Josef Fahlen

Professor Department of Sport and Social Sciences

Email: josefmf@nih.no

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Background and experience

Josef Fahlén works as an adjunct professor (Professor II) at the Department of Sport and Social Sciences. In his research, he explores the intersection between the governance and organization of sport, examining how policies related to sport are developed, implemented, and evaluated, as well as how these processes—along with broader societal influences—affect the organization of sporting activities within clubs, federations, and self-organized contexts.

A common ambition across these research questions is to shed light on how political governance, leadership, and organization have real consequences for the practice of sport, particularly in terms of power and resource distribution, as well as the prioritization of different types of activities and target groups. This ambition is currently reflected in two research projects:
1. Trans-sporting the understanding of gender – the transformative effects of transgender inclusion.
2. Bowling separately or bowling together – an investigation of organization in Sámi sport

Teaching

His areas of expertise include organizational change, implementation, organizational theory, sports policy, and leadership.

Research

His areas of expertise include sports policy, implementation, sport management, organization, institutional theory, and qualitative methods.

Projects

Sport governance for all?

Johansson, Maria; Stenling, Cecilia; Fahlen, Josef & Svender, Jenny (2026). Paid work in voluntary sport clubs: An oxymoron with transformative potential? International Review for the Sociology of Sport. ISSN 1012-6902. doi: 10.1177/10126902261453616. Full text in Research Archive
Nagel, Siegfried; Fahlen, Josef; Stenling, Cecilia; Schlesinger, Torsten; Elmose-Østerlund, Karsten & Ibsen, Bjarne [Show all 10 contributors for this article] (2026). Willingness of voluntary sports clubs to implement integration programmes – A construction of organisational identity ideal types. International Review for the Sociology of Sport. ISSN 1012-6902. doi: 10.1177/10126902251411555. Full text in Research Archive
Strömberg, Julius Zackarias; Fahlen, Josef & Strittmatter, Anna-Maria (2025). Mapping values in sport clubs: towards a conceptual typology for understanding the bettering of grassroots sport governance. European Sport Management Quarterly. ISSN 1618-4742. p. 22–22. doi: 10.1080/16184742.2025.2582559. Full text in Research Archive
Stenling, Maria Cecilia Erika & Fahlen, Josef (2025). Sport integrity systems’ organizational footprint: the typification of the integrity officer role and its transformative effects. European Journal for Sport and Society (EJSS). ISSN 1613-8171. 22(3), p. 239–256. doi: 10.1080/16138171.2025.2455855. Full text in Research Archive
Strittmatter, Anna-Maria; Stenling, Maria Cecilia Erika; Skille, Eivind Åsrum & Fahlen, Josef (2024). Youth representatives as agents of institutional change: the circumscribing effects of role prescriptions in sport governance. International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics. ISSN 1940-6940. 16(3), p. 449–463. doi: 10.1080/19406940.2024.2356593. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
Conceptualising the youth representative as an institutional role, we explore the institutional shaping of youth representatives as change agents in the governance of sport organisations. Focusing on how these shaping conditions who the youth representative can be and what determines the scope of their role fulfilment, including the impact of their work on established institutional orders, allows us to examine the shaping of agency related to governance institutions. Data is drawn from a questionnaire centred on the experiences of young people in sport governance (n = 32) and semi-structured interviews with 10 representatives of organisations affiliated with the Norwegian Olympic and Paralympic Committee and Confederations of Sports. The role of the youth representatives is scripted in terms of who the representatives ought to be and what they ought to do. The scripting associated with the operationalisation of this ambition into role pre- and proscriptions stands in stark contrast to the ideal of youth representatives as agents of institutional change. Our study of the scripting of institutional roles has theoretical implications because it shows how normative typifications that link notions of actors with actorhood circumscribe institutional work pertaining to change.
Stenling, Maria Cecilia Erika; Fahlen, Josef; Sam, Michael & Tak, Minhyeok (2024). (Re)Asserting organization as a lens in sport sociology: The meaning, workings, and consequences of rational design efforts. International Review for the Sociology of Sport. ISSN 1012-6902. 60(3), p. 64–81. doi: 10.1177/10126902241262620. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
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.
Renström, Anna; Stenling, Maria Cecilia Erika & Fahlen, Josef (2024). Developing athletes into cooperative learners: the potential in viewing coaches as educators and coaching as teaching. Sport, Education and Society. ISSN 1357-3322. doi: 10.1080/13573322.2024.2334426. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
Talent development environments are usually group-based, meaning athletes comprise each other’s learning context. Consequently, athletes’ ability to learn with and from each other is essential. This implies that there is a key role for coaches to play in cultivating reciprocal, cooperative athletes and creating talent environments in which participants can ‘learn to learn’. The aim of this study was to create knowledge on day-to-day coaching conduct that supports the development of athletes’ reciprocal abilities. Observations of 75 h of football (soccer) lessons within the Swedish Football Association’s school sports programme – a cornerstone of the FA’s talent development system, located in upper secondary schools – were carried out over the course of three school semesters, and included in-depth interviews with the teacher-coaches. Data were analysed using the five key teaching pillars within a cooperative learning approach: positive interdependence, individual accountability, face-to-face interaction, interpersonal skills and group processing. Findings show how teacher-coaches engage in activities that focus on organization of lessons and structuring of group work to create situations where individuals are motivated to learn, but also motivated to support other group members’ learning. Thereby, teacher-coaches place more emphasis on positive interdependence, individual accountability, face-to-face interaction. In contrast, findings also show how teacher-coaches to a lesser extent perform coaching conduct associated with lesson content that has the potential to develop the skills and abilities required to participate in and benefit from group work – interpersonal skills, and group processing. This means that while teacher-coaches seem well-equipped to create learning environments that support reciprocal learning, they may benefit from challenging the role of the coach as an expert and tackle the preconceptions around cooperative behaviours that athletes bring from club football contexts. Taken together, these findings point to the need for a better understanding of overlapping learning sites within talent systems.
Strittmatter, Anna-Maria; Skille, Eivind Åsrum; Stenling, Maria Cecilia Erika & Fahlen, Josef (2024). Structural and Cultural Othering: An Organizational Culture Perspective on Young People’s Participation in Decision-making in Sport Organizations. Young - Nordic Journal of Youth Research. ISSN 1103-3088. 32(4), p. 360–377. doi: 10.1177/11033088241237386. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
The purpose of this article is to examine the role played by organizational culture in young people’s continuing underrepresentation in decision-making bodies, despite structural changes, in the context of Norwegian sport organizations. Data is based on a questionnaire centred on the experiences of young people in sport governance (n = 32 youth representatives) and semi-structured interviews with young (under 26 years) and older representatives of organizations affiliated with the Norwegian Olympic and Paralympic Committee and Confederations of Sports (n = 10). Findings show that Norwegian sport organizations foster a cultural understanding of young people which takes its structural expression in the separation of elements that are ‘othering’ the youth. Youth have also limited access to resources of power as a result of a lack of trust in older leaders. Prevailing culture mirrors an adult society in which young people need to upgrade their level of professionalism through education before they are invited to decision-making processes.
Skille, Eivind Åsrum; Strittmatter, Anna-Maria; Stenling, Maria Cecilia Erika & Fahlen, Josef (2023). Private football academies—friend or foe? An analysis of Norwegian media's framing of arguments about private football academies and the monopoly of organized sport. International Review for the Sociology of Sport. ISSN 1012-6902. 58(8), p. 1263–1281. doi: 10.1177/10126902231164903. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
Private football academies challenge the monopoly of Norwegian voluntary and democratic sport. Using field theory and framing approach as analytical perspectives, this article presents a media analysis that reveals that, first, association football and private academies agree on the fact that Norwegian football is not good enough and must improve. Second, they disagree on whether to improve it within association football exclusively or supplemented by private actors that are inspired by the international football field. Third, there is a negative popular view of private academies as too expensive, unconcerned with children's best interests, in violation of Norwegian sport's regulations for children's sport, and—in sum—thus being accused of destroying ‘sport for all’. However, by employing the analytical concepts of habitus and fields, the article also shows how actors partake in several subfields—often on both sides of the private—association border.
Lehtonen, Kati; Skille, Eivind Åsrum & Fahlen, Josef (2023). The art of balance: Indigenous sport governance between traditional government and self-governance. International Review for the Sociology of Sport. ISSN 1012-6902. 59(4). doi: 10.1177/10126902231217185. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
The governance of Indigenous people is in many contexts a combination of political ambitions to promote self-governance, and more traditional policies and governance practices. These combinations often carry unintended contradictions and exclusionary processes. In this article, we investigate the consequences of one such contradiction: the aspiration for self-determination and self-governance on the one hand and the aspiration for broader political influence in decisions about resources to Sámi sport on the other. Since legitimation of governance structures and practices is essential for their overall functionality, we constructed the research question: What strategies are used to legitimise the policy and governance practices of Sámi sport? To explore this research question, we employed Sámi sport in Finland as an empirical case. Results show that authorisation as a legitimation strategy is prominent and used at institutional and individual levels. Moral evaluation as strategy is based on authoritative actors’ personal choice. Inclusion and integration in mainstream policy is seen as a rational legitimation strategy, which is supported by narratives where smallness and uniqueness are dominant.
Ehnold, Peter; Jarck, Henning; Doherty, Alison; Elmose-Østerlund, Karsten; Fahlen, Josef & Gohritz, Andreas [Show all 14 contributors for this article] (2023). Developing a multi-level framework for analyzing public sports-based programmes to integrate migrants and refugees into organized sports. Sport in Society: Cultures, Commerce, Media, Politics. ISSN 1743-0437. doi: 10.1080/17430437.2023.2276813. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
Voluntary sports clubs (VSCs) are viewed by governments as an important catalyst for the integration of migrants/refugees. However, research has shown that only a small number of VSCs are directly involved in ‘integration through sport’ practices. To increase the number of VSCs that are willing and able to significantly implement targeted integration measures, it is necessary to understand how ‘integration through sport policies’ can actually reach the local level and impact practices. In this paper, we propose a conceptual framework that considers and bundles current integration research in organized sports. To address the complexity, a multi-level framework will be developed that helps to understand the roll-out strategies and implementation processes of integration programmes for migrants in organized sports. Additionally, it helps to support practitioners in developing appropriate evaluation schemes, or revising existing integration programmes at the local, regional or national level in order to increase the number of integrative VSCs.
Stenling, Maria Cecilia Erika & Fahlen, Josef (2022). Taking stock of sport management research in the new millenia–research contributions, worthwhile knowledge, and the field’s raison d’être. European Sport Management Quarterly. ISSN 1618-4742. 22(5), p. 643–662. doi: 10.1080/16184742.2022.2063360. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
Research question: In this paper, we analyse the variety and distribution of ways that authors frame their research contributions in published sport management articles, thereby providing a base from which to reflect on what is considered worthwhile knowledge in the field of sport management. Research methods: Our analysis builds on a reading of the introductions of 128 papers published in European Sport Management Quarterly, Journal of Sport Management, and Sport Management Review between 2001 and 2020. We grounded our approach conceptually in the work of [Sandberg, J., & Alvesson, M. (2011). Ways of constructing research questions: Gap-spotting or problematization? Organization, 18(1), 23–44. 10.1177/1350508410372151] but identified field-specific variations using an inductive process. Results and findings: Most contribution-framings entail spotting gaps in the literature, in which the value of a piece of research is based on the idea that existing research is lacking in some way. Very few papers adopt a more disruptive contribution-framing mode that questions the assumptions underpinning existing knowledge in the field. Implications: We raise potential issues of concern and important considerations for the future regarding questions around the development of a distinct body of sport management knowledge, ways to evaluate gaps in the literature, the significance of significance-statements, and the need to discuss an appropriate balance between incremental and assumption-challenging knowledge production.
Stenling, Maria Cecilia Erika; Fahlen, Josef; Strittmatter, Anna-Maria & Skille, Eivind Åsrum (2022). The meaning of democracy in an era of good governance: Views of representation and their implications for board composition. International Review for the Sociology of Sport. ISSN 1012-6902. p. 1–18. doi: 10.1177/10126902221088127. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
Contemporary sport governance contexts are marked by a trend towards efficiency-based board composition and an increasing use of instruments aimed to (re)shape boards. Yet, democratic governance is integral to many countries’ sport systems, and research tells us that representation still matters in sport governance. Considering this, the aim with this paper is to provide researchers and practitioners with a vocabulary to understand and address issues of representation in board composition. The paper builds on interviews with nomination committee representatives of 62 Swedish national sport federations (NSFs). The analysis provides insights into the meaning and implications of four distinct views of representation, along with an interpretation of potential responses to board-shaping instruments engendered by these views.
Fahlen, Josef & Stenling, Maria Cecilia Erika (2022). Stakeholding in community sport. In Strittmatter, Anna-Maria; Fahlen, Josef & Houlihan, Barrie (Ed.), Stakeholder Analysis and Sport Organisations. Routledge. ISSN 9781000511888. p. 68–86. doi: 10.4324/9781003111917-6. Full text in Research Archive
Stenling, Cecilia; Fahlen, Josef; Strittmatter, Anna-Maria & Skille, Eivind Å. (2021). The gatekeepers of sport governance–nomination committees’ shaping potential in national sport organizations’ board composition processes. European Sport Management Quarterly. ISSN 1618-4742. p. 1–19. doi: 10.1080/16184742.2021.1897640. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
RESEARCH QUESTION The purpose of this paper is to construct knowledge on the working processes of nomination committees (NCs) in sport and analyze their potential to shape board composition. The significance of such an effort lies in its potential to shed light on the processes preceding the structures and practices created for the wielding of power in sport organizations. RESEARCH METHODS This paper reports findings based on telephone interviews with NCs of 64 Swedish national sport organizations. RESULTS AND FINDINGS The analyses show how NC processes may be distinguished into six components: election of the NC at the general assembly (GA), monitoring of the incumbent board, preparation for nominee identification, assembly of a list of potential nominees, evaluation of potential nominees, and submission of proposed nominees to the GA. Within and across these components, the analyses reveal three aspects particularly powerful in their potential to shape board composition: degree of formalization, network reliance, and transparency. IMPLICATIONS These findings have implications for research and practice. Regarding the former, the study provides a baseline description that can be used in future explorations of the NC process and its determinants and effects in varying contexts. As for the latter, the findings suggest that sport organizations carry an untapped potential in considering NCs’ shaping potential, regardless of whether an ‘adequate’ board is one that is equipped to improve organizational efficiency or one that safeguards representation and democracy.
Stenling, Maria Cecilia Erika; Fahlen, Josef; Strittmatter, Anna-Maria & Skille, Eivind Åsrum (2021). Gate-keeping nonprofit governance: evaluative criteria and their rankings in nomination committee selection processes. In Donnelly-Cox, Gemma; Meyer, Michael & Wijkström, Filip (Ed.), Research Handbook on Nonprofit Governance. Edward Elgar Publishing. ISSN 9781788114905. p. 279–293. doi: 10.4337/9781788114912.00025. Full text in Research Archive
Skille, Eivind Åsrum; Fahlen, Josef; Stenling, Cecilia & Strittmatter, Anna-Maria (2021). Dørvakter til særforbundsstyrer: Valgkomitérepresentanters syn på seleksjonskriterier og kjønnsbalanse. In Tjønndal, Anne (Eds.), Idrett, kjønn og ledelse. Fagbokforlaget. ISSN 9788245035353. p. 306–322. Full text in Research Archive
Skille, Eivind Åsrum; Lehtonen, Kati & Fahlen, Josef (2021). The politics of organizing indigenous sport – cross-border and cross-sectoral complexity. European Sport Management Quarterly. ISSN 1618-4742. 23(2), p. 526–543. doi: 10.1080/16184742.2021.1892161. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
Research Question: The authors studied the complexity surrounding the organization of sport in nations without nation-state status, exploring three research questions: (1) How do representatives of Sámi sport organizations in Finland and Norway perceive and act upon the proposal to reorganize Sámi sport? (2) How do representatives of the Sámi parliaments in Finland and Norway perceive and act upon the proposal to reorganize Sámi sport? (3) How do representatives of the state bureaucracy in Finland perceive and act upon the proposal to reorganize Sámi sport? Research Methods: We interviewed representatives of the Sámi parliaments and Sámi sport in Norway and Finland, an external consultant in Norway and a state official of Finland constituting a total of eight key actor interviews. Results and Findings: The analysis revealed the dominant role of the Norwegian side of Sámi sport, largely based on the institutional power of the Sámi parliament in Norway. In that respect, voluntary sport organizations in both Finland and Norway were reluctant to consider or were even negative towards an ongoing reorganization of Sámi sport since it was initiated by the Norwegian authorities and by the Norwegian Sámi parliament. Implications: Decision-makers in government agencies involved in cross-border and cross-sectoral issues should consider the opinions of all parties involved. Moreover, concerning indigenous groups striving for self-determination in post-colonial contexts, it is important to create a unified voice in matters important to the group as a collective.
Stenling, Cecilia & Fahlen, Josef (2021). Sport club consultants as street-level bureaucrats in sport policy processes: conceptualising micro-level interaction styles and their macro-level consequences. European Journal for Sport and Society (EJSS). ISSN 1613-8171. 18(2), p. 168–186. doi: 10.1080/16138171.2021.1908731. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
The focus of this paper is sport club consultants, an under-researched role that is uniquely situated at the interface of sport policy systems and clubs. Incumbents of this role—the label of which varies between countries—conduct club-directed developmental work to align clubs with centrally issued policies and programmes. Conceptualising sport club consultants as a sport-specific street-level bureaucrat, the paper’s purpose is, first, to analyse sport club consultants’ interaction style vis-à-vis clubs and, second, to demonstrate that broader and unintended transformative effects may follow from this rather micro practice. We propose that sport club consultants’ institutionally shaped interaction style may be operationalised along four dimensions (e.g. case prioritisation principle, shaping of interaction context, interactor positioning, communicative strategy). The substantive empirical content of these dimensions may vary between systems and the policy in question. Nonetheless, we show that system-level fragmentation, professionalisation, and centralisation are potential consequences of the work through which sport club consultants attempt to reconcile tensions between centrally distilled policies and clubs’ readiness, willingness, and ability to change.
Skille, Eivind Åsrum; Fahlen, Josef; Stenling, Cecilia & Strittmatter, Anna-Maria (2021). (Lack of) government policy for indigenous (Sámi) sport: A chain of legitimating and de-legitimating acts. International Review for the Sociology of Sport. ISSN 1012-6902. doi: 10.1177/1012690220988650. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
While colonization as policy is formally a historic phenomenon in Norway and elsewhere, many former structures of state organization – including their relationship to sport – remain under post-colonial conditions. This paper is concerned with how the Norwegian government contributes to creating a situation, which includes the Norwegian sports confederation (NIF) but excludes the indigenous people Sámi’s sports organisation. Based on existing data and literature, we analyse how the state favours NIF through a chain of legitimating acts. Thus, sport is a preserve of colonization, where a one-sided legitimation parallels a de-legitimation of the overarching sport policy goal of sport-for-all. However, there are signs of change whereby actors are challenging NIF’s monopoly and ‘older’ state-sport regimes.
Bodemar, Annika; Strittmatter, Anna-Maria & Fahlen, Josef (2020). Doomed to fail? A study of how junior managers at a major sport event cope with leadership issues. International Journal of Sport Management and Marketing. ISSN 1475-8962. 20(3-4), p. 271–288. doi: 10.1504/IJSMM.2020.110845. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
The organising committee at the 2012 World Snowboarding Championships in Oslo experienced major problems such as uncertainty among the junior managers and general chaos. Despite this, in external communications, the event was declared to be a success. This article draws on the works of Parent and Seguin (2007) and Parent et al. (2009) to examine the key leadership and organisational factors that contributed to these problems. The purpose of this study is to investigate how the junior managers coped with uncertainty and solved problems. This study is based on semi-structured interviews, documents, and participant observations. The findings show that a variety of mechanisms caused uncertainty, including some factors that predicted the event's failure. Although the existing literature is focused on explaining events' success or lack thereof via leadership, this case provides an opportunity to understand how an event can succeed despite the presence of factors that typically lead to failure.
Skille, Eivind Åsrum & Fahlen, Josef (2019). The role of sport organizations for local and national community: The case of Sámi sport organizations. European Sport Management Quarterly. ISSN 1618-4742. doi: 10.1080/16184742.2019.1610784. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
Research question: This paper investigates (1) how representatives of Sámi sport clubs understand local and national communities, and (2) and the role of the sport organization in the creation and perception of local and national community. The study contributes to the research field by showing how sport organizations are the basis of the community, locally and nationally. Research methods: Interviews were conducted with seven board members representing five Sámi sport clubs in four municipalities. The sport clubs were all members of the Sámi sport organization, and located in core Sámi areas where Sámi language and culture is manifested in everyday life. Sámi are the indigenous peoples of the northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and north-west Russia. Results and findings: For sport club representatives, Sámi sport refers to specific activities associated with Sámi husbandry heritage, and to the Sámi sport organization. Sport clubs function as community organizations at the local level. Moreover, through affiliation with the Sámi sport organization, the sport clubs are the link to the Sámi national community. Sámi indigeneity is played out internally in the local community as well as on the borderline to other communities with other ethnic compositions. Implications: The study revealed a complex relationship between the local and national elements of indigeneity, and between the internal and the external elements. These elements of multiculturalism and sport clubs require to be taken into account in future sport management and policy-making in addition to multicultural policies towards immigrant sport participation and organization.
Stenling, Cecilia; Fahlen, Josef; Strittmatter, Anna-Maria & Skille, Eivind Åsrum (2019). Hierarchies of criteria in NSO board-nomination processes: insights from nomination committees’ work. European Sport Management Quarterly. ISSN 1618-4742. doi: 10.1080/16184742.2019.1672204. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
Research question: The purpose of this paper is to create knowledge on board-selection processes and their outcomes in terms of board composition. We address two research questions: (1) What evaluative criteria are at play in board-selection processes; and (2) what hierarchies of criteria are formed when evaluative criteria are ranked? The significance of the study lies in contemporary considerations of good governance, in sport members’ (un)equal access to positions of power, and in how issues of representation relate to the legitimacy of sport governance systems and to broader societal patterns of representation, influence, and democracy. Research methods: Nomination committees are increasingly used worldwide to further good governance in sport organizations. Our analysis builds on interviews with representatives of 61 out of 71 Swedish national sport organizations’ nomination committees. Results and Findings: Our study shows that trade-offs are made not between gender and merit, as previously suggested, but between and among a wide variety of representation criteria and a wide variety of efficiency criteria. We show how tensions between criteria result in trade-offs that imply a ranking of criteria into seven types of hierarchies, only one of which prioritizes a representation-based board composition. Implications: Because rankings of multiple evaluative criteria impact any single criterion of interest (e.g. gender), future studies should take into account the range of evaluative criteria at play. For sport management and policy practitioners alike, we provide a tool to understand and address (in)adequate representation but also an imperative to consider the meaning of adequate representation.
Fahlen, Josef & Ferry, Magnus (2019). Sports participation in Sweden. In Green, Kenneth Stanley; Sigurjonsson, Thorsteinn Josef & Skille, Eivind (Ed.), Sport in Scandinavia and the Nordic countries. Routledge. ISSN 9781138052154. p. 136–171. doi: 10.4324/9781315167978-7. Full text in Research Archive
Strittmatter, Anna-Maria; Stenling, Cecilia; Fahlen, Josef & Skille, Eivind (2018). Sport policy analysis revisited: the sport policy process as an interlinked chain of legitimating acts. International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics. ISSN 1940-6940. 10(4), p. 621–635. doi: 10.1080/19406940.2018.1522657. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
By providing an analytical framework that draws on a conceptualisation of legitimacy in organisation studies, this paper demonstrates that the sport policy process can be understood as an interlinked chain of legitimating acts. Based on recent suggestions in organisation theory literature on how to approach legitimacy and legitimation, we applied the framework on a small sample of published sport policy studies to demonstrate its utility. By applying the framework, six interweaved and interweaving elements of the legitimating act within sport policy processes were identified: legitimacy-seeking organisation, subject, source(s), strategy, bases and scenario. The analysis shows that each of the six elements works by intersecting within each phase of the policy process. The main conclusion is that consequences – often unintended – resulting from legitimating acts in one phase have legitimacy-related implications for the other phases of the policy process. As pressing as pinpointing the use of all elements of the framework is, it is equally important to distinguish each of the elements in order to fulfil the analytical potential of the proposed framework. Since sport policy processes in practice rely primarily on organisations and organisational action, future sport policy research would benefit from this type of framework connecting organisations and organising to policy processes.
Fahlen, Josef & Stenling, Cecilia (2018). (Re)conceptualizing institutional change in sport management contexts: the unintended consequences of sport organizations? everyday organizational life. European Sport Management Quarterly. ISSN 1618-4742. doi: 10.1080/16184742.2018.1516795. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
Research question: The purpose of this paper is to construct empirically grounded concepts that can aid the explanation of processes of institutional change. This effort is guided by the observation that neither ‘structure-centred' nor ‘actor-centred' explanations of institutional change are equipped to provide a satisfactory explanation of one of organizational institutionalism’s basic assumptions: that organizations are products of and produce their institutional contexts. Therefore, the focus is directed at practitioners' everyday struggle to accomplish their work, and institutional change is conceptualized as an unintended consequence of such mundane ‘muddling through'. Research methods: The text is based on video recordings of board meetings in two sport clubs over one year. Data collection resulted in approximately 33 h of observation data from 17 board meetings. Results and findings: Analysis shows how sport club boards' interpretive processes of meaning making are instances of unintentional coproduction that plant seeds for institutional change. The creation of such seeds is the result of processes of problem–solution approximation and the use of proximal institutional raw material. This shows how sport organizations are crucial actors in the creation, modification, and transformation of the institutional arrangements prescribing appropriate organizational behaviour and enforcing patterns of interest and privilege. This analysis contributes knowledge on how sport organizations unintentionally coproduce increasing government reliance on sport organizations, professionalization, and commercialization. Implications: Such knowledge can make sport organizations and policy-makers aware of how unintentional coproduction might lead to the momentum of processes adverse to their needs and wishes.

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Strittmatter, Anna-Maria; Fahlen, Josef & Houlihan, Barrie (2022). Stakeholder Analysis and Sport Organisations. Routledge. ISBN 9781000511888. 287 p. Full text in Research Archive

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Strömberg, Julius Zackarias; Strittmatter, Anna-Maria & Fahlen, Josef (2025). Volunteering is (not) dead? The promises and pitfalls of professionalization within the governance of the voluntary sport club. SVEBI 2025. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
This paper focuses on the two central meaning systems existing and affecting the practices and structures within modern grassroots sport, namely voluntarism and professionalism – and how they, despite differences, coexist and conjoins within sport club organization. This theme is one of the most enduring within the scholarly discourse in sport management, and we aim to discuss and showcase how the logics’ interdependence continues to shape grassroots sport and how they remain the key processes that shape how sport clubs are being lead, organized and practiced. The aim is to understand how professionalization processes impact voluntary ideals and practices in the governance of voluntary sports.
Strittmatter, Anna-Maria; Fahlen, Josef & Houlihan, Barrie (2022). Introduction. In Strittmatter, Anna-Maria; Fahlen, Josef & Houlihan, Barrie (Ed.), Stakeholder Analysis and Sport Organisations. Routledge. ISSN 9781000511888. Full text in Research Archive
Skille, Eivind Åsrum; Strittmatter, Anna-Maria; Fahlen, Josef & Stenling, Cecilia (2019). Government policy for indigenous (Sámi) sport – a chain of legitimating acts? Full text in Research Archive

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Published Oct. 17, 2023 1:10 PM - Last modified Apr. 16, 2026 3:51 PM