Corporate governance and organizational relations: The rules of the game for a Swedish Football Club

Abstract: The aim of this study is to understand how an elite football club accommodates their 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, finite research has been made 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 but also 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.