1. Introduction

Digital technologies have changed the “game rules” in almost every product and service market. Nowadays, media firms should be extremely flexible and creative to protect their market shares against old and new rivals (^{Pérez-Latre, 2014}). Quick innovations and more competition in the media industry demand a high degree of corporate leadership (^{Dal Zotto & Van Kranenburg, 2008}; Koryak, Mole, Lockett, et al., 2015). Without changes, companies are left behind. Often transformations are not quiet and linear, as they require new strategies, business models and processes to create and generate value (^{Nieves et al., 2014}). In summary, leadership has become one of the main sources of competitive advantages (^{Jaiswal and Dhar, 2015}).

Our research aims to test how leaders (editors and publishers) behave and understand their role in Chilean and Spanish news media. We would like to identify whether they aspire to foster the necessary industry innovations with a long-term vision as it has been proved that decisions oriented just to get immediate results without considering quality have a potential to generate more damage than profits.

2. Reference framework

3. Methodology and research questions

The general objective of the study is to find out if the directors and editors of Chilean and Spanish news media perceive themselves as transformational leaders, and how this leadership style benefits to their organizations. We consider that Chilean and Spanish market are faced with similar problems: a lot and new competitors; fragmented audience (^{Álvarez, 2016}; ^{Sánchez y de la Cavada, 2018}); and constant decline in advertising investment (^{Achap, 2018}; ^{InfoAdex, 2018}).

This is the context in which our three research questions are established:

Q1 How do news media managers perceive their own leadership styles?

We hypothesize that many news firms are not taking advantage of their potential to foster creativity and innovation because of their lack of efficient leadership at the top of the organizations. That explains that the most radical and successful changes in the industry come from new players, many of them coming from other non-related product markets. In many cases, such lack of leadership is not adequately identified by the managers and becomes "endemic". Following our point, we guess that publishers and editors overestimate their leadership skills. Therefore, our goal with this question is to measure the perceptions of Chilean and Spanish managers about their ability to lead news media companies.

Q2 Is there a match between leadership theory (generation of innovative environments in creative industries) and editors and managers perceptions of their management tasks?

In media environments, intangible assets are crucial: talented and motivated teams should produce innovative contents which can conquer the attention and trust of the audience. There is a solid body of research that points out to the kind of leadership needed in those creative contexts. Managers should not give orders but inspire people (^{Zhang & Bartol, 2010}). And micromanagement should be replaced by participatoy decission-making processes (^{Men, 2014}). With this second question, we would like to compare theory and the industry leaders’ perceptions. In other words, we would like to verify if leaders use the frames and tools that are considered essential to generate value in "knowledge creating companies" and promote the innovation according to the literature.

Q3 Is there any correlation between leadership practices and i) firms’ size, ii) distribution systems or platforms used, iii) years of existence, and iv) type of ownership?

Media firms deliver news and entertainment content to their audiences. But they differ in many ways: they have different size and scope; they distribute their offers through print media, radio or television broadcasting, cable and satellite and the internet; they are owned by the state, by individuals or families or they have a diversified ownership if they are quoted in the stock exchange. We would like to discover whether each one of those options has an impact on the kind of leadership practiced in news organizations.

To find the right answers to our three questions, we have sent a questionnaire to managers and editors of Chilean and Spanish news media. The research instrument is made of three parts. The first is the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire 5X, commonly known as MLQ5x. It was developed by ^{Bass & Avolio (2000}). This instrument is validated for (^{Mittal & Dhar, 2015}; ^{Qu, Janssen, & Shi, 2015}; ^{Pilbeam, Doherty, Davidson, & Denyer, 2016}; ^{Zwingmann, Wegge, Wolf, Rudolf, Schmidt, & Richter, 2014}; ^{Aga, Noorderhaven, & Vallejo, 2016}; ^{Jensen, Andersen, Bro, Bøllingtoft, Eriksen, Holten & Westergård-Nielsen, 2019}) and is considered the best method to measure this kind of issues and the most research style study in academic journals (^{Eberly, Bluhm, Guarana, Avolio, & Hannah, 2017}; ^{Antonakis, & Day, 2017}).

It uses 45 statements that measure and identify nine key leadership traits. It makes possible to acknowledge transformational leaders and differentiate efficient leaders from ineffective leaders. All items were answered using a 5-point Likert scale where 0= totally disagree and 4 = totally agree.

The nine sub variables are grouped in three higher order variables (Figure 1): Transformational Leadership, Transactional Leadership and Corrective Leadership. The first higher order variable corresponds to Transformational Leadership that is made up of charisma or idealized influence: it measures the degree in which leaders behave in such a way that followers identify with him or her. That dimension is composed by a) Idealized attributed influence that allows knowing whether leaders are perceived as powerful and trustworthy, focused on ideals and higher order ethics; b) Idealized conductual influence that refers to charismatic actions by a leader that are centered in beliefs and values; c) Inspirational motivation is a mechanism that allows leaders to articulate their vision and motivate their collaborators with long term goals. Table 1 shows also the variables corresponding to transactional and corrective leadership.

The second part of the questionnaire is built to understand the relationships between leadership, creativity and innovation. In order to achieve that goal a tool developed by ^{Zhou and George (2001}) was used. It includes a series of variables that were summarized in five items: motivation, innovation, audience, participation and talent. The final part tries to find out whether the size, distribution system (print, audiovisual or online) and type of ownership have any relationship with the kind of leadership of each news organization.

The survey was sent twice by email to a database of more than 400 professionals that were. After that, in order to improve response rates, some participants were also visited in their workplaces. The response rate reached (around 25%) allowed us to get 50 valid questionnaires from each country. The sample -85% men, 15% women- includes managers from radio, television, newspapers, magazines and the web of the most relevant media companies from each country. The average age of the participants was 45 years. With 78 people on average in their teams, which shows a relevant number of people in charge. Regarding the years in management positions, they have been on average 10 years. All of them are journalists by profession.

4. Results: Leaders’ self-perceptions

According to the results obtained (table 2 & 3), the directors and editors in Chile and in Spain consider themselves as transformational leaders, with inspirational motivation (mean: 3.29; mean: 3.17) being the indicator with the highest average. This means that they see as herself as people who believe they inspire others, articulate shared goals and understand what is right and important, thus providing insights to achieve common objectives (^{Avolio & Bass, 2004}). All those qualities seem to be desirable in the media industry where there is evidence that suggests that more motivated workers will increase their productivity along with their work satisfaction (^{Czech & Forward, 2013}).

Idealized behavioral influence shows high scores (Chile mean: 3.26; Spain’s mean: 3.24) that are usual for leaders with behaviors that are considered excellent like mastery, awareness, optimism or self-control (^{Avolio & Bass, 2004}). Such scores underline their most relevant beliefs, including ethical and moral values. ^{Xiaoming, George & Cong (2013}) showed that integrity is a crucial value for journalists as they consider it part of their public mission and societal role. Leaders with high idealized influence scores are also considered to be dedicated to building a shared vision and mission for their teams.

Comparing our two groups, we run an ANOVA test to check for the difference between the Chilean and the Spanish sample:

Results show that there is a significant difference between Chile and Spain in Inspirational motivation (p<0.05), Intellectual stimulation (p<0.05), and Management-by-exception passive (p<0.01). Such results suggest the importance given to innovative thinking that can support employees’ ideas and values, especially those that question processes or work practices they consider obsolete or inappropriate to face new challenges (^{Avolio & Bass, 2004}). In such way, creativity and efficiency are both fostered and there is a sort of intellectual contagion in working teams. Intellectual stimulation appears to be apt for the news media industry that needs to challenge old ways embracing the new consumption patterns that are increasingly adopted by audiences (^{Jenkins, Ford, & Green, 2013}).

Editors do not see lack of leadership in themselves: “management-by-exception passive and laissez-faire” were the least self-perceived characteristics. It corresponds to leadership styles that have difficulties assuming duties and responsibilities (^{Skogstad, Einarsen, Torsheim, Aasland, & Hetland, 2007}). Its mean was 0.65 and 0.44 respectively in Chile, versus 1.01 and 0.51 in Spain. The landscape was quite similar in both countries, where directors and publishers see themselves as involved, solution-oriented and decisive leaders that solve problems along the way (Table 5).

To check if there is any difference between the type of media, we run an ANOVA test. Results are presented in table 6.

Additionally, to test if there is any difference between the type of media in each country, we run another ANOVA test. Results are shown in table 7.

We see that for television there is differences between Spain and Chile in the way in which the participants see their leadership. In print media (daily newspapers and magazines) and radio, the leadership style is considered as based on inspiration: the communication of an ideal future company that has the potential to be shared (^{Yaslioglu & Erden, 2018}). However, in television and Internet managers there is a wider recognition of idealized behavioral influence, the more charismatic aspect of transformational leaders, where they become role models that can be admired by their employees (^{Sy, Horton, & Riggio, 2018}). Idealized influence has also been related to the leaders’ ethical integrity (^{Leroy, Palanski, & Simons, 2012}).

We also checked if there is any difference between the type of leadership and the tenure of the manager as a director. As table 8 and 9 shows, we did not find any difference between the evaluation of leadership styles and the tenure of the manager as a director (Table 10).

In order to measure the indicators’ consistency in the second part of our questionnaire, an exploratory factor analysis was conducted. We complemented it calculating the Cronbach alphas of each of the indicators. Our 14 indicators could be grouped in three main factors (see table 10): the first refers to strategic decisions. It tries to measure whether best practices from innovative industry companies are adopted; to what extent company people are promoted and retained, and how new technologies are adopted. The second is related to participation: it groups variables such as the leaders’ initiatives to make employees part of the decision making, take risk or propose new ways to solve problems. The third is associated to motivation and the active promotion of creativity and other intangibles of organizations.

We calculate linear regression of each variable, we propose two models. The first one considering the three types of leadership measured in our study: transformational leadership, transactional leadership and Laissez-faire leadership. In the second model we include two control variables: tenure of the manager in a directive position, and type of media. Results are shown in table 11.

The third question our research tried to investigate was whether size, media, ownership or years of existence were relevant factors for innovation and creativity in media organizations. Results are shown in Table 12.

We did not find any evidence that the firm size, the type of ownership, the distribution system or the year of existence is correlated with the leadership practices.

According to the perceptions of the managers and editors who answered our questionnaire, we did not find evidence that supports that case. A 71% of our respondents in Chile and a 66% in Spain considered that both small and large companies can foster innovative and creative cultures. The situation is similar in terms of ownership, where a 72% in Chile and 66% in Spain said that diversification or familiar ownership are not relevant factors. The medium was only a factor in the case of online platforms, that were considered to create better conditions for innovation and creativity by a 68% of our Chilean respondents and a 57% of our Spanish ones (the difference between both countries was here more significant). Finally, when we looked into the organizations’ years of existence, a 68% in Chile and a 57% in Spain said that when it comes to innovation and creativity it did not matter how old a company is.

5. Discussion, future research and limitations

Our results find a group of managers that have good opinions of their transformative qualities: they believe they have the ability to inspire, share goals and understand what is important, perhaps somewhat in contrast with the working experiences of their employees that often have a low opinion of media companies as places to work. In the second phase of this work we will study the perception of journalist to improve our understanding of the causes of this disconnect.

In the media industry leadership is considered crucial. But the sector has been underperforming and yet leaders are not very critical about their work. Our hypothesis could be summarized by saying that that is precisely the problem. Further research could ask the same time of questions to employees in order to find out their opinions and confirm this hypothesis.

The findings underline the value of idealized behavioral influence, which appears as an element that sheds light on a crucial value for journalists: integrity. The industry needs leaders that understand media’s mission and societal role, and high scores for idealized behavioral influence point in that direction. Innovative thinking was also stressed by our intellectual stimulation indicator, showing the need to support employees’ ideas and values and behaviors that could be considered disruptive. This element could be considered crucial in the media industry, where there is a widespread recognition of the need for change. The consequences of these findings seem valuable as innovative thinking tends to support creativity, which at the same time might enhance effectiveness in the industry.

Not all the media are the same. Our research finds some differences in the way participants see leadership in different media. Leadership styles tend to be perceived as more inspirational in print media and radio. In television and the Internet, however, the more charismatic aspects of transformational leaders are considered more often. Our sample was too small to measure deeply each different medium but we think these findings deserve further research focusing in each medium’s specific characteristics.

Evidence supporting the idea that size, media, ownership or years of existence are perceived by leaders as relevant factors for innovation and creativity in media organizations was not found. The medium appeared to be a factor only in the case of online platforms that were considered to create better environments for innovation and creativity. This seem to point to the idea that leadership is more important for innovation and creativity that any of those factors, which might underline the purpose of our research.

The main limitations of our study are due to the fact that we cover just two countries. Our sample is not large enough to understand the situation in each medium: in the survey there are managers from every medium but for some media the number of respondents is limited. Also, it is well known that a survey methodology gives impressions from leaders that talk about their views and tend to say what it is expected about leadership and working environments. Some ethnographic research could be added not just to talk about behaviors but actually observe them.

Research of leadership in the media industry appears to be an increasingly necessary research venue. The ever changing nature of the industry is leading to the perception that people are key “assets” for company success. And people need to be led by outstanding managers that inspire, sustain their efforts and foster innovative environments.

In our complex landscape, to do the same or something quite similar to what was done yesterday is not likely to be a recipe for success. Leadership demands for success evolve more towards softer skills combined with abilities to motivate teams and agility and flexibility to embrace change. Therefore, fast innovations and more competition in the media industry require a high degree of leadership: without an increased capacity to change, companies are left behind. When transformations are not quiet and linear, they demand new strategies, business models and processes to create value. Our work opens new venues for further research adding to the scholarly work that reminds us that leadership is one of the main sources of competitive advantages in turbulent times.