Policy, Governance & Event Politics
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.
Anna Sandäng & Eric Karlsson (2019)
Abstract: In this thesis, we examine the legitimizing role of accounting in a public debate. We draw upon a case study of Sweden's candidacy for hosting the Winter Olympics in 2026, in which the budget for the games played a central and at the same time problematic role. The Olympic candidature turned out to be a complex procedure, where competing interests, power dynamics, and low confidence in the budget from the start characterized the process of legitimating the candidacy. Building upon the legitimacy process framework by Patriotta et al. (2011), we apply the concept 'orders of worth' to analyze the public debate and conceptualize the role of accounting in a legitimating process. We find that the role of accounting and the factors influencing it differ between the stages of the legitimating process. More specifically, we find that differing mobilizations of orders of worth affect an organization’s ability to legitimize a project to different stakeholders using accounting. In parallel, we show that the quality of current and past budgets also plays a role in the legitimating process. We term this historical bias against accounting 'the broken environment', since it affected the Swedish Olympic Committee's ability to legitimize the candidature using the budget. Thereby, it influenced both the role of accounting and the legitimation process.
Carl Lundborg & Matilda Ward (2017)
Abstract: The Swedish government wants to arrange more international sports events to strengthen Sweden's position as an attractive destination among the global audience. To arrange such an event in a Swedish municipality, in most cases, the local politicians need to accept the arrangement in the municipal council. The purpose of the study was to empirically examine factors that can influence a local politician in the decision-making regarding the arrangements of international sports events in the municipality. Two studies were conducted, one qualitative and one quantitative. The qualitative study aimed to identify stakeholder groups in the matter and determine their salience from the perspective of a local politician. The results revealed eight stakeholder groups where the destination companies and local sports associations possessed the highest degree of salience. Furthermore, the qualitative study aimed to provide an understanding of the context of arranging an international sports event and the dynamics preceding the decision. This understanding was used as a basis for the quantitative study. The quantitative study aimed to explore factors influencing acceptance of the decision, resource allocation, confidence in the decision, and perceived risk regarding the arrangement. The quantitative study tested factors that have previously been proven to influence decision-making in general: familiarity (experience and knowledge), affect (liking), and factors for evaluating effects (social, economic, environmental, image, and tourism). Moreover, additional factors in terms of characteristics of the municipality and the politician were explored. The findings reveal that politicians with greater knowledge of arranging sports events and/or who have a greater liking for sports are more inclined to accept the decision. Further, politicians with greater knowledge, liking, or experience feel more confident in their decisions. The perceived importance of the event's effect on the municipal image influences the acceptance of decisions.
Keys to Football Success (BSc)
Joakim Kjeller (2015)
Abstract: Despite the popularity of football, no one has made a study of what external factors affect the chances of being a successful football city in Sweden. In this thesis, a statistical study, using a Fixed Effects model, of all Swedish municipalities in the years 2003-2012 is performed to identify the most important external factors affecting the football performance. The number of points in Allsvenskan, the highest Swedish football division, is used as the measure of performance, and the explanatory variables are chosen based on previous research. The results show that the optimal Swedish football city has a recent history of being successful in football, and it is unlikely that we will see many new municipalities represented in Allsvenskan in the future. Increases in the educational level also have a small positive impact on the football performance. Competition from an additional team in Allsvenskan from the same county, but from another municipality, has a small negative impact on the football performance of a municipality.
Louise Karlsson (2014)
Abstract: Management control systems (MCS) are a common feature in most organizations. However, few have explored the functioning of MCS in sports event organizations. This paper aims to address this apparent gap, exploring how sports event organizations apply MCS and investigating how such systems are affected by the pulsating nature of the organizations' operations as well as by their stakeholders. A multiple case study, including six Swedish sport event organizations, serves as the basis of the analysis. Adopting a broad perspective on management control in order to capture both informal and formal controls and applying the framework by Malmi and Brown (2008) enabled the identification of the control elements. The distinction between participator and spectator events, as well as the concept of stakeholders and the pulsating organization, was found useful and enhanced the understanding of MCS in sport event organizations. The findings suggest that stakeholders' effect on MCS differs depending on the characteristics of the stakeholders. Furthermore, action planning is found to be a prominent control element assisting sport event organizations in managing the inherent pulsating nature of the operations.