BACHELOR THESIS Fall 2009 Kristianstad University College International Business and Economics Program The future for football supporters Strategic customer perception of organizational change Authors Johan Lindell Gustav Nilsson Supervisor Timurs Umans Examiner Christer Ekelund Abstract The interest for professional football has increased during the last decades; more people attend football games and buying club merchandise. This has lead to increased turnover for the football clubs. This new development has forced the football clubs to transform in order to take advantage of the opportunities an increased turnover creates. The way Swedish football clubs have changed; is to start joint stock companies besides the non-profit football club. The supporter clubs today have a close relationship with the football clubs they are connected to. The purpose with this thesis is to investigate how the organizational change in the football club affects the close relationship between the supporters and the football club. The problem has been investigated with help of an open questionnaire, which has been sent out to supporter clubs connected to football clubs in the highest division in Sweden. The result of this thesis shows that the organizational change that has taken place in the Swedish football clubs, has not affected the relationship between the supporters and football clubs in a negative way. However, some of the supporters feel that the development has lead to a situation where the supporters have less opportunity to participate in the decision-making process. To conclude, the supporter clubs felt that a change in organizational form had or would mean that they did not have the same opportunity to be involved in the decision-making process. Keywords: Organizational change, Strategic customer, Supporter clubs, Football clubs. Acknowledgements With this thesis we complete our bachelor degree in International Business Administration at Kristianstad University College. It has been a developing and interesting experience to work with this thesis. We are both pleased that we have had the opportunity to combine our two biggest interests, Football and Business. We would like to thank our tutor Timurs Umans for his help throughout the whole process, contributing with thoughts and ideas. We also would like to thank Annika Fjelkner for the help with the language and structure of the thesis. Last, we would like to thank the participants of the thesis; Mattias Andersson/ Balders Hage, Linus Jensen/Kärnan, Andreas Tranlöv/Guliganerna, Jesper Uhlén/Bollklubben Support and Dan Blomberg/Järnkaminerna. Kristianstad, December 2009 ___________ _____________ Johan Lindell Gustav Nilsson Table of Contents 1. INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 BACKGROUND 1 1.2 PROBLEM 3 1.3 PURPOSE 4 1.4 RESEARCH QUESTION 4 1.5 LIMITATIONS 4 2. METHOD 5 2.1 INTRODUCTION 5 2.2 RESEARCH PHILOSOPHY 6 2.3 RESEARCH APPROACH 7 2.4 CHOICE OF THEORY 8 2.5 TIME HORIZON 9 3. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 10 3.1 INTRODUCTION TO THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 10 3.2 ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE 10 3.2.1 PROBLEMS WITH ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE 11 3.3 ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE 12 3.3.1 CENTRALIZATION 14 3.3.2 DECENTRALIZATION 14 3.4 ORGANIZATIONAL FORM 15 3.4.1 NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATIONS 15 3.4.2 JOINT STOCK COMPANIES 16 3.5 STAKEHOLDER THEORY 16 3.5.1 COUNTING ALL STAKEHOLDERS 17 3.5.2 FROM STAKEHOLDERS PERSPECTIVE 18 3.5.3 FANS AS CUSTOMERS 18 3.6 OUTCOMES OF ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE 19 3.6.1 DECREASE OF INVOLVEMENT 20 3.6.2 LOSS OF IDENTITY 20 3.6.3 DECREASE OF MOTIVATION 21 3.6.4 LACK OF SUPPORT 21 3.6.5 LACK OF TRUST 22 3.7 STRATEGIC CUSTOMER PERCEPTION MODEL 23 3.7.2 OUTCOMES OF ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE 24 3.7.3 STRATEGIC CUSTOMER PERCEPTION 24 4. EMPIRICS 25 4.1 INTRODUCTION 25 4.1.1 LEGAL FORMS 27 4.1.2 NON-PROFIT ASSOCIATION FORMS IN SWEDISH SPORT ORGANIZATIONS 27 4.1.3 SWEDISH SPORT ORGANIZATIONS START JOINT-STOCK COMPANIES 28 4.2 RESEARCH DESIGN 28 4.3 RESEARCH STRATEGIES 29 4.4 DATA COLLECTION 29 4.4.1 PRIMARY DATA 30 4.4.2 SECONDARY DATA 30 4.4.3 DATA COLLECTION IN OUR THESIS 30 4.5 THE RESPONDENTS 31 4.5.1 JÄRNKAMINERNA AND DJURGÅRDENS IF 31 4.5.2 KÄRNAN AND HELSINGBORGS IF 33 4.5.3 BALDERS HAGE AND ÖRGRYTE IS 34 4.5.4 GULIGANERNA AND IF ELFSBORG 34 4.5.5 BOLLKLUBBEN SUPPORT AND HALMSTAD BK 35 4.6 OPERATIONALISATION 35 4.6.1 EXPLANATION TO OPEN QUESTIONNAIRE 36 4.7 RELIABILITY 39 4.8 VALIDITY 40 4.9 GENERALIZABILITY 41 5. ANALYSIS 42 5.1 EMPIRICAL FINDINGS 42 5.1.1 THE RESPONDENTS´ ANSWERS 44 5.2 HORIZONTAL ANALYSIS OF THE RESPONDENTS IN TABLE 1. 50 5.2.1 HORIZONTAL ANALYSIS OF JÄRNKAMINERNA 50 5.2.2 HORIZONTAL ANALYSIS OF KÄRNAN 52 5.2.3 HORIZONTAL ANALYSIS OF BOLLKLUBBEN SUPPORT 53 5.2.4 HORIZONTAL ANALYSIS OF GULIGANERNA 53 5.2.5 HORIZONTAL ANALYSIS OF BALDERS HAGE 54 5.3 VERTICAL ANALYSIS OF THE RESPONDENTS IN TABLE 1 55 5.3.1 VERTICAL ANALYSIS OF DECREASE OF INVOLVEMENT 55 5.3.2 VERTICAL ANALYSIS OF LOSS OF IDENTITY 56 5.3.3 VERTICAL ANALYSIS OF DECREASE OF MOTIVATION 57 5.3.4 VERTICAL ANALYSIS OF LACK OF SUPPORT 57 5.3.5 VERTICAL ANALYSIS OF LACK OF TRUST 58 6. CONCLUSION 59 6.1 SUMMARY OF THESIS 59 6.2 CONCLUSION 60 6.3 CRITICAL REFLECTIONS 62 6.4 FUTURE RESEARCH 62 6.5 PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS 63 REFERENCES 64 List of Figures FIGURE 1 : THE RESEARCH ONION...........................................................................................5 FIGURE 2: THE ELEMENTS IN A DEDUCTIVE RESEARCH PROCESS................................8 FIGURE 3: STRATEGIC CUSTOMER PERCEPTION MODEL ................................................23 List of Tables TABLE 1: CROSS-SECTIONAL ANALYSIS .............................................................................43 TABLE 2: SUMMARY OF JÄRNKAMINERNAS´ ANSWERS ................................................50 TABLE 3: SUMMARY OF KÄRNANS´ ANSWERS..................................................................52 TABLE 4: SUMMARY OF BOLLKLUBBEN SUPPORTS´ ANSWERS ...................................53 TABLE 5: SUMMARY OF GULIGANERNAS´ ANSWERS......................................................53 TABLE 6: SUMMARY OF BALDERS HAGES´ ANSWERS.....................................................54 TABLE 7: SUMMARY OF DECREASE OF INVOLVEMENT OUTCOME .............................55 TABLE 8: SUMMARY OF LOSS OF IDENTITY OUTCOME ..................................................56 TABLE 9: SUMMARY OF DECREASE OF MOTIVATION OUTCOME.................................57 TABLE 10: SUMMARY OF LACK OF SUPPORT OUTCOME .................................................57 TABLE 11: SUMMARY OF LACK OF TRUST OUTCOME ......................................................58 Appendices APPENDIX 1: FIRST LETTER TO SUPPORTER CLUBS (ENGLISH) ....................................69 APPENDIX 2: FIRST LETTER TO SUPPORTER CLUBS (SWEDISH) ...................................70 APPENDIX 3: SECOND LETTER TO SUPPORTER CLUBS (ENGLISH) ...............................71 APPENDIX 4: SECOND LETTER TO SUPPORTER CLUBS (SWEDISH) ..............................72 APPENDIX 5: OPEN QUESTIONNAIRE (ENGLISH)...............................................................73 APPENDIX 6: OPEN QUESTIONNAIRE (SWEDISH) ..............................................................74 1. Introduction In the introduction, the first part of the dissertation, we justify our choice of research topic and give the reader background information to the problem. In this part the research problem and research question is presented. 1.1 Background It is very hard to define what an organization is and how it is working. One way to explain what an organization is made of is to describe it as an object which organizes something, for example a business organization. A business organization can be seen as a group of people whose main concern is to make profit (Roberts & Armitage 2006). People that start an organization have shared beliefs and common goals at the start but as soon as new people enter the organization they will influence the organization and develop it. As the organization grows and more and more people get involved, the organization will develop its unique characteristics. No matter the type of organization, it is the values that keep the organization together. Even if the organization develops, it is important that these values stay the same, otherwise the organization falls apart (Fernandez & Hogan 2003). Together with the organizational development the organizational culture grows. Organizational theorists have since the late 1970s started to interest themselves in the cultural differences that exist both between different countries and different organizations. Nevertheless all organizational theorists have some shared general thoughts about organizational culture, including definitions of values, beliefs and basic assumptions (Slack & Parent 2006). 1 Football is a sport that is constantly developing. The different clubs are doing whatever they can in order to find ways to be more competitive and successful. In recent years the football clubs have spent more money on transfers and salary to players in order to be successful. This development has forced the clubs to find ways to increase their incomes and revenues. Football clubs in Europe are today bought by companies or rich private persons who have the capability to invest money in the clubs and make them successful. In recent years more football clubs have been bought up and then been given the opportunity to spend more money on player transfers (Croci & Ammirante 1999, BBC 2003). In Sweden, legislations makes it impossible for a company or a person to buy a football club, therefore