En kvalitativ studie om sportchefers förklaring till den höga omsättningen inom SHL och Hockeyallsvenskan i svensk elitishockey.

Sammanfattning: End of signal has just passed. The team you work for has just won the championship, and you as sport director hailed as a hero based on your ability to build a successful team. The season after looks differently, you are painted as guilt and the association begins to lose patience. The pressure of external stakeholders grows and it ends with the association choosing to fire you. Another scenario is the feelings that the excessive workload will be your failure, which will let you resign from your service as sports director. Being a sports director in a performance-based world places high demands on you as an individual, both holding knowledge about Ice hockey, but also to handle for example economic and legal issues. Almost half of all sports directors have become unemployed or stopped themselves in recent seasons. It becomes clear that the role and the requirement image become complex. That reason makes it interesting to explain this problem. The study has been conducted by making qualitative interviews with the selection of sports directors in SHL and Hockeyallsvenskan in Swedish elite Hockey. SHL (Swedish Hockey League) is the highest league and Hockeyallsvenskan is the second highest league in Swedish Elite Hockey. The purpose of this study has been the sports leaders’ explanation for the high turnover in SHL and Hockeyallsvenskan in Swedish elite Hockey. The purpose of this study has developed two issues that will form the basis of the study: 1. What are the factors behind the high turnover of the sports directors? 2. Is the responsibility of the associations or the sports directors for the high turnover? The result of this study shows that there are combinations of different factors that are behind the high turnover of sports directors in Swedish Elite Hockey. One factor is the diffuse requirement picture from the association on what is expected of the sports director. The sports director’s role in the organization is not clear enough. This leads to a collision in which the associations have not identified the skills required in the role. Furthermore, there is a lack of continuity and long term relationships with the associations where confidence in the sports director immediately reduces in the event of non-sporting results. The result also shows that the impact of external factors, combined with excessive workload, leads to terminations in the profession. Finally, it may be noted that the role of sports director requires good competence in matters that are included in the role of a chief. The lack of competencies within the management leads to difficulties for the sports director to handle the issues that include tough decisions.