Making Change a Natural, Desirable and Continual State: A Critical Examination of Volunteer-based Sport Associational Development

Author(s):

Rasmus Bergmann(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2017

Network:

32. Organizational Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

32 SES 03, Organizational Change as Process

Paper Session

Time:

2017-08-22

17:15-18:45

Room:

K3.18

Chair:

Andreas Schröer

Contribution

This paper addresses organizational education and change processes within the voluntary sector. Volunteerism has been a hot topic on the political agenda in recent years. Welfare states are under pressure due to economic crisis, ageing populations, rising public expectations, etc., and embracing volunteers seems to be a common way to accommodate the crisis. The EU have designated a European Year of Volunteering. In the UK, politicians have talked about building a ‘Big Society’. And in Scandinavia, national programmes aimed at involving civil society and its voluntary organizations in the handling of a variety of welfare issues have been launched. Researchers talk about therediscovery of volunteerismon the political agenda (Rochester 2013) and the close relationship between the public sector and the voluntary sector is diligently discussed under labels such as co-production (Verschuere, Brandsen, and Pestoff 2012), partnerships (Bode and Brandsen 2014), and collaborative innovation (Hartley, Sørensen, and Torfing 2013). In many countries sport constitutes the largest area of volunteerism, and also in this field volunteers and their organizations are increasingly expected to act as welfare policy teammates by participating in a variety of collaborative projects and partnerships with public organizations (Groeneveld 2009, Waardenburg 2016).

The rediscovery of volunteerism has been followed by a growing focus on developing and modernizing the voluntary sector (McLaughlin 2004). In the field of sport, attention has mainly been directed at attempts to modernize sport governance within the public sector by modernizing and professionalizing national sports organizations (NSOs) (Houlihan and Green 2009, Sam 2009). But also local, volunteer-based sports associations (VSAs) are increasingly under pressure to modernize in order to become the attractive welfare policy partners that politicians and others wish them to be (Stenling and Fahlén 2016). While a number of studies have explored how VSAs emerge in national as well as local sport policies (see e.g. Adams 2011, Waardenburg 2016), less attention has been paid to the logics embedded in the attempts made by NSOs to modernize and develop their volunteer-based local member associations (an exception is van der Roest, Vermeulen, and van Bottenburg 2015). Nonetheless, this seems highly relevant, since modernization in its essence is a political endeavour, though often presented as a neutral way to make things work better. As Adams (2011, 38f) has stressed, the zeal to modernize VSAs may change not only how VSAs function, but also why they function, who they function for, and what meaning they may have for those involved. Taking the call by Adams (2011, 39f) and others (see e.g. Thing and Ottesen 2010, 233f) for future research that can further our understanding of the socio-political nature of modernization strategies and techniques seriously, this paper examines how the concept of voluntary associationalism is contested when the state-subsidized NSO Danish Gymnastics and Sports Associations (DGI) encourages its volunteer-based member associations to work with their own self-development by participating in the Danish Associational Development Championships (DADC). The purpose is to show how the political battlefield for voluntary associationalism today has moved into the development tools and techniques which VSAs are encouraged to use in their change processes. To pursue this purpose, the article draws on Foucault’s thinking about the intimate relationship between power, knowledge and subjectivity, and especially on the concepts of governmentality and dispositive (Foucault 2000, 2007), in order to demonstrate how the DADC seeks to structure the relationship of VSA leaders to themselves and their associations according to proclaimed ethical standards and political goals.

Method

The paper is based on all kinds of empirical material that is either produced or applied in the DADC. This includes conference material such as presentations, posters and methods, inspirational catalogues, the associations’ own descriptions of their profiles and their project results, official evaluations of the DADC, and online information about the project found on DGI’s official website. Data was primarily collected from the second edition of the DADC when a total of 9 presentations held by a) the DADC Chair, b) a number of keynote speakers, and c) representatives from former DADC participant VSAs were recorded at the project’s kick-off conference. In particular, the article focuses on three specific development tools: the Idea Generator, the Association Test and the Association Survey, all of which the participants were encouraged to use in their development process during the project period. To study these techniques, the article draws on online information material including instruction videos and written manuals. All recorded presentations and instruction videos were fully transcribed. On this basis, a theoretically founded, concept-driven encoding (see Gibbs 2007, 38ff) was carried out. The purpose of the encoding was neither to compare nor to quantify the statements placed in each category. Rather, the aim of the encoding was simply to structure the empirical data in relation to the article’s theoretically inspired knowledge interests, thus creating the basis for adding as much complexity to each analysis as possible. The empirical data has at least two obvious limitations. First, the paper cannot draw any conclusions regarding whether the DADC actually leads to associational development. Neither is it possible to identify whether the relationship of VSA leaders to themselves and/or their association changes due to their participation in the DADC. What the empirical data does make it possible to draw conclusions about, however, is the way in which a concrete modernization project aimed at Danish VSAs seeks to structure the field of possible actions of voluntary VSA leaders. Hence, the paper focuses on the logics upon which the organizational modernization of VSAs is reasoned in the DADC rather than on what actually characterizes VSAs, their surroundings or their voluntary leaders.

Expected Outcomes

The paper shows how the DADC integrates three different logics of change, and how this makes it appear inevitable that every VSA a) has the desire to change, b) has the potential to change, and c) faces a demand to change. First, the DADC forms a logic of care that makes the project appear as an innocent taking care of the participating voluntary leaders’ desire for change by helping them to realize their own development ideas and wishes. Based on this logic of care, VSAs are independent communities of interest that need to change because a common desire to do so exists among the association’s voluntary leaders. Secondly, the DADC forms a logic of optimization that makes the project appear as a way to hold voluntary leaders responsible for fulfilling their associations’ development potential as it appears from a very detailed ideal model of the optimal VSA. Based on this logic of optimization, VSAs are socially responsible organizations that need to change because they have a potential to do so. Thirdly, the DADC forms a logic of competition that makes the project appear as a way to improve the competitiveness of VSAs. Based on this logic of competition, VSAs are communities of utility that need to change because the market demands it. The article’s main point is that the DADC challenges the very concept of voluntary associationalism by making it ambiguous what the function of VSAs is, who they function for, and why they need to change. This is important not only because it shows how the political battlefield for voluntary associationalism today has moved into the development tools and techniques which VSAs are encouraged to use in their continual processes of change, but also because it makes change appear as the natural, desirable and continual state of every VSA.

References

Adams, Andrew. 2011. "Between modernization and mutual aid: the changing perceptions of voluntary sports clubs in England." International journal of sport policy and politics 3 (1):23-43. Bode, Ingo, and Taco Brandsen. 2014. "State–third Sector Partnerships: A short overview of key issues in the debate." Public Management Review 16 (8):1055-1066. Foucault, Michel. 2000. "The subject and power." In Power. Essential Works of Foucault, Vol. 3, edited by James D. Faubion. New York: The New Press. Foucault, Michel. 2007. Security, territory, population: lectures at the Collège de France 1977-78. New York: Palgrave. Gibbs, Graham R. 2007. Analyzing qualitative data. Reprinted ed, The SAGE qualitative research kit. Los Angeles: Sage Publications. Groeneveld, Margaret. 2009. "European Sport Governance, Citizens, And The State: Finding a (co-) productive balance for the twenty-first century." Public management review 11 (4):421-440. Hartley, Jean, Eva Sørensen, and Jacob Torfing. 2013. "Collaborative innovation: A viable alternative to market competition and organizational entrepreneurship." Public Administration Review 73 (6):821-830. Houlihan, Barrie, and M. Green. 2009. "Modernization and sport: The reform of Sport England and UK Sport." Public administration 87 (3):678-698. McLaughlin, Kate. 2004. "Towards a 'modernized' voluntary and community sector?" Public Management Review 6 (4):555-562. Rochester, Colin. 2013. Rediscovering voluntary action: The beat of a different drum: Palgrave Macmillan. Sam, Michael P. 2009. "The public management of sport: wicked problems, challenges and dilemmas." Public management review 11 (4):499-514. Stenling, Cecilia, and Josef Fahlén. 2016. "Same same, but different? Exploring the organizational identities of Swedish voluntary sports: Possible implications of sports clubs’ self-identification for their role as implementers of policy objectives." International Review for the Sociology of Sport 51 (7):867-883. Thing, Lone Friis, and Laila Ottesen. 2010. "The autonomy of sports: negotiating boundaries between sports governance and government policy in the Danish welfare state." International Journal of Sport Policy 2 (2):223-235. van der Roest, Jan-Willem, Jeroen Vermeulen, and Maarten van Bottenburg. 2015. "Creating sport consumers in Dutch sport policy." International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics 7 (1):105-121. Verschuere, Bram, Taco Brandsen, and Victor Pestoff. 2012. "Co-production: The State of the Art in Research and the Future Agenda." VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations 23 (4):1083-1101. Waardenburg, Maikel. 2016. "Which wider social roles? An analysis of social roles ascribed to voluntary sports clubs." European Journal for Sport and Society 13 (1):38-54.

Author Information

Rasmus Bergmann (presenting / submitting)

University College Capital

Department of Research and Development

Copenhagen V

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