Football Management & Strategy
Peter Hamra & Lucas Halef (2024)
Abstract: This thesis explores the influence of LALIGA, a renowned football league operating as a meta-organization, on the operational priorities of its member clubs. More specifically, it examines the impact on performance measurement systems and outlines the challenges and tensions arising from the complex meta-organizational structure. Data was collected through extensive interviews with executives and managers from both LALIGA and its Primera DivisioĢn clubs and was subsequently coded and analyzed. The research reveals that LALIGA shifts how its member clubs prioritize and balance performance measures, guided by the dual institutional logics prevalent in football organizations. While LALIGA successfully redirects its members' institutional logics, it also encounters inherent challenges due to the complex nature of such organizations. These challenges include managing the heterogeneity among members, which LALIGA strives to minimize, and dealing with the subsequent issues that arise from these efforts. Additionally, the thesis delves into the difficulties of aligning the individual objectives of the clubs with the collective objective of LALIGA.
Tova Isberg & Jessica Kollberg (2023)
Abstract: This thesis examines the interrelationship between accounting practices and the coexistence of multiple institutional logics in a Swedish elite women's football team. While previous studies have investigated the nexus of accounting and sports, the perspective of a female sports organization remains unexplored. In light of this research gap, we draw on the notion of passionate interest along with prior studies on institutional logics in sports organizations to demonstrate how accounting practices are shaped by said logics. We build on the idea of a predominant sports and business logic in professional sports organizations and show that due to a lack of financial incentive to invest in sports success in women's football, the sports and business logics are perpetually competing with each other, with the business logic always taking priority over the sports logic. We explain this through the notion of passionate interest, whereby we found that (i) passionate interest among stakeholders is a key factor in enforcing the sports logic and (ii) there is a clear lack of passionate interest in the women's team of our case organization, rendering the sports logic weak and uninfluential. Instead, a sports-for-all logic, emphasizing values of democracy and public welfare, appears to be prominent in shaping the accounting practices of the women's team.
Sadia Abdi & Lennart Asensio Nitz (2022)
Abstract: This qualitative study investigates how managers in a Swedish elite football club handle and make sense of multiple institutional logics by drawing upon the theories of institutional logics and framing. A single case study was conducted in which 12 individuals in various roles at the case football club participated in in-depth interviews. The findings show the existence of three main institutional logics or frames, namely, a sports, business, and identity logic. The coexistence of these three logics at the case football club resulted in different tactics to manage this plurality of frames: frame blending, frame shifting, as well as frame compartmentalization, and frame denial. There was a multitude of frame tactics deployed depending on the individual and the context. It was also found that frame tactics could depend on identity work, emotions, as well as that those tactics could be deployed in a dynamic way. For instance, a frame compartmentalization from the sports logic in light of a blending of the business and identity logic tactic. This thesis helps practitioners to identify which possible frame tactics to deploy in case of dealing with multiple institutional logics, independent of industry or sector.
Dennis Fageräng & Felix Tuomainen (2022)
Abstract: Through this qualitative, single-case study, we aim to examine how the board of AIK operates on an organizational level in order to successfully develop the goals, vision, and strategy for the club. We do so through in-depth semi-structured interviews with key personnel who have an influence over the development of the club’s long-term strategy. Through the theoretical framework of stakeholder theory, agency theory, and institutional logics, we analyze the empirical data. We found that for the board of AIK, one key is to understand the stakeholder landscape and value the importance of each stakeholder thereafter. We also noted that the acceptance of the Swedish association culture forms the basis of the identity of AIK, and this, in turn, promotes cooperation within the club. Lastly, we also found that a well-developed goal and vision program with clearly defined long-term strategy goals acted as a facilitator for the compromises that occur in hybrid organizations, between institutional logics. Overall, the goal and vision document also has an important role in defining these goals and the culture to stakeholders, members, and supporters.
How to manage tensions between institutional logics (BSc)
Agnes Persson & Sarah Berglind (2022)
Abstract: Nowadays, operating a football club is a rather complex task where clubs have several stakeholders with different interests. The interest in achieving sporting results and the interest in achieving financial results are in particular prominent, and management within football clubs has to conduct the club in a way that fulfills both these interests. However, in many situations, it is not possible to make decisions that favor both sporting success and financial position. Thus, a tradeoff between sport and business has to be made. The purpose of this thesis has been to investigate how management within top football clubs in Sweden considers this tradeoff between sport and business, both in a general, more long-term perspective as well as in a short-term, more situation-specific context. The research was structured using a qualitative method where semi-structured interviews with management from three different clubs in Allsvenskan were conducted. In total, eight people were interviewed, and the data generated was analyzed in conceptual terms through a theoretical lens. The study found that all clubs mainly use a decoupling strategy for managing conflicting interests in a general overall perspective, and a compromising strategy in daily, more specific situations. Moreover, depending on the specific situation, the study found that the clubs need to prioritize sport and business interests differently. Based on the analysis, the study concluded that clubs that are in a more disadvantageous financial position are more often forced to prioritize the financial interest over the sport interest, whereas clubs with a more beneficial financial position, to a larger extent, can choose which interest they want to favor in a certain situation.
Management control in a hybrid setting – a case study of a Swedish football club (MSc)
Hamza Ali (2021)
Abstract: Research within sports associations is, from an accounting perspective, a modestly researched area, where the multifaceted circumstances and organizational settings existing in sports clubs affect the use of management control systems. Taking an all-inclusive view on how management control systems are designed in sport organizations in tough times, I expand prior research on management control and sports that mainly has discovered constricted topics within the chosen subject. To achieve the purpose of the thesis, a comprehensive case study of a Swedish professional football association, xxx F.C., has been conducted with the identification of two fundamental logics: sports logic and business logic. Linking the object-of-control framework provided by Merchant & Van der Stede (2017), I formulate a theoretical framework, which leads to the collection and analysis of data. The discoveries illustrate that xxx F.C. is a hybrid organization where the business and sports logics exist but appear not to be in conflict. Despite the turbulent times within the association, the strong prevailing culture that exists with the strong emotional connection employees have to the organization, together with the lack of formal guidelines, has implied a greater focus on the sports logic and consequently the whole organization being dependent on achieving sporting success and selling their assets to survive.
Corporate governance and organizational relations: The rules of the game for a Swedish Football club (MSc)
Louise Hiort af Ornäs & Petter Aasa (2020)
Abstract: The aim of this study is to understand how an elite football club accommodates its environmental uncertainties and the dependencies of internal and external stakeholders. We seek to explore this phenomenon by conducting a qualitative, single-case study. Although a plethora of research has been done within the field of corporate governance, little research has been done on how sports organizations act within these parameters to balance the cultural and commercial aspects of their organization while complying with the demands of members, supporter groups, and corporate partners. This study hopes to contribute to the field of corporate governance by analyzing a Swedish football club through the lens of resource dependency, stakeholder theory, and strategic alliances. This will carry the ongoing research field into how hybrid sports organizations have to structure their internal organization to adapt to uncertainty and dependencies of internal and external stakeholders to gain a competitive advantage over other teams within the sports league. We find that the members' power directly increases the uncertainty that the club faces. Their influence causes major turnover problems both for the positions of the board of directors and for the top executive and management teams. This, in turn, negatively affects the club since the executive starts prioritizing short-term initiatives to please the members instead of focusing on long-term strategies, sustainable initiatives, and directives for performance and financial success.
Oliver Lindqvist Parbratt & Marcus Wernersson (2019)
Abstract: In an attempt to explore an underexplored linkage in previous literature on accounting and sport, this thesis investigates how differences in thought worlds in a Swedish elite football club may lead to differences in effects on organizational routines of an implemented performance measurement system (PMS). This is done by performing a qualitative single-case study on a Swedish elite football club, and developing a theoretical framework based on the concepts of thought worlds and organizational routines from Dougherty (1992), integrated with Weick's (1995) sensemaking and his discussion of the pulsating interrelation between intersubjectivity and generic subjectivity. Through this, it is found that: (1) thought worlds and organizational routines differ between the business and sports parts of a football club; (2) the implementation of a PMS may give rise to uncertainty in its interruptive entrance; and, (3) the PMS is better (worse) received if the contents of it are compatible (incompatible) with the sensemaking processes of the thought worlds.
Olle Göransson & Carl Hedström (2019)
Abstract: This study examines the current role of the finance function in Swedish football and ice hockey clubs. We make three contributions to the previous literature. First, by building on Janin's (2016) study on management accountants at a French football club, our work conduces advancements within an uncharted area of research within sports & accounting, namely, business partnering within the finance function. Our empirical findings reveal that the role of the finance function in Swedish football and ice hockey clubs varies across clubs, but also that distinct differences explained by environmental uncertainties are observed between the two sports. Second, we find that the level of business partnering exerted by the CFO is mostly dependent on three contingent variables: industry culture (external), environmental uncertainties (external), and organizational structure (internal) (Otley, 2016). These contingent variables influence the role expectations sent from other organizational members, which in turn shape the role of the CFO. Third, inspired by Byrne & Pierce (2007), we build on the framework developed by Katz & Kahn (1978) by incorporating independent contingent variables. We claim that the extension of the framework facilitates a holistic analysis of roles within complex organizations that are significantly impacted by external, industry-specific variables.
Falk Wahlström & Marcus Åvall (2019)
Abstract: Following an increasing commercialization of sports in general and football in particular, modern sports organizations may need to challenge their current business model. Through a qualitative study of a Swedish elite football club, the aim of this paper has been to distinguish the roles of management accounting when reframing a sports organization with a strong culture. We find that institutional logics succumb to business logics while tensions are mitigated through the deployment of a well-defined long-term strategy. By using a Foucauldian perspective, we studied the power dynamics employed and found that employees are mainly empowered by being increasingly measured, as opposed to what Foucault may suggest. We conclude that elite football clubs may use management accounting processes to achieve long-term stability while decreasing short-term focus on sport performance.
Controlling the journey from amateur to pro – Institutional work in sport organizations (MSc)
Rikard Edvardsson & Michael Kestad (2017)
Abstract: In light of the professionalization of elite sports, the field has become divided into two parts, the amateur and the professional level, with differing conditions and logics that affect the design and use of management control systems (MCS). Taking a holistic view on how MCS develops in sport organizations that move from amateur to professional, we add to previous research on management control and sports that mainly have explored narrow topics of control. This multiple case study examines three Swedish football clubs that made the journey to tier 1 in a similar time period, although in separate ways, as the clubs engaged in different types of institutional work: maintaining, creating, and disrupting. We make three main contributions: First, regardless of MCS professionalization, soft controls are the dominant form of control when moving from amateur to professional, in which culture, values, and beliefs are used as the main controls. Second, despite the isomorphism in sports, strong institutional actors can challenge norms and practices, as the three clubs, through the design of their MCS, engaged in different institutional work. Third, we argue that the absence of a distinct institutional actor should be understood as the main reason for conformity among sport organizations, rather than solely strong institutional pressures.