Ulrik Wagner

The International Cycling Union under Siege—Anti-doping and the Biological Passport as a Mission Impossible?

Abstract This article examines the anti-doping efforts undertaken since 1998 by the International Cycling Union (UCI). It does so by outlining the complex network of interdependencies in which the UCI is embedded, by analysing the potentials and constraints for exercising power and by using neo-institutional categorizations to define the change in its organizational responses to anti-doping institutionalization. The paper concludes that the UCI is an organization under siege because it is the target of multiple demands, which constrain its ability to exercise power. During the last ten years the UCI has shifted from a compromise strategy to a manipulation strategy by trying to become an anti-doping entrepreneur, for instance by introducing the Biological Passport. Implementing new measures on doping might result in additional positive tests, thus reinforcing the perception of professional cycling as a doping-infected sport. Therefore, UCI anti-doping efforts can be termed a temporary Mission Impossible.

Experiences, attitudes and trust: an inquiry into elite athletes’ perception of the whereabouts reporting system

The duty of elite athletes to report whereabouts is a controversial and debated element of the World Anti-Doping Code. Though the obligation to provide whereabouts information has a real impact on athletes’ daily lives, knowledge about athletes’ perception of and trust in the system after the Code was revised in 2009 is still scarce. This study contributes to the discussion on the legitimacy and institutionalization of the whereabouts system by integrating the points of view of Danish elite athletes (with/without whereabouts obligations). In total, 645 athletes completed a web-based questionnaire about their perceptions of the whereabouts system. The results showed that elite athletes’ perceptions were ambivalent: a majority of athletes seemed to accept the system as a necessity, a duty or a compliment to their sporting level. On the other hand, the system did, to a greater or lesser degree, interfere negatively in everyday life: three quarters of the athletes felt reporting whereabouts was too time-consuming; fear of a warning was a concern for more than half of the athletes; four in ten found their joy of being an elite athlete was reduced; and four in ten experienced the system as surveillance. Athletes’ trust in the system was remarkably low when it came to questions concerning how it operated in other countries and its ability to catch doped athletes. A particular remarkable finding is that distrust seemed to increase once athletes had personal experience of reporting whereabouts. This must be considered a major challenge for future anti-doping policymaking.

Towards the Construction of the World Anti-Doping Agency: Analyzing the Approaches of FIFA and the IAAF to Doping in Sport

Abstract This article examines FIFAs and the IAAFs different approaches to doping in sport. Through access to documents of their respective departments working on doping issues and by applying a new institutional theoretical perspective, it is shown that until the mid 1990s FIFA considered doping to be a problem primarily found outside football while the IAAF considered it to be one of the most serious problems facing athletics. These different approaches impacted how the two federations viewed the process leading to the establishment of the World Anti-Doping Agency. Accordingly, the IAAF is termed an “institutional entrepreneur”, while FIFA has greater reservations about the new agency. Circumstances such as the close interrelations between the IOC and the IAAF, the competitive relationship between the Olympic Games and the FIFA World Cup, power-relations in the organizational field and intra-organizational dynamics are examined as decisive factors.

Scandinavian perspectives on doping – a comparative policy analysis in relation to the international process of institutionalizing anti-doping

This study investigates why, unlike Sweden, Denmark and Norway have decided to establish independent national anti-doping agencies. Starting off from a new institutional perspective, a qualitative comparative method is applied, and this study outlines variables that enable us to explain the differences and similarities of the two approaches. It is concluded that Sweden differs because doping is regarded as a broader public health issue and thus administratively dealt with in an area not only concerned with sport, while Sweden has a tradition of low political interference in elite sport. Despite various differences, the similar solutions chosen by Denmark and Norway are explained by their focus on doping in elite sport, combined with a high political profile in anti-doping. Although one can argue in favour of sport as an example of a world-society culture with a huge institutionalizing impact, this study reveals a space open for national interpretation. Finally, this article discusses future challenges for the two models analysed.

The World Anti-Doping Agency: constructing a hybrid organisation in permanent stress (dis)order?

The aim of this article is to outline a modern system-theoretical explanation of the emergence of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). The approach embraced here is based on a conception of competitive sport as a functionally differentiated system organised around the binary coding ‘win/lose’. It is argued that sport produces a unique product beneficial for society as a whole, but the relationship between the sport system and its environment has been perturbed by the existence of doping. Therefore, the establishment of a new global governing body is regarded as a functional solution to a critical situation of increasing environmental criticism towards sport and its affiliated international organisations. WADA is characterised as a hybrid, heterophonic organisation because it refers to several functional systems without giving any of them primacy. On the one hand, this enables WADA to manoeuvre between several functional systems and build up its own complexity: on the other hand, the multiplicity of environmental demands can induce a state of permanent stress disorder. As such, WADA serves as a formulating agency that functions both as precondition and intermediary for a structural coupling between sport, law and politics.

Enacted ambiguity and risk perceptions: making sense of national elite sport sponsorships.

This paper analyses how Danish marketing directors and managers responsible for sponsoring make sense of sponsoring the kind of national elite sport that receives little or hardly any mass-media coverage. This study adds a sociological dimension to sponsorship research, which is dominated by marketing approaches. The concept sense-making, inspired by Karl Weick, provides the theoretical foundation of this paper. In 10 qualitative interviews, five ways of enactment are identified where poor sporting results are not considered a major risk faced by these kinds of sponsorships. The results provide insights into how corporate sense-making emerges and thus remain useful knowledge for national elite sport organizations in their efforts to attract external funding.

Agency constraints and possibilities: Athletes manoeuvring between the logics of community, market, profession and corporation in their quest for individual sponsorships

The purpose of this qualitative study is to add a sociological dimension to sponsorship research, which is otherwise dominated by marketing research. This paper analyses how world-class but often not well-paid athletes from time-consuming endurance sports like rowing and triathlon seek individual sponsorships as a strategy to improve their financial situation. With regard to theory, an institutional logics perspective is adopted in which logics both provide tools for individual actors as well as representing agency constraints. To understand how athletes cope with the encounter between sport and business, insights from micro-sociology are employed. The findings indicate that various roles are performed, that sponsorship commitment is an issue of finding a balance between ‘gameworthiness’ and integrity and that the quest for an individual sponsorship is deselected as an option by some athletes. These insights are used to sketch out the paradox of sponsorship commitment, where time-consuming sponsorship engagement as a solution to athletes’ financial problems may potentially undermine their professional identity, which is characterised by the quality of their craft – the quality that simultaneously makes the athlete a market asset.

Sponsor networks and business relations orchestrated by team sports clubs

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate firms’ reasons and motives for becoming sponsors and how they benefit from this networking engagement by exploring sponsorship networks associated with two Danish team sport clubs – a Premier League football club and a second-division handball club. Design/methodology/approach Two online surveys were conducted with firms associated with the networks during the Autumn and Winter of 2013/2014 (n=116). The questionnaire was theoretically anchored in the existing sponsorship literature, business network research, and social capital theory. Findings The results show that business logics were the dominating reasons for joining the network. A large proportion of the respondents reported having increased their number of business (32 percent) and social (26 percent) relations with other network members after joining the network. Furthermore, 37 percent of the respondents reported having made business agreements with companies external to the network via network contacts, which supports ideas of bridging social capital. More than half the respondents (59 percent) preferred doing business with network members rather than with non-members. Originality/value By investigating a local and regional sport club context, the paper adds to our knowledge about sponsorship networks. It emphasizes the potential importance of team sport clubs for the business landscape, thus maintaining that sport clubs fulfill an important role for local communities beyond being mere entertainment industries.

The Anatomy of the Sports Scandal: An Outline for a Theoretical Contextualization

Sports scandals are often discussed in the media and research literature without any deeper reflection on their specificities or development. As the economic and political significance of sport seem to grow in correlation with the development of globalization and new social media, the call for a sociological understanding of the downsides of sport becomes imperative. By deploying a communication-theory framework supplemented with insights from discourse theory, this article aims to develop a theoretical model of the sports scandal. It presents a 5-step model encompassing initial steps of transgression, followed by a publicly observed dislocation destabilizing the social order, which subsequently results in moral communication, environmental pressure for appropriate action, and, finally, an institutional solution.