Assessing the Aspects of Good Governance in Finnish Sport Federations

Background: Over the past few years, the issue of good governance has climbed to the sport’s political agenda rapidly through mismanagement and legitimacy crisis in international and national sport organizations. The Finnish sport movement has been forced to justify its reasons of actions for the surrounding society by the constant change in the operating environment and global phenomena in sports. Even though the notion of good governance has gathered a growing recognition in international and national sport field, the reality is that most of sport federations require a tailored application of good governance’s parameters, which may cause gaps between practice and discourse (Geeraert, 2018a). Purpose: The purpose of this study was to assess and analyze Finnish sport federations views and actions in four aspects of good governance: transparency, democratic processes, internal accountability, and societal responsibility. The four chosen federations were the Finnish Esport Federation, the Finnish Figure Skating Association, the Finnish Gymnastics Federation and the Finnish Speed Skating Association. Methods: The views and actions of the federations were explored through a qualitative comparative case study. The data was gathered through content analysis of the websites and four semi-structured interviews with the representatives of the federations. The data from the semi-structured interviews was transcript and analyzed with theory driven content analysis. Conclusions: The empirical data of this study shows that despite the misconducts, constant change in the operating environment and global phenomena of sports, the four chosen federations fulfilled 15 actions (62,5 %) of the 24 principles of good governance suggested by the framework of this study. The dimensions in which the federations did not fulfill the suggestions of the framework were transparency and internal accountability. The federations also had some similarities in their actions of good governance with the previous studies in the area