2009-01-Solvoll.Pdf (1.176Mb)

Televised sport

Exploring the structuration of producing change and stability in a public service institution

Mona Kristin Solvoll
A dissertation submitted to BI Norwegian School of Management for the degree of Ph.D

Series of Dissertations 1/2009
BI Norwegian School of Management Department of Public Governance

Mona Kristin Solvoll Televised sport - exploring the structuration of producing change and stability in a public service institution

© Mona Kristin Solvoll
2009

Series of Dissertations 1/2009 ISBN: 978 82 7042 944 8 ISSN: 1502-2099

BI Norwegian School of Management N-0442 Oslo Phone: +47 4641 0000

www.bi.no

Printing: Nordberg The dissertation may be ordered from our website www.bi.no (Research – Research Publications)

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Acknowledgements

Many people have contributed in various ways to this project. I am indebted to my outstanding supervisor Professor Tor Hernes for his very unusual mind.

I am grateful to the Norwegian Research Council for the funding of this thesis and to the Department of Public Governance at Norwegian School of Management, BI. Special thanks to the boys at the Centre for Media Economics and to Professor Rolf Høyer who brought me to BI. I would also like to thank the Department of Innovation and Economic Organization that generously welcomed me. Very special thanks to the Department Administrators Ellen A. Jacobsen and Berit Lunke for all their help and bright smiles.

I have received valuable inspiration from many “senior” colleagues, in particular professor Tore Bakken and Professor Lars Thue. Special thanks to Professor Nick Sitter, although he supports the wrong team. Thanks also to my proof-reader, Verona Christmas-Best and the members of the committee for their insightful, comments and criticism.

Without the camaraderie of my fellow doctoral students, this PhD work would have been unbearable. I am forever grateful to Stine “Barbara” Ludvigsen and Anne Louise Koefoed – I am proud to know such excellent researchers. Thanks to the old gang (Anne, Helene, Catherine, Lars and Lars) and to the study group The Inspirea Girls who helped me out in the early days.

I am grateful to Tor Bang, Gerhard E. Schjelderup and Berit von der Lippe who has trusted me with their beloved students. Special thanks to the process friends of the Mimosa 2005 – important days where I suddenly understood something...

My family and close friends have been a long lasting source of energy during this exhaustive period. Thanks for never loosing faith in me. Most of all, I thank my parents for their encouragement and support and thanks to Gary – AML.

Oslo, December 5, 2008
Mona

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Abstract

This thesis has both an empirical and a theoretical ambition. First, the empirical concern is uncovering the processes that shaped and influenced the production of televised football in the Norwegian Public Service Broadcaster, NRK from 1960 to 1995. Secondly, I hope to provide some insight into the theoretical debate on how organisational change and stability act together.
If we accept the assumption that organisations are pursuing change and, at the same time, promoting stability, we need to seek a theoretical context that embrace how an organisation undergoes renewal while retaining much of its institutional inertia at the same time. Drawing on Giddens’ structuration theory (1984), the thesis investigates how structures (rules and resources) provide temporal stability that enable agents to change them. In structuration theory, the structural principles are the most abstract elements of structures while the structural properties are the most concrete. My main concern has been how structures are instantiated in practice and how practices constitute structures. The term instantiation refers to the capacity of human actors to produce a more concrete realisation of some abstract structural principles, while constitution refers to a feedback device from larger concrete structural properties of practice to abstraction.
Empirically, the thesis illustrates how various aspects of public service broadcasting interact. It suggests an understanding of the “conceptual glue” which constructs and reproduces public service broadcasting as (1) a daily professional practice of producing and delivering program output, as (2) a policy organised within an institution, and (3) as an institution with a cultural ideology underpinning both programme making practices and the organising of a public service broadcaster.