an itemwill be included:

‘‘But gradually stories should appear about how thingscould have gone wrong in spite of the fact that companiesdeployed a form of Risk Management. Even though all


these banks had substantial Risk Management depart-ments why could they not foresee the financial crisis?How can companies use Risk Management in a way thatwould prevent these problems? I would be very muchinterested in these kinds of stories.’’ [R2]

SignificanceThe second category of norms that we found in our data isrelated to the editors’ understanding of significance. Thisrefers to the extent to which the editors perceive issues aslikely to play an important role in the working lives of theirmagazine’s audience. Given that these magazines are direc-ted primarily at a target audience of professional readers,what is perceived as significant for the different readershipsvaries between the different magazines. However, issues arerecognized as being significant for similar reasons. In thecontext of management ideas, our analysis reveals thatunderstandings of social significance consist of two key ele-ments: (1) prominence and (2) proximity (see Table 2).

First, the perceived prominence of a particular manage-ment idea involves its perceived real-world effects on themagazine’s readers. Magazine editors are inclined to acceptstories because they form part of wider discourse on manage-ment ideas, such as when networks of readers and trustedinsiders talk about it. Thus the perceived prevalence amongmanagement practitioners in itself enhances an idea’s news-worthiness to the media:

‘‘If you know that at one moment CRM is hardly used whileone year later thousands of companies have adopted it,this is highly newsworthy which, in any case, should bementioned in your magazine.’’ [C3b].

In addition, the social status of the actors associated with theissue plays a role. For instance, new product announcementsby influential knowledge entrepreneurs are understood tohave an impact on end-users. From the demand-side of themarket for management ideas, stories about implementationsat high-status organizations were also seen as newsworthy:

‘‘Would an article submitted by a consultant where hedescribes yet another successful implementation be in-teresting for me to publish? Well, that mainly depends onthe case organization. If this is a large and appealingcompany, then it would still be highly interesting. Butin that case I not only want to know how the implementa-tion went but also whether it resulted in improvements inthe long run.’’ [R2]

A second key element of significance is proximity. This meansthat issues are considered more newsworthy when there is ageneral fit with the readers’ interests and their expectationsof a magazine’s coverage in terms of topics and specialistareas. Our findings indicate that when articles on an idea areperceived as being closer to the daily occupations of themagazine’s readers, their social significance is enhanced andhence their chances of being selected by the editors. Forinstance, one editor noted:

‘‘What we actually aim to do is nothing else than tell thereader what is going on in his world, try to explain this,and signal new ideas.’’ [R1]

Furthermore, whether editors judge an issue to have prox-imity is based on whether they perceive it as being something



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their audience is likely to be confronted with in their dailypractice. For example, our editors perceived as significantfor their audience articles by consultants featuring insightsinto the application of ideas, as well as personal stories frompractitioners sharing their experiences of a managementidea. However, as gatekeepers they were selective as towhat sources and stories to let in. For instance, while anissue might no longer meet the criteria of novelty, if aparticular article on that issue also had an appeal in termsof proximity, that might enhance its chances of publication.For instance, editor [3a] explains why certain types of newson CRM may still be publishable:

‘‘The fact that a company implements CRM is notnewsworthy any more [. . .] But we do report on devel-opments at the CRM vendors — where there’s a wave ofacquisitions. What consequences does that have forInstalBase, or existing suites, or the maintenance ofsuites? Because that is what our audience members usingSiebel products want to know; ‘What happens to usnow’?’’ [C3a]

Having discussed norms of newsworthiness, we now move to adescription of various routines at professional magazines thatimpact the application of these norms.

Routines and tensions in gatekeeping

The data showed that editors use a variety of routines, ashabitual, appropriate and patterned practices, in the pro-duction of professional magazines. Some of these routineswere particularly relevant as they shape and constrain thecritical application of the norms of newsworthiness dis-cussed above. As we show below, the existence and logicof these routines are common to professional magazines anddriven by various resource constraints. First, a key routine inthe production of professional magazines is the reliance onunpaid external authors to deliver content. There exists amutually beneficial relationship between editors and exter-nal authors, who are often management consultants. Theseexternal authors can deliver relevant content to profes-sional magazines free of cost. In turn, editors understandthese authors to be motivated to publish in professionalmagazines because of the potential for visibility and legiti-macy for their services and themselves (see also Berglund &Werr, 2000).

Second, there is a routine reliance on proxies for theactual interests and preferences of magazine readers. Sinceeditors of professional magazines have a limited capacity todirectly measure and experience the shifting interests oftheir respective professional fields, they rely on an efficientyet indirect means of gauging demand-side interest: the totalsupply of news items. In lieu of direct contact with readingaudiences, editors develop a feel for the field’s interest bylooking at the topics of articles offered to them. Magazinesare thus inclined to accept more stories about a certainmanagement idea precisely because of the prevalence ofstories on that idea. Even though editors are aware that ideasmay be being pushed strongly by suppliers, this in itselfenhances an idea’s newsworthiness:

‘‘There’s a hundred people in front of me and eighty wantto talk about CRM — well then I’m thinking CRM must be


pretty hot. So then I start asking ‘what’s going on, what doyou want?’ ’’ [C3]

These two routines are common but are simultaneouslyperceived as a potential source of tension in the processof gatekeeping. As evident across interviews, informantsattach great symbolic value to words and phrases normallyassociated with journalistic jargon, such as ‘independence’,‘autonomy’, ‘objectivity’ and ‘being critical’. However, all ofthese values can potentially come under pressure to theextent that unpaid, self-interested external authors areinfluential in determining the content and tone of a maga-zine. As one editor expressed it:

‘‘I’m very much aware of the fact that most of the sourcesseek publicity for their own sake which is often at oddswith the desire of a magazine to be a neutral and inde-pendent medium. As a result I will assess news thatoriginates from IT vendors and their PR bureaus particu-larly critically.’’ [C3]

As we will outline below, editors show differences in theirrelative experiences of independence from these externalauthors. As noted, the contexts in which informants oper-ate are characterized by differences in subscriber numbersand associated resource constraints (also see Table 1). InTable 3 we present evidence that informants at low-re-source magazines such as C1, L1 and L3 do indeed perceivea relatively stronger reliance on unpaid external authors toproduce copy. While small staff sizes appear to be a con-stant for professional magazines in this particular lingualarea, low-resource magazines are additionally hamperedby limited budgets for hiring freelance journalists. There-fore, workload and budget pressures together reduce theamount of writing done by editorial staff (be they freelanceor in-house), thereby increasing the reliance on externalauthors.

Contrast, for instance, the perceived importance of exter-nal authors in the following two quotes:

‘‘You can use them, it means less work for you. That’s oneway of looking at it. I was the editor-in-chief but really Iwas the only editor.’’ [C1]

‘‘No, we have our full-time editors and we have a numberof steady freelancers [. . .] We do have a backgroundsection where we invite external authors to write thingsdown for us and to put things in perspective. [. . .] They’restories by people that we invite on the basis of theirbackground and expertise.’’ [C3a]

The analysis revealed that those magazines with a strongdependence on externally created magazine content alsoreport constraints in their potential to be selective withregard to external authors. As such, a key implication isthat editors might experience tensions between their reli-ance on external authors and the maintenance of profes-sional values and norms of newsworthiness. Some of theeditors experienced tensions in that they sometimes feltcompelled to select articles that they considered not en-tirely satisfactory with respect to norms of newsworthi-ness, and therefore indicated that they had to be more



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Please cite this article in press as: Nijholt, J. J., et al. Handling management ideas: Gatekeeping, editors and professional magazines.Scandinavian Journal of Management (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scaman.2014.03.003

Table 3 Perceived tensions.

Magazine Payingsubscribers

Reliance on external authors Advertiser pressure

Dependency Editorial decisionmaking

Dependency Editorial decisionmaking

C2 High Low; unpaid externalauthors deliver approx 20%of the magazine’s articles.Magazine is a desirablemedium for authors, butrejection rate isconsidered high.

Stringency; however,cost-effectiveness ofusing unpaid externalauthors is appreciated.

Low; desirable mediumfor advertisers.Self-perception as theleading professionalmagazine on marketing.

Stringency; magazine isconsidered to thrive onreaders, penetrationand authority. No linkseen betweenadvertising and editing.

C3 High None; unpaid externalauthors are used on aninvitation-only basis.Magazine is a desirablemedium but externalauthors are ‘filtered’extensively.

Stringency; strict use ofstandards ofnewsworthinessrecognized as key todecisions.

Low; desirable mediumfor advertisers.Magazine independenceis perceived as a USP foradvertisers.

Stringency; decisionprocess regarded ashighly independentfrom advertisers.

R1 Med Low; unpaid externalauthors deliver approx.25% of articles. Most of thearticles on invitation-onlybasis. Magazine developsclose relationships withlimited number of expertson relevant topics.

Stringency; editor’spreferences play amajor role. Hardly allowexternal authors towrite their own articlesto maintainindependence.

Intermediate;independence fromadvertisers called for.Relatively largeinfluence of (parent)trade association.

Moderate stringency;advertisers consideredas potential source ofinformation. Onlyincluded whennewsworthy.

R2 Med Intermediate; acceptancerate of unpaid externalauthors 20%-30%. Contentsnot regarded as highlydependent on voluntarysubmissions.

Moderate stringency;consultants may deliverinteresting cases, butare assessed criticallyand selectively.

Low; only fully payingsubscribers.

Stringency; submissionsare desk-rejected ifthey do not meetgeneral criteria ofnewsworthiness.

L2 Med Low; only 5% of themagazine’s contentsdirectly stems fromexternal authors. Mainlyfreelancers.

Leniency; editor mayask consultants criticalquestions but lets themfree in their opinion.

High; advertisers areconsidered to play amajor role ininfluencing themagazine’s contents.

Leniency; significantattention to advertisersbecause of the dangerof ‘missing the boat’ interms of contents andfinances.

C1 Low High; unpaid externalauthors deliver around 40%of articles. Small budgetfor hiring authors. Externalauthors seen as easy, quickand a good input to themagazine.

Leniency; would placearticles while doubtingtheir quality. Acceptarticles to maintaingood relationships withpractice.

High; strong focus onCRM vendors results in anarrow, but influential,advertising base.

Leniency; copyprovided by advertisersis readily accepted.Constantly anticipatesadvertisers’ opinions.

L1 Low High; largely (90%)dependent on externalauthors. Only a fewarticles written byfreelancers, most articlesare submitted voluntarily.

Leniency; maintainspublishing on particularconcepts when there isvoluntary supply ofmanuscripts.

High; small magazinewith few financialresources which affectsposition towardsadvertisers.

Leniency; articles onlyrejected when they donot fit the focus of themagazine.

L3 Low High; mainly dependent onvoluntary submissions ofexternal authors forcreating content. Fewresources for independentarticles.

Leniency; tend toaccept articles in spiteof direct commercialinterests of consultants.Emphasize importanceof giving voice toreaders’ opinions.

Low; in spite of havingvery few resources,stress that there is littlepressure fromadvertisers.

Moderate stringency;submissions fromadvertisers followsimilar reviewprocedure to anyarticle.



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lenient in the application of these norms. One editorphrased this as follows:

‘‘Sometimes you’re approaching the deadline and creat-ing the magazine and you’re a couple pages short. Thenthere’s a pile of back-up articles and you’re thinking ‘Idon’t know whether that’s really quality stuff.’ But thenI’d just go back to the author and ask him to have a secondlook. That’s how it goes.’’ [C1].

Furthermore, some editors were prepared to publish articleseven if they had an explicit commercial slant.

‘‘You can just feel the commercial aspect [in an articleabout a scan offered by a consulting firm]. So I understandthat you’re trying to sell that scan, but if the entire articleis not about that scan, and you actually write down yourown vision on the topic on top of saying ‘we have this scanyou could use’, then I’ll go ‘yeah, okay, come on in.’ Itreally is a game. They benefit. I benefit. And so does thereader.’’ [L3]

The findings also indicate that higher subscription numbersfor a magazine mean that external authors are more willingto publish in it. Editors themselves emphasize, and make it apoint of pride, that those who take out a subscription to amagazine demonstrate their readiness to pay for its contentand are therefore considered to be more attentive readers.Editors report that external authors also adhere to this logicso that magazines with relatively high numbers of subscrip-tions are deemed a more attractive platform to publish in.This results in a steadier supply of quality submissions (alsosee Table 3). Editors C2, C3 and R1 are thus in a position whichallows them to be more stringent in applying the norms ofnewsworthiness. As one editor explained:

‘‘Indeed, we work with external authors: partly journal-ists, partly people from universities because they know alot about a particular subject. And also we deal withpeople from specialized consultancy firms. However, ifsomeone from such a firm does a similar kind of [article]then I notice I’m much more stringent; I really just don’twant that kind of enthusiasm and I have to cut out thosefirm names from the article.’’ [R2]

Operating in this kind of context, editors can be particularlycritical in gatekeeping articles with a commercial slant:

‘‘What we used to often get — not so much anymorebecause by now they know — was the type of articleswhere they [consultants] went: ‘we have a fantastic caseand we will write this story up for you.’ Well, no way thatthat is published in our magazine.’’ [C3c]

Having now discussed a number of organizational routinesthat, depending on the magazines’ characteristics, mightinfluence how norms of newsworthiness are applied, wenow turn to a discussion of a key external pressure oneditorial decision-making. Given the typical media businessmodel where subscription fees typically do not cover the costof production and the relatively small audience for profes-sional magazines, these magazines are potentially very de-pendent on productive relationships with advertisers. In thefollowing section we explore the circumstances in whichinformants find that their relationships with advertisers


create tensions in their application of the norms of newswor-thiness.

Advertiser pressure and tensions in gatekeeping

In light of media sociology’s concern with the impact ofexternal pressures on editorial decision-making, the roleof advertisers in influencing media content has been pre-viously documented (Clayman & Reisner, 1998; Schudson,2003). Indeed, like other mass media, professional magazinesare financially dependent on advertising income (Bagdikian,1989; Shoemaker & Reese, 1996; Williams, 1992). For profes-sional magazines, this dependence on advertising incomemight create tensions in the process of gatekeeping. Thissituation occurs specifically because professional magazinesare reliant on a relatively clearly delineated set of potentialadvertisers, who provide services and products that arerelevant to the specialized professional audiences the maga-zines are aimed at. They may actually depend on a smallnumber of advertisers. Furthermore, the unpaid externalauthors mentioned above might in some cases be employedby these advertisers. For instance one editor indicated that:

‘‘What often happens is that companies say that they havea very nice article on a case that they have performed,that they would like to talk about it in our magazine and, ifthis would be accepted, they are inclined to buy anadvertisement.’’ [L3]

Our analysis showed there is variety in the extent to whichinformants experience advertiser pressure on editorial deci-sion-making with respect to the selection of news. Infor-mants from low-subscription magazines (C1, L1, and L3)indicate that they have trouble securing much needed ad-vertising income (see Table 3). Furthermore, magazineswhich are more specialized in terms of subject matter (spe-cifically C1) are associated with a smaller and more concen-trated pool of advertisers interested in reaching their targetaudience.

The analysis revealed divergent ways in which editorsreport on the way they perform their gatekeeping role inlight of this variety. While no examples of explicit externalcensorship were reported, informants would anticipateadvertisers’ opinions of editorial choices, thereby stressingthe importance of leniency with regard to these norms. Thus,this leniency is driven by a perception that they are not in aposition to make their editorial choices independent ofadvertisers’ interests. These examples are all the morestriking given the universal espousal of journalistic valuesof editorial independence. For example, editors L1 and C1indicated that selection of articles has been prompted byconsiderations of advertising income, so that articles sub-mitted by external authors were accepted with the under-standing that these authors would also purchase advertisingspace. Furthermore, C1’s magazine, initially dealing withdatabase marketing, went as far as to change its positioningso that it became a magazine fully devoted to CustomerRelationship Management:

‘‘That was commercially motivated [. . .] it was an upcom-ing management issue, with clear ties to database mar-keting. To our readers we could justify switching to thatsubject, and it was good for advertising. [. . .] So you



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always have to keep in mind that you need to make amagazine that is attractive to advertisers. As a medium,you may fully focus only on your readers, but if the vendorsin your market don’t find it attractive to advertise, mymagazine will no longer be viable.’’ [C1]

In contrast, informants from magazines with greaterresources experienced more independence and were ableto be more stringent in applying the norms of newsworthi-ness, even in the face of advertiser interests. While recog-nizing the existence of such pressures, the following editorsdo not experience them as significant:

‘‘This is also the priority of the reader, and I represent thereader around here. 95 percent of them has a universitydegree and are quite knowledgeable. They will not acceptit when a magazine with a yearly subscription fee of s150publishes a story on firm X and then they find out that thisfirm X has an ad one page later. This simply doesn’t work.These are separateworlds and I’ll definitely try to main-tain this.’’ [C2]

‘‘We are just not so dependent on advertisers that theycan say: if we cannot have a story, we don’t advertise’’[R2]

In conclusion, at high-subscription high-resource magazines alogic of autonomy and independence is very explicit, even inthe face of the importance of advertisers to the businessmodel of professional magazines.

Discussion

Using a media sociology perspective (Clayman & Reisner,1998; Shoemaker & Reese, 1996), we aimed to show howeditorial norms of newsworthiness, routines and externalpressures on professional magazines play a role in the gate-keeping of management ideas. Our study thereby makes anumber of contributions to the literature on managementideas in general and has various implications for our under-standing of ‘backstage processes’ in the production anddissemination of management ideas in particular.

First, by revealing a number of key processes and tensionsthat shape gatekeeping in relation to professional magazines,this study provides a richer understanding of what roleeditors and the media play in the dissemination and ‘fashion-ing’ of management ideas, and why. Prior literature onmanagement ideas has conceptualized business media pri-marily as a channel in which different actors such as profes-sional groups, gurus and consultants collude to propagatetheir ideas and services, thereby assuming unproblematicaccess to this channel (e.g. Mazza & Alvarez, 2000; Scar-brough et al., 2005). Moreover, studies have tended to focuson collaborative aspects in the relationship between knowl-edge entrepreneurs such as management gurus and bookeditors (Clark & Greatbatch, 2004), and have thereby empha-sized an essentially shared interest in the dissemination ofmanagement ideas (Kieser, 1997). Whilst this literature pro-vides insights into the importance of the media in the transferof ideas and a parsimonious description of fashion setters, ithas shed hardly light on how and why business media relate tomanagement ideas. Our findings indicate that the business


media cannot be seen as a collectively compliant and accom-modating channel for the dissemination and legitimation ofmanagement ideas. Indeed, editors of professional maga-zines aim to function as principally independent gate-keepers, yet are engaged in actively managing tensionsbetween the interests of knowledge entrepreneurs involvedin ‘fashioning’ management ideas (Kieser, 2002) and theirown norms of newsworthiness. Therefore, rather than seeingeditors as part of the collective of fashion-setters, thisresearch highlights their potentially disruptive role as gate-keepers.

Second, by explaining how external pressures operate onthe business media, our study provides a more comprehen-sive view of how processes of gatekeeping management ideascan vary between empirical contexts. Previous accounts haveconsidered the context of distinct organizational or profes-sional fields which represent distinct ‘speech communities’(Barley et al., 1988; Raub & Ruling, 2001; Scarbrough & Swan,2001) in explaining differences in the evolving media atten-tion for management ideas. However, differences in maga-zine characteristics other than professional backgroundshave been ignored. In contrast, our analysis shows, first,how variations in resource constraints affect editors’ per-ceived independence from external authors and advertisers.Second, it reveals that dependencies on external parties mayaffect gatekeeping. Results indicate that high-resourcemagazines appear to mirror the logic of autonomy and inde-pendence considered valuable in the general field of massmedia, where a wide array of potential advertisers ensuresthat ‘no single advertiser can truly wield a veto power’(Gitlin, 1983, p. 254). In contrast, low-resource magazinesappear to mirror more closely the logic of the ‘principallycooperative game’ suggested by Kieser (1997) where themass media collude with management intellectuals, consult-ing firms and advertisers to draw attention to certain man-agement ideas. Thus, our findings suggest that mediaattention in relation to management ideas is shaped inimportant ways by the resource constraints experienced byindividual magazines and the related influence of specialinterest groups and advertisers. While it is implicitly assumedthat the role played the mass media in the transfer of fashionis a homogenous one, our study emphasizes the importance ofcontext in understanding gatekeeping processes.

Third, by emphasizing the processes underlying theircreation, our research furthers insight into the possibilitiesand limitations of using print media as a data source. Indeed,whilst a substantial body of literature draws on print mediadata as a means to study issues such as the evolution ofmanagement ideas (e.g. Abrahamson & Fairchild, 1999;Scarbrough et al., 2005) or the social construction of orga-nizations and their corporate activities (e.g. Hellgren et al.,2002; Vaara et al., 2006; Zavyalova et al., 2012), there hasstill been little explicit attention to the back-stage processesthat shape these media. Sensitivity to the issues outlinedabove is appropriate for this body of work. Given that mediacontent is shaped by norms of newsworthiness as well as byresource dependencies on external parties, future studiesusing media to track the social acceptance of organizationsand their activities should take into account these back-stageprocesses. Specifically in the context of work on managementfashions, the print media have functioned as a prime sourceof empirical material for studying the notion of a ‘lifecycle’



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of idea popularity (Abrahamson & Fairchild, 1999; Gill &Whittle, 1993). We suggest that our identification of thenorms of newsworthiness can further enhance understandingof how and why upswings and downswings in media attentionare frequently observed (Abrahamson & Fairchild, 1999;Clark, 2004; David & Strang, 2006; Nijholt & Benders,2007). In an upswing phase, prospective management fash-ion-setters must be able to articulate successfully how apromising management idea constitutes a novelty (Abraham-son, 1996; Suddaby & Greenwood, 2005). Novelty is likely tobe important above and beyond the establishment of news-worthiness in the eyes of media gatekeepers. Indeed, it isalso of vital importance in securing the attention of con-sumers in the market for management fashion, where pro-gress and innovation are seen as important values, whereinnovativeness is a key dimension of organizational reputa-tion, and where the term ‘laggards’ has negative connota-tions (Abrahamson, 1996; Fombrun, 1998; Suddaby &Greenwood, 2005). However, if gatekeepers do not perceivesome indication of potential or realized real-world effects inthe proximity of a magazine’s audience, they are unlikely todeem an idea newsworthy. Indeed, novelty without signifi-cance is, by itself, unlikely to create newsworthiness. Withregard to a fashion downswing, our findings suggest that laterattempts by fashion-setters to draw attention to manage-ment ideas have less likelihood of being published because itis more difficult for these authors to convince editors thattheir submissions are still novel or unusual and thereby meeteditorial norms of newsworthiness. Given these norms arerelatively invariant between the different individual gate-keepers at different magazines, it seems likely these normsact as a universal constraint on how long the media are likelyto keep up their collective interest in a popular idea. As such,even a strongly institutionalized idea is likely to stop beingthe ‘object of public discourse’ at some point in its lifecycle,thus ending the fashion surrounding it (Kieser, 2002). Ourresults thus help in understanding the very fundamentalquestion of why management fashions appear to be relativelyshort-lived (Kieser, 1997). We suggest that this implies someserious limitations for the use of media output as a proxy forthe diffusion of management ideas: our results suggest that adecline in media attention in the later stages of a lifecyclemight be more easily explained by the declining newsworthi-ness of the associated management idea, rather than by itscollective and substantive rejection in organizational praxis(Nijholt & Benders, 2007; Swan, 2004).

Notwithstanding the benefits of our approach, this studyhas some limitations that also offer significant possibilitiesfor further research. Whilst our respondent selection andempirical data allowed us to reveal a number of norms,routines and pressures that are key to understanding gate-keeping, there is a need to replicate the study in differentsettings to corroborate and complement our findings. In ourtheoretical sampling we focused only on editors responsiblefor a substantial number of publications associated withthree recently popular management ideas in a Dutch context.To complement our findings, we encourage future researchfocusing on other management ideas, other relevant actorsand other national and professional contexts. It seems rea-sonable to assume that magazines operating in languageareas of a similar size to the Netherlands would operateunder similar budgetary and staffing constraints, given


similar total circulation and subscription numbers. However,it remains an open question whether there are fewer con-straints in larger nations such as Germany, the UK or the USA,so that editors of professional magazines in these contextscan operate much more freely with regard to the pressuresexerted by external authors and advertisers.

Finally, our interview-based study of editorial work can befurther enriched by drawing on multiple methods ofresearch. Specifically, we suggest that ethnographicapproaches to studying the production of business media,combined with content analyses of articles published, mightprovide even deeper understanding of how the variousnorms, routines and pressures in gatekeeping interact toshape the content of the media. Future research could focuson visible processes of editorial decision-making in a settingwhich involve interactions with knowledge entrepreneurssuch as vendors, management consultants and managementgurus (Westphal & Deephouse, 2011) and could examine howthis relates to the way management ideas are presented inthe media. Another valuable area for further research wouldbe to shed more light on audience effects and the role of themedia in the general processes of agenda-setting at anindividual, corporate and societal level (Dearing & Rogers,1996; McCombs & Shaw, 1972). This would bring to the forethe interlocking relationship between the media agenda,public opinion and the broader impact on managementand organizational practice (Guillen, 1994; Hjarvard,2008). Addressing questions about how the media shapemanagerial agendas in interaction with other actors mayfurther extend the present literature on the transfer ofmanagement ideas.

Acknowledgements

We are indebted to three anonymous reviewers of the Scan-dinavian Journal of Management and its handling editorAndreas Werr for their valuable comments and suggestions.

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Handling management ideas: Gatekeeping, editors and professional magazines

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