To Örebro University

Research Question: The study aims to offer a typology illustrating sport clubs' common values, and how they influence clubs' potential responses to policy reforms and modernization efforts. Based on a conceptual framework focusing on the roots of modernization and tradition, as well as intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in grassroots sport, we construct a typology of values inherent and embedded in sport clubs.

Research Methods: We generated some 600 pages of empirical material from published club handbooks, guidelines, and strategy documents from 21 Norwegian sport clubs. The intertextual analysis was influenced by organizational discourse analysis.

Results and Findings: The discursive analysis of sport clubs' official communication reveals four overarching themes underpinning their governance: (a) lifelong activity and community creation; (b) democracy, schooling, and inclusion; (c) voluntarism, local anchoring, and collective understanding; and (d) innovation, professionalism, and communication. Our findings show the variance of values articulated by sport clubs and how they relate to wider traditional, modern, intrinsic, and extrinsic values.

Implications: With this study, we can not only conceptualize how sport clubs view modernization efforts embedded in policy initiatives but also better theoretically understand how they would respond to potential reforms. Methodologically, this study provides an alternative approach to the often-quantitative methods on sport club typologies and often-binary golden standards used to measure and implement governance frameworks. For policymakers wanting sport clubs to better their governance, this study offers an understanding of the complexity in which sport clubs operate.

This study explores the relevance, and applicability, of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in relation to Norwegian sport organizations’ sustainability transition. The following research questions guided the study: (1) How do National Sport Governing Bodies (NGBs) strategically address and prioritize SDGs and why? (2) How does the strategic prioritization of SDGs align with sport managers’ perspectives? (3) What does their prioritization of SDGs imply about the progress of sustainability transition within the Norwegian sports sector? The qualitative study is based on three interviews with directors in NGBs, document analysis of 11 strategy documents by six NGBs’ and essays produced by 82 sport managers representing the respective NGBs. Data analysis was informed by neo-institutional theory and the waves of sustainability transition framework. In our sample, spanning a diverse range of sports, we observed that 10 different SDGs are seen as relevant for NGBs from a strategy perspective, while sport managers prioritized eight. There is a strong alignment between national strategies and sport managers’ perspectives which is explainable through coercive, mimetic and normative pressures within the organizational field of sports. This further demonstrates that SDG prioritization is linked to the sport political context. While the alignment of prioritization from different perspectives provides a solid foundation for advancing sustainability work, the missing link between the SDGs and organizational goals with concrete suggestions for measures witnesses that Norwegian sport organizations are still in the infancy of sustainable transition.

Ein Fokus auf Good Governance in Sportorganisationen wird zunehmend als Notwendigkeit wahrgenommen, nicht zuletzt als Reaktion auf zahlreiche große Skandale und Krisen in den führenden internationalen Sportorganisationen, zum Beispiel der FIFA und dem IOC. Obwohl viele andere Sportorganisationen nicht die gleiche Aufmerksamkeit in den internationalen Medien erhalten, stehen sie auf allen Ebenen, bis hin zu Breitensportvereinen, vor ähnlichen Problemen und Krisen, von denen viele auf schlechte Governance-Strukturen, -Prozesse und -Praktiken zurückzuführen sind. Dieses Kapitel gibt einen Überblick über die Entwicklung von Good Governance im Sport. Die Entwicklung von Prinzipien und Kodizes für Good Governance basiert auf verschiedenen theoretischen Grundlagen und verbindet vielfältige Perspektiven, darunter Corporate Governance, politische Governance sowie organisatorische und systemische Governance. Zudem gilt es Indikatoren zur Bewertung und Überwachung der Einhaltung von Goo Governance in Sportorganisationen herauszuarbeiten. Obwohl bisherige Bemühungen noch nicht zu einer standardisierten und einhelligen Auffassung von Good-Governance-Prinzipien für Sportorganisationen geführt haben, besteht Einigkeit darüber, dass Transparenz, Rechenschaftspflicht und Demokratie der Schlüssel für einen Wandel hin zu guter Governance sind. Da die gesellschaftliche Verantwortung zunehmend als Pflicht für Sportorganisationen angesehen wird, muss auch diese in Zukunft an die Good-Governance-Strukturen von Sportorganisationen auf allen Ebenen integriert und umgesetzt werden.

Scholars emphasise the need to understand how contested concepts, like social inclusion and legacy, are interpreted within specific contexts. However, there are a lack of critical studies on social legacies of sports mega-events. This study aims to analyse how social inclusion of marginalised groups is constructed in the legacy-shaping process of and bidding for the Olympic Games. Three cases were chosen in which the inclusion of Indigenous Peoples was stated as one of the goals of the bidding and organising committees: Sydney 2000, Vancouver 2010 and Tromsø 2014, 2018 bids. Translation theory and critical discourse analysis were used to understand how inclusion and legacy efforts are taken into action. The cases spread across space, time and bidding stage did not provide unique approaches to the formulations of legacies and inclusion. Despite the highlighted celebration of culture and diversity of communities in the documents, we interpret the inclusion discourse as a symbolic appreciation of Indigenous Peoples with attempts to address and solve the challenges connected to social exclusion. However, these attempts are characterised by postcolonial and assimilation thinking. A broader commitment is needed to create lasting social change through long-term initiatives created with and led by Indigenous Peoples.

Research question This study aimed to examine how actors across different organizational levels respond to institutional complexity when facilitating elite sport and sport for all. By applying institutional work to understand responses to institutional complexity better, we examined the individual actors’ organizational roles and why and how they transformed the complexity in performing day-to-day work.

Research methods Data were collected in a bottom-up approach using qualitative focus groups and in-depth interviews. 149 representatives within Norwegian sport organizations contributed to the study, including coaches, club managers, directors, managers in national sport organizations, and the president of the Norwegian Olympic and Paralympic Committee and Confederation of Sports (NIF)

Results and findings Institutional complexity is differently characterized at the different organizational levels. One common issue across levels is that the institutional complexity of sport for all and elite sport is seen as challenging, especially in the local sport clubs where institutional logics turn into day-to-day activity. The main source of the challenge is unifying the youth players and practitioners’ different skills and ambitions, which propagates upwards in the organization. How actors respond to complexity varies within the organizational levels and the different sports. Tensions stemming from complexity are often neglected by the political argument of ‘the trickle down and up effects’, which to a considerable extent lacks empirical evidence.

Implications We recommend local sport managers prioritize expectation management to counteract a conflict of interests between institutional logics. It is necessary that national governing bodies better align their policies with the interest and organizational capacity of local clubs.

The purpose of this article is to examine the role played by organizational culture in young people’s continuing underrepresentation in decision-making bodies, despite structural changes, in the context of Norwegian sport organizations. Data is based on a questionnaire centred on the experiences of young people in sport governance (n = 32 youth representatives) and semi-structured interviews with young (under 26 years) and older representatives of organizations affiliated with the Norwegian Olympic and Paralympic Committee and Confederations of Sports (n = 10). Findings show that Norwegian sport organizations foster a cultural understanding of young people which takes its structural expression in the separation of elements that are ‘othering’ the youth. Youth have also limited access to resources of power as a result of a lack of trust in older leaders. Prevailing culture mirrors an adult society in which young people need to upgrade their level of professionalism through education before they are invited to decision-making processes.

Coaching in Scandinavia is characterized by tensions between voluntary ideals and increased demands for professionalization. This paper examines the origins and content of such demands, how voluntary run and governed football clubs translate them into practices, and the impact of professionalization on the coach role. Within an organizational perspective, our analysis is framed by institutional theory and a translation perspective and draw on data from interviews with representatives of Norwegian football clubs. The results show how demands for professionalization are translated into (new) practices in football clubs and lead to (more) professionalization of the coach role. In a 'top-down' trajectory, professionalization is characterized by bureaucratization driven by a need to satisfy the Norwegian Football Federation and Norwegian Elite Football. In a 'bottom-up' trajectory, professionalization is characterized by individualization driven by pressures from members to tailor-make the club's service offer. In a 'trickle-sideways' trajectory, professionalization is characterized by marketization driven by the establishment of private football academies that exert pressure on football clubs to adapt to a more customer-oriented membership base. In conclusion, this examination highlights the multidimensional character of the professionalization of the coach role and emphasizes the need for further research on the broader ramifications of professionalization in contexts characterized by voluntary ideals.

Conceptualising the youth representative as an institutional role, we explore the institutional shaping of youth representatives as change agents in the governance of sport organisations. Focusing on how these shaping conditions who the youth representative can be and what determines the scope of their role fulfilment, including the impact of their work on established institutional orders, allows us to examine the shaping of agency related to governance institutions. Data is drawn from a questionnaire centred on the experiences of young people in sport governance (n = 32) and semi-structured interviews with 10 representatives of organisations affiliated with the Norwegian Olympic and Paralympic Committee and Confederations of Sports. The role of the youth representatives is scripted in terms of who the representatives ought to be and what they ought to do. The scripting associated with the operationalisation of this ambition into role pre- and proscriptions stands in stark contrast to the ideal of youth representatives as agents of institutional change. Our study of the scripting of institutional roles has theoretical implications because it shows how normative typifications that link notions of actors with actorhood circumscribe institutional work pertaining to change.

The aim of this study is to review the literature on lifestyle sports and lifestyle sport contexts with regard to the developmental potential they may represent in young people’s everyday lives. The review applies a relational developmental systems approach to youth development. The eligibility criteria are based on the phenomenon of interest and outcomes. Hence, we include studies examining the associations between young people performing lifestyle sports and potential developmental outcomes: mental, biological, social, and behavioral. The present study shows that the volume of research on informal lifestyle sport is rather extensive and that studies on the way these activity contexts may affect developmental processes in youth are diverse and wide ranging. The studies suggest that performing lifestyle sports may have several beneficial health and skills outcomes. Furthermore, positive associations are suggested between involvement in lifestyle sport contexts such as climbing, snowboarding, parkour, tricking, kiting, and surfing and (a) mental outcomes such joy, happiness, freedom, euphoria, motivation, self-efficacy, and well-being; (b) social outcomes such as gender equality, network building, social inclusion, interaction, friendship; and (c) behavioral outcomes such as identity, creativity, and expressions of masculinity and/or femininity. The review performed indicates that lifestyle sport contexts are flexible according to needs and desires that exist among the practitioners and that the human and democratic origins of these contexts make them supportive for positive movement experiences and for positive youth development. The findings have implications for PE teachers, social workers, policymakers, sport organizations, and urban architecture, in that providing lifestyle sport opportunities in the everyday lives of young people will foster a holistic development in a positive way.