Local community relations (LCR) strategies in Norwegian professional football

Abstract

In this paper we study local community relations (LCR) strategies of four professional Norwegian football clubs in the light of what is taken to be an organization field that is identified as being increasingly more institutionally defined over the last decades. LCR strategies are specific approaches that materialize in some action to improve the clubs’ relations to local constituents. Our conclusion is that the LCR strategies of clubs to a large extent reflect institutionalized ideas and even regulations about how modern professional football clubs in Norway must behave. This explains the similarities in addressing strategic planning, stadium development, and local players’ policies. We also see, however, that the clubs can initiate projects and measures that are not so directly defined by institutional coercion, norms imposed on them or plain mimicry. Within such a meta-organizational field there are many layers that in the end present the focal club with the discretion to relate to its community in a specific manner.