Financing and Coach Development in Swedish High Performance athletics Maria Berglöf Bachelor thesis 15 hp Spring 2010 Supervisor: Sten Söderman Abstract: Why are some countries more competitive than others in sport? The question of sport management reached a political level some decades ago and since then the question has become more important and the numbers of research have increased. From Belgium, Netherlands and UK, some researchers started a group in 2002 to go deeper in the subject of sport management; they were called the SPLISS-Consortium group and developed a model to use when benchmarking critical success factors in sport. At the time an international athletics high performance project is coordinated from Brussels, Belgium. The project is using the SPLISS-model to benchmark different countries sport policies around athletics. The purpose with this thesis is to describe and explain financing and coach development, two of the critical success factors developed in the SPLISS-model, in Swedish athletics to see how these factors affects the Swedish results in athletics. The result aims to be a part of the international athletic high performance project. This investigation is built on concepts such as Critical Success Factors, competitiveness and benchmarking. Interviews have been done with two persons working at the Swedish National athletics Association and a coach from a Swedish athletics club. The answers from the interviews have been summarized to describe and explain the predominate context of the financing and coach development in Swedish athletics. The results have also been benchmarked to give a glimpse of how the competitiveness in Swedish elite athletics can be raised. 2 Acknowledgment: Thanks to those who took their time to answer the questionnaires for this thesis. You are all the reason this investigation could be done. Thanks to my supervisor Sten Söderman for his commitment and good advices. Thanks to Massimo Sabbatucci at Université du Luxembourg, in Luxemburg, for taking his time and giving me good advices and to Jaspers Truyens project coordinator at Vreij Universiteit, Brussels, Belgium for his help answering all my questions and letting me borrow his office during my stay in Brussels. Thanks to Marianne Nilsson, Stockholms universitet, Stockholm, for saying that the only way to discourage the worries about the thesis is to start writing it. Maria Berglöf, May 2010 3 1 Introduction ................................................................................. 6 1.1 Discussion of the issue ......................................................................... 8 1.1.1 The issues in the research phase ..................................................... 9 1.2 The issue.......................................................................................... 10 1.3 Purpose............................................................................................ 10 2 Three parts of the framework ..................................................... 11 2.1 Critical Success Factors ...................................................................... 11 2.2 Competitiveness ................................................................................ 11 2.3 Value Chain ...................................................................................... 12 2.4 Benchmarking ................................................................................... 13 2.5 SPLISS, Sport Policy factors Leading to International Success .................. 15 2.6 Conclusions of the existing framework .................................................. 18 3 The emerging methodology ........................................................ 18 3.1 Scientific view ................................................................................... 19 3.2 Collecting of data............................................................................... 22 3.2.1 The interview with the NAA ........................................................... 24 3.2.2 The interview with a coach............................................................ 25 3.3 Approach.......................................................................................... 25 3.4 Limitations of the project .................................................................... 25 4 Empirical studies ........................................................................ 26 4.1 The Swedish National Sport Association ................................................ 26 4.1.1 Financing.................................................................................... 27 4.1.2 Coach development ..................................................................... 27 4.2 The Swedish National athletics Association ............................................ 27 4.2.1 Financing.................................................................................... 28 4.2.2 Coach development in Swedish athletics ......................................... 30 4.3 A coach in a Swedish athletic sport club ................................................ 32 4.3.1 Financing.................................................................................... 32 4.3.2 Coach development ..................................................................... 33 5 Analysis ...................................................................................... 35 6 Discussion and conclusion .......................................................... 39 6.1 Recommendations ............................................................................. 41 Stockholm University School of Business 106 91 Stockholm Telephone: +46 (0)8 16 20 00 www.fek.su.se 7 Critic and future research ........................................................... 42 Reference list: ............................................................................... 43 Literature: ............................................................................................. 43 Other sources:........................................................................................ 44 5 1 Introduction People have always competed in sports but during recent years the competitiveness has grown stronger. A growing number of nations are developing capabilities in elite sport, which is resulting in an increasing competition between nations (Truyens 2009). Competing in elite sport is an economical and political question and to have good policies regarding elite sport has been increasingly important over the last years. One of the reasons in the growing interest in sport is related to the increasing coverage from mass media in the current globalize world. The former president of IOC, Samaranch, brought the Olympic Games into the commercial world and that made the world of sport more dependent on money than earlier (www.svd.se, 2010-05-03). It was first in the 1970’s indications of planned approach to elite sports development occurred in western countries (Green 2007). During the past 40 years sport policy systems have changed. Sometimes during the 1960-1970:s sport policy questions took place in the politics and a discussion about how to organize investment in sports started. That discussion has, during the years, increased around the world. Around the1980’s, Australia established the Australian Institute of Sport; which indicated that the government improved the investment in sporting performance. About this time similar activities, at the political level, happened in many countries. The development of investment in sport is a political issue and has been dependent on the current political view and persons at political position. Communist states and western have during history differed in political statement, regarding sport. In communist’s states, such as former German Democratic Republic, GDR, and the Soviet Union, the research around developing elite sport were excellent (Green and Oakley 2001). For example in Germany coaches had to prepare plans how to work when practicing for an Olympic Game. The plan had to be presented to political bodies for decision (Digel 2005). In China, the communist party has had all the power to control decisions in sport. Today this control has started to decrease (Digel 2005). Now sponsors are gaining increased influences through investments into Chinese sport. The Chinese sport system is slowly being more dependent on other forces than the political. Today, after the fall of Soviet Union and former German Democratic Republic, the western and eastern countries gradually come closer regarding to political influences in sports and the willingness to invest in research. There is no longer such a gap between east end west countries investment in sports. In western countries the sport systems have been depending on the people that commit in the sport. Now when all countries are affected by globalization factors such as, 6 mass media, sponsors, finance, research and politics, the systems are influenced in the same way. As systems in different countries become more equivalent, organizational details become increasingly important (de Bosscher 2009). To have specific tools to measure competitiveness in sports and to measure the quality of sport policies in an international context, have become a more important issue (Truyens 2009). In addition the elite sport system in Sweden is dependent on Swedish culture and political view. This paper aims to explain how the Swedish elite sport system is organized regarding athletics. At the same time the questions about sport policies come in to focus the