Talent Management in Sports - A qualitative analysis of Swedish sport federations

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this thesis is to explore how Swedish sport federations define talent, how they conduct their talent management practices and which factors that affect talent definitions and talent management in different sports. To investigate this a theoretical framework is designed which merges the literature from the fields of talent definitions in business, talent management in sports and institutional logics in sports. The method used is an explorative abductive approach with a qualitative study design. In-depth interviews were conducted in 12 different Swedish sport federations. Our conclusion is that there is a homogeneity in how the sports define talent and how they conduct their talent management activities. There is a strong focus on motivation when talent is defined and little focus on results. Talent identification is done by using different assessment methods. The view shared among the sports is that there is a variety of factors which are important for elite success. Another similarity between the sport federations is that there is a strong emphasis on adapting to individual needs when it comes to talent development. A factor which affects talent management is how the sports are organized in the Swedish sports model, a model which we confirm gives rise to institutional pluralism between the sport-for-all logic and result-oriented logic.