(Re)Asserting organization as a lens in sport sociology: The meaning,workings,and consequences of rational design efforts

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to (re)assert the importance of an organizational lens in the socio-cultural study of sport. Specifically, we aim to demonstrate the often self-perpetuating and always value-infused nature of rational design, and the organizational processes through which problems, objectives, structures, roles, identities, and knowledges are (re)constituted and privileged in the context of sport. Drawing on an institutional understanding of organizational life, we examine Swedish sports' adoption of a new integrity platform as a case of rational design. Analyzing documentary and interview data, we demonstrate how positing organization as the object of knowledge allows us to unpack how, why, and with what effects, social issues and domains become subsumed into processes of rationalization and rational organizational design.

In 1989, Slack and Kikulis urged the sociology of sport community to consider that sport organizations “are not only reflective of our values and beliefs about the nature of sport activities; they also, in turn, help shape the nature of that activity. As such, they are worthy of much more systematic inquiry” (p. 193). They further claimed that such knowledge generation needs to build on the theoretical tools developed specifically for the sociological study of organization/s. This perspective's fruitfulness was subsequently demonstrated through groundbreaking work on fundamentally sociological processes like rationalization and bureaucratization (e.g. Amis and Slack, 1996; Kikulis et al., 1992; Macintosh and Whitson, 1990; O’Brien and Slack, 2003; Theodoraki and Henry, 1994). However, after the mid-1990s, Slack's (1996) plea to study organizations, “From the locker room to the boardroom” (p. 1), was instead taken up primarily by the growing sport management community, albeit with a greater emphasis on normative organizational design (see Amis et al., 1995).

Sport integrity, as an emerging research topic, exemplifies this drift towards rationality and function (Schenhav, 2003). Studies on organizational integrity measures have largely centered on management's “golden question” (Jensen et al., 2009: 530) focused on assessing and increasing the effectiveness of various sport integrity instruments (e.g. De Waegeneer et al., 2017; Elliot and Drummond, 2015; Donnelly et al., 2016; Hartmann-Tews et al., 2020; Verschuuren, 2021; Vertommen et al., 2015; Wiersma and Sherman, 2005). A main recommendation emanating from this work is that more rational organization is needed to come to terms with integrity breaches. In that sense, the contemporary treatment and analysis of sport integrity follow the good governance movement in sport, tracing a familiar pattern in which the issue is prepared for technocratic interventions (Stenling et al., 2023).

This is not to say that the objectives attached to sport integrity measures are not desirable, or that research on how to achieve them is not worthwhile. However, because the contemporary sporting landscape comprises organized activity of ever greater complexity, the study of sport organizations has an evident but underexplored space in the sociology of sport. Attending to this space, however, requires us to position the organization as an object of knowledge and explanatory context, while refraining from taking organizational problems and solutions at face value. Indeed, a sociological study of organization could instead reveal how, over time, rational design processes render so-called “wicked problems” (Sam, 2009) as more solvable than they probably are. An organizational outlook furthermore allows us to unveil the ways in which features of intentional design, however, tempting they may seem, could “contain the seeds of their own reconstruction” (Stenling and Sam, 2020a: 592).

Purpose and significance

This paper seeks to (re)assert the importance of an organizational lens in the socio-cultural study of sport. Specifically, we aim to demonstrate the often self-perpetuating and always value-infused nature of rational design, and the organizational processes through which problems, objectives, structures, roles, identities, and knowledges are (re)constituted and privileged. We pursue this aim via an analysis of sport integrity as a problem that only recently has come to be understood as appropriate or even necessary to deal with via organizational measures, but which has quickly become the center of an evolving agenda for reforms that bear significance beyond the importance of the issues they seek to address, and their effectiveness in doing so (Sam et al., 2023).

We draw on data from a larger project that explores the organizational implications of adopting an integrity platform in Swedish sport in the late 2010s (SSC, 2017a). As we shall see, issues that fall under the umbrella term “sport integrity” are not new in Swedish sport, and neither are attempts to deal with them using organizational measures. Nonetheless, the compliance-oriented nature of the new platform (Weaver et al., 1999) signals a shift in how Swedish sport “organise their moral commitments” (Kvalnes and Hemmestad, 2010: 57). As such, the platform gives rise to a series of questions that we believe are at the heart of organizational analyses in the sociology of sport, and whose treatment, therefore, may serve as an illustration of what contemporary organizational research in the field can entail.

A first question emerges from the consideration of organization as historically and societally situated, and as both an expression of, and driving force for, societal transformation (cf. Macintosh and Whitson, 1990). At a more concrete level, this implies that an organization is in a constant state of becoming, where neither perceived challenges nor their proposed organizational solutions emerge in a vacuum. Instead, they are linked through interpretations that frame problems and justify ways of rectifying them organizationally (Greenwood et al., 2002) in continuing and layered processes through which organizations evolve. Considering a lack of documented increase in integrity breaches in Swedish sport, this understanding led us to ask (RQ1), “What problem-solution constructions enabled the adoption of a collection of instruments under a compliance-oriented platform?”

A second consideration concerns the relationship between the ideational and material (i.e. structures and practices) elements of rational design, and the propensity for organization to breed organization in unintended ways. Instruments, such as those under consideration here, tend to produce an organizational machinery of their own (Vedung, 2007; Salamon, 2002). However, because of the new organizational requirements they create, and the standards they introduce, they are also prone to creating unintended consequences within and across organizations (Lascoumes and Le Galès, 2007; Tak et al., 2018). This recognition of the dual nature of organizing and the propensity for rational design to have unforeseen effects directed us to ask (RQ2), “What are the (immediate) ideational and material organizational implications of the establishment of the platform?” and (RQ3) “What are the potential ‘ripple effects’ of the organizational machinery put in place to implement the platform?”

The significance of our analysis lies in, first, its application of an organizational sociology lens on sport integrity. That is, extending the growing body of work (e.g. Ohl et al., 2021; Sam et al., 2023; Tak et al., 2018, 2022, 2024; Verschuuren and Ohl, 2023) that seeks to understand and explain the meanings and transformative consequences associated with integrity as a “new reform agenda for sport” (Sam et al., 2023: 1), we showcase integrity breaches as a problem made subject of rational design, and the organizational ramifications that may follow from attempts to safeguard integrity via reforms. In that sense, our work is distinct from most outstanding organization-focused work on integrity, because it deals with organizational effects rather than effectiveness vis-à-vis stated objectives, however pressing. Second, our work is significant because it illustrates our broader concern with organization as a worthwhile object of knowledge for the sociology of sport. It allows us to gain knowledge on how sport as a distinct area of social life is transformed via organizational processes, and what this means for the (re)distribution of power, resources, and opportunities within and beyond sport.

Conceptual outlook

Key to our present purpose is a sociological understanding of organization as such. Organizational institutionalism (e.g. Greenwood et al., 2017) offers this through its conceptualization of organization as both ideational and material, and of organizations as products of ongoing processes through which they gain their institutional character and thereby appear to us as rational and agency-infused entities (Jepperson and Meyer, 2021). The ideational element refers to the systems of meaning concerning the organization itself that are expressed, (re)produced, and changed in practice via the ways in which social activities are patterned (e.g. in “Bureaucracies”). Such systems of meaning are located in the institutional context of organizations and constitute ready-to-wear cultural material around how and why organizations ought to be carried out for organizations to appear as legitimate actors (e.g. Greenwood et al., 2017). In the context of sport, institutionalized ideas around what constitutes “sport” are illustrative of the ways in which systems of meaning provide sport organizations with organizational templates. Tacon and Walters (2016), for example, demonstrated how sport as a democratic phenomenon may influence how sport organizations structure and evaluate their boards of governance.

Another ambition central to our purpose is understanding organizational change processes (like those leading up to and resulting from the adoption of integrity measures) as driven by the formulation, propagation, and discursive linking of significant problems, desirable objectives, and appropriate means (Greenwood et al., 2002). In a sporting context, Dowling and Smith (2016) illustrated this by showing how strategic meaning-making by key actors facilitated the formalization and continued operation of Own The Podium—an initially temporary initiative that was set up to support Canada's success at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games. The construction and proffering of frames (Entman, 1993) or theorizations (Strang and Meyer, 1993) for change and their instantiations in reformed (however partial) organizational practices fulfill the dual function of building outwards credibility as a “modern” actor (Brunsson and Olsen, 1993), and giving an internal sense of control through the forging of rational design. In this way, the ideational basis for organizational change and its associated practices are both the product and propagator of logic around rationality, progress, and modernity.

However, such rationality conceals the unavoidable effects of organization as choosing, namely that all organization involves trade-offs and produces both intended and unintended consequences (Clegg et al., 2002; Hood, 1991; Sieber, 1981). The latter often results from the introduction of new yardsticks via the logic embedded in new ideas and organization practice (Lascoumes and Le Galès, 2007). As a consequence, emerging problems may be interpreted as resulting from incomplete instantiations of rationality, thus propelling further reform in the direction pursued, and across organizational layers (Stenling and Sam, 2019, 2020a). By studying sport clubs’ participation in a quality certification program, Seippel (2019) exemplified this as he showed how intentions to professionalize activities may lock clubs into a trajectory that requires continuous development beyond available resources.

Research approach

Swedish sport, commonly called the Sports Movement, is a voluntary-based, federative system that gathers some 20,000 sport clubs. Clubs are members of one or several of the 73 National Sport Federations (NSFs) that govern their sport/s via regulatory documents decided by their members in general assemblies (GAs). NSFs are in turn federated under the Swedish Sports Confederation (SSC), where the biennial GAs make decisions pertaining to the overall direction of Swedish sport. The SSC extends into 19 Regional Sport Federations (RSFs) that assist clubs in development work and in communication with local and regional authorities (Stenling and Sam, 2020b).

As an organized system, Swedish sport gives clubs extensive support and guidance, but the system's dual governance structures may also create ambiguity concerning lines of authority, mandates, and responsibilities. Constitutionally, all parties in the system enjoy far-reaching autonomy to decide on issues concerning the organization in question and its members, but they are also bound to decisions made by the organizations they are members of. These features motivate Swedish sport's rather extensive sport-for-all underpinned public funding, with central public policy goals being sport's contribution to public health and the shaping of democratic citizens (via its organizational form) (Stenling and Fahlén, 2016). Swedish sport's organizational structure also means that the new integrity platform is both a result of bottom-up representative structures and applicable to all affiliated organizations. The main components of the platform are the Whistleblower- and Ombudsman functions that were installed in the SSC bureaucracy, an Ethical Code of Conduct, and associated by-law amendments (SSC, 2017a). In addition, “Integrity Officers” were installed at the RSF level to handle complaints that regard breaches of Swedish sport's basic values.

Methods

The larger project from which this article benefits follows the Swedish Research Council's ethical guidelines (Swedish Research Council, 2017) and university guidelines for secure data handling- and storage. We draw on documents and interview data to address our research questions. Specifically, for RQ1, we employed a processual approach (Langley, 1999) that involved identifying and interrelating past events (“what happened and who did what when” Langley, 1999: 692) and associated problem-solution constructions that led up to the adoption of the platform. This procedure involved an interrogation of 38 SSC documents (e.g. annual plans and -reports, motions, propositions, and GA meeting minutes) produced between 2005 and 2018. Starting with documents associated with the 2017 decision to adopt the platform, we traced historical events that involved a directional change related to integrity issues, with a particular focus on the problem-solution constructions that surrounded them. While there is no definite starting point for any policy development, 2005 appears to have been significant in setting Swedish sport on the path that eventually led to the adoption of the platform. This was when the SSC GA decided to initiate a broad discussion within the movement around shared basic values (SSC, 2007).

For RQ2 and RQ3, we benefitted from the interviews' ability to generate meaning-dense data (Kvale and Brinkmann, 2009). To shed light on the organizational implications of the adoption of the platform, we build on data from interviews (carried out by the first and second authors) with 31 employed staff that either worked as sport integrity officers in RSFs or in close collaboration with this role. Interviews covered four themes: (1) integrity issues in the historical and contemporary context of Swedish sport, (2) the integrity officer's role in the implementation of the platform, (3) the inter-organizational integrity system, and (4) the needs for further organizational development in the sport integrity domain.

Subsequent to the interviewees providing consent, interviews (ranging from 60 to 90 min) were carried out via Zoom, and the recorded sound files were transcribed verbatim. In preparation for further analysis, transcripts were subjected to meaning concentration (Kvale and Brinkmann, 2009). Thereafter, the condensed material was inductively coded following the so-called Gioia method (Gioia et al., 2013). First, we assigned data-close codes. Second, we revised codes and renamed them to better reflect their content. In a third and final step, we assembled similar codes into broader categories that illustrate the organizational implications and ripple effects of the establishment of the platform and the organizational machinery put in place to implement it. Revised codes were then discussed and refined by the author team, thus drawing on the strengths of collective analyses for enhancing trustworthiness (Phoenix et al., 2016). In the “Findings and Discussion” section, anonymized interview quotes are used to illustrate and substantiate our analyses. Interviewee 1 is labelled I1, interviewee 2, I2, and so on.

Findings and discussion

Below, we address each RQ in turn and discuss our findings’ implications for our broader concern with an organizational lens in the sociology of sport.

Problem-solution constructions that enabled a compliance-oriented platform (RQ1)

The adoption of the integrity platform in 2017 may appear sudden, but the following account shows that the platform was decades in the making due to the problem-solution constructions and associated organizational events that preceded it. Specifically, our analysis details three consecutive and layered problem-solution constructions and events that culminated in the formulation and adoption of Strategy 2025 in 2015. As we will return to at the end of this section, Strategy 2025 created an impetus for a cross-sport platform that content and orientation/form-wise built on the problem-solution constructions and associated events preceding its formulation.

The first problem-solution construction can be dated to around 2005, when a lack of shared values and norms around equal participation (with respect to gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc.) was identified as a problem, thus implicitly raising the question of whether Swedish sport really is “for all.” The organizational solution to this problem was the creation of prescriptive policy documents that focused on the presence of desirable values and practices. These policies were implemented via movement-wide and sermon-type instruments (Bemelmans-Videc et al., 2011) such as information and education programs that invited organizations to contextualize shared values. This implementation process was supported by the mobilization of existing in-house competence, processes, and structures. A good illustration in this regard is the adoption of the policy document “What sport wants,” and the associated implementation campaign “Valuable” (SSC, 2011a). In our interpretation, this problem-solution construction and the intentional organizing related to it created norms for good sport, but perhaps more fundamentally a focus on (collective) norms per se.

The end of the ’00s saw the advent of a second problem-solution construction, although this one centered on the threats to the “spirit of sport” (Richie, 2013) posed by doping, hooliganism, and match-fixing (SSC, 2009). At this point, integrity breaches were viewed as conduct displayed by a few rotten apples, and thus not reflective of the movement as a whole (SSC, 2011a, 2011b). Nonetheless, now emerging were proscriptive policy documents and rules implemented through education programs that focused on creating problem- and rule awareness among targeted groups (e.g. information tours among clubs in sports/divisions most susceptible to match-fixing issues, SSC, 2016). Rather than mobilizing existing competence, new and task-specific functions (e.g. an SSC full-time position responsible for match-fixing issues, SSC, 2015a) were created, along with centrally defined and located (but partially outsourced) reporting mechanisms for individual types of integrity breaches (e.g. a match-fixing reporting channel, SSC, 2016). Thus, whereas the first problem-solution construction created a focus on norms, the second provided ready-to-wear means to address integrity breaches.

Beginning in the early 2010s, yet another stream of problem-solution constructions emerged that drew on the first in terms of its focus on norms and the second regarding the preferred way of dealing with integrity-related issues. Specifically, during this time, the question coming to the fore was whether children's rights are accommodated in sport—whether sport is safe (SSC, 2011a, 2011b). Attending to this problem organizationally entailed constructing, clarifying, and concretizing policy documents and rules that focused on the absence of unwanted conduct. Displaying a mix of the first and second problem-solution constructions, these were implemented through movement-wide information- and education programs aimed at creating problem-, rule-, and action plan awareness around a targeted topic. An illustration of this development is the adoption of and implementation of “Instructions for child- and youth sport” (SSC, 2015b). Additionally, this period saw the instantiation of task-specific functions and resource allocation criteria related to a children's rights perspective (e.g. a precursor to the sport integrity officer, “Responsible official for child- and youth sport,” SSC, 2017b). In that sense, this third wave of problem-solution constructions foreshadowed a shift in, first, the criteria upon which assessments of “good” sport are made—from the (presence of) virtues to the (absence of) vices. This wave also, second, prepared for a change in how integrity issues would be addressed—from contextualized education to centralized, rules-based, and expertise-led handling and management.

By approximately the mid-2010s, and in the face of declining membership and participation rates, it appears Swedish sport increasingly assessed itself through the eyes of its (critical) beholders and prospective members. In doing so, the movement conceived of itself as waning in attractiveness and out of step with the times (i.e. unmodern and at risk of becoming irrelevant). The SSC's solution to this problem, which had Swedish sport's very existence at its core, was the preparatory work for and launch of Strategy 2025 in 2015 (SSC, 2013, 2015a). As purportedly the most comprehensive collective work ever undertaken by Swedish sport, Strategy 2025 sought to reorient the sports movement as a more attractive member organization and credible political actor. Underpinned by the notion that too much focus is being placed on the competitive element of sport, the strategy proposed changes to sport activities “on the ground” (e.g. the discontinuation of score counting during games for certain age groups).

Beyond these transformations, however, Strategy 2025 emphasized the SSC's and RSFs’ service-oriented leadership (inwards) and representative (outwards) roles, such that NSFs were positioned as having to become “fit for delivery” (cf. Stenling and Sam, 2020c). Importantly, Strategy 2025 also intensified the branding of Swedish Sport as one movement with the SSC as its primary guardian, and suggested a joint approach for dealing with breaches of shared values (SSC, 2018, 2019, 2020). Thus, whereas the mid-00s saw integrity breaches as the conduct of a few “rotten apples,” the understanding was now that “no chain is stronger than its weakest link” (SSC, 2013, Appendix A: 2). Strategy 2025 thus shifted Swedish sport's moral commitments by positioning the SSC as the guardians of sport's credibility, and by framing the management of integrity issues as a strategic resource and imperative, subject to matters of professionalization and expertise.

In our interpretation, the consecutive, layered problem-solution constructions and events that culminated in Strategy 2025 set the stage for the design and adoption of the integrity platform. They provided the elements for the platform in terms of its content (i.e. a focus on norms), form (compliance orientation), and scope of implementation (cross-sport design). Viewed from this perspective, then, the eventual adoption of the integrity platform appears less like a sudden occurrence than an incremental continuation of a process already underway. This insight is significant because it provides a preamble of measures that in and of themselves appear de-contextualized and a-political (Richie, 2013).

More generally, the preceding demonstrates the significance of studying the continuously unfolding processes through which social issues become subject to rational organizational design. It reminds us that these processes are not neutral, but value-imbued and political in the framing of problems, their causes, and potential solutions. Importantly, such processes also foreshadow the location of blame and responsibility through the structuring of organizational attention, roles, tasks, authority/accountability structures, and performance criteria (Lascoumes and Le Galès, 2007; Salamon, 2002). Such is the value of organizational sociological thinking that it enables us to gain a “clear[er] picture of the dynamic processes through which organisation emerges” (Tsoukas, 2003: 610). While recognizing that in light of the above analysis, any breaking point in the study of organization is purely analytical, we now turn to the platform's immediate organizational effects.

(Immediate) organizational implications of the platform (RQ2)

From our analysis of the interview data, it is clear that what distinguishes Swedish sport's contemporary approach to integrity issues is the level of intentionality with which it has mobilized, post-adoption of the platform. In itself, this suggests that a significant shift has taken place that entails the absorption of integrity issues under the purview of rational design. Specifically, making integrity (breaches) the subject of intentional organizing has involved a more prioritized, focused, systematic, specialized, and coordinated work agenda, where resources are allocated to functions tasked with managing (complaints) processes and conveying knowledge, and where the holders of these functions are able to build function-specific expertise. One of the interviewees summarized this when they said that, “We’ve developed a way of working with these issues and we’ve upskilled those who do. Previously, they were dealt with more through common sense. Work happened, conversations were held back then too, but now there's a structure that guides the procedure […] a system we didn’t have seven-eight years ago” (I21).

Perhaps the utmost illustration of the materialization of this intentionality is the formation of the sport integrity officer and the tasks and procedural requirements emerging around this role. In addition, subjecting integrity to organizational control is visible in an overall upskilling among front-line RSF employees, the integration of integrity issues in everyday club consultancy processes, and in the tools available for consultants to use in their club-directed work. While recognizing that “the underlying issues have always been there,” I20 reflected a more general understanding of an expanded “toolbox” (I5, I19, I28) when they stated that “previously, we didn’t have the tools or the competence to work with them […] So, over the past years, I’d say that we’ve developed both action plans and tools, we are able to act differently.”

The above-described development should not be understood as a response to a documented increase in integrity breaches. In fact, with very few exceptions, interviewees contend that while assessing its historical and contemporary scale is “extremely challenging” (I2), “really difficult” (I19) if not “impossible” (I9), integrity breaches are not a new phenomenon. What interviewees are quite certain of, however, is that the boundaries of (un)acceptable behavior have shifted, the “threshold for what is acceptable has been lowered, and people react earlier and more distinct than before” (I2). Some interviewees tentatively attribute this shift to a broader societal trend that involves a greater attention to values and norms in general, and individual rights in particular. Others explain it with reference to the impact that the intentional organizing around integrity itself has had on problem awareness, and to the enhanced possibility of lodging a claim now afforded through the establishment of “somewhere to turn” (I2, I5, I6, I9, I21) outside of the sport club: “Whereas previously I believe people were a bit lost as to where to turn, there is now a clear recipient […] bringing issues to light to a greater extent” (I18).

At the intersection of broad societal shifts and organizational reform, issues previously not recognized as issues now, in fact, are. Events and actions are not “swept under the rug” (I10, I22, I27) but made visible and someone's responsibility to deal with. A significant change has thus taken place in terms of establishing “a designated area of work responsibility for these issues. […] Treating the issue as an issue of significance at all, and that it is so significant that there are employees at each and every RSF that carries it” (I17). In that sense, the emergence of integrity management both presupposes and precipitates the notion of integrity breaches as a problem that ought to be dealt with via intentional organizing. Even though the difficulty of measuring the scale of integrity breaches makes it challenging to know whether adopted measures are effective, interviewees state that “better support” (I1) is provided, and that a much “improved, or at least more structured and intentional, work” (I27) around these issues is taking place.

However, beyond its potential instrumental function vis-à-vis the problem, the intentional organizing put in place to address integrity issues has reportedly also allowed Swedish sport to demonstrate a proactive doing. I11, for example, said that in light of increasing expectations to offer a sound environment, “[sport] cannot wait for someone else to tell us ‘This is what you need to do’. We need to be active in how we want to work with these issues.” From the perspective of interviewees, integrity-related organizing and its constituent parts (roles, rules, action plans, etc.) thus provide evidence that the movement recognizes problems and prioritizes working with them, effectively signaling that it can be trusted to handle their internal affairs. I19 illustrated this when they said “[This is] a credibility matter for sport […] and to be credible, we need to address these issues, and we need to do an internal prioritization so that we have the resources to properly do so.”

Interviewees believe that the magnitude of Swedish sport makes completely eradicating integrity breaches an impossibility. At the same time, because Swedish sport seeks to present itself as one movement, each incident represents a threat to the movement in its entirety. In recognizing this, the proper handling of integrity breaches emerges as a tool to be used to protect and build the credibility of the movement as a whole when incidents do occur. Reflecting on the significance of the organizational changes that had recently taken place in this regard, I11 said that,

The reactive measures are important for us in terms of dealing with issues when they arise, because we need to be able to show that—as a movement—we can handle when things go wrong. And it's important for us to have that system within the movement, as a complement to societal support systems.

The preceding suggests that the immediate organizational implications of the integrity reform agenda (Sam et al., 2023) are both of an ideational and material (i.e. structures and practices) nature, and that these elements combine to create “integrity management” as a new realm for the formal coordination and control of social relations. As displayed above, this new managerial domain indeed has practice-based implications in terms of an increase in working hours spent on integrity-related issues and the formation of specialized roles and accordant tools applied.

From an ideational standpoint, integrity management is both legitimized by, and draws attention to, shifting and sharpening lines of (un)acceptable conduct as a genuine concern for sport, thus reflecting a collective awareness of Swedish sport's historical negligence of integrity issues. However, echoing Verschuuren and Ohl's (2023) work on integrity structures as “trust devices,” the substantive material practices put in place to guard these new boundaries carry significance beyond their effectiveness. Indeed, just as with their analysis of the Athletics Integrity Unit, these measures symbolically sustain the credibility of external claims around Swedish sport as an up-to-date actor capable of “keeping its house in order,” and which is therefore well-suited for government investment in meaningful and safe leisure. In that sense, the organizational significance of the new practices extends into Swedish sport's broader interest in crafting effective public policy advocacy claims (Stenling and Sam, 2020c).

However, our analysis suggests the view that for the system to be an effective tool (in both instrumental and legitimacy-enhancing terms), it needs to be airtight. On this, interviewees argue that the intentionality with which integrity issues are now approached, and particularly the development of a specialized role (i.e. the sport integrity officer), represents a great step forward. However, as we shall see next, channeling tasks and knowledge towards a dedicated function solves the problem of “everyone and no one” being responsible yet produces a host of new ones.

Potential “Ripple Effects” emerging from the implementation of the platform (RQ3)

Placing the integrity officer role in RSFs has the upside of geographical and relational proximity to clubs that are federated under any NSF. However, this structure reduces the potential for hard mandates vis-à-vis clubs or any other organization in the NSF structure. Interviewees thus suggested that NSFs (not RSFs) have not only the disciplinary mandate, but more fundamentally “own” (I6, I8, I12, I13, I18) their sport and remain responsible for its development, including around issues of integrity: “[Each NSF] issues disciplinary measures, and that's how it should be, they own their sport […] they are responsible for its operations/activities” (I6) and clubs “listen more to their NSF than to us” (I31).

NSFs are therefore perceived to be in a much better position to wield both sticks and carrots (Bemelmans-Videc et al., 2011) towards clubs, thus inducing change throughout the NSF structure. This is arguably why interviewees, representing organizations that formally have neither of these instruments at their disposal, envision the necessity of “coordinating” (I2, I5, I11, I13, I16, I20) and collaborating with the actors that do. I17 exemplified this when they stated that, “What I think we need to become better at […] is cooperating with the NSFs and be more hands-on in our collaboration.” However, from the perspective of interviewees, coordination requires a counterpart that understands and honors their responsibility and mandate, and that is organizationally “fit” to enter collaborative processes. Consequently, a concern among interviewees is that NSFs embark on the same journey of intentional organizing that the SSC/RSFs are under way of completing. I19 and I20, respectively, expressed this when they said that “[the NSFs] have a responsibility, and they are now supposed to have a designated contact person, and that's really important—that there's a case recipient” (I19) and that “in every NSF, there has to be a designated structure for dealing with these issues” (I20).

The preceding illustrates the propensity for intentional organizing to generate new problems due to the ways in which initial ones were handled. Specifically, the building up of a specialized integrity management bureaucracy within the SSC structure has generated a coordination problem, the solution of which requires the establishment of a “mirror image” professionalized structure in NSFs. To the extent that this is realized, it illustrates the propagation of bureaucratic structures “sideways” in the Swedish sport system. While interviewees would like NSFs to be more on their toes, organizationally speaking, they also note the wide range in organizational size and capacity among NSFs, the geographical distance, and the lack of close relationships between most NSFs and their clubs. Emerging from the push for NSFs to take more responsibility for integrity issues is therefore a resource-distribution problem, itself a result of coordination as the solution.

Our analysis also foreshadows a procreation of intentional organizing “downwards” towards clubs. Like the expectation placed on NSFs to develop/enable coordination, the rationale for RSFs’ shifting relationships with clubs in the integrity domain must be understood against their careful attention not overstep their mandate as organizations that are institutionally tasked with supporting autonomous clubs on their own terms (cf. Stenling and Fahlén, 2021). From this position, interviewees highlight that RSFs’ core purpose and modus operandi is guiding clubs through proactive integrity work processes. In that sense, integrity breaches, although highly regrettable, are themselves an opportunity to stimulate clubs to engage in proactive work, since “nothing motivates a club to develop their organization more than the realization that things have gone really south” (I23).

Interviewees express confidence in proactive work as preventative, however difficult this effect is to (dis)prove. I4, for example, said that “if all clubs undertook proactive work, there would be fewer incidents, and we would have to do less reactive case management.” In a way, RSF employees are predisposed to believe in the force of proactive development albeit guided by an overall policy direction (e.g. Strategy 2025, see Stenling and Fahlén, 2019), otherwise, their work would appear meaningless. What is more important in this context, however, is the significance afforded to proactive work as a means of creating “robust” clubs that have the capacity to detect and manage integrity breaches. To this end, the club-directed proactive work around integrity increasingly seeks to impel clubs to develop reactive structures and practices such as action plans, whistleblower channels, and integrity-specific functions to operate alongside existing values-oriented processes. Illustrating this view, I10 said that an effect of RSF-level case management is that “the club is strengthened in their understanding of the importance of constructing policies and work with these issues […] so that when something happens there are routines for dealing with them.” I6 likewise stated that the RSF is now “working a lot with bringing about a new role designated for these issues, and that having such a role [in a club] should be as natural as having a secretary, treasurer or chairperson.”

This is perhaps unsurprising, given the combination of club consultants’ institutionalized role as supporters of club development and the application of “centrally distilled goals and policy documents as a prioritising filter” (Stenling and Sam, 2020b: 595) in their work. Nonetheless, this development foreshadows an integrity-driven professionalization and bureaucratization at the club level. To the extent that integrity measures succeed in alleviating and properly handling breaches, this is a welcome development. It is however notable that this process is taking place in a context where interviewees argue that one of the most pressing challenges relates to Swedish sport as a landscape of organized activity, and the (re)establishment of the sport club as the context of “relevance” (I13, I16, I26, I30) for individuals and the sport movement as a relevant societal actor. I16 illustrated this when they stated that,

Our biggest challenge is to find sport's relevance in people's lives. What we stand for, what we do, the way we do it, and what we want, it's all important, and something that all people want. But our organizational form, there's a perceived lack of relevance there.

On this, interviewees identified a weakening commitment to the democratically governed club-sport as an organizational form, and an increasing difficulty for sport clubs to recruit volunteers to coach and organizational leadership positions. A struggle was thus identified concerning “creating involvement and commitment, given how we’re organized” (I10) and “rethinking, reorganizing to fit in with new ways of being and living” (I10).

Perhaps ironically, interviewees attribute this challenge to increasing bureaucratic and professional requirements placed on prospective volunteers. I7, for example, noted that “a big challenge relates to recruiting board members that are willing to accept the responsibility of holding together the structure that a club, as an independent legal entity, actually is,” and I23 that “the responsibilities now assigned to volunteer board members are detrimental for recruitment to those positions.”

Fundamentally, although we have not empirically captured the end result of these processes in NSFs or clubs by direct empirical measurement, the above analysis points to organization as an effect of organization. Here, this is indicated in how professionalized structures installed in one part of an organizational system (i.e. the SSC/RSFs) generate the need for such structures to be developed in other parts (i.e. NSFs and clubs) in order to satisfy the needs of the system as a whole. As distinct from the available organization-related work on integrity measures (e.g. De Waegeneer et al., 2017; Elliot and Drummond, 2015; Donnelly et al., 2016; Hartmann-Tews et al., 2020; Kihl, 2023; Verschuuren 2021; Vertommen et al., 2015; Wiersma and Sherman, 2005), the preceding thus speaks to the promulgation of rational organization as both a consequence and point of departure. Specifically, as Nagel et al. (2015) foresaw, and Stenling and Sam (2020a) have previously shown, we illustrate how organization may “ripple” both “sideways” and “downwards” as an effect of the RSFs’ attempt to deal with the problems that emerge from the platform's initial set-up, and the discursive shift it brought about.

This is not to imply that the platform is inherently flawed in its design and implementation, but that new modes of organization beget more organization (Dawbin et al., 2021); they invariably create new frames of reference and requirements that come to be perceived as solvable through subsequent organizational development. In multi-level sport systems, such processes may involve the (re)shaping of intra and inter-organizational roles and their relative position in an organizational hierarchy, in ways that speak to broader transformations of sport as a distinct social domain. The above also unveils that organization invariably involves choosing, and by extension produces trade-offs between, for example, bottom-up democracy, volunteerism, and grassroots engagement, and the effectiveness of organizational measures through a managerial pursuit.

Concluding remarks

In addressing our three research questions, our analysis unveils, first, that the adoption of the Swedish sports' integrity platform was preceded by consecutive and layered problem-solution constructions and associated material practices that provided the content, form, and scope of the platform. We thus add to previous knowledge on sport integrity by demonstrating the value-laden and incremental processes by which integrity breaches come to be viewed as a problem, and compliance-oriented rational organizing as an appropriate solution. Second, we suggest that the platform has both ideational and practice-based organizational implications that coalesce into sport integrity as a new managerial domain advancing both instrumental and legitimacy-related functions. In that sense, we expand sport integrity research by showing that organization matters in both the appearance and pursuit of rationality. Third, distinct from existing work on this subject, we unpack how the logic and operating requirements brought about by the platform and its implementation create unintended ripple effects “sideways” and “downwards” in the sport system.

The above conclusions should be interpreted in the context of our broader ambition to (re)assert the significance of an organizational lens in the socio-cultural study of sport. An organizational lens in the sociology of sport can of course mean many different things (see, e.g. Adler, 2009). For us, it is fundamentally about understanding how new domains of social life become subsumed into processes of rationalization and rational organizational design. In turn, this indicates how organization not only shapes sporting lives and experiences but also how it expresses and drives societal transformation (cf. Macintosh and Witson, 1990). However, for such a venture to be justifiable and worthwhile, studies must conceptualize sociological phenomena (e.g. bureaucratization and professionalization) in organizational terms, including the “mechanisms of organizational calculation and representation” (Clegg, 1988: 10). By leveraging sociological theories and concepts of organization, as done here, it is possible to show that rationality, the master logic of organization, compels prioritizations that generate consequences in the (re)distribution of power, resources, and opportunities. Crucially, an organization-focused perspective also permits the deconstruction and demystification of this logic, thus unpacking its inadvertent (and potentially unwanted) long-term effects at the level of organization and society.

Our study is limited in its explication of the breadth of conceptual outlooks available for such a pursuit, but we call on the sociology of sport community to reconnect with early work in the sociology of sport (e.g. Slack and Kikulis, 1989; Macintosh and Whitson, 1990) as well as to familiarize itself with the theoretical breadth of organizational sociology (e.g. Adler, 2009). Going forward, this will make it possible to re-assess the utility of older theories while also casting a critical eye on contemporary approaches that perhaps repackage old knowledge as “new truths.” In either case, the field would be well served by continued research into organization as an object of knowledge for both the theoretical and practical lessons that can be drawn from it.