(6) The organizational capacity hypothesis
The last potential answer to the question of why some agencies put more effort into the
media than others is related to the agencies’ tangible personal and financial resources.
There are large differences in size between agencies – some have many more resources
than others – and this could be the simple, slightly deflating, main determinant of mediatization.
In many studies on public sector organizations, differences in size are found
to be an important determinant of variance in various dependent variables (Christensen
and Laegreid 2007; Verhoest et al. 2010). Research in organization studies pinpoints that
organizational size is positively related to negative outcomes such as inertia (Hannan and
Freeman 1984), as well as to positive outcomes such as innovation (Haveman 1993) and
compliance (Ashworth et al. 2009). Studies of government communication also suggest
that size is generally positively related (Ward 2007, p. 11; Sanders et al. 2011, pp. 527–28;
Schillemans 2012, p. 145). For these reasons, our sixth and last hypothesis is that organizational
size is likely to positively influence the level of mediatization of the agencies under
investigation.