Accounting and the Dark Side of Passionate Interest - The Case of a Swedish Elite Women's Football Team

Abstract: This thesis examines the interrelationship between accounting practices and the coexistence of multiple institutional logics in a Swedish elite women's football team. While previous studies have investigated the nexus of accounting and sports, the perspective of a female sports organization remains unexplored. In light of this research gap, we draw on the notion of passionate interest along with prior studies on institutional logics in sports organizations to demonstrate how accounting practices are shaped by said logics. We build on the idea of a predominating sports and business logic in professional sports organizations and show that due to a lack of financial incentive to invest in sports success in women's football, the sports and business logics are perpetually competing with each other - with the business logic always taking priority over the sports logic. We explain this through the notion of passionate interest, whereby we found that (i) passionate interest among stakeholders is a key factor in enforcing the sports logic and (ii) there is a clear lack of passionate interest in the women's team of our case organization, rendering the sports logic weak and uninfluential. Instead, a sports-for-all logic, emphasizing values of democracy and public welfare, appears to be prominent in shaping the accounting practices of the women's team.