End of signal has just passed. The team you work for has just won the championship, and you
as sport director hailed as a hero based on your ability to build a successful team. The season
after looks differently, you are painted as guilt and the association begins to lose patience.
The pressure of external stakeholders grows and it ends with the association choosing to fire
you. Another scenario is the feelings that the excessive workload will be your failure, which
will let you resign from your service as sports director. Being a sports director in a
performance-based world places high demands on you as an individual, both holding
knowledge about Ice hockey, but also to handle for example economic and legal issues.
Almost half of all sports directors have become unemployed or stopped themselves in recent
seasons. It becomes clear that the role and the requirement image become complex. That
reason makes it interesting to explain this problem.
The study has been conducted by making
qualitative interviews with the selection of sports directors in SHL and Hockeyallsvenskan in
Swedish elite Hockey. SHL (Swedish Hockey League) is the highest league and
Hockeyallsvenskan is the second highest league in Swedish Elite Hockey.
The purpose of this study has been the sports leaders’ explanation for the high turnover in
SHL and Hockeyallsvenskan in Swedish elite Hockey.
The purpose of this study has developed two issues that will form the basis of the study:
1. What are the factors behind the high turnover of the sports directors?
2. Is the responsibility of the associations or the sports directors for the high turnover?
The result of this study shows that there are combinations of different factors that are behind
the high turnover of sports directors in Swedish Elite Hockey. One factor is the diffuse
requirement picture from the association on what is expected of the sports director. The
sports director’s role in the organization is not clear enough. This leads to a collision in which
the associations have not identified the skills required in the role. Furthermore, there is a lack
of continuity and long term relationships with the associations where confidence in the sports
director immediately reduces in the event of non-sporting results. The result also shows that
the impact of external factors, combined with excessive workload, leads to terminations in
the profession. Finally, it may be noted that the role of sports director requires good
competence in matters that are included in the role of a chief. The lack of competencies
within the management leads to difficulties for the sports director to handle the issues that
include tough decisions.