Hur leds förändring i en ideell förening som verkar i myndighets ställe? : En studie av den svenska idrottsrörelsens ledarskap, förändring och korporativa samarbete med staten under perioden 2013–2019.

Sammanfattning: The Swedish model is a concept that over time has become widely known. Lately, the first thing that springs to mind may be the way Sweden has handled the pandemic of covid-19. Originally however, the Swedish model is an attempt develop a strategy of cooperation between conflicting interests. It has a long history in the relationship between employers and employees and also more structurally, between labour unions and the employers’ association, as well as between government and various interest organisations. The Swedish Sports Confederation (SSC) is a membership organisation of 72 special federations of sport. In addition, it disperses the government funding to sports and hence has a relationship with the state where the government has particular interest in how sport delivers on the government targets for sport. As a member organisation however, the SSC is governed by its members. The question then arises: does the government funding and the state’s expectations influence how sport is governed even though it is an independent organisation? This study based on a theory of leading change, where leadership is categorised in eight steps examines to what extent and how leadership surfaces in the relationship between the SSC and its members. How can this leadership be described and understood? The method used is a study of documents, more explicitly propositions from the board to the general assembly of the confederation, documents for discussion in workshops and documents containing information and knowledge pertinent to the process. All the documents that were studied have been presented by the board to the members between the years 2013 and 2019. Analysis were quantitative where leadership that could be identified as one of the eight categories of the model was marked in a specially developed protocol and thereafter summarised to determine the extent of leadership that occurred, and qualitative where sections of text that related to the steps of the model were analysed. The leadership was then described based on how steps of the model were utilised or not. The results of the analysis show that the SSC emphasised the creating of a sense of urgency early in the process. This emphasis however, decreased as time passed. During the whole process the SSC kept focus on involving all federations as well as focusing on what to achieve and how this is to be done. From about halfway and onwards the communication about the change process and the vision was given more attention. The SSC has not identified any small, leading coalition, created short term results or celebrated early successes in order to build up more power for change. In the discussion section there is speculation on whether this is due to the type of member organisation that the SSC is. To conclude several suggestions are presented with regards to how a hybrid organisation could handle leadership in order to strengthen knowledge, democracy and at the same time meet expectations from several directions.