Petter Gottschalk
BI Norwegian Business School
There are several leadership styles, governance structures, and organizational cultures discussed in the research literature and applied in sport management. This article asks the question of what might work best in sport management when the focus is on preventing, detecting, and correcting individual deviance, which is a negative phenomenon in sport as it refers to behaviors that go against and violate expectations, norms, values, as well as rules, regulations, and laws. While ethical and democratic leadership styles are normally recommended, sometimes dictatorial and narcissistic leadership styles are needed to fight deviance. While learning rather than punishing, flat rather than hierarchical, and federal rather than unitary governance structures are normally recommended, sometimes the opposite is needed to fight deviance. While inclusion rather than exclusion, equality rather than inequality, and cooperation rather than rivalry are normally recommended for organizational culture, sometimes the opposite is needed to fight deviance.
Click to access this peer review article in Scandinavian Sport Studies Forum, Vol. 17, 2026
PETTER GOTTSCHALK was the managing director and chief executive officer at several business enterprises, including CEO at ABB Data Cables, before joining academia. He is a Professor in the Department of Leadership and Organizational Behavior at BI Norwegian Business School. Dr Gottschalk has published extensively on convenience theory, corporate investigations and white-collar crime. He received his education at TU Berlin, MIT, Dartmouth and Henley.
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