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On the 50th anniversary of the ISSA and IRSS, a key figure in the sociology of sport in Norway, Jorid Hovden, assesses research into sport organizations and the pressures of neoliberal discourses. In considering the trajectory of research into non-profit sport organizations, focus is given to the ideological tensions in the field today and how neoliberal management discourses may contribute to weakening the impact of sociological concerns. Key challenges in inquiry are anchored in the contradictory and mutually exclusive paradigms for research into sport organizations, with one stream reliant on management functionalities that are remiss in considering power relations and the other a critical stream that emphasizes diversity and equity. These differences are amplified in the methodological schisms between the two streams, with a bias towards epistemological orthodoxy, positivist logic, and empirical evidence crowding out critical and cultural stocktaking. In the future, sociological inquiry into non-profit sport organizations will be challenged by the dominance of a 'new managerialism' that portrays organizations as rational, action-oriented systems, where individual action, competitiveness, and entrepreneurialism are embedded logics. Scholarship using critical paradigms will need to fight effectively to develop alternative knowledge formations to help advance democratic and community-based sport organizations and reduce power differences, exclusion, and inequalities.

This article examines some of the gendered processes surrounding the selection of leaders in Norwegian sporting organizations. It was found that the most desirable candidates possessed professional-managerial skills that could open corporate doors. This corporate image reflects the valorization of masculine norms in contemporary organizations. The normalization of this androcentric culture rendered the organizations as gender-neutral entities, thus masking fundamental links between masculinity, power and leadership. The study illustrates the formidable distance between rhetoric and reality, as well as between legislation and realization.

Coaching is a male dominated area of sport. Globally, women coaches represent a small minority and only a few women coach male athletes. In Norway it is estimated that only about 19% of all coaches are women. In this article we engage in issues regarding the gendering of coaching from an athlete perspective. The concerns are how meanings of gender mirror the athletes' perceptions and experiences of coaching practices. The theoretical framework develops our understanding of gender and how leadership ideals and practices are structured by and through gender. The data material consists of qualitative interviews with Norwegian boxers. The analysis demonstrates that male coaches earn the respect of their boxers more easily than female coaches do. Furthermore, female boxers experience a more open and socially supportive coach–athlete relationship with female coaches. The coach–athlete relationship with male coaches is often shaped by paternalism, which particularly seems to represent a challenge for young female athletes. The interviewees describe sound coaching as consisting of leadership forms associated with both masculine and feminine skills.

PurposeThe paper criticizes current directions in research on women and management. The purpose of this paper is to propose new directions for such research.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is conceptual and is based on a review of recent literature on elites and the gendering of elite positions internationally and in the Nordic countries. This literature is discussed using studies of changing power dynamics and the development of welfare state services in a context of globalization.FindingsThe paper argues that one needs to move away from the focus on individual traits and "female management" to study the processes and practices that (re)produce power differences between men and women in the organisations where they take place. Two contextual factors make new directions in research necessary. The first is the knowledge economy changing organisations from bureaucratic towards democratic forms at the level of production and the financialization of the economy centralizing power at corporate level. The second is the challenging of Nordic welfare states by globalization of the economy. The welfare state results in a "democratization of motherhood" that increases women's participation in the economy, but may limit their opportunity to obtain elite positions.Originality/valueTo understand women's exclusion of elite positions, new research should combine multidimensional analyses of gender and power to explore the symbolic connections between masculinity and "big money".