Media Entrepreneurship Programs: Emerging Isomorphic Patterns

ABSTRACT This study examines if the area of media entrepreneurship education has developed similarities as a way to build legitimacy. This study uses institutional isomorphism to examine the likelihood, and reasons, that similarities may be emerging from separate media entrepreneurship programs. This study conducts in-depth, open-ended telephone interviews with program heads of media entrepreneurship programs across the United States. Overall, the interviews indicated isomorphic practices are emerging from media entrepreneurship programs, with the programs displaying similar coercive, normative and mimetic processes in the attempt to legitimize the emerging area of media entrepreneurship. The findings indicate that isomorphism has emerged within media entrepreneurship programs, and that media entrepreneurship is becoming a legitimized “industry” within media management and economics and journalism fields.