This study aims to examine the concept of media organizations?
performance and the factors that influence their level of performance. Media
organizations are often private profit-seeking enterprises but at the same time
also have a public side that realizes freedom of speech, which is a core value of
democracy. Therefore, a theory of media organizations? organizational performance
needs to reflect this duality. We divide media organizations? organizational
performance into two categories: economic-industrial and sociocultural.
Economic-industrial performance can be defined as how media organizations
perform in the market. A typical indicator is how much sales revenue they bring
in. In addition, because their revenue heavily depends on advertisements, newspaper
subscriptions or television viewer ratings, which are directly connected to
advertisement revenue, can be used as performance indicators.
Sociocultural performance refers to how media organizations perform with
respect to their content. A media organization?s sociocultural performance primarily
depends on whether it has accomplished the goals indicated by relevant
laws. In addition, sociocultural performance depends on how the contents of a
media organization are received by its readers or viewers, which can be identified
by media credibility measures that are conducted by many organizations.
Factors that influence media organization?s performance include independence,
diversity and openness. The present study is a preliminary attempt to provide a
conceptual analysis as groundwork for empirical research. We hope this preliminary
examination builds a foundation for comparative studies of diverse public
organizations such as public hospitals, universities, and public enterprises and
can contribute to further theoretical and conceptual discussions about organizational
performance.
