Institutional enforced board diversity in sport clubs as trigger of us-them divisions

Abstract

Michel van Slobbe confronts one assumption that underpins indicators and codes of good governance in sport: that enhancing diversity will by itself increase the performance of boards. Drawing on the concept of the ‘established and outsiders’ advanced by Norbert Elias and John Scotson, he analyses the power dynamics related to the enforced transition towards an ethnically mixed club board. This in-depth case study paradoxically reveals how enforced diversity may ultimately not lead to an ethnically mixed board, when the formerly ‘established’ board members no longer feel at home and all key positions end up in the hands of the former ‘outsiders’. While these findings do not question diversity as a principle of good governance as such, they demonstrate that intervening in the social composition of sport governance can have the unintended effect of triggering us-them divisions as well as deteriorating social relations.