Media, Management and Transformation Center - MMTC

21/09/2026

Innovation in news media does not only come from the top – it can also grow from within the organisation.

A recent article by MMTC affiliate Sari Virta and her coauthors Nando Malmelin, Matti Pihlajamaa, and Johanna Strandholm examines how employees in news media organizations generate, develop, and implement new ideas in their daily work.

Published in Journalism Studies, this research examines intrapreneurship—entrepreneurial activities occurring within established organizations—at two Finnish news media companies. The findings show that renewal is shaped by interconnected practices at the individual, team and organisational levels. Ideas may begin with individuals, but whether they develop further depends on collaboration and on the wider organisational environment that supports them.

The study provides another perspective on media transformation, showing how change takes shape through everyday practices inside organisations as they respond to continuing pressure to innovate and renew.

Read “Intrapreneurial Practices in News Media Organisations: A Multi-level Analysis”: https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2026.2728655

18/09/2026

AI, augmented reality, virtual reality and other immersive technologies are creating new possibilities for retail – but they also bring new challenges for those responsible for protecting consumers and governing markets.

In a new article published in Technological Forecasting and Social Change, MMTC member Lucia Pizzichini, together with Federica Caboni, Rosa Palladino and Demetris Vrontis, examines how regulators can respond as immersive retail continues to develop.

The article, “Regulatory orchestration in immersive retail innovation systems: A capability-based framework for AI and XR governance,” highlights challenges including data protection, algorithmic bias, surveillance, behavioural manipulation and consumer vulnerability.

Rather than viewing regulators only as authorities that set and enforce rules, the authors propose seeing them as active participants in innovation systems. Their framework identifies five capabilities that can help regulators support experimentation and innovation while guiding technological development towards responsible and socially aligned outcomes.

The research highlights an important dimension of digital transformation: as technologies and markets change, the systems used to govern them may also need to transform.

Read the article: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2026.124844

16/09/2026

🌍 Learning across borders: EGAP participants visit Jönköping

Professionals from Armenia, Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia and Belarus recently came together in Jönköping for the on-site Sweden module of Enhancing Governance and Accountability: Towards EU Integration in the Public Sector (EGAP).

Led by MMTC member Timur Uman, with Bryan Malki managing the programme and Yuliya Khvatsik and Caroline Teh contributing as teachers, the intensive week focused on governance, accountability and public-sector reform.

An important part of the programme is connecting academic knowledge with practice. Participants combined classroom discussions with study visits and exchanges with Jönköping Municipality, the Swedish Board of Agriculture, the Swedish Tax Agency, June Avfall & Miljö AB and Växjö Energi AB.

The visits provided opportunities to explore how public organisations work with governance and accountability in practice, while also opening up conversations about different institutional contexts and approaches to public-sector transformation.

EGAP is funded by the Swedish Institute and implemented by Jönköping International Business School, Jönköping University, in collaboration with Moldova State University and the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga. Jönköping Municipality also provided important support during the Sweden module.

Thank you to everyone who contributed to the week – and especially to the participants for sharing their experiences, questions and perspectives.

15/09/2026

AI expertise to strengthen MMTC research on Swedish forest management

Congratulations to MMTC Director Leona Achtenhagen and team, who have received a Knut and Alice Wallenberg AI Consultancy Grant for research connected to the MMTC project "Profit versus nature?".

The project explores the tensions surrounding forest management in Sweden. Forests can provide economic value and livelihoods while also playing important roles in biodiversity, climate mitigation and cultural life. These different priorities have contributed to an increasingly polarised public debate, creating a complex landscape for private forest owners making decisions about how their forests should be used and managed.

The new grant gives Leona’s research group access to specialist AI expertise from AI4S, creating opportunities to use advanced AI methods to analyse the media discourse surrounding these competing perspectives. Leona’s group is one of only 11 research groups across Sweden selected in the first round of this new Wallenberg initiative.

By bringing AI expertise into an established sustainability research project, the support opens up new possibilities for understanding how public narratives and competing institutional pressures influence decision-making – and ultimately how Sweden’s forests can be managed amid changing economic, environmental and societal expectations.

14/09/2026

Meet the winners of the 2026 MMTC Thesis Award!

Congratulations to Sophia Engl and Agnetta Lucia Nabukenya, whose Master's thesis “How AI Disclosure Shapes Patient Trust and Perceived Professionalism: A Quantitative Study of Health Communication in Germany and Uganda” has been selected as this year's winning submission. Their research addresses an increasingly important question: what happens to trust when people are told that AI has been used to communicate with them?

Sophia and Agnetta studied this in healthcare, comparing how people in Germany and Uganda responded to the same medical discharge instructions when they were presented as coming from either a physician or an AI system. Their results showed that disclosing AI involvement reduced trust, perceived professionalism and willingness to follow the advice.

The research also demonstrates that responses to AI cannot be understood independently of their context. Different factors shaped people's willingness to follow the advice in Germany and Uganda, highlighting the importance of considering institutional and cultural settings when organisations introduce AI into sensitive forms of communication.

Agnetta and Sophia's findings have relevance beyond healthcare, raising important questions about how organisations can combine AI transparency with the human oversight, responsibility and accountability needed to maintain trust.

As the winners of the 2026 MMTC Thesis Award, Sophia and Agnetta will receive a financial reward and have the opportunity to collaborate with MMTC scholars to further develop their research for publication.

A huge congratulations to them both! 🎉

11/09/2026

From master’s thesis to award-winning research and journal publication

A master’s thesis can be the beginning of an exciting research journey. That was the case for Ravinath Herath and Emanuel Woodhouse Schmit, whose master’s thesis research at JIBS was further developed together with MMTC member Joaquín Cestino.

In 2022, an early version of their research, “Perceived Organizational Support and Transition Intentions in Hybrid Entrepreneurs,” received a Best Paper Award from the Entrepreneurship (ENT) Division of the Academy of Management and was presented at the Academy of Management Annual Meeting in Seattle.

Building on this, Joaquín, Ravinath and Emanuel continued the research. They followed eight hybrid entrepreneurs in Sweden over three years, allowing them to examine how their experiences and intentions to transition from employment to full-time entrepreneurship changed over time. The resulting article, published in the Journal of Small Business Management in May 2026, shows that workplace support can both enable and constrain this transition.

Flexible and supportive employment can give hybrid entrepreneurs the time, knowledge and confidence needed to develop their ventures. At the same time, reliance on workplace knowledge, networks and other resources can create a “lock-in” effect, making remaining in employment more attractive.

By following this process over time, the study provides insights into how entrepreneurial careers transform and how the boundaries between employment and entrepreneurship can shift as ventures develop.

The journey from master’s thesis to award-winning conference paper and journal article is a great example of the potential for student research to continue developing beyond graduation – something MMTC seeks to encourage through our annual Master’s Thesis Award.

And speaking of the award, the 2026 MMTC Master’s Thesis Award winners will be announced soon. Stay tuned!

🔗 Read the article: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00472778.2026.2665710

10/09/2026

Congratulations to MMTC member Daniel Alejandro de los Rios Pérez!

Daniel has received a Best Paper Award at the 2026 Journal of Business Venturing Insights (JBVI) Entrepreneurship Academy for his paper “The Earth Is Flat, But There Are Levels: Entrepreneurial Hierarchy and Cross-World Conversion in Havana's Entrepreneurial Ecosystem.”

The paper is connected to Daniel’s doctoral research at Jönköping International Business School, Jönköping University, where he studies entrepreneurial ecosystems in Cuba. At the heart of this research is a question of transformation: how do entrepreneurial ecosystems evolve when the institutional, economic and social conditions around them are changing? Studying the Cuban context also broadens entrepreneurship research beyond settings that have traditionally received the most attention.

A fantastic recognition of Daniel’s work — congratulations! 👏

09/09/2026

Public subsidies may not “buy” better journalism – but they can help sustain it.

A new study from MMTC members Marcel Garz and Mart Ots looks at whether Swedish media subsidies support the public-interest journalism they are designed to protect.

Analysing newspapers between 2014 and 2022, the researchers find that subsidised newspapers provide similar levels of journalistic quality and local news as non-subsidised newspapers – and actually produce a higher share of original content.

However, receiving more or less subsidy does not appear to change the content a newspaper produces in the short term. Instead, Marcel and Mart suggest that subsidies primarily act as stabilisers, helping newsrooms maintain professional standards and continue providing public-interest journalism during periods of financial pressure.

This has wider implications for democracy. Maintaining diverse, locally relevant and original journalism supports access to information, public debate and the scrutiny of those in power.

As the economic foundations of journalism continue to change, the research also contributes to MMTC’s work on transformation in media and organisations, showing how changes in media markets are prompting new questions about the policies and structures needed to sustain journalism.

The article is published open access in Journalism Studies.

🔗 https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2026.2686731

For decades, governments in a number of countries have sought to safeguard public-interest journalism through media subsidies. Yet, empirical evidence on the effectiveness of such measures remains ...

07/09/2026

A new article by MMTC member Lucia Pizzichini, together with her co-authors Pier Franco Luigi Fraboni, Elena Borin and Demetris Vrontis, published in the Journal of Intellectual Capital, explores how organisations can use their corporate heritage to develop intellectual capital.

In "The missing link: developing intellectual capital through corporate heritage practices,” the authors examine how historically rooted knowledge, values and identity can be actively mobilised rather than simply preserved.

Drawing on the Portus Lab project in Italy, the findings show how corporate heritage practices can support the development of human capital through the transfer of knowledge, skills and values; structural capital by codifying and making organisational knowledge accessible; and relational capital by strengthening trust, legitimacy and stakeholder relationships.

The article introduces the concept of potential corporate heritage capital – historically embedded knowledge, meanings and values that may remain latent until organisations actively identify, reinterpret and put them to use. It also proposes a heritage-driven entropic intellectual capital model, showing how corporate heritage practices can transform these latent resources into human, structural, and relational capital.

Importantly, the study shows that engaging with heritage does not simply mean looking backwards. By continually reinterpreting heritage in response to changing stakeholder expectations and contemporary challenges, organisations can connect their history and identity with present and future needs, supporting learning, innovation and organisational renewal.

Congratulations to Lucia and her co-authors on the publication!

🔗 Read the open-access article: https://doi.org/10.1108/JIC-07-2025-0281

04/09/2026

Constr:act Next is underway!

How can the construction and real estate sectors speed up their transition to more circular, resource-efficient, and climate-smart practices? This question lies at the core of Constr:act Next, a new collaborative project led by Energikontor Norra Småland. The project unites businesses, municipalities, academia, and other regional stakeholders across Jönköping County.

The project builds on the successful Constr:act initiative, which created a regional platform for knowledge exchange and collaboration around the transition towards a climate-neutral construction and real estate sector. Constr:act Next takes this work further, with a particular focus on circularity, resource efficiency and supporting organisations as they translate sustainability ambitions and requirements into practical changes.

We are very pleased that MMTC members Carla Gonçalves Machado and Sambit Lenka are part of the project. As MMTC and JIBS contribute as a research and education partner, Carla and Sambit will bring research expertise in circular business models, sustainable supply chains and the practical implementation of circular solutions. Their work will explore how research can be translated into useful tools and guidance for businesses and public organisations, helping bridge the gap between sustainability goals and what transformation looks like in practice.

Constr:act Next has received approximately SEK 7.3 million in funding and is primarily financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and Region Jönköpings län, with additional support from municipalities and industry partners.

We look forward to following Carla and Sambit’s work and the collaborations that emerge as the project progresses!

🔗 Read more about Constr:act Next and MMTC’s involvement (in Swedish) https://www.rjl.se/energikontoret/om-energikontoret/projekt/constract/natverket-samverkan-for-klimatneutralt-byggande/