The Coexistence of New and Old Business within an Established Firm - A case study of Göteborgs-Posten

Abstract

Newspapers all over the world are under pressure due to the technological shifts of the information age. While circulation and readership of printed newspapers are dropping constantly and offer gloomy growth prospects, they remain the largest revenue source. Therefore, in order to explore growth in emerging businesses and still take advantage of the printed newspapers’ benefits, established newspaper firms need to focus on new business opportunities while simultaneously upholding the old business. This thesis is based on a case study at Göteborgs-Posten, a Gothenburg-based newspaper, where we investigated strategic and organizational issues related to the development of new business. The aim of the thesis is to explain how Göteborgs-Posten deals with the challenges of the coexistence of new and old business and the effects their response has on the organization’s ability to play multiple games at once. The empirical investigation shows a number of challenging aspects in this coexistence such as: short term perspectives in some new business development projects, difficulties to find a balance between the focus on old customers/markets and new customers/markets, inflexible overall organizational structure, historical duality management practices, and sub-cultures. Using theories from strategy and entrepreneurship we further discuss our findings, in order to highlight the specificities of this study as well as to propose relevant suggestions for this particular case.