Eivind Å. Skille
University of Innland Norway, Elverum
A relatively new phenomenon in Norwegian sport is private football academies. They stand outside the national football association and offer – for purchase – tailored sessions for individual skill development. Inspired by sport studies into organizational change focusing on ‘high impact systems’ and analytically founded on theories into institutional leadership and institutional work, this paper investigates how voluntary Norwegian football clubs interpret and act upon private football academies. Empirically based on 16 interviews with representatives of six voluntary football clubs, two overarching and intertwined findings were identified. First, many football club representatives consider the private academies as normatively wrong and as threatening the Norwegian sports model, founded ideologically and practically on voluntary work. This is analyzed along the lines of ‘high impact system (of change)’, implying that if the particular element of volunteerism is changed, Norwegian football – and consequently: the comprehensive Norwegian sports model – will change. The second main finding is that there are variations across representatives – or rather across roles – of football clubs; there is a particular distinction between democratically elected chairs and members of boards, on one side; and employed people in sports specific position on the other. The board representatives work as institutional leaders to protect the established football and sports model by ideologically and practically repelling the private academies, and inversely, the employed sports persons show a more positive and/or pragmatic attitude towards the private academies, and sometimes conduct collaborative practices. This finding aligns with the theoretical ideas of how institutional work depends on positions and roles in an organization.
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