Ainamo, Tienari and Vaara 2006 Between West and East: A Social History of Business Journalism in Cold War Finland, Human Relations.

Human Relations DOI: 10.1177/0018726706066550 Volume 59(5): 611–636 Copyright © 2006 The Tavistock Institute ® SAGE Publications London, Thousand Oaks CA, New Delhi www.sagepublications.com Between West and East: A social history of business journalism in Cold War Finland Antti Ainamo, Janne Tienari and Eero Vaara1 A B S T R AC T The Cold War era was characterized by ideological struggles that had a major impact on economic decision-making, and also on management practice. To date, however, these ideological struggles have received little attention from management and organizational scholars. To partially ﬁll this research gap, we focus on the role of the media in these ideological struggles. Our starting point is that the media both reﬂect more general societal debates but also act as an agency promoting speciﬁc kinds of ideas and ideologies. In this sense, the media exercise signiﬁcant power in society; this inﬂuence, however, is often subtle and easily dismissed in historical analyses focusing on political and corporate decision-making. In this article, we focus on the role of business journalism in the ideological struggles of the Cold War era. Our case in point is Finland, which is arguably a particularly interesting example due to its geo-political position between East and West. Our approach is socio-historical: we focus on the emergence and development of business journalism in the context of the speciﬁc struggles in the Finnish political and economic ﬁelds. Our analysis shows how the business journalists struggled between nationalist, pro-Soviet and pro-West political forces, but gradually developed into an increasingly inﬂuential force promoting neo-liberal ideology. K E Y WO R D S business history business press ideology journalism management history media 611 612 Human Relations 59(5) Introduction The end of the Second World War set the stage for the military, economic, and ideological polarization of Europe, and a period that has been called the Cold War. This period marked an Americanization of Western Europe while Central and Eastern Europe, in turn, fell behind the Iron Curtain, inﬂuenced and dominated by the Soviet Union. However, the polarization was never complete. Due to their peculiar geo-political position, some countries were left to straddle the market economies of Western Europe and the command economies of Eastern Europe. In these countries, the Cold War era was characterized by ideological struggles that had a major impact on economic decision-making, and also on management practice. To date, however, these ideological struggles have received little attention from management and organizational scholars. In particular, we seem to know little of the impact of these ideological struggles on the promotion and legitimation of speciﬁc kinds of ideas and practices in business organizations. To partially ﬁll this research gap, we focus on the role of the media in these ideological struggles. Our starting point is that the media both reﬂect more general societal debates but also act as an agency promoting speciﬁc kinds of ideas and ideologies (e.g. Fiske, 1989; van Dijk, 1990; Fairclough, 1995; Bourdieu, 1998; Luhmann, 2000). In this sense, the media exercise signiﬁcant power in society; this inﬂuence, however, is often subtle and easily dismissed in historical analyses focusing on political and corporate decisionmaking. For business and management, business journalism is a particularly interesting part of the media (e.g. Parsons, 1989; Read, 1992). Organization and management scholars have started to pay increasing attention to this profession, which has promoted and legitimated speciﬁc kinds of ideas and practices in business organizations and society at large (e.g. Mazza & Strandgaard Pedersen, 2004; Kjaer & Langer, 2005). However, we have so far lacked socio-historical analyses focusing on the ideological aspects of the development and role of this profession. In this article, we focus on the role of business journalism in the ideological struggles of the Cold War era. Our case in point is Finland, which is arguably a particularly interesting example due to its geo-political position between East and West. Our approach is socio-historical: we focus on the emergence and development of business journalism in the context of the speciﬁc struggles in the Finnish political and economic ﬁelds. In this analysis, we draw on extensive historical material, including interviews of business journalists and key corporate decision-makers, published reports and analyses of the media in Cold War Finland, and selections of media material of various genres. In our analysis, we aim in particular at shedding more light Ainamo et al. Business journalism in Cold War Finland 613 on how this emerging profession was shaped by the ideological struggles and how it promoted speciﬁc kinds of ideas, practices and values throughout 1945–95. Our analysis shows how the business journalists struggled between nationalist, pro-Soviet and pro-West political forces, but gradually developed into an increasingly inﬂuential force promoting neoliberal ideology. More speciﬁcally, we illustrate how the postwar reconstruction period (1945 to mid-1960s) in Finnish society and economy was characterized by a national consensus on economic and business issues. During this period, business journalists acted primarily as individual reporters promoting speciﬁc business interests. Between the mid-1960s and early 1980s, Finnish society was politically and ideologically divided, and this was also reﬂected in the media. During this time, business journalists on the one hand became more independent and critical analysts but on the other represented an important pro-market economy force in Finnish society. From the early 1980s to mid1990s, the Finnish political climate and especially the economic structure changed signiﬁcantly and began to increasingly resemble the ‘old’ Western European market economies. During this time, business journalism grew into a profession of increasing independence and inﬂuence. In particular, business journalists emerged as increasingly powerful protagonists of neoliberal ideology. This article is structured as follows. After this introduction, we will explain what we mean when we look at the Cold War as an ideologial struggle. This is followed by a section examining the speciﬁc characteristics of business journalism as an agency promoting and legitimating particular kinds of ideas and ideologies. We then provide a brief summary of our empirical material and explain how we conducted our analysis. This is followed by our empirical analysis where we outline the role that the business journalists played in three time periods in Cold War Finland. Finally, we discuss the implications of this analysis and provide suggestions for future research. Cold War as ideological struggle Ideology is a concept that has been deﬁned in notably different ways in different research traditions (e.g. Mannheim, 1979; Seliger, 1979; Boudon, 1986; Rosenberg, 1988; van Dijk, 1998; Chiapello, 2003). Destutt de Tracy was probably the ﬁrst to propose that a ‘science of ideas’ could be called ‘ideology.’ It was, however, Marx who brought this concept to the attention of broader audiences (Marx & Engels, 1974). Accordingly, in the Marxist 614 Human Relations 59(5) tradition, ideology has been seen as a ‘false consciousness,’ a distorted representation of reality that tends to mask the true power relationships and structures of domination in a society. It is especially the ruling class that imposes speciﬁc ideas values and ideas upon others. Gramsci later offered a new way of looking at ideology by introducing the concept of ‘hegemony’ (Gramsci, 1971). According to this view, hegemony works more subtly through the minds of people, for example, by constructing a consensus about a particular social order. There is, however, another distinctive way of conceptualizing ideology that has grown out of the work by sociologists such as Durkheim (e.g. Geertz, 1973; Dumont, 1977), where the starting point is not a realistic or materialistic worldview but a constructionist epistemology. According to this ‘culturalist’ conception, ideology refers to a shared framework of understanding that characterizes the social and discursive practices of a speciﬁc community. Ideology is here not something negative, distorted, or false, but rather something on which people base their interpretations. It is only from a distance or retrospectively that we can as observers point to some apparent distortions or biases in the people’s views. Some scholars have sought to synthesize these alternative conceptions on ideology (e.g. Laclau & Mouffe, 1985; van Dijk, 1998; Chiapello, 2003). These attempts have been mostly built on the culturalist conception, but at the same time have tried to retain capacity for critical reﬂection. This is also our perspective in this study. In line with van Dijk (1998: 8), we view ideology as ‘the basis of the social representations shared by members of a group.’ This means that ideologies serve as ways of organizing a multitude of social beliefs concerning what is true or false, good or bad, right or wrong, and so forth. Ideologies are, at the same time, often self-serving and reﬂect the material and symbolic interests of a speciﬁc group. What is noteworthy is that ideologies ‘operate both at the overall, global level of social structure, for instance as the socially shared mental “monitor” of social competition, conﬂict, struggle and inequality, and at the local level of situated social practices in everyday life’ (van Dijk, 1998: 8). From this perspective, the Cold War era can be seen as a period of ideological struggle. What is important is that this ideological struggle involved concrete material questions but was, to a large extent, also a battle between alternative conceptions of right and wrong, legitimate and illegitimate concerning the organization of economic activity and the management of business organizations. In simple terms, the period following the Second World War was in European countries such as Finland characterized by the juxtaposition of the western market economy and free trade ideology and the Soviet-type planning economy and socialist ideology. Ainamo et al. Business journalism in Cold War Finland 615 On the one hand, US-type market economy and right-wing political programs became increasingly inﬂuential in Western Europe. Among other things, this meant that new kinds of management ideas and practices served as models to be adopted and spread among business and other kinds of organizations in the period immediately following the Second World War. For example, American corporate management practices gradually constituted the dominant model for most Western European countries (e.g. ServanSchreiber, 1968; Engwall, 1992; Djelic, 1998; Kipping & Bjarnar, 1998). Towards the end of the Cold War, the western ideal became increasingly linked with neoliberal ideology as put forth by politicians such as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. On the other hand, at the same time, socialism and communism as exempliﬁed by the Soviet Union provided a powerful contrast to the free market economy model. This was obviously the case in the Eastern and Central European countries that were taken over by the Soviet Union after the Second World War. In the 1960s and 1970s in particular, socialist and communist ideas also gained ground among workers and intellectuals in Western Europe. Apart from sharing the underlying Marxist premises, many actors in the latter groups of actors linked the socialist model with overall social responsibility and global solidarity. Socialism – or various interpretations of it – thus provided an ideological counterforce to the free market ideology in general and Americanization in particular. To the above well-established view of a polarized Europe during the Cold War, we add that the Cold War also happened in the context of speciﬁc national economic and business systems. In speciﬁc settings, particular conceptions of national identity and interests shaped the struggle between pro-West and pro-Soviet models and practices. Nationalism thus played a role in the ideological struggles (e.g. Anderson, 1983; Gellner, 1983; Hobsbawm, 1994). In practice, nationalism took different forms, depending on the speciﬁc geo- and socio-political conditions and the varying inﬂuences of particular political, economic and societal actors. While many political and economic actors had a major role to play in these ideological struggles, we will in the following concentrate on the role of the media and speciﬁcally the business press in these battles. There are three reasons for this. First, the media provide an arena that arguably reﬂects the public opinion and speciﬁcally the ideological debates in society. Second, the media also exercise signiﬁcant power in promoting and legitimating speciﬁc ideas and ideologies. Third, this power is often subtle and is easily overlooked in traditional historical analyses focusing, for example, on economic development or corporate decision-making. This makes it a particularly important object of study. 616 Human Relations 59(5) Business journalism as an institutional actor in the ideological struggles Various studies have shown how the mass media shape our views and values and thus contribute to the social construction of reality (e.g. Fiske, 1989; van Dijk, 1990; Fairclough, 1995; Bourdieu, 1998; Luhmann, 2000). In particular, the media may determine which issues to bring to the fore and which do not deserve speciﬁc attention (e.g. van Dijk, 1990). At the same time, the media legitimize and naturalize speciﬁc ideas and ideologies, but not others (e.g. Herman & Chomsky, 1988; Fiske, 1989; Fairclough, 1995). All this happens in a system that has developed its own practices and professional norms (e.g. Bourdieu, 1998). These practices and norms can lead to bias, or even distortion. Bourdieu (1998) argues that journalists reproduce ‘commonplaces,’ that is, what the audience already knows and wants to hear. In general, media analyses have been relatively rare in organization and management literature. There are, however, notable examples. For instance, the representation of speciﬁc organizations and particular management issues has been an important topic (e.g. Chen & Meindl, 1991). Others have expanded on this approach and examined how speciﬁc representations in the popular culture, as reﬂected in the media, help us to understand particular aspects of organizations and management (e.g. Czarniawska-Joerges & Guillet de Monthoux, 1994; Hassard & Holliday, 1998). Media have also served as a context for institutional analyses examining how speciﬁc ideologies such as nationalism impact media organizations and their strategic choices (e.g. Dacin, 1997). Most importantly for our analysis, recent studies have also linked media with the spread and promotion of speciﬁc management ideas and practices (e.g. Abrahamson, 1996; Mazza & Alvarez, 2000; Sahlin-Anderson & Engwall, 2003; Engwall & Kipping, 2004). Kipping and Engwall (2002) outline a symbiotic system that they term the ‘global management knowledge industry’. This consists of the interrelated elements of management practice, consultancies, media companies, and academic institutions. In this model, particular ideas and ideologies can be exported, transmitted and imported wholesale or piece by piece by media companies and their partners in the process of institutionalization of knowledge. At a more micro-level, other scholars have then examined speciﬁc cases such as mergers and acquisitions in detail and pointed to the discursive practices through which the media legitimate and naturalize speciﬁc phenomena (e.g. Vaara & Tienari, 2002; Hellgren et al., 2003). Interestingly, this usually involves the juxtaposition of various kinds of discourses and ideologies such as nationalism and global capitalism (e.g. Tienari et al., 2003). Ainamo et al. Business journalism in Cold War Finland 617 While there are many types of media that undoubtedly play an important part in these processes, we will in the following focus on business journalism. Following the tradition in media studies, we view business journalism as a distinctive ﬁeld comprising speciﬁc newspapers and magazines dealing with economic, business or management issues. Business journalism is also a speciﬁc genre within news and reporting, and it is becoming an increasingly distinctive profession with its own speciﬁc practices and norms. Having said this, it is important to note that the boundaries between business journalism and other forms of journalism are not ﬁxed but somewhat arbitrary. On the whole, business journalism received relatively little explicit management and organization research attention until very recently (Slaatta, 2003; Mazza & Strandgaard Pedersen, 2004; Kjaer & Langer, 2005). Then, Slaatta (2003), building on Bourdieu, pointed to the increasingly important role of business journalism in the media ﬁeld and elaborated on its special role in our contemporary mediatized and commercialized society. Kjaer and Langer (2005) argued that business journalism has become autonomous (moving from simple reporting of speciﬁc news to more elaborate and broader discussions of particular issues judged on the basis of journalistic relevance), that business news has become more negotiated in content (moving from single sources to more complex discussions where multiple actors are involved and where the journalists themselves also play a big role), and that business news has become boundary spanning over time (expanding to other areas). While these and other studies have greatly advanced our knowledge of the special role of business journalists in contemporary society, it should be noted that these analyses have mostly been based on methods such as content and discourse analysis. In fact, we lack socio-historical analyses of the development of this profession and the inﬂuence that it has had in particular societal and economic contexts. We know little of how various ideological inﬂuences have shaped the development of this profession and its practices and about the role of business journalists as protagonists of particular ideas and ideologies in speciﬁc historical contexts. Methodology In this study, we adopt a socio-historial approach to the role of the business press in Cold War Finland. Our analysis is based on three sources of empirical data: interviews with business journalists and key corporate decision-makers, published reports and analyses of the media in Cold War Finland, and selections of media material of various genres. First, in 1996–8, Antti Mikkonen, a well-known Finnish business journalist, conducted 153 618 Human Relations 59(5) interviews of journalists and key corporate decision-makers. He made these interviews to document the development of Finnish business journalism from the Second World War to the mid-1990s to write a popular book on this topic (Mikkonen, 1998). We obtained full access to these interviews as well as other material that he had gathered, which proved to be an invaluable source for our analysis. The interviewees include most of the key ﬁgures in Finnish business journalism, both already retired journalists and those who were active in the mid-1990s. The interviews also comprise a number of discussions with some of the key corporate decision-makers in Finnish business organizations. Most interviewees were male, and they were typically over 50 years old. The interviews focused on topics such as the development of the journalistic practices, the emergence and development of speciﬁc genres within business journalism, the professionalization of the business press, its changing role in the Finnish media, and the relationship between business journalists and the political and management elite. Usually, the interviews centered on speciﬁc topics such as breaking news or scoops made by journalists. All interviews were fully or partially transcribed. The quotations offered in the following sections are our translations of Finnish to English. Although this material was extremely rich, its use was not methodologically unproblematic because we had not ourselves conducted these interviews; at times, we lacked contextual knowledge in speciﬁc issues such as scoops. However, Mikkonen himself helped us to interpret the material, and we also made additional interviews with current business journalists to complement the picture. Second, we gathered and examined published reports and analyses of the media in Cold War Finland. This included studies on the historical development of the Finnish media (Jauri, 1948; Klemola, 1981; Vesikansa, 1997; Tommila & Salokangas, 1998; Lindén, 2003), concentration of ownership and control of the Finnish media sector (Jyrkiäinen, 1994; Jyrkiäinen & Sauri, 1997), and the coevolution of the Finnish and Swedish language press (Dacin, 1997). We also examined biographies of key individuals within the history of Finnish broadsheet newspapers (Zetterberg, 2001). In addition, we examined various articles on business journalism in SanomalehtimiesJournalisten, the professional journal of Finnish journalists. Third, we also studied the actual media texts that had appeared in the leading outlets during the Cold War. We focused on the leading broadsheet papers (Helsingin Sanomat and Uusi Suomi) and the leading business daily (Kauppalehti) and leading business weekly (Talouselämä) that were the central outlets in the Finnish business press during the Cold War period. A summary of the history of these outlets is provided in Table 1. Note that this choice unavoidably meant that we paid less attention to speciﬁc types of Ainamo et al. Business journalism in Cold War Finland 619 Table 1 Major outlets of business journalism in Finland Outlet Uusi Suomi (1847) History and characteristics In 1847, the ﬁrst major daily newspaper in the Finnish language was established. Suometar (‘Maiden of Finland’) was the product of a cohort of Finns that was overtly nationalistic. Russian censorship authorities forced the publishers to change the newspaper’s name. In 1869, it became Uusi Suometar (‘New Maiden of Finland’) and in 1919, Uusi Suomi (‘New Finland’), which remained closely linked with the Conservative Party in Finland. In 1958, Uusi Suomi acquired Kauppalehti, the business daily (see below). In the 1960s, the ﬁnancial performance of Uusi Suomi began to rapidly deteriorate although Kauppalehti’s proﬁts helped to cover Uusi Suomi’s losses. In the 1980s, Uusi Suomi was acquired by Aamulehti (see below). In 1991, Aamulehti gave up on Uusi Suomi, which was then closed. In 1881, Aamulehti was established in the industrial city of Tampere by another cohort of nationalistic Finns. Since the early 1900s, it has remained closely linked with the Conservative Party in Finland. Aamulehti Group merged in 1998 with MTV3, the leading commercial TV in Finland, to create Alma Media. Apart from Aamulehti, Alma Media publishes Iltalehti, the tabloid, and Kauppalehti. In 1889, Päivälehti was established by yet another cohort of nationalists. The founders consisted of Finnish-speaking entrepreneurs and politicians. Russian authorities closed the paper down in 1903, but it was re-established as Helsingin Sanomat (‘Helsinki News’) in 1904. In the 1930s, Helsingin Sanomat began to reinvent itself from its origins in the Finnish nationalist movement into an independent and neutral outlet. It is considered liberally rightwing. Today, Helsingin Sanomat has the largest absolute daily subscription rate of printed media outlets in the Nordic countries. SanomaWSOY, a media corporation grown around Helsingin Sanomat, remains controlled by the descendants of Eero Erkko, the founder of Päivälehti. Among other papers, it publishes the largest Finnish tabloid, Ilta-Sanomat. SanomaWSOY has internationalized from the 1970s onwards. In 1898, the Finnish Businessmen’s Association established Kauppalehti (‘The Commerce Journal’), a newspaper specializing in issues of economy and business. Kauppalehti has remained in a dominant position ever since. Since 1919, it has been published ﬁve (or at times six) times a week. In 1937, a group of Finnish businessmen dissatisﬁed with Helsingin Sanomat’s economic-news coverage established Talouselämä (‘Economic Life’). Printed in magazine format in Finnish, Talouselämä emerged as the largest business weekly in Finland. Challengers to Talouselämä’s dominance as the main weekly business magazine in Finland have appeared since the 1980s in particular but Talouselämä has managed to maintain its dominant position. Aamulehti (1881) Helsingin Sanomat (1889) Kauppalehti (1898) Talouselämä (1937) 620 Human Relations 59(5) economic journalism found only in the political press or local press. Neither did we examine the Swedish-speaking press in Finland. Rather than conducting a systematic content or genre analysis, we searched for, identiﬁed and examined overall patterns as well as focused on speciﬁc examples to map out some of the key issues discussed and the genres used. All this provided extensive material for the description and analysis of the role of the business journalists in Cold War Finland. The use of multiple sources of data also led to data triangulation, which was particularly important in the case of interpreting the interviews. In our analysis, we identiﬁed three time periods characterized by speciﬁc political and economic conditions and particular features and developments in business journalism: the reconstruction period (1945 to the mid-1960s), the period of balancing between East and West (from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s) and the period leading to the end of the Cold War and Finland joining the European Union (from the early 1980s to the mid-1990s). The main characteristics of business journalism are summarized in Table 2. In the following, we will provide a condensed historical account of how the Finnish business journalism reﬂected the overall ideological battles in Finnish society and the role that the business journalists played in these ideological struggles. We will, however, start with a short history of the overall development of Finnish society and economy during the Cold War period. Cold War Finland: A short overview Finland was part of the Kingdom of Sweden for about 800 years. Finland adopted its judicial system, governmental administration and basic political structure from its western neighbor. In this context, it is noteworthy that the Finn Anders Chydenius spoke for the liberalization of world trade already a few years before Adam Smith (Chydenius, 1765). In 1809, Sweden lost Finland to Russia, and Finland became a Great Duchy of Tsarist Russia. This was the case until the Russian revolution, after which Finland declared independence in 1917. The Finnish economy has traditionally been based on the forestry sector, and this specialization emerged as the basis for its foreign trade. In the Second World War, Finland ended up as the only country to ﬁght both the Soviet Union (1939–40 and 1941–4) and Germany (1944–5). When the war ended, the Finnish economy was in dire need of reconstruction. Large parts of eastern Finland had been lost to the Soviet Union, which also came to demand extensive war reparations from her small neighbor. War reparations were to consist mainly of metal industry products, the creation of which Ainamo et al. Business journalism in Cold War Finland 621 industry demanded large investments. The upshot was that the metal industry became a second ‘leg’ or basis for Finland’s foreign trade. In 1948, Finland committed itself to a Treaty of Cooperation, Friendship and Mutual Assistance with the Soviet Union. Basically a military agreement, this treaty also became the foundation for political and economic relations between Finland and the Soviet Union (e.g. Hentilä, 1998). Under Soviet pressure, Finland refused Marshal Aid (e.g. Keylor, 2003). American observers at times considered Finland a Soviet satellite (e.g. Hawthorne, 1958). However, the picture was in fact far more complicated. While Finnish political elite assured Soviet leaders that it ‘would in no circumstances turn against them,’ they ‘would not yield to demands going beyond the legitimate – to ideological demands for instance’ (Jakobson, 1987: 60). The immediate postwar years were a period of reconstruction in Finland (e.g. Hjerppe, 1989). The resettlement of refugees from areas lost in the war to the Soviet Union and of servicemen returning from the front, as well as construction work on the transportation network and industrial plants, placed heavy demands on the nation’s scarce resources. Paradoxically, the postwar period marked an exceptional period of uninterrupted development and economic growth in Finland. Finland was dependent on Soviet crude oil. Metal sector products were used to pay for oil purchases. The oil crisis in 1973 meant that trade with the Soviet Union came to account for over 20 percent of Finland’s total foreign trade. Well into the 1980s, Finland’s rates of savings and investment were high (for further information, see, for example, Kekkonen, 1952; Hjerppe, 1989; Pohjola, 1996). However, as a result of deregulation of the ﬁnancial markets, the rate of real investment slowed down in the 1980s. This was accompanied by a dramatic cycle of boom and bust in the ﬁnancial markets in the late 1980s and early 1990s. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Finland plunged into the deepest recession in its history as an independent nation, and only rose from its predicament in the mid-1990s (see Pulkkinen, 1997). Industries building on new technologies in electronics and telecommunications emerged as a third ‘leg’ for foreign trade and the whole economy as a whole (e.g. Lovio, 1993; Ainamo, 1997). Finland joined the European Union from 1995, which arguably signaled the end of the Cold War era in Finland for good. The reconstruction period: Promotion of business interests Immediately after the Second World War, it was difﬁcult for Finnish journalists to obtain information about industry and business. The main reason was that business journalism in Finland was in its infancy as a recognized profession. Taloustoimittajain Kerho or ‘The business journalists’ club’ was 622 Human Relations 59(5) Table 2 Characteristics of business journalism during the Cold War period in Finland Reconstruction period (1945 to mid-1960s) Balancing between West and East (mid-1960s to early 1980s) Investments Sales contracts (especially Soviet trade) Financial results Internationalization Industrial restructuring (e.g. mergers and acquisitions, downsizing, shutdowns) Genres Classical economic news Simple forms of business news Economic news Various forms of business news New kinds of ﬁnancial analysis New kinds of reportage and commentary (including investigative journalism) All kinds of economic and business news Various kinds of ﬁnancial analyses Various kinds of reportage and commentaries (including inﬂuential columns, scoops and new kinds of investigative journalism) Personal portraits and other mixed genres Mostly ideological alignment Promotion of neo-liberal ideals New kind of criticism Towards the end of the Cold War (early 1980s to mid-1990s) Investments Financial results Stock market development Issues in public debate Investments Sales contracts Relationship with political elite ‘Old boys’ network’ Tensions with the pro-Soviet elite (e.g. blacklisting of Kauppalehti) Alignment with the conservatives Ainamo et al. Business journalism in Cold War Finland 623 Table 2 continued Reconstruction period (1945 to mid-1960s) Balancing between West and East (mid-1960s to early 1980s) Increasing distance Speciﬁc problems caused by reporting on Soviet trade Some leftist voices creating speciﬁc conﬂicts Promotion of western models and practices Role in the media Marginal role Increasing recognition Promotion of market economy Increasing inﬂuence (shown e.g. in space and recognition) Neo-liberal voice Overall role in ideological struggles Promotion of business interests Promotion of the western model Neo-liberal protagonists Towards the end of the Cold War (early 1980s to mid-1990s) Mostly ideological alignment (‘lap dog journalism’) Promotion of western models and practices New kind of criticism (e.g. investigative journalism) Relationship with corporate management ‘Old boys’ network’ (implying e.g. self-censorship) established in 1948 with a ‘mission’ to act as a ‘pressure group.’ In the words of a key ﬁgure: ‘to develop the professional competence of business journalists, particularly with respect to the national economy’ and ‘to free members from being mere conduits of trade statistics or ﬁnancial quotes, as was the prewar practice in Finland.’ What began as an informal club turned into a registered professional association in 1952. After the Second World War, the Finnish political and managerial elite formed a particular kind of ‘old boys’ network’ to which also inﬂuential journalists belonged. At the core of this network was a tight cadre of men united by wartime experiences (e.g. Virtanen, 2001). While there were major differences in education and political orientation, many of these people shared a fundamental national interest: development and modernization of Finnish 624 Human Relations 59(5) society and the economy. For the business journalists, it was thus natural to organize meetings hosted by key ﬁgures of the Finnish political and corporate elite. At these meetings and other encounters, prominent business journalists were seen as part of the network. The meetings provided the club members with what was termed ‘background information.’ On the outside, business journalists were then expected to act as voices promoting knowledge of the economy and business and particularly of the speciﬁc interests of the ‘industry.’ Until the late 1960s, business journalism was neither a very developed profession, nor a well-recognized genre in the Finnish media. In many ways, the journalistic practices were still unclear and ambiguous. In this respect, Finnish business journalism seems to have lagged behind other Western European countries. As a prominent business journalist put it: ‘everything happened in Sweden four or ﬁve years before it happened in Finland.’ Characteristic of the relationship between business journalists and the managerial elite was reciprocal trust. The premise was that managers ‘could be certain that business secrets would not be published, at least not in the next day’s papers’ (Helkkula, 1988: 1). Here, it is noteworthy that the Finnish managers saw almost all ﬁnancial information, except for news of major investments and major deals, as ‘business secrets.’ The fora for reciprocal interaction with managers were meetings and press conferences hosted by ﬁrms, where journalists obtained information about business events such as large investments or new sales contracts. A well-known business journalist described these events as follows: ‘The principle was that someone organized a press conference or a function in the evening, and they didn’t even have to ask . . . out of convenience, journalists agreed that, hey, we won’t write anything about this for tomorrow’s papers now.’ To cater for the press conferences, ﬁrms were expected to serve food and drink to journalists. It became the practice in business journalism to attend such events, get a full stomach and at times quite drunk, and then head for the ofﬁce to type out the news story. The most important thing was to ‘be able to stick the sheets of paper together, if you were really drunk, three sheets in the right order, so you wouldn’t end up with 1, 3, and 2,’ as a participant put it. Another convention of business journalism was ‘the long, wet lunch,’ with alcohol and food served at the expense of the top manager acting as the host. At their best (or worst), these long lunches would go on until the early morning hours. The criticality of the business journalists was further compromised as journalism and advertising sales were not kept apart in the close networks of cooperation. Talouselämä, the business weekly, was said to have at one time attracted ‘fourteen pages of ads in order to cater for fourteen pages of Ainamo et al. Business journalism in Cold War Finland 625 journalistic material.’ As late as 1968, it was estimated that two-thirds of ﬁrms’ press releases were published more or less word-for-word in Helsingin Sanomat and Uusi Suomi, the two broadsheets (Mikkonen, 1998: 42). As to their relationship with the politicians, Soviet trade formed a particularly sensitive area. This meant that ‘no-one dared to ask any “stupid questions”’ related to the Soviet Union, as a seasoned journalist put it. This was not only a speciﬁc practice during this period, but also something that characterized the Finnish media throughout the Cold War period (e.g. Jakobson, 1987). For example, as late as the 1980s, journalists were expected to report everything they knew about a particular topic – ‘except when considerations of foreign policy demanded otherwise’ (e.g. Huovila, 1994). Nevertheless, until the late 1960s, the business press appeared to have some leeway, as the majority of the political elite seemed to recognize the need to support the reconstruction of the Finnish economy by educating the Finnish people in economic matters. In this context, Kauppalehti, the leading business daily, gradually developed into a more open advocate of the western market economy. For example, Kauppalehti took an active role in promoting integration with the Western European economies. This was the case, for instance, with the free trade agreement between Finland and the EFTA countries in 1963. However, a new breed of business journalists was beginning to appear outside Kauppalehti. Gradually, some of the journalistic ground rules were clariﬁed. Helsingin Sanomat, the leading broadsheet, played a major role in this process as it started to invest in business news. In 1972, the business section of Helsingin Sanomat was established on Tuesdays to allow for longer stories on signiﬁcant business events, following the model of the Swedish broadsheet Dagens Nyheter. Helsingin Sanomat also acquired exclusive Finnish rights to Dow Jones electronic economic and business news services. These rights had earlier resided with Uusi Suomi, which had used them sparingly. One of the reasons for this was that Kauppalehti, which was in Uusi Suomi ownership, was to cover economic and business news. In addition, Helsingin Sanomat declared an explicit policy of journalistic independence from the concerns of advertising sales. Balancing between West and East: Business journalism as a pro-market economy voice In the latter part of the 1960s, the political atmosphere in Finland intensiﬁed. Leftist ideas gained ground, and Finnish society was governed by a proSoviet political elite the symbol of which was the long-term president Urho 626 Human Relations 59(5) Kekkonen. The Finnish media was also a part of this new pro-Soviet consensus. Self-censorship in Soviet criticism was a particularly clear sign of Finlandisierung – a term ﬁrst coined by a German journalist – to denote the gradual falling of a neutral country under Soviet inﬂuence. Limits were, however, also set for this self-censorship. Most notably, the organization of the 1975 Helsinki Conference on Security and Cooperation made Finland’s international position ‘more stable and secure [and] editorial judgment as to what is or is not ﬁt to print more relaxed’ towards the end of the 1970s (Jakobson, 1987: 127). While pro-Soviet voices also started to intensify in economic matters, the Finnish business journalists – by and large – stood out as an exception. In the Finnish public debate, the business journalists continued to promote the western market economy model and economic integration with the West. Helsingin Sanomat, Uusi Suomi, Kauppalehti and Talouselämä arguably had a key role in explaining the need for the free trade treaty with the European Economic Community (EEC) to the ‘ordinary people’ in 1973. While the media in general and the leftist political press in particular took a pro-Soviet view on the increasing economic cooperation with the Soviet Union (e.g. Tolvanen, 1982), some business journalists had apparent problems in making sense of this issue. On the one hand, these increasingly signiﬁcant deals made great news. A prominent business journalist portrayed this as ‘a great business for the media, too, with large Finno-Soviet deals, signiﬁcant to the Finnish economy, to be covered . . . gigantic trade agreements and deals . . . in those times you didn’t get deals worth billions of marks elsewhere . . . Everyone wanted to write about them.’ On the other hand, most business journalists increasingly saw themselves as proponents of the western market economy model. In fact, Uusi Suomi and Kauppalehti ﬁrst tried to resist writing as much as the others about Soviet trade for ideological reasons (Tolvanen, 1982). The result was problematic for the paper. Finnish ﬁrms doing business with the Soviet Union ‘blacklisted’ Kauppalehti in terms of advertising to remain on favorable terms with the politicians who negotiated bilateral agreements with their Soviet counterparts and often in practice dictated terms of trade for individual companies. ‘With a heavy heart, this proﬁle was gradually worked on,’ as a leading Kauppalehti journalist put it. This meant that Kauppalehti ran a series of articles about Finnish trade with the Eastern bloc. Over time, a group of pro-Soviet business journalists also emerged. Their style resembled the style of the pro-Soviet political media. Typically, these journalists were more interested in overall economic issues than individual companies. A journalist with strong right-wing convictions recalls the Ainamo et al. Business journalism in Cold War Finland 627 small but loud group of left-wing business journalists: ‘These bloody communists did not want to touch a company with a ten foot pole, all they wanted to write about was the national economy.’ In any case, some of these journalists were given a great deal of space both in the broadsheets and the radio. While the pro-Soviet political elite took distance from and viewed business journalism in a critical light, there were other actors that supported the market economy orientation of the Finnish business press. In 1975, a group of conservative businessmen established Elinkeinoelämän valtuuskunta (EVA), a think-tank with a mission to inﬂuence Finnish journalists in the direction of the ‘free market,’ and to downplay left-wing tendencies in public debate. Helsingin Sanomat, for example, had according to them offered ‘too much space for different kinds of political opinions’ (Eva memo, quoted in Sanomalehtimies-Journalisten, 7 March 1978). To provide room for views promoting the market economy model and western management practices, EVA also began to subsidize Uusi Suomi, which had ﬁnancial difﬁculties. It is noteworthy that Uusi Suomi owned Kauppalehti. In the 1970s, a new distance emerged between the business journalists and the corporate elite. This was partly due to the general fear of talking about the proﬁts in a leftist societal atmosphere. Corporate managers were ‘the last people to open up’ to any kind of journalist. A journalist put it as follows: ‘If you were doing well, you did not talk about it’. Instead, managers would emphasize that they are on ‘a social mission, providing jobs.’ Another reason was that the pro-market economy business journalists were also becoming more independent and critical towards Finnish corporations and managers than before. This was shown, for example, in new kinds of ﬁnancial analyses of the companies and more thorough and sometimes critical commentaries on their strategies. In the development of journalistic practices, the reorientation of Kauppalehti in 1977 was a major turning point. The photo-journalistic intent of the new young editor-in-chief was ‘to achieve something, things that others had not done before.’ Kauppalehti created itself a ﬂow of news independent from others in Finland, with a focus on small- and medium-sized businesses ‘to actively take part and to take stands . . . proﬁling ourselves as different from Helsingin Sanomat,’ as it was later explained. At the same time, Talouselämä – the leading business weekly – also began to differentiate its proﬁle with analyses and articles on the ﬁnancial results of Finnish companies. Helsingin Sanomat, from 1978 onwards, combined ﬁnancial analyses with colorful commentary on the ﬁrms’ business and corporate management ‘to get ordinary people interested.’ 628 Human Relations 59(5) Towards the end of the Cold War: Business journalists as protagonists of the neoliberal ideology The 1970s and even the early 1980s undoubtedly had a role in that business journalists became increasingly visible agents promoting modern western management practices in the Finnish business community. As a result of the détente of the late 1970s, Finland began to open up towards the West. By that time, the Finnish political and corporate decision-makers already paid attention to the restructuration of the Finnish economic and ﬁnancial system. In this sense, the development in Finland was similar to many other Western European countries, but the change from that point on was more accentuated than in most other societies. It was really only with the process of deregulation of the Finnish ﬁnancial system from 1983 (e.g. Halttunen & Suvanto, 1988) coupled with the emergence of a sizable information and telecommunications sector (Ainamo, 1997) that the entrenched power blocs in business and industry, established over a substantial period of time, began to crumble (e.g. Kuusterä, 1990). ‘Signiﬁcant events started to unroll: deregulation, mergers and other major events in business,’ as a prominent business journalist of the old school recalled. In particular, Finnish companies across sectors started to invest in internationalization by, for example, foreign acquisitions. Foreign investors’ interest in Finnish companies appeared to rise for good. All these developments led into unprecedented hype in the Finnish economy called the ‘casino economy’ by the end of the 1980s. Interestingly, media outlets themselves became a spectacle in the national news about mergers and acquisitions, with small local and regional papers being consolidated into those media corporations that were larger in comparison (e.g. Jyrkiäinen, 1994; Jyrkiäinen & Sauri, 1997; Tommila & Salokangas, 1998). The business journalistic models of Kauppalehti, Talouselämä and Helsingin Sanomat attracted followers in the increasingly pro-market economy environment. As in most other western countries, new daily, weekly and monthly publications targeted at managers began to appear (for Nordic comparisons, see Hadenius & Weibull, 1999; Slaatta, 2003; Kjaer & Langer, 2005). The pro-market economy perspective spread from the speciﬁc business sections of broadsheet newspapers into other sections. As a result, the business press grew rapidly and its signiﬁcance in the Finnish media became more pronounced. At the same time, a new generation of journalists entered the ﬁeld. In contrast to the 1960s and 1970s, they focused their readers’ attention on ﬁnancial analyses and international (western) business models. In this new journalistic style, companies not conforming to these models were to be heavily criticized. The new cohort of business journalists thus became a social force that promoted the western model of a ﬁnancial market driven economy and neoliberal ideology. Talouselämä explained this Ainamo et al. Business journalism in Cold War Finland 629 in an article reﬂecting their own role: ‘Business journalism has in Finland been more alert than the companies in detecting the new trends. There have been ﬁghts, but what the reporters have wanted, the companies have been forced to conform to’ (Vol. 36, 1988). In this new casino economy, the relationship between the business journalists and the managers changed in a fundamental way. Instead of trying to guard ‘business secrets,’ many Finnish companies now were eager to inform the press about their intentions in cases such as share issues or major acquisitions. Many for the ﬁrst time thought about investor relations, assigning the media a role as the key carrier of their press releases and messages. As a complementary development, ‘a choir of deep throats’ emerged in Finland. Managers learned to use media for their own purposes, and business journalists learned to write scoops of dramatic events such as managerial careers and mergers and acquisitions. In the Finnish media, a number of young bankers, managers, and entrepreneurs emerged as heroes, whose actions, at the time, were seldom questioned. Finnish business journalists would later regret their simple-minded enthusiasm and lack of criticism during the late 1980s. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Finland plunged into the deepest recession in its history as an independent nation. The recession was an international one, but was particularly severe in Finland due to the collapse of the Soviet trade. The drastic consequences such as the suicide of more than one leading corporate manager, a stock market crash, a banking crisis, and massive unemployment triggered new kinds of reﬂections in the media in general and in the business press in particular. This also led to considerable self-criticism among the business journalists that they had lived in a hubris that had prevented them from seeing the problems leading to the recession (e.g. Journalisti, 3 April 1993). A seasoned journalist put it as follows: ‘Looking back at those years from 1987 to 1989, in particular, [we acted as] third rate detectives. We were just good at making news of the day. That’s sad . . . but the events covered were just so damn dramatic!’ Mikkonen (1998) sums up the attitude of the 1980s as ‘lap dog’ journalism. In particular, new kinds of genres such as investigative journalism became institutionalized parts of Finnish business journalism. Business journalists started to proactively hunt down stories following the traditions of American investigative journalism, instead of only passively waiting for news to unfold. The scoop concerning the merger of a toppling bank with its main rival in 1995 brought forward several days before the intended announcement was, at the time, seen as a major event in the history of Finnish business journalism. In the words of one of the interviewed business journalists, this ‘illustrates the strength of real-time media.’ The collapse of the Soviet Union also triggered a debate concerning potential membership in the European Union. The political, managerial and 630 Human Relations 59(5) media elite once again formed a strong alliance for ‘promoting the national cause,’ as in the case of the EEC (1972) treaty or, before that, EFTA (European Free Trade Agreement, 1963) agreement. The business press supported the European Union membership strongly, and arguably business journalists also had a major impact on the overall stands and policies of the major broadsheets. Conclusion Despite the signiﬁcance of the Cold War period, we have known little of its impact on economic and business systems in speciﬁc countries. In particular, there is a paucity of knowledge concerning the ideological struggles deﬁning what is important and legitimate for business organizations and their management. To partially bridge this gap, we have in this article examined the role of the media in the Cold War, focusing on the role of business journalism in the ideological struggles of Cold War Finland. In our analysis, we showed how this profession was both shaped by the ideological struggles and how it acted as an agent promoting speciﬁc kinds of ideas, practices and values in 1945–95. More speciﬁcally, we illustrated how this role changed during speciﬁc periods, partly as a result of the overall changes in economic and political settings, but also as a result of the development of this profession. During the reconstruction period (1945 to the mid-1960s), Finnish business journalists acted primarily as individual reporters promoting speciﬁc business interests. Between the mid-1960s and the early 1980s, business journalists by and large promoted the market economy model in Finnish society, but also pro-Soviet voices could be heard among the business journalists. From the early 1980s to the mid-1990s, business journalists then began to act as increasingly powerful protagonists of neoliberal ideology. While the Finnish case certainly has unique features, we argue that our ﬁndings also have broader signiﬁcance. In our view, this study makes contributions to three literatures. First, to our knowledge, this is the ﬁrst analysis to focus on the role of the media in the ideological struggles concerning economic and business issues in the Cold War period and thus contributes to the nascent literature on organizations and management in the Cold War context. Importantly, our analysis illustrates that the Cold War period was not only a battle between western and eastern political inﬂuence, market or planning economy, or conservative and socialist ideologies, but a struggle the exact nature of which depended on the time period and context. As our case shows, particular interpretations of national interests played a major role in these ideological struggles, the importance of which should not be underestimated. In the Ainamo et al. Business journalism in Cold War Finland 631 Finnish case, in particular, nationalism both served as a basis for consensus and was at times used as a rhetorical weapon for speciﬁc political purposes (see also Dacin, 1997). Our analysis also shows that a more complete and nuanced picture of the Cold War era requires not only a careful analysis of the overall global political and economic changes, the decisions made by local politicians, or the actions taken by speciﬁc corporate decision-makers, but also a recognition of the role that the media – and in our case business journalists – played in promoting and legitimating speciﬁc ideas and ideologies. To make it clear, we are not arguing that business journalism was the most important or the most decisive political or social force in Cold War Finland. However, we are saying that this profession came to act as an increasingly important protagonist of market economy and later neoliberal ideals, without which the spread and adoption of speciﬁc western ideas and practices would have most certainly been much slower and much more difﬁcult in Finnish business organizations and society at large than now was the case. Importantly, it was the increasing professionalization of the business journalists that made this group a powerful social force not only vis-à-vis political decision-makers but also corporate managers. Depending on the context, this protagonist role could imply a different kind of inﬂuence. For example, in the 1970s, business journalists were among the ﬁrst to promote western-style open ﬁnancial reporting standards and a more critical public scrutiny of business issues to Finnish business organizations. In partial contrast, in the 1980s, the increasingly strong neoliberal orientation of the business journalists led at times to ‘lap dog journalism’ vis-à-vis the international growth and stock market operations of Finnish companies. Second, our analysis also adds to our understanding of the development of business journalism and hence contributes to the emerging literature on business journalism (Slaatta, 2003; Mazza & Strandgaard Pedersen, 2004; Kjaer & Langer, 2005). In particular, our socio-historical approach provides a new perspective to this research area characterized by content analyses and studies of speciﬁc issues. In several ways, our ﬁndings seem to complement the observations made by Slaatta (2003) and Kjaer and Langer (2005) on the increasingly inﬂuential role of the business press in contemporary society. However, in addition, by showing how business journalism was constrained by particular societal and political forces and characterized by speciﬁc practices, our analysis provides a much more nuanced picture of the development of this profession than we have been used to see. It thus also paves the way for similar kinds of analysis in other contexts. Third, this analysis also provides a new perspective on the discussions concerning the spread of management ideas and ideologies. While the central role of the media has been acknowledged and examined in this literature 632 Human Relations 59(5) (e.g. Abrahamson, 1996; Mazza & Alvarez, 2000; Sahlin-Anderson & Engwall, 2003; Engwall & Kipping, 2004; Alvarez et al., 2005), there have been few studies of the long-term socio-political inﬂuence of the business press. In our analysis, Cold War Finland appears as a showcase of how the relationships between the central institutional actors can be very intense in a small country characterized by close networks, thereby speeding up the spread of particular ideas. Our analysis also shows the importance of the ideological dimension, which easily passes unnoticed in more decontextualized analyses that focus on speciﬁc ideas or practices. This exploratory study raises new questions for future research. First, as our analysis in this article has shown, both journalistic practices and their particular representations evolved over time in Cold War Finland. If we want to better understand the overall role of business journalism in contemporary society, we need to examine stability and change in the relationships between leading journalists, corporate managers, and other actors in other settings. Thus, it would be interesting to compare historical evidence of business journalism and ideological struggle across countries or regions. Second, while we have conducted a socio-historical study that has highlighted the emergence of speciﬁc kinds of journalistic practices, it would be meaningful to go further with a more systematic analysis of the development of particular kinds of genres and styles of reporting. This would allow us to better understand the discursive features characterizing business journalism at different time periods as well their linkages with dominant and other ideologies. Such analysis could draw, for example, on critical discourse analysis or on content analyses. Third, to be able to focus on the processes of legitimation and naturalization of a profession such as business journalism, it would be interesting to focus on speciﬁc management ideas and track discussions about these in and around the business press. Finally, as our analysis has shown, cultural interpretations of what journalistic practices are appropriate have varied over time. If we want to better understand the overall role of business journalists in contemporary society, it would be meaningful to examine the ethics of the evolving relationships between corporate managers, political decisionmakers, journalists, and journalistic practices in more detail. Acknowledgements We wish to thank the Joint Committee of the Nordic Social Science Research Councils, Liikesivistysrahasto (Foundation for Economic Education), Marcus Wallenberg research foundation and Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation for their ﬁnancial support. We are grateful for the comments received at the annual conference of the European Business History Association in Helsinki 2002, the annual conference of the European Group for Organization Studies in Copenhagen 2003 Ainamo et al. 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Antti Ainamo (MSc, LicSc, PhD) has research interests that include historical and comparative approaches to study temporary forms of organizing. His recent publications include ‘The telecom industry as cultural industry’, Research in the Sociology of Organizations (with M.-L. Djelic), ‘Coevolution of individual and ﬁrm speciﬁc competences’, Scandinavian Economic History Review, as well as Handbook of product and service development in communication and information technology, a Springer/Kluwer edited volume (with T.O. Korhonen). Currently, he is Visiting Scholar at SCANCOR (Scandinavian Center for Organizational Research) and at CRGP (Collaboratory for Research on Global Projects), both at Stanford University. He is also Senior Researcher and Docent at Helsinki School of Economics, Department of Marketing and Management, and Docent at University of Art and Design Helsinki, Department of Industrial and Strategic Design. [E-mail: ainamo@hse.ﬁ] 636 Human Relations 59(5) Janne Tienari is Professor of Management and Organizations at Lappeenranta University of Technology, Finland. His research interests include managing multinational corporations, cross-cultural studies of gender and organizing, and media discourse. Tienari’s work has been published in leading journals such as Organization Studies, Journal of Management Studies, Organization, Human Relations, Scandinavian Journal of Management, British Journal of Management, Journal of Management Inquiry, and Gender, Work and Organization. [E-mail: janne.tienari@lut.ﬁ] Eero Vaara is Professor of Management and Organization at Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration in Helsinki, Finland, and a permanent Visiting Professor at Ecole de Management de Lyon, France. His research interests focus on organizational change, industrial restructuring, and globalization. He has lately worked especially on narrative and discursive perspectives and philosophical questions in management and organization research. His work has been published in leading academic journals. [E-mail: eero.vaara@hanken.ﬁ]