Creativity and Constraint at Al Jazeera

Muhammad Ayish
University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates

The Culture of Al Jazeera: Inside an Arab Media Giant, by Mohamed Zayani and Sofiane Sahroui. Jefferson, North Carolina, and London: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2007

During the past five decades, Arab media scholarship has been highly obsessed with content and institutional analyses as the two prime tools for understanding the workings of Arab communications in different phases of their development. In its basic configuration, this approach views media organizations in holistic terms as institutional entities whose behavior could be addressed primarily through content and institutional investigations. The obfuscation of media behavior as a function of organizational factors has had negative effects on our understanding of the role of media institutions in the Arab World. This book is a real contribution to expanding our methodological and conceptual horizons as they pertain to Arab media by combining media and organizational analysis to generate unique perspectives on the inner workings of Al Jazeera as an evolving pan-Arab media giant. By highlighting the role of Al Jazeera’s organizational culture as a decisive factor shaping the network’s current and future development, the two authors have indeed presented media students and researchers with a new perspective for understanding media institutions in the region beyond the traditional media sociology paradigm that locates variables bearing on media work more in surrounding environments than in media organizations themselves. The book, of course, does not ignore the impact of external factors on Al Jazeera development; but rather demonstrates how the interplay between surrounding political, social and economic environments and the network’s organizational culture shapes the satellite television network’s performance. In this context, the book shows how “objective factors “ such as vision, strategy, leadership, empowerment, reward system and knowledge management contribute to the survival and development of Al Jazeera in the midst of an increasingly hostile environment.

The book comprises of 13 chapters that bring together the "bits and pieces” that make up Al Jazeera organizational culture, a significant aspect long neglected by researchers in the Arab World as having little impact on media work. The first five chapters seem to be more concerned with the professional media-proper aspects of Al Jazeera network while the rest of the book addresses issues relating to institutional and organizational practices and values. This division seems to reflect the academic interests of both authors who have successfully combined their expertise to produce this scholarly work. Although both authors seek to elucidate the growth and evolution of Al Jazeera as dictated by organizational factors, they seem to present the case of the network’s development as enigmatic, noting that the rise and eminence of Al Jazeera defy rational explanation. Within the organizational culture perspective, they conceive of a set of key factors which contributed to the success of Al Jazeera, chief among these are the wealth of talent, the structure of system in place for handling the news, and most importantly the margin of freedom available to the network. But as they come to note later, this is not to suggest that Al Jazeera has a carte blanche to speak about anything as the television network keeps silent on a number of pressing social, economical and cultural issues. They argue that even if we concede that Al Jazeera has an independent editorial line with very few limits, the margin of freedom available to it makes it vulnerable as this competitive edge may not be enough to sustain competition in the future. To understand the prowess of Al Jazeera, the book takes accounts of a set of distinctive attributes that can be considered as a source of the organization’s strength or core competency. For example, the BBC core competency is broadcasting creativity, that is the organization’s commitment to, and record in, the consistent production of innovative high-quality intelligent programming. But when it comes to Al Jazeera, the notion of core capability is quite tricky as the network has come to eminence because of the vacuity that has long characterized the media scene in the Arab World.

An interesting point raised by the two authors is that media organizational models in Western contexts may not be applicable to Arab world media. This, as the book notes, is particularly important in conceiving of Al Jazeera’s organizational culture in the specificity of the society and culture, in the broad sense of the term, within which Al Jazeera operates. Taking heed of the socio-cultural environment in which Al Jazeera has been thriving, according to the authors, compels us to look at Al Jazeera not only from a corporate model perspective, but also from a family business perspective which, although more specific to Qatar, is particularly intrinsic to the culture of a small Arab country where kinship, tribalism and nepotism are still prominent concepts. For both authors, the family-business paradigm can be said to permeate Al Jazeera particularly when we contemplate the way it was founded and the way it was managed during its formative years. Though it was created as a state-sponsored organization, the autonomy and access to resources that the founding director Mohammed Jassim Al Ali had while running the network allowed him to mold the network on a family business model; and hence, attempts at formalizing, structuring, and institutionalizing activities in Al Jazeera were also attempts to move away from a family-like business to a more professional model based on explicit structures and modern management practices. But again, the authors seem to retract their statement by noting that Al Jazeera is not a family business any more than it is a network organization which suggests that Al Jazeera could be operating under different models during different time periods, such as being a family business like model under Al Ali and a network model afterward. In the final analysis, the book suggests that that Al Jazeera’s organizational model is more of a hybrid model than a normative model- one which has traditional Western management practices, but which is also imbued with idiosyncrasies which make it all the more interesting and worthy of study.

Potential political effects on Al Jazeera funding have also been addressed in the book. The authors note that the fact that Al Jazeera maintains its operations in spite of failure to sustain its operations on the basis of its self-generated financial resources is indicative of Qatar’s political priorities. In this context, the writers seem close to invoking a mild “conspiracy theory,” as they note that the plan from the outset was to furnish a channel for reasons other than profit- what is often termed ‘vanity broadcasting.’ The Qatari government’s conduit to the network is its board of directors- although the relationship between the latter and the upper political leadership is neither direct not straightforward. At the level of management, the relationship between Al Jazeera’s board of directors and Qatar’s political leadership has at times served Al Jazeera well, but at a price. Partly because of its covert political dimension, Al Jazeera is presented in the book as a fragile organization, which is tantamount to saying that the politics of Qatar is not without potential effects on Al Jazeera. For one thing, awareness that Al Jazeera has a political weight takes away from the myth of its independence while its dependence on the good will and support of its sponsor makes it unable to wean itself off Qatari state funding. At least initially, according to the authors, Al Jazeera has been perceived as the Emir’s pet project more than a full-fledged institution, which in the words of Louay Barhy means that ‘any serious domestic change in Qatar- such as instability in the ruling family or even change in government- though currently unexpected, always a possibility, would impact Al Jazeera.”

By shifting the analysis to the microscopic staff level, the authors seem keen on providing readers with significant perspectives on how individual factors make or break a media giant development. The note that the dedication, commitment, and loyalty of Al Jazeera staff is particularly striking. This enthusiasm, according to the authors, has been a source of validity and a driving force for a young broadcaster with relatively minimal resources. Throughout its formative years, the network was motivated by a sense of purpose more than it was driven by a particular vision. For better or for worse, the staff had in mind the notion that they were changing the face of Arab history; likewise, there is a sense among some people that Al Jazeera is supportive of its staff as evident in high job security and low turnover rates. The book plays up Al Jazeera’s culture of empowerment as instrumental in maintaining organizational cohesion and continuity within the network. Particularly when seen in the context of Arab media, Al Jazeera’s journalists, reporters, anchors and editors have decision making prerogatives which enable them to react to situations and deal with events without systematic and routine hierarchical referral, thus allowing self-managing teams to be in charge of themselves and qualified individuals to be at their best

While Al Jazeera has successfully attended to its professional development as the incubator of core capabilities furnishing it with the edge for competition, its administrative structure and practices seem to be seriously flawed. The authors cite the example of knowledge as a management asset that seems to be poorly present in Al Jazeera’s organizational culture. Both authors note that it is hard to profile Al Jazeera’s knowledge management efforts because these are unmanaged or undermanaged. Al Jazeera does not have a formal knowledge management structure and its culture is not management intensive. This suggests, according to the authors, that Al Jazeera culture is not conducive to the identification and appropriation of acquired knowledge. Part of the problem facing Al Jazeera is its overwhelming concern with professional considerations rather than with administrative matters, which meant that insufficient attention was paid to institutional or organizational issues. The authors note that because there was no elaborate frame for paperwork to be processed nor there was an editorial policy in place, the staff dealt with issues and situations as they came up. From the start, according to the book, Al Jazeera was never given the chance to grow and evolve naturally as its leadership has been embroiled in the management of everyday business at the expense of developing the structural.

In conclusion, the two authors seem to suggest that Al Jazeera has a rough ride ahead despite its impressive professional achievements. They note that Al Jazeera’s success cannot be credited to objective factors and certainly cannot be attributed to its organizational model. In fact Al Jazeera is far from being an organization in the full business import of the term as the network continues to exhibit many of the symptoms that plague Arab organizations. Even a cursory look at such objective factors as vision, strategy, leadership, empowerment, reward system and knowledge management suggests that Al Jazeera does not live up to the image it has acquired over the years of being at the forefront of Arab news media. The book notes that although these organizational problems may not be threatening or detrimental to the survival of Al Jazeera, they are nonetheless risk factors which cannot be overlooked if the network is to maintain its privileged status in an already congested Arab media landscape. When it comes to their role and mission, many Arab broadcasters have been grappling with an identity crisis and rhetorical missions. But according to the authors, Al Jazeera has come off as uncommonly conscious of its mission which is defined by as an Arab media service that has a global orientation. With its motto “the view and the other view,” it acts as a forum for plurality, seeking the truth while observing the principles of professionalism within an institutional framework. In many parts of the book, the two authors seem to affirm that although the network does have an explicit and written mission statement and although its top management is very conscious of it and articulate about it, that consciousness does not seem to trickle down to the network’s staff. More challenging and more difficult to pin down than Al Jazeera’s mission and strategy are its beliefs and values which were summarized by the authors as standing out for its instinct for breaking news, its alternative journalism, its tolerance for difference, and its Arab orientation.

In certain ways, the book suffers from some methodological problems relating to the exclusive use of personal interviews as sources of data for generating conclusions about Al Jazeera organizational culture. Other methods like survey and observation research could have been harnessed to produce more generalizable and valid findings. Confinement to one method seems to have had a negative effect on the style of language and analysis whereby we seem to have black-and-white statements about different aspects of the network. Furthermore, the authors could have allocated full chapters to case studies relating to Al Jazeera management rather than drawing on isolated anecdotes that fail to deliver the full picture of organizational realities. The division of the book into 13 chapters seems to have adversely affected its focus as some chapters could be combined to produce more solid analysis. But despite these flaws, the book remains an important contribution to Arab media scholarship by virtue of its application of an interdisciplinary methodological scheme and conceptual framework as evident in employing media and organizational analysis tools to shed light on this Arab media giant. The book would significantly serve as an eye opener for Arab media scholars who have been hostage to traditional views of media organizations as reactive to external stimuli with no role assigned for organizational culture in shaping media performance.