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The purpose of this paper is to analyse the increasing commercialisation of professional football in France, and its implications for clubs’ governance and management.

A historical analysis using a narrative approach based on historical data from various sources, will allow for identifying the emergence of and shifts in institutional logics. Due to the role of the state in the subject in question, particular attention was paid to parliamentary documents.

Rather than replacing the former logic, a new commercial logic coexists alongside this, leading to institutional pluralism.

The paper outlines the governance implications of institutional pluralism of football clubs; thus opening up new perspectives for future research on clubs’ governance. It does not, however, provide a response to these implications and therefore further research is needed to analyse how clubs’ managers can shape organisational identity and make it more consistent.

Governance and management issues in football might be explained by the multiple logics clubs are facing. Football clubs’ managers thus need to take these logics into account when addressing their key stakeholders, and have to work on shaping a consistent organisational identity.

This article is original in that it analyses the commercialisation of football as a move towards a more complex institutional pluralism, rather than a change in the dominant logic. This perspective is valuable for managers because it helps them to identify the levers they should work on to better manage clubs’ stakeholders. It is also useful for academics in terms of opening up new ways to conceive clubs’ governance.

The purpose of this paper is to critically evaluate football club financial reporting with reference to: the long-standing debate on the nature and purpose of accounting; and the implementation of UEFA's Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations.

The paper is based on a review and analysis of academic literature, accounting regulation and football regulations.

The focus of financial reporting on rational economic decision-makers results in football club financial reports being of limited use to many football club stakeholders. Consideration of the social and organisational context of football, as takes place in FFP, can be used as a catalyst to consider broader approaches to football club reporting. The paper calls for fuller and different pictures to be provided of clubs’ performance, in particular broadening the scope of accountability to users beyond that provided by an economic account.

The paper is designed to stimulate debate about accounting for and reporting on football club businesses. A necessary next step is an exploratory project, focusing on one or a small number of clubs and their stakeholders, exploring in a practical setting what enhanced football club reporting might look like.

While the weaknesses of financial reporting have been considered extensively in the mainstream accounting literature and on occasion in terms of sport, the paper seeks to progress this discussion by linking it to significant football policy initiatives and to wider social and community-based football research.

The aim of this study is to consider how key actors in a territorial brand view the creation of value, and how it is balanced between the territorial and individual brands – using champagne as a means of exploring this.

The project was exploratory and a qualitative process involving interviews with key actors in the region was adopted.

Members of the champagne industry adopt a range of views about the nature of value, focusing on image, reputation and perceived quality, but varying between an individualist approach (which considers that value creation lies with the proprietary brands) and a more collectivist perspective, which considers it is predominantly the result of the territorial brand.

Research into the organisation of territorial brands is just beginning; while merely exploratory this research suggests that issues around value merit further consideration.

Actors within a territorial brand need to clearly negotiate how they view value in order to maintain coherence and a common message. They may also need to pay more attention to issues around brand co-creation.

No research in this precise field has previously been carried out and this study highlights variations in the perceptions of key actors within a territorial brand.

The purpose of this paper is to critically review the part of the leader succession literature which is based on coach turnover in sport teams. The aim of this paper is to assess the state of the art and the relevance of this literature for sport management and further research.

A comprehensive reading of the extant scientific literature and a critical assessment of its conceptual and methodological foundations.

The assumptions guiding the coach succession are not based on insights about the idiosyncrasies of team sport and its management. These flaws render the research findings of the research dubious and leave us with little reliable information of what influence coaches have on their teams and what the impact is of the high turnover of head coaches in professional team sport.

Leader succession research in sport is heavily flawed because it has not been informed by qualitative studies exploring the contextual conditions under which the coaches work. It follows that qualitative studies of the impact of coaches is highly wanted. Furthermore, the generalization from findings in sport across other spheres of social life should be addressed with caution because sport is much more idiosyncratic than has been assumed in the coach succession literature.

This is the first review of the leader succession literature from a sport management perspective. It provides a profound critique of the research on coach succession in team sport.

Previous research has solidly demonstrated that successful sports teams and athletes can sway purchase behavior and other critical outcomes (Braunstein-Minkove et al.; McEvoy; Bush et al.). The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact that a globally prominent sports team can have on perceptions of the country by foreigners. The importance of a country's image as a cue in consumer choice behavior is well recognized in the business literature. However, relatively little empirical research has been done in determining what factors influence the formation of country-of-origin (COO) image in the minds of potential consumers and tourists. The paper theorizes that loyalty and viewership of a country's sports team will be a significant predictor of COO image.

In all, 951 individuals from four different countries were surveyed to determine their loyalty and viewership of Manchester United Football Club and their perceptions of the geographic home of the team.

The results indicate significant effects of both team loyalty and team viewership on the COO image by foreigners, especially highlighting noteworthy differences between foreigners with strong loyalty toward the globally prominent sports team and foreigners with weak to nonexistent loyalty regarding the interaction of these effects.

Few studies have sought to empirically explore what factors influence the formation of COO image. The current research contributes to the ever growing COO image body of knowledge by demonstrating the importance that a globally prominent sports team can play in generating positive perceptions of a country by foreigners. The paper further demonstrates that a country should pursue opportunities that allow foreigners to watch the globally prominent sports team play.

The purpose of this paper is to bridge the micro-macro divide by trying to integrate the micro-domain's focus on individuals (i.e. managers) with the meso-domain's and macro-domain's focus (i.e. leagues/football clubs and the socio-political environment, respectively). The examination takes place within the context of English football and in relation to the implementation of corporate social responsibility (CSR).

The paper draws on data collected by 21 charitable foundation managers of the top two divisions of English football. The interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim from digital voice recorders and were analysed using grounded theory coding techniques.

The study found a paradoxical context in which foundation managers make strategic decisions in an endeavour to harmonise multiple environmental and institutional “recipes”. Managers are confident that they have the capability to do so, yet realise that this capability is the result of a heavy reliance on external and internal resources. These considerations come together to create the micro-context, here identified as a dysfunctional setting, in which managers are required to make the decisions that confirm their role as managers. Therefore, multiple, and often contradictory, theoretical perspectives are in play and explain the foundation managers’ role in the implementation process.

The paper moves away from mono-theoretical approaches that have been mainly used for the examination of CSR in the sporting context, and by placing its focus on the individual level of analysis illustrates the complexity of the CSR implementation process.