Kueng, Lucy (2007). Does Media Management Matter? Establishing the Scope, Rationale, and Future Research Agenda of the Discipline, Journal of Media Business Studies 4(1):21-39.
Key Words: management, scholarship, philosophy
The field of media management has grown frenetically. Over the past ten years a rash of courses have sprung up all over the world, two journals have been established, as well as two professional associations for academics working in the field. Yet despite--or perhaps because of--this fast growth it remains a confused field, particularly concerning its scope, purpose and methods. This article addresses these issues in three ways. First, it analyses the current state of play in the field, with specific references to the theoretical orientations of key players in the field and the implications these have had for scholarship output to date. Second, it adopts the perspective of media organizations and idendifies which aspects characterize , or even differentiate, the management task in this context. Finally, by synthesizing these contextual insights with research emphases to date, it makes recommendations for future work in the field, both in terms of theoretical perspectives and methodological orientations.