Influential Individual Condition in Deseret News Order Instructions: Your task is to explore the individual, organizational and environmental conditions that were influential in the Deseret News case study and comment on the ways in which those conditions have impacted on the subsequent performance of the firm.
Also comment on how the conditions have enhanced or detracted from its sustainability potential for the future.
o Discussing the nature of the ‘climate for change’ created by the actions of individuals working at Deseret News, the structural design model adopted in the case study and the dominant characteristics of the operating environment
o Debating the extent to which Deseret News actions to date have represented an appropriate change response
Influential Individual Condition in Deseret News Sample Answer
Deseret News case study
This paper explores the environmental, organizational as well as individual conditions which were influential in the Deseret News case study. The paper also comments on how those conditions have actually impacted on Deseret News’ subsequent performance on the company. Moreover, how the conditions have detracted or enhanced from the company’s sustainability potential for the future is discussed.
At Deseret News, the environmental conditions which were actually influential include new technologies, low-cost start-ups and market shifts (Nadina 2011; Konno, Nonaka & Ogilvy 2014a). The specific environmental conditions include the following: the first is internet start-ups such as AutoTrader.com, Monster.com, and Craigslist which siphoned off classified revenues from Deseret News (Gilbert, Eyring & Foster 2012). Second is free news websites such as social media websites, the Huffington Post, and smartphones that diverted the attention and time of readers and in so doing drying up subscription dollars; and third is Google’s search-term advert which competed with Deseret News for display-advertising revenues (Gilbert, Eyring & Foster 2012). These environmental conditions have impacted on the subsequent performance of Deseret News in that they assaulted the company’s business model resulting in significant revenue decreases (Konno, Nonaka & Ogilvy 2014b). It is notable that declining readership of Deseret News traditional newspaper hit each of the company’s revenue streams at the same time and from the year 2008 to the year 2010, the company lost 70 percent of print classified revenues and 30 percent of its print display-ad revenues (Gilbert, Eyring & Foster 2012).
The individual conditions which were actually influential at the company include the actions of key personnel including members of the firm’s leadership team who did not see the situation as a hopeless one. The leadership team initiated 2 different efforts: on the 5th floor of their corporate head-offices in Salt Lake City, members of the company’s leadership team established Deseret Digital Media, a new company, aimed at taking over Deseret News’ websites and focusing solely on web publishing, and on the 1st floor, they reconceived the print operation (Gilbert, Eyring & Foster 2012). Some of the individual conditions include the nature of the climate for change that was created by the actions of Deseret News’ key people who mainly include publisher Christopher Lee and the firm’s chief executive officer Clark Gilbert. These key individuals along with others repositioned the news company to refocus its print content. Christopher Lee was the main individual who led the development of Deseret Digital that made use of online opportunities further than just repurposing the print newspaper (Gilbert, Eyring & Foster 2012).
The main organizational condition was the fact that the firm dismissed twenty-eight part-time and fifty-seven full-time staff members in 2010 August. The company devoted fewer resources to routine and sports news and invested more to producing investigative and in-depth journalism in 6 aspects of editorial emphasis including fiscal responsibility, education, faith, family, care for the poor, as well as the influence of the media on values. These conditions have enhanced the company’s sustainability potential for the future since the company managed to successfully adjust its existing business model to become profitable and found new ways to make use of opportunities available in the new digital landscape which helped the company to pull through and recover (Whelan-Berry & Somerville 2010).
In essence, the actions of this news company have represented a rather suitable response to change. This is largely because Deseret News managed to successfully reposition its core business and create a new model resulting in increased revenue and profitability. It repositioned its core by changing into a much leaner, local print broadsheet that provided detailed coverage of matters pertaining to faith as well as family, plus a similarly focused periodical targeted at countrywide audiences that could sell at higher-margin countrywide adverts (Gilbert, Eyring & Foster 2012). It developed a new model, Deseret Digital, to capture the higher-volume, lower-margin, opportunities made available by the internet’s greater reach. The result is that from the year 2008 to the year 2012, Deseret Digital makes up roughly ¼ of the company’s total revenues. Moreover, combined weekly/daily print circulation increased twofold and generated sufficient advertising revenues to turn this new company into a very fast-growing American print newspaper (Gilbert, Eyring & Foster 2012). All in all, the first part of Deseret News change was a defense against near future or an existing disruptive change, whereas the second part was an offensive strategy basing upon the creation of a disruptive and new change (Konno, Nonaka & Ogilvy 2014b).
Influential Individual Condition in Deseret News References
Buchanan, DA 2011, Good practice, not rocket science – understanding failures to change after extreme events, Journal of Change Management, 11 (3), pp.273-288.
Gilbert, C., Eyring, M. & Foster, RN 2012, Two routes to resilience, Harvard Business Review, 90 (20), pp.66-73.
Konno, N., Nonaka, I & Ogilvy, J 2014a, Scenario planning: the basics, World Futures, 70 (1), pp.28-43.
Konno, N., Nonaka, I & Ogilvy, J 2014b, The mind of the scenario thinker, World Futures, 70 (1), pp.44-51.
Nadina, RR 2011 Methods of identification of the need for organizational change as being opportune’, Annals of the University of Oradea, Economic Science Series, 20 (2), pp.707-712.
Whelan-Berry, KS & Somerville, KA 2010, Linking change drivers and the organizational change process – a review and synthesis, Journal of Change Management, 10 (2), pp.175-193.
