Practical, Not Radical: Examining Innovative Learning Culture in a Public Service Media Organization

Abstract

Recent scholarship has argued for media organizations’ need to radically innovate to ensure their survival in the future. This study deploys the innovative learning culture (ILC) framework to qualitatively study innovation and learning in a legacy public service media organization. While innovation and learning are linked, the learning processes of professional journalists have received only little attention. Through an analysis of a development network operating in a public service media organization, we identify characteristics of ILC in the network and how those characteristics manifest in practice, as well as examine contextual factors that shape ILC. Our findings indicate that innovation and learning processes in the network are shaped by journalistic practice, technology and platforms, and organizational strategy. Importantly, the organization’s technological environment is seen to encourage mimicry in learning and innovation processes, leading to exploitative rather than explorative innovation. The study contributes theoretically to ILC by providing an organizationally situated understanding of the framework that accounts for institutional tendencies in media innovation.