Merger or termination? Re-engineering the journalistic work environment in Egyptian national magazines: a business process re-engineering perspective

1 Introduction

Egypt's national press institutions have historically occupied a foundational position within the country's media landscape. Long-established titles, including Al-Ahram, Akhbar Al-Youm, Al-Tahrir, Rose al-Youssef, Dar Al-Hilal, and Dar Al-Maaref, constitute the principal pillars of a state-affiliated press system governed by the National Press Authority (NPA). Under Article 4 of Law No. 179 of 2018, the NPA is mandated to ensure sound governance and effective management of national press institutions in ways that enhance their competitive capacity and institutional sustainability.

These institutions have faced compounding structural pressures: successive economic crises, chronic financial deficits, and the rapid transformation of media consumption patterns driven by digital technology. In response, the NPA initiated a programme of institutional rationalisation, most notably through intra-institutional mergers of selected magazine titles. The key decisions examined in this study include the consolidation of Al-Ahram Al-Eqtisadi with Lughat Al-Asr (a bilateral merger within Al-Ahram institution) and the integration of Hawaa, Al-Kawakeb, and Tabibak Al-Khas into a unified publication within Dar Al-Hilal (a trilateral merger). These decisions were more circumscribed than Egypt's earlier 2009 merger wave, which involved the absorption of entire institutions such as Dar Al-Taawun and Al-Shaab into other press bodies, focusing instead on intra-institutional consolidation.

The decisions generated considerable controversy. Supporters argued that consolidation would reduce operational costs, improve journalistic quality, and enable adaptation to digital media trends. Opponents contended that mergers erode the identity and cultural heritage of established publications and destabilise journalists' professional environments. The Egyptian Press Syndicate formally called for strategic revitalisation plans as alternatives to structural dismantlement, emphasising that declining circulation or identity loss should not be addressed through publication reduction.

Despite this controversy, empirical evidence on the professional consequences of consolidation for journalists within Egypt's national magazine sector remains scarce. This study addresses that gap by examining how consolidation decisions reshaped journalists' perceptions of their work environment, editorial processes, and perceived content quality, and organisational leadership practices. It additionally introduces a comparative analytical dimension by contrasting bilateral and trilateral merger models. The remainder of the paper is structured as follows. Section 2 reviews the relevant literature. Section 3 presents the theoretical framework. Section 4 details research design and methodology. Section 5 reports all empirical findings. Section 6 tests the study hypotheses. Section 7 discusses the findings. Section 8 offers conclusions and recommendations.

2 Literature review

2.1 Media consolidation: economic and organisational dimensions

Media consolidation has been extensively theorised as a strategic response to structural pressures, including declining revenues, audience fragmentation, and the rising costs of digital infrastructure, confronting legacy media organisations (Küng, 2017; Picard, 2011). Whilst consolidation is frequently framed in terms of economic efficiency and organisational sustainability, scholars emphasise that its ramifications extend well beyond financial performance. Consolidation reshapes internal power structures, redistributes editorial authority, and redefines production routines, fundamentally altering how journalism is organised within merged entities (Mierzjewska and Hollifield, 2006).

Research consistently associates organisational restructuring in newsrooms with increased workloads, role expansion, and heightened performance pressures, particularly in contexts of reduced human capital (Deuze and Witschge, 2018). Such transformations affect journalists' job satisfaction, perceptions of organisational stability, and professional well-being (Bakker and Demerouti, 2017). The literature cautions, however, against assuming uniform outcomes: the impact of consolidation on journalists' work environments appears contingent upon managerial practices, internal communication strategies, and the degree to which journalists are involved in restructuring processes (Deuze and Witschge, 2018; Mierzjewska and Hollifield, 2006).

A particularly undertheorized dimension of newsroom merger outcomes is the asymmetry between absorbing and absorbed publications. Merger integration research consistently finds that organisations on the receiving end of an acquisition or consolidation experience systematically different outcomes from those on the dominant side (Cartwright and Schoenberg, 2006; Larsson, 1990): absorbed units face loss of editorial autonomy, destabilisation of organisational culture, and attrition of professional identity, whilst absorbing units may gain resources, authority, and operational continuity. In journalism studies, professional identity is a particularly consequential variable: journalists derive meaning, role clarity, and normative orientation from their publication's editorial identity, brand, and audience relationship (Deuze and Witschge, 2018; Zelizer, 1993), and the dissolution or subordination of that identity in a merger constitutes a professional threat independent of any changes to workload or compensation. Despite the intuitive relevance of this absorber–absorbed distinction to media merger research, it has rarely been systematically documented using primary survey data from within affected newsrooms. The present study addresses this gap directly.

2.2 Digital transformation and newsroom restructuring

Djourelova et al. (2025) demonstrate that the emergence of digital platforms significantly disrupted the economic foundations of legacy newspapers, producing reductions in newsroom staff and declines in political coverage attributable to digitally driven economic restructuring. Attia (2024) found that Egyptian press institutions have pursued technological integration across editorial and administrative sectors, with adoption of digital tools perceived as essential for organisational efficiency, although implementation remained uneven.

Al-Ramhi (2024) documented how Egyptian media organisations accelerated digital transformation after the COVID-19 pandemic. Aref (2023) found that digital content innovation at the Saudi Press Agency enhanced editorial diversity and institutional adaptability. Al-Zeinat (2022), examining Jordanian daily newspapers, identified financial pressure as a primary driver of restructuring and found that inadequate training during transitions generated professional uncertainty. Mahmoud's (2024) study found that economic pressures affected the main managerial functions of Egyptian press institutions, particularly planning, organization, leadership, decision-making, and performance evaluation.

2.3 Media consolidation in the Egyptian context

Within Egypt, Al-Meligy et al. (2025) examined digitisation strategies in national press publications through in-depth interviews with 32 journalistic and administrative leaders, identifying a significant gap between official discourse on digital transformation and its actual implementation. They attributed this to the absence of a clear operational vision, continued dependence on state support, and the lack of a competitive market environment. Leadership attitudes were divided between perceiving digitisation as a pathway to sustainability and viewing it as a threat to job security and traditional organisational structures. Mahmoud's (2026) case study of the forced digitization of Al-Ahram Al-Masai revealed that top-down change failed to produce genuine institutional transformation because it was implemented without adequate digital readiness, strategic planning, or organizational capacity.

Collectively, these studies establish that media organisational restructuring is shaped by an interplay of economic pressures, technological change, and managerial decision-making, with profound implications for newsroom organisation, professional roles, and institutional performance. Nevertheless, empirical studies explicitly linking consolidation strategies to journalists' perceptions of their work environment, within state-affiliated, non-Western media systems, using primary survey data, remain limited. The present study directly addresses this lacuna.

3 Theoretical framework

This study draws on three theoretically complementary but analytically distinct frameworks, each assigned a specific explanatory role. Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) serves as the primary analytical framework governing the study's core hypotheses: it provides the conceptual vocabulary for examining how consolidation translates into process-level redesign of editorial workflows, decision-making structures, workload distribution, and role clarity (H1–H4). Media Convergence Theory provides the framework for evaluating editorial compatibility: it explains why certain merger configurations, those combining editorially adjacent content domains, are more feasible than others, and anchors the comparative analysis of bilateral versus trilateral consolidation models (H5). Institutional isomorphism theory, derived from new institutionalism in organisational sociology (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983; Meyer and Rowan, 1977), provides the contextual explanation for the NPA's decision to restructure at all: it situates the consolidation decisions within the broader field-level pressures, fiscal austerity, regulatory mandate, and the legitimacy imperatives facing state-affiliated press institutions, that drive organisations to adopt structurally similar responses to shared environmental pressures. Together, the three frameworks form a layered theoretical architecture: institutional theory explains the context of the decision, Media Convergence Theory explains the logic of specific merger configurations, and BPR explains the process-level consequences for journalists' professional experience.

3.1 Business process re-engineering (BPR)

The primary analytical framework of this study is Business Process Re-engineering (BPR), conceptualised by Hammer and Champy (1993) as a radical redesign of core organisational processes aimed at achieving dramatic improvements in performance, quality, cost, and speed. In media-management scholarship, BPR has been applied to understand how institutional restructuring translates into redesigned workflows, altered decision-making architectures, and restructured professional roles (Picard, 2011). The framework is particularly appropriate for examining media mergers because it directs analytical attention toward process-level changes rather than merely structural or financial outcomes.

Applied to the present context, BPR is used exclusively to examine process-level consequences: it enables assessment of whether the NPA's consolidation decisions produced genuine workflow redesign, enhancing editorial efficiency, clarifying role boundaries, and improving perceived content quality, or whether they constituted superficial administrative restructuring without substantive transformation of how editorial work is actually organised and performed. BPR does not speak to why the NPA chose to consolidate (an institutional question) nor to whether specific merger pairings were editorially compatible (a convergence question); those roles are assigned to the other two frameworks. The study's four directional hypotheses (H1–H4) are all grounded in BPR's core propositions concerning how process redesign affects work environments, workflow structures, output quality, and professional adaptation.

3.2 Media convergence theory

Media Convergence Theory, as developed by Jenkins (2006) and elaborated by Jensen (2022), provides the framework for evaluating the editorial compatibility of the specific merger configurations examined here. Its exclusive analytical role in this study is to explain why some merger pairings are more editorially coherent, and therefore more likely to succeed in practice, than others. The theory posits that formerly distinct media sectors, content domains, and technological platforms increasingly integrate into hybrid forms of production and dissemination; where content domains are already epistemologically adjacent, convergence is more feasible and generates less professional disruption than cross-genre integration (Jensen, 2022). Applied here, the bilateral merger of Al-Ahram Al-Eqtisadi with Lughat Al-Asr exemplifies convergence between economic journalism and technology reporting, two domains that have become substantively interdependent within the digital economy, and Media Convergence Theory predicts that this configuration should produce more stable outcomes than editorially heterogeneous mergers. The trilateral merger within Dar Al-Hilal, by contrast, represents cross-genre convergence, integrating gender, cultural, and health content into a single editorial structure; the theory predicts that this configuration will generate greater coordination complexity and professional friction. Media Convergence Theory thus anchors the comparative hypothesis (H5) and provides the interpretive framework for understanding divergences in outcome trajectories across the two merger types. Questions of why the NPA adopted consolidation in the first place, and under what environmental pressures—fall outside this theory's scope and are addressed by institutional theory in the following subsection.

3.3 Institutional isomorphism theory

Institutional isomorphism theory, rooted in the new institutionalism of DiMaggio and Powell (1983) and Meyer and Rowan (1977), provides the contextual explanation for why organisations like the NPA adopt restructuring strategies under conditions of environmental pressure. The theory identifies three mechanisms through which organisations in the same field converge on structurally similar forms: coercive isomorphism, driven by regulatory mandates and resource dependencies; mimetic isomorphism, driven by uncertainty and imitation of perceived best practice; and normative isomorphism, driven by professionalisation and field-level norms. This framework is not used here to explain what happened within publications after consolidation, that is BPR's exclusive domain, but rather to explain the institutional logic behind the NPA's decision to initiate consolidation at all.

Applied to the NPA context, coercive isomorphism is most directly relevant: under Law No. 179/2018, the Authority operates under a state mandate to ensure institutional sustainability and fiscal efficiency, creating strong top-down pressure to rationalise operations. The merger decisions can thus be read as coercively isomorphic responses to shared environmental conditions, chronic fiscal deficit and accelerating digital disruption, rather than as internally generated editorial strategy. Mimetic isomorphism is also operative: the NPA's consolidation approach mirrors restructuring patterns observable across comparable state-press systems facing analogous pressures, consistent with institutional accounts of how organisations respond to shared field-level pressures (Oliver, 1991). The practical significance of this framing is substantial: if consolidation decisions are driven primarily by institutional field pressures rather than by editorial strategy, the near-universal absence of pre-merger consultation, reported by 96.5% of respondents, is not an oversight but a structural feature of coercively driven organisational change. Institutional theory thus provides the explanatory backdrop against which the BPR-level findings and the Media Convergence Theory-level compatibility findings must be situated: it explains why consolidation happened; BPR explains what it did to workflows; and Media Convergence Theory explains which configurations were more or less editorially viable.

4 Research design and methodology

4.1 Research design

This study employs a descriptive–analytical survey design to examine journalists' perceptions of consolidation across multiple dimensions of their professional experience. This design is appropriate for capturing subjective assessments of organisational change within a bounded, information-rich population (Babbie, 2021). A process-oriented analytical approach, informed by BPR theory, guides the operationalisation of variables, directing attention toward editorial decision-making structures, workflow redesign, and the qualitative dimensions of journalistic output.

4.2 Study population and sampling

The study population comprises all journalists employed in the five magazine publications directly affected by the NPA's consolidation decisions, spanning two institutional merger groups:

Bilateral Merger Group (Al-Ahram Institution): Al-Ahram Al-Eqtisadi (n = 26) and Lughat Al-Asr (n = 7), merged into a single publication.

Trilateral Merger Group (Dar Al-Hilal Institution): Hawaa (n = 20), Al-Kawakeb (n = 25), and Tabibak Al-Khas (n = 7), consolidated into one publication.

A purposive (criterion-based) sampling strategy was adopted, consistent with organisational-change research in which access to informed respondents is essential for evaluating institutional transformation (Maxwell, 2013). Inclusion criteria required current or recent direct employment within one of the five affected publications. The total sample comprised 85 journalists, enabling comparative analysis between publication groups, as a function of both consolidation model (bilateral vs. trilateral) and institutional position within the merger (absorbing vs. absorbed).

Data were collected through an electronic questionnaire administered by the researcher directly to each journalist, without intermediation by editorial management, through repeated visits to the five publications over more than a year, meeting journalists individually to introduce the study and invite participation. The population was defined operationally as the active journalistic workforce practising within each publication during this period, distinct from the formal administrative payroll, which in state-affiliated press institutions typically includes staff on extended statutory leave (e.g., unpaid leave, childcare leave, or leave to pursue work elsewhere) not engaged in day-to-day editorial practice. Editors-in-chief were excluded: unlike other leadership roles, filled through internal seniority-based progression, the editor-in-chief is appointed directly by the National Press Authority and thus occupies a position institutionally aligned with the body responsible for the consolidation decisions under study. Following this approach, all 85 members of the active journalistic workforce completed the questionnaire.

4.3 Data collection instrument

Data were collected through a structured questionnaire comprising six thematic dimensions: (1) satisfaction with work-environment elements; (2) impact of the merger on post-level work elements; (3) journalistic product quality; (4) publication rates of journalistic genres; (5) editorial leadership practices; and (6) agreement with statements about the merger process. Items employed three-point Likert-type response formats, supplemented by categorical items on editorial decision-making, pre-merger communication, types of change and adaptation strategies. The instrument was administered in Arabic, the respondents' professional language, to minimise comprehension barriers.

4.4 Validity and reliability

Content validity was established through alignment between questionnaire items and the study's BPR-informed conceptual framework, and through review by three academic specialists in media management and journalism studies. Internal consistency was assessed using Cronbach's alpha coefficients for each thematic dimension (see Section 5.2). Alpha values ranged from 0.736 to 0.934 across individual dimensions, with an overall scale reliability of α = 0.813, exceeding the conventional threshold of 0.70 (Nunnally, 1978) and demonstrating satisfactory to excellent reliability across all dimensions.

4.5 Data analysis

Data were analysed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). Procedures comprised three complementary analytical steps. First, descriptive statistics (frequencies, percentages, arithmetic means, and standard deviations) characterised distributional patterns for each questionnaire dimension and at publication level. Second, chi-square tests (with contingency coefficients, CC) assessed associations between publication type, the key categorical grouping variable differentiating bilateral and trilateral consolidation models and individual publications, and ordinal outcome categories (e.g., work environment evaluated as improved/deteriorated/unchanged; satisfaction rated as low/moderate/high). This is the primary inferential strategy for testing H5 and for detecting publication-level heterogeneity across all dimensions. Third, Pearson correlation coefficients and Spearman's rank correlations (ρ) were computed as supplementary exploratory analyses to examine the directional hypotheses (H1–H4). Because chi-square publication-level comparisons serve as the primary inferential basis throughout, the correlations are interpreted as complementary evidence rather than definitive tests. Because all 85 respondents experienced consolidation, it was not possible to treat consolidation as a binary present/absent variable; doing so would eliminate all statistical variation in the predictor and render correlation meaningless. To avoid circular associations between the predictor and the outcome composites, the independent consolidation predictor was constructed from three indicators that are logically and operationally independent of respondents' perceptual outcome assessments. Two of these (merger type and absorber/absorbed institutional position) are objective structural features of the merger design; the third (pre-merger consultation) is based on a single-item respondent report and is therefore more accurately described as a contextual indicator rather than a fully structural one. The Structural Consolidation Index (SCI) is composed as follows. First, merger type was coded dichotomously: bilateral merger publications (Al-Ahram Al-Eqtisadi, Lughat Al-Asr) received a score of 1, and trilateral merger publications (Hawaa, Al-Kawakeb, Tabibak Al-Khas) a score of 2, reflecting greater structural complexity. Second, institutional position within the merger was coded as absorber position (Al-Ahram Al-Eqtisadi, Hawaa) = 1 and absorbed position (Lughat Al-Asr, Al-Kawakeb, Tabibak Al-Khas) = 2, reflecting the power asymmetry between dominant and subordinated publications within each merger event. Third, pre-merger consultation was coded from the single-item consultation question (see Section 5.7): respondents who reported receiving prior communication = 1; those reporting no prior communication = 2. These three binary/ordinal indicators were standardised (z-scored) and summed to form the SCI. The first two (merger type and absorber/absorbed position) are objective structural features assigned from the merger design; the third (pre-merger consultation) is a contextual indicator derived from respondent report rather than from the merger structure itself. Higher SCI scores indicate greater structural consolidation intensity: belonging to a more complex (trilateral) merger, occupying an absorbed rather than absorbing position, and experiencing the merger without prior consultation. Critically, none of these three components derives from or overlaps with the perceptual outcome composites used in H1–H4, eliminating the circularity inherent in using the same questionnaire dimensions as both predictor and outcomes. Three methodological considerations warrant acknowledgement. First, the pre-merger consultation component exhibits very limited variance: 96.5% of respondents reported no prior consultation (scored 2), with only 3 respondents (3.5%) reporting consultation received (scored 1). This near-zero variance means that the consultation component contributes minimally to differentiation in SCI scores. In practice, the SCI's discriminatory power derives primarily from the merger-type component (bilateral vs. trilateral) and the absorber/absorbed position component, both of which vary meaningfully across respondents. The SCI scores range from −2.14 to +1.89 (after z-standardisation and summing of three components), with a mean of 0.00 (SD = 1.21), reflecting variation principally along the merger-type and institutional-position dimensions. The coding of the SCI components and the resulting score distribution are summarised in Section 6. Second, because the SCI is composed of categorical and ordinal indicators (two structural and one contextual/self-reported), and because respondents are nested within only five publications, Pearson correlations with the SCI are best interpreted as exploratory rather than definitive tests. To supplement the parametric analysis, Spearman's rank correlations (ρ) were computed alongside Pearson r for all SCI-based hypotheses. The Spearman values were: H1 (ρ = 0.038, p = .726), H2 (ρ = 0.608, p < .001), H3 (ρ = 0.729, p < .001), all closely mirroring the Pearson values and confirming the robustness of the pattern. Third, the clustering of respondents within five publications means that individual-level correlations may partially reflect publication-level grouping rather than fully independent individual variation. For this reason, the chi-square publication-level comparisons are treated as the primary inferential strategy throughout, with the SCI-based Pearson (and Spearman) correlations serving as a complementary, exploratory lens. Outcome composites for H1–H4 were constructed by computing respondent-level arithmetic means across items constituting each target dimension (work-environment satisfaction for H1; editorial workflow change for H2; perceived journalistic quality for H3; and leadership quality/adaptation for H4). The use of Pearson r on Likert-derived composites follows established psychometric convention: whilst individual Likert items are ordinal, multi-item composites approach interval-level measurement and support parametric analysis when sample sizes are adequate and distributions are approximately normal (Carifio and Perla, 2008; Norman, 2010; Sullivan and Artino, 2013). All composite distributions were examined for normality prior to analysis.

4.6 Ethical considerations

Participation was entirely voluntary; respondents were fully informed of the study's academic purpose prior to completion. Anonymity and confidentiality were strictly maintained: no personally identifiable information was collected, and data were analysed and reported exclusively in aggregate form to prevent identification of individual journalists or editorial units. Because the questionnaire was distributed directly by the researcher to each journalist individually, without involvement from editorial management or any institutional intermediary, participation was not contingent on managerial awareness, and the decision to respond or abstain carried no professional consequence visible to any institutional party.

5 Findings

5.1 Sample characteristics

Table 1 summarises the sample characteristics. The 85 respondents were distributed across the five affected publications in proportion to their institutional size, with Al-Ahram Al-Eqtisadi (n = 26) and Al-Kawakeb (n = 25) contributing the largest shares. Notably, 97.6% had worked in their publication for more than ten years, indicating an experienced professional workforce with first-hand knowledge of pre-merger conditions.

Table 1. Demographic and professional characteristics of the study sample (N = 85).

Percentages may not sum to 100.0 due to rounding.

5.2 Instrument reliability

Table 2 reports Cronbach's alpha values for each questionnaire dimension. All dimensions achieved acceptable to excellent internal consistency (range: 0.736–0.934), with an overall scale reliability of α = 0.813, supporting confidence in the instrument's capacity to generate valid and consistent measurements.

Table 2. Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficients for questionnaire dimensions and overall scale.

Values ≥ 0.70 are considered acceptable; values ≥ 0.80 are considered good (Nunnally, 1978).

5.3 Overall evaluation of the post-merger work environment

Table 3 reveals statistically significant and strongly differentiated publication-level differences in overall post-merger work-environment evaluations (CC = 0.779, p < .001), confirming that outcomes were strongly contingent on publication context rather than uniformly distributed across the sample. Full frequencies by category and publication are presented in the table.

Table 3. Journalists’ evaluation of the work environment after the merger decision, by publication.

The publication-level breakdown reveals a pattern that recurs across every dimension of this study: absorbing publications (Al-Ahram Al-Eqtisadi and Hawaa) reported stability or improvement, whilst absorbed publications reported disruption and deterioration—with 100.0% of Tabibak Al-Khas journalists reporting deterioration, and similarly high rates at Al-Kawakeb and Lughat Al-Asr (see Table 3). This absorber–absorbed asymmetry, consistent across all outcome dimensions examined in subsequent sections, suggests that the experience of merger is shaped less by the merger event itself than by each publication's structural position within it.

5.4 Satisfaction with work-environment elements

Table 4 reveals a clear hierarchy among the five work-environment elements. Leadership ranked highest and financial compensation lowest (RW = 73.7% and 51.7% respectively), with 54.1% dissatisfied with compensation—reflecting the fiscal austerity context of the consolidation. Role clarity also ranked poorly, consistent with role ambiguity as a correlate of organisational transitions. At publication level (Table 5; CC = 0.741), the aggregate distribution is strikingly polarised: identical proportions reported low and high satisfaction (41.2% each), with only 17.6% at the moderate level. This bimodal pattern does not indicate a middling consensus but two opposed institutional experiences, and it maps directly onto institutional position within the merger. Both absorbing publications reported predominantly favourable outcomes—Hawaa uniformly so (100.0% high) and Al-Ahram Al-Eqtisadi predominantly so (53.8% high)—whereas the absorbed publications reported almost no high satisfaction: Tabibak Al-Khas (100.0% low) and Al-Kawakeb (92.0% low) clustered at the bottom, whilst Lughat Al-Asr occupied a uniformly moderate position (100.0%). Satisfaction with the post-merger work environment therefore tracks institutional position far more closely than it tracks consolidation as such.

Table 4. Journalists’ satisfaction with post-merger work-environment elements (N = 85).

M = arithmetic mean on a 3-point scale (1 = Dissatisfied, 2 = Neutral, 3 = Satisfied); RW% = relative weight percentage = (M/3) × 100.

Table 5. Overall satisfaction scale by publication (low/moderate/high).

The overall satisfaction scale was derived from composite scores across the five elements in Table 4. Low = predominantly dissatisfied responses; High = predominantly satisfied responses.

5.5 Editorial decision-making processes

Table 6 (CC = 0.674) reveals a sharp absorber–absorbed contrast in editorial decision-making. Across the sample, 49.4% perceived increased centralisation versus 34.1% reporting greater freedom. Absorbed publications drove the centralisation finding: virtually all journalists at Tabibak Al-Khas, Al-Kawakeb, and Lughat Al-Asr reported increased restriction. Conversely, Hawaa (85.0% greater freedom) and Al-Ahram Al-Eqtisadi demonstrated that absorbing entities retain or expand editorial autonomy, confirming that editorial centralisation is the administrative expression of the power transfer that consolidation entails for subordinated publications.

Table 6. Evaluation of editorial decision-making processes after the merger, by publication.

5.6 Impact of the merger on journalists’ post-level work elements

Table 7 reveals a mixed but hierarchically ordered picture of merger impacts on post-level work elements. The two highest-ranking items—professional relationships with new colleagues (RW = 80.0%) and utilisation of professional expertise (RW = 73.3%)—registered net positive trends, suggesting that expanded professional networks and broader specialisation pools constituted tangible benefits of consolidation. Financial elements, by contrast, presented a uniformly adverse picture: salary remained unchanged or decreased for all respondents (no improvement reported), incentives showed a net negative trajectory, and opportunities for editorial promotion received the lowest ranking (RW = 57.7%). At publication level (Table 8; CC = 0.720), the absorber–absorbed asymmetry was again apparent: Hawaa reported predominantly high positive impact (90.0%) whilst Tabibak Al-Khas (100.0%) and Al-Kawakeb (80.0%) skewed toward low impact, confirming that the distribution of post-merger work element consequences closely tracked institutional position within each merger.

Table 7. Impact of the merger decision on post-level work elements (N = 85).

M = arithmetic mean; RW% = relative weight percentage.

Table 8. Overall impact scale on post-level elements, by publication.

5.7 Pre-merger communication and consultation

Table 9 presents one of the most consequential findings of the study: 96.5% of journalists reported receiving no communication or coordination prior to the merger, with only 3.5% (exclusively from Al-Ahram Al-Eqtisadi) reporting prior contact. Critically, the chi-square test was not significant (p = .133), indicating this near-total exclusion was consistent across all five publications rather than concentrated in any single institution. The merger was thus implemented within a centralised administrative framework that afforded journalists no meaningful opportunity for participation, a finding that carries direct implications for the leadership quality and adaptation results reported below.

Table 9. Communication and coordination prior to merger implementation, by publication.

5.8 Impact on journalistic product quality

Table 10 presents a mixed picture of perceived journalistic quality. Coverage-related items showed no consistent directional trend, with increases and decreases roughly balanced. The clearest signal was in the quality-assurance dimensions: pre-publication accuracy verification and linguistic correctness both registered net deterioration, with linguistic accuracy receiving the lowest relative weight of all items (RW = 60.3%). These findings suggest that the capacity pressures accompanying consolidation—staff redistribution, increased workload, and role ambiguity—created perceptible downward pressure on professional standards as perceived by the journalists producing the content.

Table 10. Impact of the merger on perceived journalistic product quality elements (N = 85).

M = arithmetic mean; RW% = relative weight percentage.

At the publication level (Table 11; CC = 0.739), the absorber–absorbed asymmetry was again decisive: Hawaa (90.0% high impact) and Al-Ahram Al-Eqtisadi reported positive-to-moderate profiles, whilst absorbed publications across both merger types reported predominantly low perceived quality impact. This confirms that perceived quality outcomes are not simply a function of merger complexity but of the power asymmetry between absorbing and absorbed publications.

Table 11. Overall journalistic product quality impact scale, by publication.

5.9 Changes in publication rates of journalistic genres

Table 12 shows that the merger produced no net improvement in publication rates for any of the three measured genre categories; declining rates predominated for interpretive materials (49.4% decrease), news materials (51.8%), and analytical materials (51.8%). These declines are consistent with the editorial centralisation and capacity pressures documented above—when staff are redistributed and decision-making becomes more restrictive, the production of time-intensive genres such as investigations and features is typically the first to suffer. At publication level (Table 13; CC = 0.693), the same asymmetric pattern held: absorbed publications (Al-Kawakeb 96.0%, Tabibak Al-Khas 100.0%, Lughat Al-Asr 85.7%) reported predominantly low genre output, whilst Hawaa (90.0% high) again constituted the exception, demonstrating that consolidation can sustain or increase genre productivity when managed by the absorbing entity under favourable leadership conditions.

Table 12. Journalists’ perceived assessment of changes in journalistic genre output rates (N = 85).

Relative weights below 66.7% (M < 2.00) indicate a net negative trend on a 3-point scale.

Table 13. Overall genre output scale, by publication.

5.10 Editorial leadership practices following the merger

Table 14 reveals a pronounced hierarchy of leadership attention that reflects a reactive rather than developmental management orientation. Control and supervision dominated (RW = 80.0%), whilst professional training and development registered the lowest relative weight (RW = 57.7%), with 50.6% of journalists perceiving no leadership interest in this function. This inverse relationship—the function most needed to rebuild professional capacity after merger receiving the least attention—is particularly consequential given the near-universal absence of pre-merger consultation documented in Section 5.7. At publication level (Table 15; CC = 0.710), Hawaa reported the highest leadership engagement (90.0% high), whilst Tabibak Al-Khas (100.0% low) and Al-Kawakeb (56.0% low) reported the weakest—consistent with the broader pattern in which absorbed publications experienced more adverse post-merger conditions across all dimensions.

Table 14. Extent of editorial leadership attention to managerial functions after the merger (N = 85).

M = arithmetic mean (3-point scale); RW% = relative weight percentage.

Table 15. Overall leadership attention scale, by publication.

5.11 Types of change observed in publications after the merger

Table 16 captures the most salient post-merger changes using a multi-response format. Change in editorial agenda and publishing priorities was the most frequently cited transformation (32.4% of responses), followed by periodic performance feedback (23.5%), redistribution of responsibilities (22.1%), and changes in economic publishing policy (22.1%). The publication-level distribution of these responses closely mirrors the broader pattern: performance feedback was heavily concentrated at Hawaa (51.3%), consistent with its stronger leadership engagement, whilst economic policy changes were concentrated at Al-Kawakeb and Tabibak Al-Khas (42.3% and 43.8%, respectively), consistent with the more adverse post-merger trajectory of these absorbed publications.

Table 16. Most significant post-merger changes reported by journalists, by publication.

Multiple responses were permitted per participant; total observations = 136.

5.12 Journalists' adaptation strategies

Table 17 (CC = 0.732) reveals that passive compliance—performing required tasks without additional conflict—was the predominant adaptation strategy across the sample (54.1%). Inability to adapt was disproportionately concentrated at Tabibak Al-Khas (85.7%) and Al-Kawakeb (40.0%), indicating that the most structurally exposed absorbed publications produced the highest proportion of journalists unable to accommodate post-merger conditions. The most theoretically notable finding is that proactive capitalisation—the rarest strategy (9.4%)—was concentrated almost entirely at Lughat Al-Asr, a pattern better interpreted as individual strategic repositioning by a small professional community that had lost its editorial home, rather than as genuine institutional adaptation.

Table 17. Journalists’ self-reported adaptation strategies following the merger, by publication.

5.13 Journalists' assessment of the merger process

Table 18 reveals a consistent pattern of negative assessments across procedural fairness indicators. Economic motivations were perceived as the primary driver of the merger by 71.8% of respondents, suggesting journalists viewed consolidation principally as a financial rather than an editorial development strategy. The procedural quality items were assessed even more negatively: only 7.1% agreed the decision was made within a consultative framework, and only 16.5% reported any opportunity for dissenting viewpoints. These responses reinforce the communication deficit documented in Section 5.7 and together indicate a structural deficit in participatory governance rather than any publication-specific grievance.

Table 18. Journalists’ agreement with statements about the merger process (N = 85).

M = arithmetic mean (3-point scale); RW% = relative weight percentage. Items sorted by descending RW%.

At publication level (Table 19; CC = 0.666), the same asymmetric logic prevailed: all journalists at Lughat Al-Asr, Al-Kawakeb, and Tabibak Al-Khas rated their overall agreement with merger-process statements as low, whilst Al-Ahram Al-Eqtisadi and Hawaa both recorded a substantial proportion of moderate or high agreement scores—a further confirmation that the overall experience of the merger process, not only its outcomes, was shaped by institutional position within the merger structure.

Table 19. Overall merger process assessment scale, by publication.

One respondent's data was missing for this scale (N = 84).

6 Hypothesis testing

Table 20 summarises the results of hypothesis testing; the correlation results for H1–H4 are reported in Tables 21–24, and the coding and score distribution of the Structural Consolidation Index (SCI) are summarised in Table 25.

Table 20. Summary of hypothesis testing results.

**p < .01 (two-tailed).

✓ = supported; ✗ = not supported.

Table 21. Pearson correlation (SCI): structural consolidation and work-environment satisfaction.

Table 22. Pearson correlation (SCI): structural consolidation and editorial workflow change.

**p < .01 (two-tailed).

Table 23. Pearson correlation (SCI): structural consolidation and perceived journalistic quality.

**p < .01 (two-tailed).

Table 24. Pearson correlation: editorial leadership quality and journalist adaptation.

**p < .01 (two-tailed).

Table 25. Structural consolidation index (SCI): component coding and score distribution.

H1: Media consolidation has a statistically significant impact on the journalistic work environment in Egyptian national magazines, particularly in terms of job satisfaction, professional autonomy, and organisational conditions.

The Pearson correlation between the Structural Consolidation Index (SCI) and the composite work-environment satisfaction score (r = 0.041, p = .709; Table 21) is not statistically significant. H1 is not supported. The SCI captures each respondent's structural consolidation exposure—merger type, institutional position as absorber or absorbed, and absence of pre-merger consultation—independent of the perceptual outcome composites, thereby avoiding circularity between predictor and outcomes. The non-significant correlation indicates that structural consolidation features did not predict work-environment satisfaction in a consistent directional pattern across the full sample. This does not indicate that journalists were unaffected; rather, the strong publication-level divergences documented in the chi-square analyses produced countervailing tendencies that suppressed the aggregate correlation: Al-Ahram Al-Eqtisadi reported uniformly high satisfaction (100.0%) whilst Hawaa reported predominantly low satisfaction (80.0%)—notwithstanding its positive evaluation of overall change in Table 3, a distinction explained in Section 5.4. These offsetting publication-level patterns, rather than a uniform absorber–absorbed split, account for the non-significant aggregate correlation. The chi-square publication-level comparisons remain the more informative test for this dimension, capturing the heterogeneous, publication-specific nature of satisfaction outcomes. Spearman ρ = 0.038 (p = .726) similarly shows no significant relationship, consistent with the Pearson result.

H2: Media consolidation leads to significant changes in journalistic work processes, including editorial decision-making structures, workload distribution, role clarity, and incentive systems within merged magazine entities.

A strong and statistically significant correlation was observed between the Structural Consolidation Index (SCI) and the composite editorial workflow-change score (r = 0.623, p < .001; Table 22). H2 is supported. The workflow-change composite draws on items in Tables 6 and 7 (full list in §5.5–5.6). Because the SCI is constructed from indicators independent of questionnaire response dimensions—two objective structural features (merger type and absorber/absorbed position) and one contextual self-report (pre-merger consultation)—this correlation tests whether consolidation-context indicators predict perceptual workflow experiences without circular measurement. The strong and significant result (Spearman ρ = 0.608, p < .001, confirming robustness) supports the BPR-theoretical expectation that greater structural consolidation intensity predicts correspondingly greater perceived process-level transformation. Given the nested data structure (five publications), the correlation is treated as exploratory, complementing the chi-square analyses as the primary test.

H3: Media consolidation has a significant effect on journalists' perceived journalistic product quality and content output, as reflected in their self-reported assessments of accuracy, balance, diversity of sources, and the production of journalistic genres.

A strong and statistically significant correlation was observed between the SCI and the composite perceived journalistic quality score (r = 0.741, p < .001; Table 23). H3 is supported. The quality composite aggregates journalists' self-reported assessments across items in Tables 10 and 12 (full item list in §5.8), constituting a measure of perceived quality change, not independently verified content quality. The strong and significant correlation indicates that journalists in structurally more intensive consolidation contexts were consistently more likely to report perceived adverse changes across multiple quality dimensions, consistent with BPR's proposition that workflow redesign generates downstream effects on organisational products. The predominantly negative trajectories in absorbed and trilateral-merger publications demonstrate that these effects were not directionally neutral. Spearman ρ = 0.729 (p < .001) closely mirrors the Pearson value, confirming robustness across both parametric and non-parametric approaches.

H4: Managerial practices and change management approaches following consolidation significantly influence journalists' adaptation to the post-merger work environment.

A moderate and statistically significant correlation was found between the composite editorial leadership-quality score and the composite journalist adaptation score (r = 0.451, p < .001; Table 24). H4 is supported. For this hypothesis, the analytical approach differs from H1–H3: rather than correlating outcome dimensions with the SCI, H4 examines the relationship between two distinct post-merger experiential dimensions—the leadership-quality composite (derived from the eight items in Table 14) and the adaptation composite (derived from the four-category adaptation variable in Table 17, scored ordinally from 1 = unable to adapt to 4 = proactively capitalised on new conditions). The moderate correlation (r = 0.451) indicates that higher perceived leadership quality was associated with more successful journalist adaptation. The effect size (r² ≈ 0.20) indicates that leadership quality explains approximately 20% of the variance in adaptation scores—a practically meaningful but not dominant share, suggesting that structural process changes, as captured by H2, carry greater immediate explanatory weight in shaping journalist experiences.

H5: There are statistically significant differences in journalists' perceptions of the work environment and work processes between publication groups, as a function of both consolidation model (bilateral versus trilateral) and institutional position within the merger (absorbing versus absorbed).

As documented across Tables 3–19, chi-square tests consistently revealed statistically significant publication-level differences across all outcome dimensions, with CC values ranging from 0.666 to 0.779 (all p < .001). Trilateral-merger publications (Al-Kawakeb and Tabibak Al-Khas) and the absorbed bilateral-merger publication (Lughat Al-Asr) exhibited markedly more adverse trajectories than the absorbing bilateral-merger publication (Al-Ahram Al-Eqtisadi) across work environment, decision-making, quality, and leadership dimensions. It is important to distinguish two separate analytical contrasts here: the bilateral versus trilateral dimension (H5) concerns merger structural complexity and editorial compatibility between merger types; the absorber versus absorbed dimension concerns intra-merger power asymmetry within each merger type. Lughat Al-Asr belongs to the bilateral merger group but experienced adverse outcomes as an absorbed publication, confirming that both dimensions operate independently. H5 is supported. The structural form of consolidation—bilateral versus trilateral—constitutes a significant moderating variable for journalist outcomes, as does the institutional position within each merger type (absorbing versus absorbed). The publication-level chi-square analyses (Tables 3–19) capture both dimensions simultaneously: the bilateral/trilateral contrast addresses merger structural complexity and editorial compatibility, whilst the absorber/absorbed contrast addresses the intra-merger power asymmetry that operates independently of merger type.

7 Discussion

7.1 Work environment and the limits of aggregate analysis

The non-significant SCI–satisfaction correlation (r = 0.041, p = .709; Spearman ρ = 0.038, p = .726) does not indicate that journalists were unaffected by consolidation; it demonstrates instead that consolidation's effects on work-environment satisfaction were highly heterogeneous across the sample and did not follow a consistent directional pattern at the individual level. As the chi-square analyses show (Table 5; CC = 0.741), the publication context was the dominant predictor of satisfaction outcomes: Hawaa (100.0%) and Al-Ahram Al-Eqtisadi (53.8%) reported predominantly high satisfaction whilst Tabibak Al-Khas (100.0%) and Al-Kawakeb (92.0%) reported predominantly low levels. These countervailing publication-level tendencies suppressed the overall SCI–satisfaction correlation to near zero, illustrating a well-documented property of aggregate correlation analysis in heterogeneous, multi-site samples: when group-level variation is the primary source of systematic variance, individual-level correlations will underestimate or mask substantive effects (cf. Babbie, 2021). The chi-square results are therefore the more informative test for this hypothesis. Financial dissatisfaction (54.1% dissatisfied with compensation) remained the dominant work-environment weakness across the full sample regardless of publication, aligning with Al-Zeinat's (2022) finding that financial pressures constitute a primary driver of professional uncertainty during media restructuring, consistent with the broader fiscal constraints of Egypt's state-press system.

7.2 Workflow redesign and the BPR framework

The strong correlation between the SCI and the workflow-change composite (H2, r = 0.623) indicates that journalists in structurally more intensive consolidation contexts reported correspondingly greater perceived process-level transformation, consistent with the BPR-theoretical expectation that organisational mergers produce measurable workflow redesign. Crucially, the use of a structural predictor (SCI) rather than a perceptual one confirms that this relationship is not an artefact of measuring predictor and outcome with the same instrument. The correlation operationalises this relationship at the individual respondent level rather than at the level of publication groups, providing a within-sample test that complements the group-level chi-square findings. The prevalent shift toward editorial centralisation (49.4% of the sample) raises theoretical questions: BPR does not prescribe centralisation as an optimal outcome but aims for leaner, more effective processes (Hammer and Champy, 1993). Centralisation may suppress professional initiative and editorial diversity, contradicting the objectives of journalistic value creation (Picard, 2011). The near-universal absence of pre-merger consultation (96.5%) likely amplified this effect: participatory change management is associated with reduced resistance and smoother transitions (Kotter, 1996), and its absence may have entrenched the negative workflow perceptions documented across multiple dimensions.

7.3 Journalistic product quality

The strong correlation between the SCI and the perceived journalistic quality composite (H3, r = 0.741) indicates that journalists in structurally more intensive consolidation contexts—those in trilateral mergers, in absorbed positions, and without pre-merger consultation—reported correspondingly greater perceived adverse quality shifts, and that this relationship is not an artefact of circular measurement. An important interpretive caveat applies: the quality composite measures journalists' self-reported perceptions, not independently verified content quality; corroboration would require complementary content analysis. Within that scope, the pattern is theoretically coherent: BPR predicts that workflow redesign generates downstream effects on organisational products as experienced by those who produce them (Hammer and Champy, 1993), and capacity constraints arising from staff redistribution and role ambiguity create observable downward pressure on perceived professional standards (Djourelova et al., 2025). Hawaa's consistently positive quality trajectory demonstrates that these effects are not structurally inevitable: where leadership actively manages integration and invests in editorial capacity, structural consolidation intensity need not translate into perceived quality decline.

7.4 Change management and leadership

The moderate but significant correlation between the leadership-quality composite and the journalist adaptation composite (H4, r = 0.451) indicates that the quality of change-management practices is associated with journalists' capacity to adapt to post-merger conditions. Unlike H1–H3, which correlate outcome dimensions with the SCI as a measure of structural consolidation intensity, H4 tests a relationship between two distinct post-merger experiential dimensions, making it conceptually closer to a bivariate association than to a consolidation-impact test. The effect size (r² ≈ 0.20) indicates that leadership quality explains approximately 20% of the variance in adaptation scores, practically meaningful, but indicating that structural process factors (H2) carry greater immediate weight in shaping journalist experiences. Leadership's observed emphasis on control and supervision (RW = 80.0%) at the expense of training (50.6% reporting no leadership interest) and technology adoption reflects a reactive rather than developmental change-management orientation, what Kotter (1996) would characterise as managing the present rather than leading the future. This configuration risks producing compliance at the cost of reduced professional capacity and innovation (Attia, 2024), with adverse consequences for both journalist well-being and institutional performance.

7.5 Bilateral vs. trilateral consolidation models

The systematic differences between bilateral and trilateral merger publications (H5 supported; CC = 0.666–0.779) represent a substantive contribution to the comparative media-management literature, and can be interpreted through all three of the study's theoretical frameworks. From an institutional perspective, both merger types arose from the same coercive isomorphic pressure—the NPA's mandate to rationalise national press institutions under fiscal and regulatory constraint—but the greater structural complexity of the trilateral model suggests that isomorphic pressures, when applied uniformly, may produce disproportionately adverse outcomes in configurations that are editorially less compatible. Two analytically distinct contrasts are at work. The bilateral/trilateral dimension concerns structural complexity and editorial compatibility: the trilateral merger integrates three distinct editorial identities, generating greater coordination complexity, consistent with BPR's expectation that more complex process redesigns carry greater risk of disruption (Hammer and Champy, 1993). The absorber/absorbed dimension operates independently, within each merger type, and is developed further in Section 7.6. Lughat Al-Asr illustrates this independence: it belongs to the bilateral merger group but experienced outcomes characteristic of absorbed publications, confirming that merger type and institutional position are separate analytical categories. The bilateral merger of Al-Ahram Al-Eqtisadi and Lughat Al-Asr—publications sharing a natural epistemological overlap between economic journalism and technology reporting—produced more stable outcomes, consistent with Media Convergence Theory's expectation that convergence between complementary content domains is more feasible than cross-genre integration (Jensen, 2022). These findings have practical implications: media policymakers should treat merger scope and editorial compatibility as critical design variables. The institutional pressure to consolidate may be unavoidable, but its form and configuration are design choices with measurable consequences for journalists' professional experience.

7.6 Absorber–absorbed asymmetry: an emergent conceptual contribution

Across every outcome dimension examined in this study—work-environment satisfaction, editorial decision-making, perceived quality, leadership quality, and professional adaptation—the data reveal a consistent structural asymmetry between publications that occupied the dominant or absorbing position within their merger group and those that were absorbed or subordinated. This pattern, which can be designated the absorber–absorbed asymmetry, emerges not as a mere artefact of bilateral versus trilateral structure but as an independent dynamic operating within each merger type. It constitutes a distinctive empirical contribution of this study, extending the general merger-research finding that acquiring and acquired organisations experience different outcomes (Cartwright and Schoenberg, 2006) to the specific journalism context, operationalised here with systematic survey evidence across five outcome dimensions.

In the bilateral merger, the absorbing publication (Al-Ahram Al-Eqtisadi) reported stability or improvement across every dimension, whilst the absorbed publication (Lughat Al-Asr) reported predominantly deteriorated outcomes and, strikingly, the highest proportion of proactive capitalisation responses in the entire sample—a profile better interpreted as the strategic repositioning of a professional community seeking individual survival within an alien editorial structure, rather than genuine adaptation. In the trilateral merger, the absorbing host (Hawaa) was the sole publication reporting positive outcomes across all dimensions, whilst the two absorbed publications (Al-Kawakeb and Tabibak Al-Khas) reported the most adverse profiles in the study. Specific figures are reported in Tables 3–19 and discussed in Section 5; the purpose here is to theorise the pattern.

The absorber–absorbed asymmetry can be theorised through three complementary lenses. First, from an organisational power perspective, mergers do not combine equals: the absorbing entity retains its authority structures, decision-making hierarchies, and resource allocation mechanisms, whilst the absorbed entity loses them (Cartwright and Schoenberg, 2006). The near-universal reports of increased editorial centralisation among absorbed publications—100.0% at Tabibak Al-Khas, 96.0% at Al-Kawakeb, 85.7% at Lughat Al-Asr—are precisely consistent with this dynamic: centralisation is the administrative expression of power consolidation in the hands of the absorbing structure. Second, from a professional identity perspective, journalists in absorbed publications experience an erosion of what Zelizer (1993) terms the interpretive community—the shared set of practices, values, and editorial norms through which a newsroom constructs its professional self-understanding. When a publication is merged into a dominant host, its journalists do not merely face new workflows; they face the dissolution of the editorial identity that gave their work meaning. Deuze and Witschge (2018) document how journalistic identity is constituted relationally through the specific organisational context of practice, a context that merger fundamentally disrupts for subordinated publications whilst leaving the absorbing publication's context largely intact. Third, from a newsroom culture perspective, organisational culture in newsrooms is publication-specific, historically accumulated, and resistant to top-down imposition (Larsson, 1990): absorbed publications do not simply import the host culture but experience cultural displacement, generating the role ambiguity, reduced autonomy, and professional uncertainty documented systematically across the absorbed entities in this study.

It is important to distinguish the absorber–absorbed asymmetry from the bilateral versus trilateral distinction documented in H5. The two phenomena are related but analytically separate. The bilateral/trilateral distinction concerns the structural complexity and editorial compatibility of merger configurations and explains aggregate outcome differences between merger types. The absorber–absorbed asymmetry concerns the intra-merger power differential between the dominant and subordinated publication within a given merger, regardless of type: it explains why, even within a single merger event, outcomes diverge systematically along lines of institutional position. In the bilateral case, one publication was insulated whilst the other was disrupted—even though both experienced the same merger decision under identical regulatory conditions. In the trilateral case, one publication thrived whilst two suffered, again, a single event producing asymmetric outcomes as a function of position, not merely of merger type or complexity. This asymmetry is invisible to aggregate analysis and emerges only through publication-level disaggregation, underscoring the methodological value of the chi-square publication-level comparisons in this study.

The practical implications follow directly. Pre-merger planning that does not explicitly address the position of absorbed publications, their editorial identity, staff integration pathway, and autonomy within the merged structure, risks reproducing the adverse outcomes documented here. Merger management protocols should include specific provisions for protecting the professional identity and cultural continuity of absorbed units, not merely for ensuring operational efficiency of the dominant structure. The NPA's near-universal failure to consult (96.5% of respondents) is particularly consequential in this light: the absence of pre-merger communication was most damaging precisely for absorbed publication journalists, for whom institutional powerlessness and informational exclusion compounded each other.

8 Conclusions

8.1 Principal contributions

This study contributes to media-management and journalism research in several ways. Theoretically, it advances a layered three-framework architecture in which each theory occupies a distinct and non-overlapping explanatory role. Institutional isomorphism theory (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983; Meyer and Rowan, 1977) explains the contextual logic of the NPA's decision to restructure, situating the consolidation programme within the coercive isomorphic pressures generated by fiscal austerity and state regulatory mandate. Media Convergence Theory (Jenkins, 2006; Jensen, 2022) explains the editorial compatibility dimension, accounting for why bilaterally merged publications with adjacent content domains fared better than trilaterally merged cross-genre configurations. BPR (Hammer and Champy, 1993; Picard, 2011) explains the process-level consequences, providing the analytical framework for understanding how consolidation translated into workflow redesign, role restructuring, and changes in journalists' assessments of editorial output quality. Together, these three frameworks demonstrate that media merger outcomes cannot be adequately explained by any single theoretical lens: institutional conditions, editorial configurations, and process-level dynamics each make independent explanatory contributions. Empirically, it provides primary survey data documenting the absorber–absorbed asymmetry in Egyptian press consolidation: a consistent pattern in which publications occupying the dominant position within a merger group reported stability or improvement across all assessed dimensions, whilst absorbed publications reported disruption, centralisation, identity erosion, and reduced professional autonomy. Whilst merger research has noted broadly that consolidating and acquired organisations experience different outcomes (Cartwright and Schoenberg, 2006), the present study extends this to the journalism context, providing systematic survey evidence documenting this asymmetry across multiple professional experience dimensions within a state-affiliated press system. This asymmetry, theorised through organisational power, professional identity, and newsroom culture frameworks, represents a conceptual contribution with potential applicability to media merger research beyond the Egyptian context. The study additionally provides primary survey evidence from a bounded, information-rich population directly affected by consolidation, addressing a documented gap in research on journalists' situated experiences in non-Western press systems. Methodologically, it establishes both bilateral vs. trilateral consolidation structure and absorber vs. absorbed institutional position as analytically productive comparative categories, and proposes the Structural Consolidation Index (SCI) as a methodological approach for operationalising consolidation exposure in contexts where all respondents share the same condition, thereby avoiding the circularity of using perceptual questionnaire dimensions as both predictor and outcomes.

These contributions are grounded in a dataset that captures direct, situated professional experience from a bounded population with first-hand knowledge of the consolidation decisions, and in a methodological design that distinguishes structural consolidation exposure (the SCI) from its perceptual consequences. As with all self-reported data, quality-related findings reflect journalists' perceptions of their publication's editorial output; corroboration of claims about actual published content quality would require independent content analysis.

8.2 Recommendations for policy and practice

Drawing on the empirical findings, the following evidence-grounded recommendations are offered to the NPA and affiliated national press institutions. Each recommendation is linked directly to the specific findings that warrant it.

First, participatory decision-making mechanisms should be institutionalised, formally involving editorial teams in merger planning prior to implementation. The near-universal absence of pre-merger communication (96.5%, Table 9) was consistent across all five publications, indicating a structural rather than publication-specific failure. The H4 correlation (r = 0.451) confirms that management practices shape journalist adaptation; consultation prior to implementation is its earliest form. The absorber–absorbed asymmetry (Section 7.6) adds that its absence was most damaging for journalists at absorbed publications, for whom institutional powerlessness and informational exclusion compounded each other.

Second, post-merger change management should rebalance toward professional development—structured training in digital tools, multimedia production, and editorial workflows—alongside operational oversight. The inverse relationship between the highest leadership function score (control and supervision, RW = 80.0%) and the lowest (professional training, RW = 57.7%; Table 14) reveals a reactive rather than developmental management orientation. Given that the H4 correlation (r = 0.451) confirms that higher leadership quality predicts better journalist adaptation, redirecting leadership attention toward development is both empirically grounded and practically urgent. Hawaa's strong leadership engagement and positive evaluation of post-merger change (Tables 3, 15) demonstrate that active leadership investment is achievable even within a complex trilateral merger.

Third, the NPA should introduce rigorous pre-merger editorial compatibility assessments before approving consolidation decisions, covering editorial identity overlap, content-domain adjacency, and the likely position of each publication as absorber or absorbed. The chi-square analyses consistently show that merger structure predicts journalist outcomes (CC = 0.666–0.779), and the absorber–absorbed asymmetry confirms that intra-merger institutional position operates as an additional independent predictor. Compatibility assessments should therefore address both the number of publications being merged and the relative editorial authority each will hold in the resulting structure.

Fourth, transparent and equitable incentive and compensation arrangements should be developed and communicated to journalists before and during merger implementation. Financial compensation was the lowest-rated work-environment element (Table 4), salary remained unchanged or declined for virtually all respondents (Table 7), and only 44.7% agreed their professional status was considered (Table 18). These findings converge on a single conclusion: the financial and motivational dimensions of the transition were not adequately addressed. Financial uncertainty during consolidation contributes to professional dissatisfaction that supervisory efficiency gains alone cannot compensate for.

Fifth, the NPA should establish ongoing monitoring mechanisms—periodic internal surveys and editorial quality audits at defined post-merger intervals—to enable adaptive, evidence-based management. The H1 finding illustrates why aggregate monitoring is insufficient: a non-significant overall correlation (r = 0.041) masked strong publication-level divergences (CC = 0.741), demonstrating that consolidation effects are heterogeneous and invisible to organisation-wide averages. Longitudinal monitoring would distinguish temporary disruption from enduring deterioration and enable targeted intervention before adverse trajectories become entrenched.

8.3 Directions for future research

Several productive avenues for future research emerge. A longitudinal design tracking journalist perception at multiple post-merger intervals (twelve, twenty-four, and thirty-six months) would address the cross-sectional limitation of the present study. Comparative research encompassing private and digital-native media organisations alongside state-affiliated institutions would advance understanding of how media-system type moderates consolidation effects. Qualitative approaches including in-depth interviews with editorial leaders and newsroom ethnographies would complement the survey findings with richer process-level insights. Quantitative studies employing larger samples and broader Likert-scale instruments would improve statistical power and facilitate cross-national comparison. Finally, the absorber–absorbed asymmetry documented here warrants systematic testing across other merger contexts, including private-sector and digital-native media organisations, and across different national and regulatory settings, to determine whether it constitutes a general property of newsroom consolidation or a feature specific to state-affiliated press systems operating under coercive isomorphic pressure.

8.4 Limitations

Several limitations warrant acknowledgement and should be read alongside the empirical findings. First, the study draws on a purposive sample of 85 journalists across five specific publications affected by the NPA's consolidation decisions. This approach suits capturing the experiences of those directly affected but limits generalisability beyond Egypt's state-affiliated press system: comparative studies encompassing private-sector, regional, or digital-native organisations would be needed before any cross-system generalisation. Second, the cross-sectional design captures perceptions at a single post-merger point; post-merger dynamics evolve over months and years, and a longitudinal design tracking perceptions at multiple intervals would strengthen causal inference. Third, as with any self-reported data, responses on sensitive dimensions—management practices and editorial autonomy—may be shaped by social desirability, with journalists potentially moderating assessments in either direction; the direct, individual mode of data collection and instrument anonymity were intended to minimise such effects, though some influence cannot be ruled out. Fourth, the study captures only the journalist perspective: editorial leaders, administrative managers, and NPA decision-makers are absent, and their views on the consolidation's rationale and implementation may differ substantially; a multi-perspective design incorporating leadership interviews would provide a fuller account, particularly for the leadership findings. Fifth, the three-point Likert-type format reduces response variance relative to broader scales, potentially attenuating correlations in the outcome composites. The Structural Consolidation Index (SCI) avoids circular measurement by drawing on structural rather than perceptual indicators (merger type, absorber/absorbed position, and pre-merger consultation). However, the SCI is a simplified structural proxy; future research incorporating continuous objective indicators of consolidation scope—such as headcount reduction ratios, page-count changes, or editorial budget figures—alongside perceptual survey outcomes would provide richer and more granular causal traction. Sixth, because all respondents are employed across the same five publications, common-method variance is a structural concern, as both predictor and outcome constructs derive from the same questionnaire at the same time point: the convergence of Pearson correlations and chi-square tests, and the differentiated pattern of Cronbach's alpha values (0.736–0.934), provide partial reassurance, though residual method effects cannot be excluded. Despite these constraints, the study offers grounded empirical evidence from a bounded, information-rich population with direct experiential knowledge of the consolidation decisions, and the consistent absorber–absorbed asymmetry across all five outcome areas strengthens confidence in the conclusions.

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Footnotes

Edited by: Joseph Lobo, Bulacan State University, Philippines

Reviewed by: Muharman Lubis, Telkom University, Indonesia

Adi Inggit Handoko, Sriwijaya University, Indonesia