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Online collaboration software (OCS), such as Slack and Microsoft Teams, has become widespread among news organizations as these tools help news workers collaborate across different locations and make communication more efficient inside newsrooms. While such technologies are increasingly employed as teamwork productivity boosters, the authors’ knowledge of their potential role in shaping control mechanisms and power dynamics within news work is limited. This paper addresses how different types of control may emerge within virtual newsrooms being operated by OCS. The purpose of this paper is to address this issue.

The paper employs an interview-based qualitative method and provides evidence gathered from 20 interviews with digital journalists and media managers representing 11 online news media in Switzerland.

The findings reveal how OCS could lead to various control mechanisms in the workplace by directing, evaluating and disciplining journalists in specific ways. This study suggests that while OCS can be valuable in boosting collaborations among news staff, it might create a situation where journalists are less able to focus on their work and creative activities. Most importantly, OCS bolsters an “always-on” work culture in news media and removes obstacles for employers and managers to invade journalists' space, time and mind.

By focusing on three aspects of control mechanisms, including direction, evaluation and discipline, this paper contributes to a better understanding of the role of OCS in shaping control and power dynamics within news media organizations.

Dynamic capabilities (DCs) help media firms adapt to rapidly changing environments. The purpose of this study is to provide a comprehensive literature review of studies of DCs in strategic management research with a view to understanding its implications for the management of media organizations. Essentially, it fertilizes on the idea that the concept of DC is useful and vital for answering various critical questions regarding the challenges that media organizations are currently facing.

This study builds on a systematic literature reviewing design as the research methodology. It aims to identify, critically evaluate, and integrate factors, dimensions, and findings on studies of DCs in strategic management research and builds knowledge transfers to the field of strategic management research in the media industry.

The study shows that the DC framework helps media firms effectively respond to changing environments. The conceptual DC framework has implications for media strategy practice. Results indicate a considerable growth in the number of papers published related to the DCs in media organizations from 2003 to 2018.

The study qualifies the relevance and validity of the DC framework in strategic management research for the field of strategic media management. It explores a research agenda in this domain by precisely explaining the significant trends in the theory of DC to shape managerial strategies in the media industry.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze competitive strategies implemented by two Iranian taxi service mobile apps – Snapp and Tap30 – in different domains by using the modified version of the generic strategies proposed by Porter and focusing on the online taxi market.

Due to the in-depth nature of competitive strategies in ridesharing platforms, the study employs comparative case research to understand the dynamics of such businesses in terms of developing mobile applications. By comparatively investigating competitive strategies of two Iranian mobile apps in ridesharing business, it is possible to extract rich knowledge about the commonalities between cases and the specificities of each of them to reach success in this market.

Although Snapp has made significant efforts to provide various services to passengers, the findings show that it has not been able to do it intelligently, as it has failed to identify customers’ new needs. In addition, Snapp is trying to keep its position in the Iranian market by monopolizing it. On the contrary, Tap30 has paid attention to the intelligence of services in order to explore and exploit new opportunities, so that it can be distinguished from its rival and gain competitive advantage. The proper and timely use of artificial intelligence by these apps will be a major issue that will greatly determine their future success on the market, according to the conclusion of this work.

Like other qualitative researches, this study also has limitations in generalizing findings to other communities. For this purpose, it is recommended that the results of this study be generalized more cautiously. Moreover, access to some data in the digital market of Iran was one of the significant issues that researchers faced with. However, using a large number of different databases, attempts were made to reduce such limitations.

Applying the competitive strategies introduced in the present research, platform managers would be benefited from using the insights provided here. In particular, they should understand the fact that competitive advantages are deeply tied to a combination of product/service differentiation, costs leadership and marketing strategies rather than focusing on just one dimension.

Focusing on the strategy literature, the paper contributes to business debates on ridesharing platforms, especially in an emerging market, Iran. This study also moves digital entrepreneurship literature forward in online taxi services by shedding light on their competitive strategies in an emerging economy.