Practicing Good Governance: Insights From Sport Clubs in Five European Countries

Codes of good governance have become an inseparable part of the vocabulary and policies of sport organisations (Geeraert & van Eekeren, 2022; Girginov, 2022; Shilbury & Ferkins, 2020; Winand & Anagnostopoulos, 2019). Yet, there is a paucity of research on governance as a practice. The main research question addressed by this original study was what practices constitute the concept of good governance at club level and how these differ from the generally established indicators of good governance.

The study was informed by the social practice theory, which offers a new vista on organisations and considers them both as the site and the result of work activities (Reckwitz, 2002; Shove, Pantzar & Watson, 2012). Social practice theory integrates three key elements including materials (i.e., objects, goods and infrastructure), competence (i.e., practical know-how and understanding the situation), and meanings (i.e., understanding of social significance of the practice and past experiences of participation). Organised activities or practices represent the basic unit of analysis, where organisational members are seen as the carriers and performers of practices. The practice of sport governance was conceptualised as the application of a set of four key principles including democracy, transparency, accountability and social responsibility. Thompson et al (2022) reported the existence of 258 good governance principles, but most commentators (Geeraert, 2019; Dawling et al., 2020) and existing codes in the countries studied agree that these four principles constitute the core of the concept.

An exploratory research design was employed with the aim of producing new ideas about an existing topic (Swedberg, 2020). Ninety-four sport clubs in Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg and Norway were studied through an online survey. Two fucus groups with club board members in each country (50 in total) were also conducted. Data were analysed with NVIVO and MAXQDA.

Good governance was variously interpreted by members of sport clubs in the five countries. There was a general agreement that good governance was concerned chiefly with democracy and accountability and clubs in Belgium, Luxembourg and Norway were not aware that social responsibility was a key principle. This view of governance reduces the concept and its related practices to the open election of officials and the sharing of decision-making information. Australian sport clubs’ context echoed these findings (Forsell et al, 2020).

Good governance, as defined by the four key principles, has been reproduced through a network of 13 core interrelated practices, which can be grouped in two broad dialectically interrelated categories including forward-oriented and backward-oriented ones. Forward-oriented practices aim to alter clubs’ ways of doing and saying things, and to establish a new regime of practices. Backward-oriented practices were aimed at undoing ways of doing and saying things which are often in conflict with the changing internal makeup of the clubs and their external environments, and thus hinder good governance. Both categories of practices were shaped by club members’ own experiences and environmental pressures. With a few exceptions the actual good governance practices differed significantly from the indicators designed to measure them.