Sweden
2024 (English)In: Management of Sport Organizations at the Crossroad of Responsibility and Sustainability: Perceptions, Practices, and Prospects Around the World / [ed] Kirstin Hallmann; Suvi Heikkinen & Hanna Vehmas, Malmö: Springer, 2024, 1, p. 147-158Chapter in book (Refereed)
Abstract [en]
Voluntarily organized sport is the cornerstone of Swedish sports and has an important societal role. In this chapter, the Regional Sports Confederation and Sports Education Skåne, which is the gathering body of the non-profit sport clubs in the region, represents the voluntary, non-profit sector. The Leisure Department, City of Malmö, represents the public sector. The football club Malmö FF represents the for-profit sector, despite not being a completely commercial club. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews and analysis of documents.
The three sectors have overlapping interests and a lot to gain from extended cooperation and knowledge transfer to bring about change. All our informants state a clear awareness of the importance of sustainability and highlight sustainable development and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) at the leading level of their organizations. However, their capacity and incentives to act differ, partly due to each sectors’ specific logics. Malmö FF, strongly affected by commercial logics, stands out as the organization most active in realizing the SDGs. The Leisure Department, limited by political requirements, works hard to handle basic political requirements with an ambition to do good and even be a role model among municipalities. For the sports movement, the possibility of collective actions is challenged by voluntarism and the strong autonomy of sports clubs. Perhaps it would be logical to argue for a stricter control of the sports clubs’ operations to ensure proper handling of sustainability issues, but according to the Swedish sport ideology, the incentives should rather be created from the bottom-up.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Malmö: Springer, 2024, 1. p. 147-158
Series
Sports Economics, Management and Policy, ISSN 2191-298X, E-ISSN 2191-2998 ; 25
Keywords [en]
Social sustainability, Environmental sustainability, Social responsibility, Environmental responsibility, Sport and social responsibility, Sport and environmental responsibility, Sport and social sustainability, Sport and environmental sustainability, Sport and ecologic responsibility, Sport and ecologic sustainability, Sport and SDG, Sport and sustainable development goals, Public sector, Non-profit sector, Commercial sport, Sustainable development, Responsibility
National Category
Social Sciences Interdisciplinary
Research subject
Sustainable studies; Organisational studies
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-66354DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-52489-9_13ISBN: 978-3-031-52488-2 (print)ISBN: 978-3-031-52489-9 (electronic)OAI: oai:DiVA.org:mau-66354DiVA, id: diva2:1845138
2024-03-182024-03-182024-03-18Bibliographically approved