Performance & Organizational Culture
Agnes Persson & Agnes Malm (2024)
Abstract: The study aims to explore how top management within Swedish elite football clubs perceives the institutional logics present within the organization and how the budget is used as a tool to mitigate the conflicts between these logics. The three main logics present are social welfare logic, sports logic, and business logic. By doing a multi-case study and applying the lens of institutional theory, the study seeks to understand how these clubs use different strategies to manage these tensions. To answer the research question, semi-structured interviews with eight different clubs have been conducted. The findings provide evidence for four strategies previously mentioned in the literature: the collaboration strategy, the compromising strategy, the separation strategy, and the decoupling strategy. In addition, the study contributes to existing literature by revealing a new strategy, the postponing strategy, which clubs commonly adopt during periods of high uncertainty. Furthermore, two new variants of the collaboration strategy have been identified. The study demonstrates that football clubs are exposed to several conflicting institutional logics but that the budget often functions as a means to mitigate these, extending its role beyond that of a mere financial tool.
Do Football Players Give Female Coaches the Red Card? (MSc)
Erica Froste Myrin & Sigrid Holmgren (2023)
Abstract: In Swedish elite football, the skewed gender distribution between coaches is conspicuous, and this thesis aims to investigate one channel as to why there are so few female coaches in this environment. Previous research has found that students evaluate female teachers more critically than male teachers, even in components that they cannot control; might this be the case in Swedish elite football as well? We have conducted a framed field experiment on the teams in the highest football division for players 19 years or under in Sweden. 505 participants watched a video with instructions on a football skill and evaluated it. Half of the players were instructed by a female coach and the other half by a male coach. We find no evidence of a gender bias in this sample at the statistical significance level of 5 %. Neither did we find any significant results when controlling for participants being a member of a male or female team, nor when controlling for currently or previously having exposure to a female coach. A series of robustness checks were conducted, and we find our results to be robust.
Play For the Badge! A Study of the Management Accountant’s Identity in Swedish Sports Organizations (MSc)
Mabast Baban & Oscar Franzén Ehrlich (2022)
Abstract: This paper contributes to extant research on the management accountant's identity by studying identity work in hybrid sports organizations tinged by permanent liminality. Through a cross-sectional field study on 16 Swedish sports organizations, this paper addresses a gap in prior research on identities in hybrid organizations, sports organizations, and organizations in permanent liminality. Further, by integrating theory on permanent liminality with Horton & Wanderley's (2018) framework on multiple identities and identity conflicts, the study explores how management accountants construct their identities and make sense of the liminal context. The study finds that permanent liminality is managed by a continuous adjustment of the current identity with varying levels of professional and organizational identification. Thereby, the study suggests that the identity in liminality is fluid rather than static. Moreover, the study finds that in the sports setting, identity conflicts are moderated by passion and organizational prestige, diminishing the risk for job dissatisfaction and personnel turnover.
Carl Grant & Marcus Skantze (2018)
Abstract: In a time of pervasive quantitative performance regimes and numerical professionalization, an investigation of individual accountability seems timely. This paper seeks to investigate the role of calculative practices in governing the emotions and performances of individuals within popular culture. By applying the lens of Foucault (1977) and conceptualizing his concept of internalization as a cognitive state (Sauder and Espeland, 2009), our first main contribution is that performance measurement systems (PMS) seem to govern individuals by informing their emotions. We find that emotions are unique with a distinct PMS, and dependent on the successful administration of the system to render productive individual performance. Additionally, measures that appealed to self-interest seemed to generate productive emotions with players and positively impact their performances. The second main contribution was to highlight the role of the expert in creating productive emotions with individuals. Credible data collection of the administered PMS, management of personal relationships with players, and avoiding mixing qualitative and quantitative discourse were important factors to decrease negative cognitions between players and the administered PMS.
Cultural dynamics with a vision of a talent factory (BSc)
Niklas Samuelsson & Jakob Lyckenvik (2017)
Abstract: The war for talent is a battle where organizations are fighting to put the right people, with the right skills, in the right place, in order to get a competitive advantage. For this reason, the question of how to manage and develop talent is of great importance for any organization. Within the context of sport, this type of research has increased since the end of the 20th century. One major reason for this is that the world of sports tends to fascinate people, both commercially and because of the pure athletic performance. By studying sports, we can accumulate knowledge that can be applied in other contexts, such as corporate organizations. Research emphasizes dominant features that are crucial for talent to develop and reach full potential, where one of those features is the existence of an appropriate organizational culture. For this reason, it is of interest to see what happens if one combines the findings of organizational culture in talent management with the world of sports. This study aims to investigate the cultural dynamics in two famous Swedish football academies. One is successful and has a strong culture, whereas the other one is less successful and therefore is trying to change the organizational culture. The purpose is to understand the (re)production of organizational culture in these two organizations.