Management control in a hybrid setting - a case study of a Swedish football club

Sammanfattning: Research within sports association is, from an accounting perspective, a modest researched area, where the multifaceted circumstances and organizational settings existing in sports clubs affect the use of management control systems. Taking an all-inclusive view on how management control systems is designed in sport organizations in tough times, I expand prior research on management control and sports that mainly has discovered constricted topics within the chosen subject. To achieve the purpose of the thesis, a comprehensive case study of a Swedish professional football association, xxx F.C., has been conducted with the identification of two fundamental logics: sports logic and business logic. Linking the object-of-control framework provided by Merchant & Van der Stede (2017), I formulate a theoretical framework, which leads the collection and analysis of data. The discoveries illustrate that xxx F.C., is a hybrid organization where the business- and sports logics exist but appear not to be in conflict. Despite the turbulent times within the association, the strong prevailing culture that exists with the strong emotional connection employees have to the organization, together with the lack of formal guidelines have implied a greater focus on the sports logic and consequently the whole organization being dependent on achieving sporting success and selling their assets in order to survive.