TY - CHAP

T1 - Resistance to change at German Media AG

T2 - Publishing companies in the digital age

AU - Rothmann, Wasko

AU - Wenzel, Matthias

N1 - 4906 words

PY - 2016/3/6

Y1 - 2016/3/6

N2 - The business model of German Media AG has traditionally relied on revenues from advertising markets to subsidize the newspaper business in the readership market. With the long-term slump in advertising markets that began in 2001 and hit the newspaper industry again in 2008, the company entered a severe crisis of drastically declining revenue streams. German Media AG has unsuccessfully responded to the crisis for more than 10 years by offering digital news, investing in new technologies, and acquiring innovative technology start-ups. To finally jump start a turnaround, Bohning, the vice president of the news department introduces paid digital news as a strategic alternative during a strategy meeting. However, he runs against a strong headwind; during the strategy meeting, most managers are skeptical about paid content as a strategy, present strong arguments against the introduced strategic alternative, and argue instead for investing more efforts in improving the current advertising-focused business ideas. These objections stifle Bohning's initiative before the strategy group can constructively elaborate on it.

AB - The business model of German Media AG has traditionally relied on revenues from advertising markets to subsidize the newspaper business in the readership market. With the long-term slump in advertising markets that began in 2001 and hit the newspaper industry again in 2008, the company entered a severe crisis of drastically declining revenue streams. German Media AG has unsuccessfully responded to the crisis for more than 10 years by offering digital news, investing in new technologies, and acquiring innovative technology start-ups. To finally jump start a turnaround, Bohning, the vice president of the news department introduces paid digital news as a strategic alternative during a strategy meeting. However, he runs against a strong headwind; during the strategy meeting, most managers are skeptical about paid content as a strategy, present strong arguments against the introduced strategic alternative, and argue instead for investing more efforts in improving the current advertising-focused business ideas. These objections stifle Bohning's initiative before the strategy group can constructively elaborate on it.

KW - Management studies

KW - Organization Development

KW - Strategy Transformation

UR - http://sk.sagepub.com/cases/resistance-to-change-german-media-publishing-companies-digital-age

U2 - 10.4135/9781473961678

DO - 10.4135/9781473961678

M3 - Contributions to collected editions/anthologies

BT - Sage Business Cases Originals

PB - SAGE Publications Inc.

ER -