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Management Accounting Research xxx (2016) xxx–xxx

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Management Accounting Research

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/mar

Performance measurement systems and the enactment of different

institutional logics: Insights from a football organization
Martin Carlsson-Wall a , Kalle Kraus a,∗ , Martin Messner b
a
Department of Accounting, Stockholm School of Economics, Box 6501, 11383 Stockholm, Sweden
b
School of Management, University of Innsbruck, Universitätsstraße 15, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Keywords: This paper examines the role of performance measurement systems (PMS) in managing the co-existence
Performance measurement systems of different institutional logics in a football organization. We show that while the sports and business
Institutional logics logics at times compete with each other, in other situations they are in harmony. We explain this with
Compromise
reference to an ambiguous cause-effect relationship between these logics which allows for different ways
Sports
of enacting the logics. Our study thus demonstrates that compatibility of logics may vary not just between
Popular culture
Emotions fields and organizations, as the literature has emphasized, but also between situations within an organi-
zation. Furthermore, our paper highlights how varying outcomes of the performance measures affect the
way in which compromises between the two logics are made. While the literature has mostly focused on
examining how compromises can be designed into the PMS, we draw attention to how situation-specific
compromises are made on the basis of such PMS. The meaning attributed to different levels of sports
performance was key for understanding the differences in compromising behaviour.
© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
“As difficult as Atletico Madrid’s 4–1 loss in the UEFA Champi-
ons League final was to handle for its fans, the club’s path to
financial solvency could prove even more challenging given its
daunting debt load. After an historic and improbable Champions
League run, the team does not appear willing or able to re-sign
key players with expiring contracts. David Villa, Jose Sosa, Tiago
Mendes, Cristian Rodriguez, Diego Ribas and goalkeeper Thibaut
Courtois—thought of as the heart of the locker room—are all out
of contract and will likely be looking for new homes. By playing
it cheap and allowing top players to flee, Atletico appears to be
thinking purely economically in an effort to face its crippling
finances head on” (Van Noll, 2014).
In this paper, we examine the operation of performance mea-
surement systems (PMS) in a particular sub-field of popular culture,
i.e., sports. More specifically, we study the way in which managers
in a Swedish football organization use a set of performance mea-
sures to manage two major institutional logics that the organization
is subject to: a demand for excellence in sports, on the one hand, and
∗ Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: martin.carlsson-wall@hhs.se (M. Carlsson-Wall),
kalle.kraus@hhs.se (K. Kraus), martin.messner@uibk.ac.at (M. Messner).
a demand for financial success or stability, on the other. As the intro-
ductory quote illustrates through the example of the football club
Atletico Madrid, these two logics are often referred to when talking
about the ‘performance’ of football clubs and other sports organi-
zations. Our focus in this paper is on how managers enact these
institutional logics when using performance measures to inform
their decisions.
The main theoretical motivation for this research focus comes
from a set of recent studies that have started to examine the
operation of accounting systems under conditions of ‘institutional
complexity’, i.e., settings in which organizations face two or more
different sets of institutional demands or ‘logics’ that prescribe
which objectives or actions the organization can legitimately pur-
sue or engage in (Amans et al., 2015; Ezzamel et al., 2012; Lander
et al., 2013; Lounsbury, 2008). Ezzamel et al. (2012), for instance,
examine budgeting practices in UK schools, where three institu-
tional logics are particularly salient: A business logic according to
which schools should operate efficiently and engage in compe-
tition with other schools; a governance logic that highlights the
political accountability of schools; and a professional logic that
builds upon the expertise and norms of the teaching profession.
The authors analyze how these three logics compete for attention in
the budgeting process. They observe that, depending on the relative
dominance of the three logics in a given school, budgeting would be
practised in different ways, thus leading to practice variation within

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mar.2016.01.006
1044-5005/© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article in press as: Carlsson-Wall, M., et al., Performance measurement systems and the enactment of different institu-
tional logics: Insights from a football organization. Manage. Account. Res. (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mar.2016.01.006
G Model
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the educational field. Amans et al. (2015) argue along similar lines
when examining the role of budgets in two French theatres. They
found that different logics (managerial, artistic, political) impacted
upon the budgeting process, but also observed some practice vari-
ation depending on the funding situation of the theatre.
While both Ezzamel et al. (2012) and Amans et al. (2015)
describe how different institutional logics compete for attention
in the budgeting process, other studies have highlighted how the
particular design of accounting systems can facilitate dealing with
a multiplicity of logics. Chenhall et al. (2013) suggest that per-
formance measurement systems (PMS) function as ‘compromising
accounts’ if they enable productive debate between different logics.
The authors focus on identifying “the factors that promote and/or
damage efforts to reach compromise” (p. 269). In particular, they
suggest that compromising accounts should contain elements that
speak to the demands of each internal stakeholder group, as this
provides “confirmation and reassurance that a particular mode of
evaluation is, indeed, recognized and respected, thus making pro-
ductive debate more likely” (p. 282). The authors refer to this as the
creation of ‘concurrent visibility’. Sundin et al. (2010) made a simi-
lar point when they examined the ability of the Balanced Scorecard
to manage multiple competing logics. They reported a case study
in a state-owned electricity company, where managers agreed that
“the ultimate goal was to achieve a balance between the objectives”,
rather than to single out one objective as the ‘most important’ one
(p. 219). The BSC apparently facilitated such balancing as it rec-
ognized different stakeholders, included multiple perspectives and
performance measures, and assisted cause-effect thinking.
Our paper builds upon these studies and the idea that PMS can
facilitate the management of multiple institutional logics. How-
ever, instead of considering the design characteristics that allow
PMS to act as ‘compromising accounts’, we examine how man-
agers use the information contained in these systems when making
decisions. That is, we shift the focus from how compromises are
designed into the PMS to how compromises are actually made on
the basis of such a system. The presumption is that compromises
are not always made in the same way, they are situation-specific.
We suggest that managers prioritize between different logics
depending on the particular situation as represented through the
performance measures. In order to understand the compromises, it
is therefore important to consider situations that differ with respect
to the information contained in the performance measures. Inter-
estingly, this is something that extant literature on performance
measurement has hardly done. Although we know much about
the use of performance measures for managerial purposes (c.f.,
Hall, 2010), we have little understanding of how different levels
of performance, i.e., actual outcomes on performance measures,
influence managerial behaviour. In the case of a single performance
measure, high levels of performance would most likely cause less
concern than low levels. In the latter case, we would, for instance,
expect managers to implement particular action plans or undertake
other sorts of ‘corrective action’ (e.g., van der Veeken and Wouters,
2002; Jordan and Messner, 2012). However, if several performance
measures are in place, the situation is more complex and some kind
of trade-off is likely to arise (Jensen, 2001b). How managers deal
with this situation and how they prioritize different performance
measures, and the underlying logics, is still little understood.
In addressing this question, we also build upon, and con-
tribute to, the literature on institutional logics and institutional
complexity more generally. This literature has acknowledged that
organizations are typically subject to diverse institutional demands
that reflect different logics of action (Friedland and Alford, 1991;
Thornton and Ocasio, 2008). Several studies suggest that multi-
plicity of logics can create tensions in organizations insofar as
the prevailing logics imply incompatible decisions or actions (e.g.,
Battilana and Dorado, 2010; Reay and Hinings, 2009). In such a
Please cite this article in press as: Carlsson-Wall, M., et al., Performance measurement systems and the enactment of different institu-
tional logics: Insights from a football organization. Manage. Account. Res. (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mar.2016.01.006
case, organizations need to find ways to resolve such tensions, for
instance by following the prescriptions of only one logic or by com-
promising between the logics (Pache and Santos, 2010). However,
other studies suggest that logics may also co-exist in a rather peace-
ful way such that no particular efforts to decouple or compromise
would seem necessary (e.g., Goodrick and Reay, 2011; Smets and
Jarzabkowski, 2013). To explain these diverging accounts, some
authors have pointed to field-level and organization-level factors
that cause variation in the way in which multiple logics are expe-
rienced by organizations (Besharov and Smith, 2014; Greenwood
et al., 2011). These factors can explain why a particular set of log-
ics is compatible in some fields but not in others, or why tensions
arise in some organizations (within a field) but not in others. We
contribute to our understanding of institutional complexity by sug-
gesting that, in addition to variation between fields and between
organizations, we may also find different degrees of compatibility
in different situations. This is because some situations are character-
ized by actions and outcomes that favour several logics at the same
time, while other situations require courses of action that are in line
with one logic but conflicting with others. Moreover, a given course
of action may have different implications, with multiple logics and
unknown outcomes leaving actors to interpret how best to priori-
tize them. By shedding light on this complexity in the relationship
between logics, and their consequences on the organizational level,
we respond to Greenwood et al.’s (2010) call that “more atten-
tion should be given to whether overarching logics reinforce or
contradict each other” (p. 536).
The logics that we discuss in our paper are located within the
specific field of sports. Although it is known that sports orga-
nizations are typically subject to several different logics (e.g.,
Gammelsæter, 2010), we focus in our paper on the two sets of
demands that turn out to be particularly salient in our empirical
case.1 We term these sports logic and business logic, respectively.
We associate the sports logic with institutional demands for suc-
cess in sports (Foster et al., 2006). Objectives such as winning a
championship, qualifying for the Olympics, advancing to a higher
league, or winning the next Derby motivate the members of a sports
organization and connect the organization to important outside
stakeholders such as fans and sponsors. At the same time, sports
organizations face institutional demands for financial performance.
Objectives such as a balanced budget, a low level of debt, a partic-
ular return to shareholders or a successful initial public offering
are examples that represent this type of logic (Smith and Stewart,
2010). Professional football is a case in point. While success in
football is often costly, requiring high investments and ongoing
expenses, it is also rewarding in financial terms. Football clubs that
are successful in terms of their sports performance benefit from
considerable prize money for international games and can attract
new sponsors and fans who attend games and buy merchandise.
However, such success is uncertain and only a few clubs will experi-
ence a virtuous cycle of this kind. The complex interaction between
these two logics makes football clubs a highly interesting context
for studying how, in different situations, performance measures
inform decision-making.
In examining how managers use performance measures to make
sense of this ambiguous relationship, we extend not only the empir-
ical focus of the literature on accounting and sports, which has so far
been concerned with other questions, such as accounting for player
contracts (Amir and Livne, 2005; Forker, 2005; Risaliti and Verona,
2013), salary scandals (Andon and Free, 2012), insolvency practice
1
As noted by McPherson and Sauder (2013) and Thornton et al. (2012), whether
the relevant number of logics is two, three or some other number requires empirical
justification in the particular organizational setting. This necessitates the identifi-
cation of the key logics invoked with regularity in the case organization.
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(Cooper and Joyce, 2013), salary caps (Andon et al., 2014; Andon and
Free, 2014) and hostile takeovers (Cooper and Johnston, 2012). We
also contribute to the growing literature on accounting and popu-
lar culture more generally (Jeacle, 2009a, 2012; Jeacle and Carter,
2014). Previous work in this area has analyzed the role of account-
ing and accountants in fields such as fashion (Jeacle, 2015; Jeacle
and Carter, 2012; Neu et al., 2014; Walker and Carnegie, 2007),
film (Jeacle, 2009b, 2014), humour (Miley and Read, 2012), popular
literature (Evans and Fraser, 2012) or popular music (Jacobs and
Evans, 2012; Smith and Jacobs, 2011). Some authors have thereby
alluded to tensions between demands for artistic performance or
authenticity, on the one hand, and economic interests, on the other
hand (Jacobs and Evans, 2012; Smith and Jacobs, 2011; Jeacle and
Carter, 2012). However, little attention has been paid to the role
that PMS play in these organizations.
The remainder of the paper proceeds as follows. The next section
develops the theoretical background of our study. This is followed
by the methodology and our case analysis of PMS and institutional
logics in our case organization, FClub. The fifth section discusses the
case findings and thereafter conclusions are presented along with
possible avenues for future research.
2. Theoretical development
2.1. Multiple institutional logics
Organizations often have to comply with the values and
expectations of diverse stakeholders (Pache and Santos, 2010).
Institutional theory suggests the conceptualization of such sets
of demands as ‘institutional logics’ (Friedland and Alford, 1991;
Thornton and Ocasio, 1999; Thornton et al., 2012). Institutional
logics prescribe what constitutes legitimate behavior in a partic-
ular institutional field and provide taken-for-granted templates for
what goals are legitimate and in what manner they should be pur-
sued (Reay and Hinings, 2009; Pache and Santos, 2013). Empirical
studies have identified a number of logics in various sectors and
industries, including, for instance, a medical care logic in a hos-
pital setting (Reay and Hinings, 2009), a regulatory logic in the
U.S. finance industry (Lounsbury, 2002) and a personal logic within
the higher education publishing market (Thornton, 2001).2 Early
research found that multiple logics co-exist during transition times
until one logic ‘wins’ and the field adopts the winning dominant
logic (DiMaggio, 1983) or a new logic that is a hybrid version of
earlier ones (Glynn and Lounsbury, 2005). However, more recent
studies suggest that multiple logics may co-exist at the organiza-
tional level for a lengthy period of time (Lounsbury, 2007; Marquis
and Lounsbury, 2007; Reay and Hinings, 2005).
An emerging stream of research has started to examine how
such multiplicity of logics affects organizations (Almandoz, 2012,
2014; Battilana and Dorado, 2010; Besharov and Smith, 2014;
McPherson and Sauder, 2013; Pache and Santos, 2013; Reay and
Hinings, 2009). Two important questions thereby emerge. First, it
is relevant to understand whether different logics place competing
demands upon organizational actors. If this is not the case and the
logics are fully compatible, then there would be no need to be con-
cerned about this multiplicity. For instance, if a particular course of
action is both economically reasonable and in line with regulatory
demands, then no tension between the business logic and the state
logic would emerge and actors do not have to worry about either
of these logics. If, in contrast, adhering to either of the two log-
ics required conflicting courses of action, then this incompatibility
2
Note that the literature stresses that such field-level logics are nested within
(combinations of) more general societal logics, such as the market logic, the state
logic, or the family logic (Thornton and Ocasio, 2008; Greenwood et al., 2011).
Please cite this article in press as: Carlsson-Wall, M., et al., Performance measurement systems and the enactment of different institu-
tional logics: Insights from a football organization. Manage. Account. Res. (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mar.2016.01.006
3
would pose a managerial challenge. In this latter case, the second
question then becomes one of how competing demands emanating
from different logics can be managed. We deal with both of these
questions in turn.
2.1.1. Compatible and incompatible logics
With respect to the first question, Greenwood et al. (2011) and
subsequently Besharov and Smith (2014) point to two types of
factors that explain why logics may create more or less tension
within an organization. First, they suggest that the “nature and
extent of institutional complexity faced by organizations is fun-
damentally shaped by the structure of the organizational fields
within which they are located” (Greenwood et al., 2001, p. 334).
In highly fragmented and decentralized fields, tensions between
different logics are not moderated by field-level actors but have to
be fully addressed by the organizations themselves. In less frag-
mented and more unified fields, in contrast, “competing demands
are worked out at a higher level, either by negotiation between
field-level actors and/or by dominant actors enforcing compliance”
(p. 338). For instance, state regulators may interact with industry
representatives to solve problems of incompatibility between the
economic interests of the industry and public interests as defended
by the state. Hence, the degree to which an organization expe-
riences the multiplicity of logics as problematic will depend on
the particular field and on how these logics are filtered into the
organization by field-level actors.
Second, within a given field, different organizations may experi-
ence more or less tension between logics depending on how these
logics are enacted within the organization. This will depend, for
instance, on the strength of ties between organizational actors
and field-level referent audiences. Similarly, the relative power of
different actors within the organization will influence the degree
to which different logics will get represented in an organization
(Greenwood et al., 2011).
The field-level and organization-level factors that Greenwood
et al. (2011) put forward can explain variation in how logics are
enacted between different fields and between different organi-
zations. They do not, however, explain potential variation within
organizations. Such variation would mean that the same set of log-
ics may create tensions in some situations, but not in others. Indeed,
we suggest that this is likely to be the case. Some situations are char-
acterized by courses of action or events that favour several logics at
the same time, while others feature courses of action or events that
are in line with one logic but conflicting with others. In other words,
the cause-effect relationship between the logics themselves is not
constantly positive or negative so to speak, but varies according to
the situation.
There are two important variants of what it means to say that
the relationship between logics is situation-specific. We can illus-
trate this with the example of football and the sports and business
logics, respectively. The first variant is that a given course of action
is unambiguously related to the two logics, in the sense that it clearly
favors both, favors none, or favors only one of them in the given sit-
uation. This would, for instance be the case when a football team is
playing very well and winning its games. This is a situation (defined
by a particular course of actions and events) that will most likely
be judged to be in line with both the sports and the business logic,
as winning games usually translates into higher merchandise and
ticket sales. It would thus be a situation where actors are unlikely
to experience conflict between the logics.
The second variant is one where a given course of action is some-
what ambiguous with respect to at least one of the logics, such
that actors have discretion in assessing how the course of action
relates to this logic. As Goodrick and Salancik (1996) have argued,
the “causal links between a practice and the institutions support-
ing it may be ambiguous, unknown, or inconsistent” (p. 4). Consider
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the example of building a new and bigger stadium. Two interpre-
tations of this decision seem possible. One is that the decision is in
line with the sports logic, as it will create a better atmosphere at the
home games and will motivate the players, but not in line with the
business logic, as it is a costly undertaking. The other one, however,
is that it is also in line with the business logic, as a new stadium will,
over time, allow for more ticket sales if the sports performance is
such that more fans will want to attend the games. The ambiguity in
this case hinges on the fact that a given decision or course of action
often creates different (and partly uncertain) outcomes, some of
which will be in line with a given logic and others not. So in the
case at hand, the (certain) short-term outcome would be a finan-
cial outflow which may endanger the financial stability of the club.
The possible (but uncertain) long-term outcome is increased finan-
cial inflows. Depending on how the logic will be enacted (Weick,
1995)3 in the specific situation, the business logic may thus be used
to either support or challenge the proposed decision.
We can thus conclude that, on the organizational level, logics
are not compatible or incompatible per se, but are accorded differ-
ent priorities in different situations. And the relationship between
logics in a particular situation is either unambiguous (i.e., a matter
of fact) or ambiguous (i.e., subject to how actors enact the logics
and interpret the consequences of a given set of actions or events
for the logics at hand). With this in mind, we can look at how logics
that are enacted as being incompatible can be managed.
2.1.2. Managing tensions between logics
Organizations have different possibilities to manage the institu-
tional complexity they face. Some of these strategies are structural
in nature, i.e., they are supposed to permanently address incompat-
ibility between logics. Others are situational in the sense that they
address such incompatibility at the time of a particular decision or
action.
A first strategy is to decide to manage the organization accord-
ing to the values, objectives and practices suggested by one kind of
logic and to only adhere symbolically to the demands emanating
from the other kind(s). This strategy is referred to as decoupling and
has been extensively discussed in the institutional literature (e.g.,
Meyer and Rowan, 1977; Westphal and Zajac, 1994). In a decou-
pling strategy, there is a gap between what the organization claims
to be concerned with and what it actually does (Brunsson, 1989).
Decoupling can be structural in nature or situation-specific. If it
is structural, then there is a permanent commitment to one logic
only and a routine symbolic adherence to the other(s). For instance,
organizations may routinely issue reports that signal adherence to
one or more logics, while managing the organization according to
the prescriptions of an alternative logic. Social and environmental
reports, which firms can use to signal the importance of non-
economic concerns, are an example of how such decoupling can
be realized (e.g., Cho and Patten, 2007). Alternatively, decoupling
may be more situation-specific whenever a concrete institutional
demand is placed on the organization. The organization would then
symbolically react to this particular demand, while not substan-
tially changing its practices. Importantly, however, decoupling is
only possible if stakeholder demands can be sufficiently well sat-
isfied by merely symbolically adhering to the type(s) of logic in
question. This is unlikely if stakeholders are powerful and have
allies within the organization who promote more than symbolic
adherence to the logic(s) in question (Pache and Santos, 2013).
3 4
The notion of “enactment” alludes to the way in which actors produce part of
the environment they face by acting upon it. Logics need to be enacted in order to
become meaningful within the organization. See also Ezzamel et al. (2012) and their
discussion of the performativity of budgeting.
Please cite this article in press as: Carlsson-Wall, M., et al., Performance measurement systems and the enactment of different institu-
tional logics: Insights from a football organization. Manage. Account. Res. (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mar.2016.01.006
A second strategy consists of structural differentiation. This
means partitioning an organization into different subunits, each
of which can act independently and according to the demands of
‘their’ institutional logic (e.g., Kraatz and Block, 2008; Greenwood
et al., 2011). Structural differentiation has also been referred to as
‘horizontal decoupling’ (Berry et al., 1985). As the name suggests,
this is a structural means of managing institutional complexity that
is supposed to preconfigure decisions and actions in the future,
thereby avoiding situations in which an actor has to face two insti-
tutional demands at the same time. The challenge with this type
of strategy is that some type of integration between the sub-units
will always be necessary, given that the units are part of the same
organization (Greenwood et al., 2011). Such need for integration
will arise, for instance, when interdependencies between the units
emerge, in the sense that the actions or decisions of one unit have
an impact on those of the other unit. Similarly, at some point, the
organization will have to allocate appropriate resources to each
unit, and this decision would necessarily involve considering the
units in comparative terms. In other words, structural differentia-
tion implies some compromise at the organizational level.
This leads us to the third mechanism, i.e., compromise. Com-
promising implies foregoing full adherence to one form of logic to
be able to partly fulfill the demands of the other(s) (Kraatz and
Block, 2008; Pache and Santos, 2013). Like decoupling, compro-
mising can be more or less structural in nature. A structural form of
compromise is to combine elements like governance, control sys-
tems, rules, routines from different logics so as to permanently
meet the needs of the different stakeholders. Pache and Santos
(2013), for instance, show how social enterprises combine certain
elements from the commercial logic (such as for-profit legal status)
with elements emanating from the social welfare logic (such as the
mobilization of volunteers). In so doing, these organizations adhere
to demands from multiple logics, but compromise insofar as they
do not implement the entire set of practices or structural elements
associated with each type of logic.4 Similarly, Chenhall et al. (2013)
observe how a non-governmental organization combines elements
representing different logics in their PMS, enabling them to speak to
different internal stakeholders. As in the case of structural differ-
entiation, structural compromises cannot predetermine behavior
in all circumstances. There will always be situations in which ad
hoc compromises have to be made, to confirm the structural strat-
egy, to deviate from it, or to fill the gaps that necessarily exist in
any structural strategy.5 When this is the case, then compromis-
ing is a response to a particular situation. Managers of a socially
responsible investment fund may, for instance, decide on a case-to-
case basis whether to invest in a particular firm or not, taking into
account that they seek to adhere both to the business logic and the
logic of social responsibility. Similarly, the management of a struc-
turally differentiated organization will have to decide during the
budgeting process how many resources each unit should obtain,
and this will be a one-off compromise between the institutional
demands that each of these units represents.
As already alluded to in the examples given, PMS can play a role
when dealing with incompatible logics. The next section elaborates
on this.
Pache and Santos (2013) refer to this strategy as ‘selective coupling’ and present
it as a third strategy for dealing with competing logics. We see it more as a special
case of compromise.
5
See Derrida (1992, 2005) for a discussion of what it means to ‘make a decision’.
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2.2. Performance measurement systems and multiple
institutional logics
Performance measurement systems (PMS) are structural
mechanisms that organizations can use to deal with multiple insti-
tutional logics in each of the above-described ways. A PMS can be
described as a set of performance measures that are jointly consid-
ered when making sense of the performance of an organization.
This set may appear in the form of a particular tool, such as a
dashboard, scorecard, or measures tree (Kaplan and Norton, 1992,
1996a; Hall, 2008, 2010); or it may be established primarily through
‘accounting talk’, i.e., when managers routinely mobilize several
performance measures when discussing performance (c.f., Ahrens,
1997; Carlsson-Wall, Kraus, Lund and Sjögren, in press; Hall, 2010).
First, PMS can facilitate decoupling insofar as they constitute
a communication tool that allows signaling to external or inter-
nal stakeholders that particular objectives, values or practices are
taken seriously, while management attention is actually focused
only on a sub-set of these concerns or on entirely different objec-
tives that do not feature in the PMS. Several studies have observed
decoupling of PMS and other accounting systems from actual orga-
nizational practice. Ansari and Euske (1987), for instance, examined
the role of a cost accounting system introduced in the US Depart-
ment of Defense. They found very little influence of this system
on operational management and suggested that the system mainly
existed to reassure stakeholders that decision-making was rational
to external constituencies such as the US Congress. Similarly, Berry
et al. (1985) found that financial performance measures represent-
ing a commercial logic were only used symbolically by the British
National Coal Board; internally, managers focused on non-financial
metrics related to their production logic.
PMS can also support structural differentiation. In this case, sep-
arate PMS are used for monitoring different sets of objectives in
different parts of the organization without being integrated. This
allows different units to focus on those performance dimensions
that are relevant within the institutional logic to which they adhere.
Brignall and Modell (2000) suggest that keeping separate PMS,
instead of having one integrated system, can help avoid possi-
ble conflicts within the organization; they illustrate this with an
example of concerns with quality and economy:
“[T]he links between ‘quality’ and ‘economy’ in public-sector
organizations are likely to be complex and open to alterna-
tive interpretations. Attempts to visualize such relationships by
integrating measures of quality, financial results and resource
utilization therefore imply a risk of creating considerable
ambiguity, which may exacerbate conflicts and reduce the pos-
sibilities of organizational action” (Brignall and Modell (2000)
p. 295).
Maintaining separate PMS that emphasize different dimensions
of performance allows the organization “to remain ‘hypocritical’
and appear to meet at least some objectives associated with both
these constituencies” (Brignall and Modell, 2000).
As noted above, when organizations keep competing institu-
tional logics apart by means of structural differentiation, they still
need to have some mechanism of integration that allows them to
decide how to allocate resources, internal power, and the amount
of top management attention to each of the differentiated units.
This may happen, for instance, during the budgeting process when
top management allocates resources to each of the units. Bud-
geting then becomes a means of compromising between different
institutional logics. Two recent accounting studies have illustrated
this with the examples of performing arts organizations (Amans
et al., 2015) and schools (Ezzamel et al., 2012), respectively. In
both cases, the budgeting practice reflected a particular compro-
Please cite this article in press as: Carlsson-Wall, M., et al., Performance measurement systems and the enactment of different institu-
tional logics: Insights from a football organization. Manage. Account. Res. (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mar.2016.01.006
5
mise between the multiple logics at work. However, budgets are
typically established just once a year, making the integration of
different institutional demands an annual exercise. Such alloca-
tion assumes that no conflicts between institutional demands will
emerge during the year, such that no compromises are needed
outside the budgeting process. However, organizations may feel
the need to make such compromises on a more permanent basis,
whenever a proposed course of action affects more than just one
institutional logic, and thus has to be evaluated as to its over-
all desirability for the organization. This is what advocates of
‘integrated’ or ‘comprehensive’ PMS emphasize (e.g., Kaplan and
Norton, 1992, 1996a; Lynch and Cross, 1992). They highlight the
importance of creating a ‘big picture’ that visualizes the perfor-
mance of different parts of the organization on an on-going basis,
thus enhancing comprehension of how different activities and deci-
sions in different areas of the organization hang together (Kaplan
and Norton, 1996b, 2000).
The importance of PMS as a means of compromising between
logics is also reflected in empirical work on the subject. Chenhall
et al. (2013) suggest the notion of ‘compromising accounts’ to
describe those PMS that facilitate making compromises between
different logics. They draw upon a case study in a non-
governmental organization to discuss the characteristics of such
compromising accounts, i.e., “the factors that promote and/or dam-
age efforts to reach compromise” (p. 269). In particular, they
suggest that compromising accounts should contain elements that
speak to the demands of each internal stakeholder group, as this
provides “confirmation and reassurance that a particular mode of
evaluation is, indeed, recognized and respected, thus making pro-
ductive debate more likely” (p. 282). The authors refer to this as the
creation of ‘concurrent visibility’. Moreover, Chenhall et al. (2013)
suggest that, by bringing together partly inconsistent objectives, a
compromising account can become “a vehicle through which dia-
logue, debate and productive friction is produced” (p. 282). In a
related vein, Sundin et al. (2010) examine the use of the Balanced
Scorecard (BSC) in a state-owned electricity company. They point
out that the BSC facilitated the ‘balancing’ of different objectives as
it overtly recognized different stakeholders, included multiple per-
spectives and performance measures, and promoted cause-effect
thinking.
Hence, these studies highlight how performance measure-
ment systems can operate as structures that enable compromises
between different institutional logics. However, as per our above
discussion, it is important to remember that the design of such ‘com-
promising accounts’ does not predetermine how compromises are
made in particular situations. A performance measurement system
may well provide concurrent visibility about the interests of dif-
ferent stakeholders; but when using the PMS to decide upon a
particular course of action, some of these interests may well be
prioritized over others. Even if an organization strives to ‘balance’
different objectives on an on-going basis (Sundin et al., 2010), there
will be temporary imbalances in the sense that some objectives are
prioritized at one point in time and others at another. Our aim is to
shed more light on how such decisions are made. How do managers
use the information from a performance measurement system to
compromise between different institutional logics? Moreover, we
account for the idea that different logics are not incompatible in all
situations. While they may compete with each other under some
circumstances, they will be in harmony in others. Our study seeks
to add to the general understanding of how such situation-specific
differences come about.
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3. Research methods
Our case organization, FClub, is a large football organizations in
Sweden and is organized as a limited liability company.6 This cre-
ates a context where we would expect the co-existence of multiple
institutional logics with performance measurement systems to be
in place to manage these. Interviews have been the main source of
data, although these were complemented with additional internal
documents and direct observations (see Appendix). A total of 23
interviews were conducted with FClub managers and staff, includ-
ing the CEO, the Chief Financial Officer (CFO), the Chief Commercial
Officer (CCO), and the Chief Sports Officer (CSO), and also with
industry experts, a member of a supporter organization, sponsors,
and a representative from the Swedish Elite Football Organiza-
tion (SEF). The collection of data took place from January, 2014
to February, 2015. The majority of the interviews were conducted
between January and May, 2014, with three follow-up interviews
being conducted in February 2015. The length of the interviews var-
ied from 40 to 90 min and took an average of 60 min. All interviews
were recorded and transcribed.
The interviews were complemented with additional documents,
including a budget template, planning documents, a description of
the organization’s codes of conduct and websites. The direct obser-
vations consisted of the annual meeting for the Football Section, one
home game attendance together with the Board of Directors, guided
tours of the headquarters and training facilities and two events held
for supporters of FClub: a seminar managed by supporters includ-
ing lecturers from international football organizations and Swedish
media representatives, and an open meeting focusing on supporter
management following the season premiere of the league in 2014.
At this event, staff from FClub, the various supporter organizations
and other relevant stakeholders were represented. The inclusion
of direct observations as sources of data allowed us to obtain an
enhanced understanding of the data collected in the interviews.
When conducting the data analysis we first arranged the empir-
ical data chronologically with the intention of identifying common
patterns or themes. We focused, in particular, on the role of the per-
formance measures in managing the sports and business logics. We
then re-organized our narrative around key themes (e.g., organiza-
tional structure, budgeting, performance measurement systems)
and five situations related to the purchase and sale of players
that emerged as we sought to understand whether sports and
business logics do or do not compete with each other in specific
decision-making situations, and to determine the role of PMS in
such situations. We finally positioned our emergent findings vis-à-
vis previous research so as to discuss the particular contribution of
our paper.
4. Case analysis
4.1. The Swedish field of football
The Swedish sport movement enjoys a prominent position in
Swedish society and comes from an old tradition of voluntarism and
democracy, where sports are seen as being contributory to public
welfare (Stenling, 2014). As Stenling (2014, p, 510) put it: “When
it comes to sport, this model [the Scandinavian welfare model] has
been translated into a sport-for-all ideal, with far-reaching state
ambitions for enabling citizens’ access to recreation and meaningful
leisure”. Historically, Swedish sport organizations have therefore
been structured as voluntary non-profit organizations in order to
comply with regulations for government aid (Stenling and Fahlén,
6 7
The identities of individuals, and of the organization itself, have been disguised
to preserve anonymity in accordance with our agreement with the organization.
Please cite this article in press as: Carlsson-Wall, M., et al., Performance measurement systems and the enactment of different institu-
tional logics: Insights from a football organization. Manage. Account. Res. (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mar.2016.01.006
2009). When it comes to Swedish football, football has traditionally
been guided by amateur rules with the clubs being operated by their
members and neither players nor leaders were paid (Billing et al.,
2004). However, the global commercialization of sport has had
an impact on Swedish elite sports, and especially football, which
attracts some of the highest audiences in Sweden (Lindfelt, 2007).
In the late 1990s, the Swedish national television and the
Swedish Football Association signed an agreement regarding the
TV-rights for the top league matches, which guaranteed the elite
clubs more money. In addition, in 1999 elite football clubs were
allowed to become private limited liability companies (Båvner,
1998; Peterson, 2002). Four clubs (including FClub) of the 16 clubs
in the top league are limited liability companies. Football is now
one of the sports in Sweden with the highest popularity and level
of commercialization (RF, 2013). More than one million of the
9.8 million Swedish citizens are engaged in football activities of
some kind.7 Elite football organizations in Sweden earn significant
revenue from advertising and sponsorship deals, TV-licenses and
ticket sales. Allsvenskan, the top Swedish league, attained total rev-
enues of D 124 Million in 2013, representing a compounded annual
growth rate of 8 % since 2004 (SvFF, 2014).
Swedish football, like most other European football leagues, has
an open league structure, i.e., depending on their performance,
teams can move up and down between the different leagues. How-
ever, the Swedish Football Association has introduced an elite
license to ensure that the clubs in the two highest leagues maintain
an adequate level of financial stability. Most important here, from a
financial point of view, is that the clubs are not allowed to have neg-
ative equity in the annual report at the end of the calendar year, i.e.,
31st December. If the equity is negative, the club must, by 31st of
March the next year at the latest, submit an action plan describing
how the club intends to restore the equity during the year. If a club
fails to fulfil this requirement, the elite license will be revoked and
a mandatory relegation to a lower league will follow.8 In addition,
the Swedish Company Act requires all limited liability companies,
including sports clubs, to continuously monitor the sum of equity
in the balance sheet. If the sum of equity is expected to be less than
half of the share capital, a special purpose balance sheet needs to
be constructed and an extra shareholder meeting held to plan how
to restore the equity to at least the full amount of share capital. In
the event that such a plan is not considered feasible, the company
has to be liquidated.
It is also important to note that, in Sweden, clubs that are not
organized as non-profit associations have to be sports modified lim-
ited liability companies, with the majority of shares (i.e., more than
50%) owned by sports associations (RF, 2013). The association is
member-owned and every member has an equal right to vote and
appoint the board of directors (RF, 2013). This ensures that the con-
trol of the club remains with members rather than private investors
and it is argued that this provides an important form of protection
from rich investors acquiring and taking over the clubs, something
which has been reported in other European countries (see, e.g.,
Cooper and Johnston, 2012). Thus, one main argument put forward
for the modified limited liability company rule is that it protects
the tradition of membership democracy in Swedish football.
. FClub and the sports and business logics
FClub is a large football organization with a men’s elite team
competing in the highest national league in Sweden. The organiza-
tion is characterized by a strong passion for football and dedicated
supporters. FClub is a part of the Football Section, which, in turn, is
www.svenskfotboll.se.
8
http://svenskfotboll.se/ImageVault/Images/id 9869/ImageVaultHandler.aspx.
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Sports Inc.
Football section Sport B section
FClub
Fig. 1. Overview of Sports Inc.
the largest section within the sports organization Sports Inc, shown
in Fig. 1. Sports Inc. is fully owned by its members, and the Foot-
ball Section is fully owned by Sports Inc. The Football Section is
the majority owner of FClub and a number of private individuals
are the minority owners.9 However, the CEO explains that FClub,
like all other football clubs in Sweden, is unlikely to ever pay out
any dividends to its shareholders. This is accepted by the investors,
most of whom are dedicated football fans.
With regard to the institutional logics relevant for our case
organization, all interviewees emphasized the prevalence of two
main sets of institutional demands, which we summarize with the
notions of sports and business logics, respectively. As the CEO put
it: “There are two sides of running [FClub], the business and the
sports. We need both and it is a great challenge to find a balance
between them.” Recurrent phrases from the interviewees referring
to the sports logic are: “our winning mentality”, “everyone looks
at the league Table in the newspapers after each round”, “we need
to perform on the field”, and “passionate fans”. Recurrent phrases
referring to the business logic are “we need to have solid finances”,
“we are a limited liability company”, “a balanced budget is very
important”, “we need good finances to keep our elite license”.
We do not claim that these are the only institutional logics
at work in the football club. Some decisions within the club may
indeed be influenced by demands that cannot be subsumed under
either of these logics. However, the sports and the business logics
are the most visible ones within the organization and, importantly,
they are prominently enacted, and thus made relevant, through
both the organization structure and the performance measures in
place (c.f., McPherson and Sauder, 2013; Thornton et al., 2012). In
the following we will analyze in more detail how they are enacted.
4.3. The organizational structure as a way to manage the sports
and business logics
FClub employs more than 50 people, including football players,
coaches, physicians and administrative personnel. FClub has one
fully owned subsidiary, FClub Merchandise, which sells souvenirs
and other sports-related items. The majority of the administrative
personnel work in the headquarters, whereas the other employees
work in the training facilities. FClub’s organizational structure is
shown in Fig. 2 and has been designed around two units, i.e., the
Sports Unit and the headquarters.
The headquarters has three sub-units. The Sales and Marketing
Department focuses on the commercial operations such as ticket
sales, sponsorships and advertising and is run by the Chief Com-
9
The ownership structure in FClub is stipulated by the previously mentioned rule
regarding modified limited liability sports companies.
Please cite this article in press as: Carlsson-Wall, M., et al., Performance measurement systems and the enactment of different institu-
tional logics: Insights from a football organization. Manage. Account. Res. (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mar.2016.01.006
7
Sport C section …
mercial Officer (CCO). The Finance and HR Department is run by
the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and the Communication and Ser-
vice Department focuses on the game related functions such as
safety and souvenirs. The manager of the Communication and Ser-
vice Department is also responsible for FClub Merchandise. Several
employees working within the headquarters pointed out that the
main advantage of gathering these three sub-units in the same
place is that it is easy for them to share information with each
other and to stay updated on what is going on within the sub-
units. An increasing professionalism with closer ties to business
practices is emphasized by all interviewees from the headquarters
and the reason for working at the headquarters is not always pri-
marily an interest in football. Rather, the sense of a business-like
approach and work ethic was stated to be one of the main reasons
for choosing this organization to work for. As the CCO put it: “I
would never have taken this job if I had felt that everyone walks
around in track-suits, drinks coffee and chills during the day.”
The Chief Sports Officer (CSO) is responsible for all the oper-
ations within the Sports Unit, which includes the players, the
coaches, physiological and medical staff, and other support staff
such as property managers. The Sports Unit is located at the train-
ing facility in another borough within the same municipality. This
separation of the headquarters and the Sports Unit was, according
to the Chairman of the Board, a deliberate managerial decision, and
this separation is not seen for the other, less professional, sports
sections. The choice of organizational structure in FClub is hence
an example of structural differentiation where the sports and busi-
ness logics are kept apart (c.f., Kraatz and Block, 2008; Berry et al.,
1985). The CSO points out the advantages of separating the Sports
Unit from the headquarters:
“In this organization, we often say that the sport is the most
important thing, however, I often feel that a lot of other stuff
gets in the way and starts dictating the conditions for the sport.
Aspects such as financial matters or organizational politics.
Therefore, my job is to build a unit with leaders and players
who can shut these out and be really good at their thing. Their
task is to be best in class at their thing, and that is to win football
games.”
The mood at the training facility is easily affected by recent
events. “Everyone here has a huge winning mentality and they are
sore losers, and the game result is really reflected in the mood here”
(Sports Coordinator). The interviewees argue that the location and
design of the training facilities allow the CSO, coaches and players to
fully focus on football related issues. The Sports Coordinator and the
CSO both argue that issues predominantly discussed in the head-
quarters, such as what price should be charged for tickets or how
the layout of the annual report should look, have little to do with
the actual game played. As the CSO put it: “If everyone who works
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Fig. 2. Organizational structure.
with these issues resigned today it wouldn’t affect the outcome of
the next game at all. . . Sometimes when I’m at the headquarters I
wonder what the relevance of the questions discussed is.” It is the
“love of football” that drives him in his work:
“It’s not like my day finishes once we’re done with this inter-
view. Sure, I’ll go home, I’ll pick up my kids, but I’ll still answer
the phone when it rings at 11 p.m. and start working again. But
that’s the way it is, and it’s for the love of football that I do it.”
4.4. Budgeting as a way to manage the sports and business logics
The budget is made on a yearly basis and the preparation pro-
cess usually begins in October the preceding year with submission
to the board by the end of that year. The CFO has the main responsi-
bility for preparing the budget templates for each of the units. The
budget structure is split into two separate parts, one covering the
expenses for the Sports Unit—how much the CSO gets to spend on
everything within the Sports Unit: players, coaches, gear, training
camps—and the other covering the revenues and expenses gener-
ated by the headquarters. The Chairman of the board suggests that
this separation is “. . . key to enabling the Sports Unit to focus on
sports and the headquarters to focus on business”.
Four types of revenues are included in the budget: ticket
sales (the CCO’s responsibility), sponsorships and advertising (the
CCO’s responsibility), sales of souvenirs in FClub Merchandise (the
manager of the Communication and Service Department’s respon-
sibility), and TV-licenses (the CEO’s responsibility). The first three
need to be forecasted in the budget, while the revenues from TV-
licenses are set in long-term agreements and are therefore known.
Importantly, revenues from sales of player contracts and from play-
ing in international leagues are excluded from the budget, as these
are very volatile and difficult to forecast. The budgeted expenses are
divided into four categories: sport (the CSO’s responsibility), events
(the CEO’s responsibility), administration (the CEO’s responsibility)
and commercial aspects (the CCO’s responsibility). As previously
mentioned, the Sports Unit’s budget is separate from that of the
rest of the organization. As explained by the Sports Coordinator:
“The sports-based money is assigned to us by the CEO and the
CFO who say, well, this is what you have to work with. This
figure. And then we present a suggestion of what it [the budget]
Please cite this article in press as: Carlsson-Wall, M., et al., Performance measurement systems and the enactment of different institu-
tional logics: Insights from a football organization. Manage. Account. Res. (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mar.2016.01.006
could look like, and then they will approve some parts of it and
ask us to reconsider other parts.”
Similar to the Sports Unit budget, the employees responsible
for all of the other expense items submit their proposals with fore-
casted expenses, discuss them with the CFO and CEO, and agree
on a final number. The CFO, CEO and each employee with budget
responsibility conducts a feedback session and adjusts the budget
to fit the total budget targets. Once this is completed for all units,
the budget is submitted and presented to the board for discussion
and final approval.10
Having separate budgets is important for facilitating structural
differentiation (c.f., Kraatz and Block, 2008). The top managers all
argue that the clear separation of the budgets for the headquarters
and the Sports Unit is made deliberately to avoid unproduc-
tive debates about continuous trade-offs between within-the-year
expenses related to sports and business (c.f., Brignall and Modell,
2000). One of the top managers mentioned that he had heard that
in some clubs, the sports budget was adjusted during the year if, for
instance, sponsorship sales or ticket sales were not going according
to plan. This is not done within FClub, where, once the two separate
budgets are set, the budget for the Sports Unit does not change dur-
ing the year. As he put it: “[The CSO] needs to know that this is the
amount of money to spend during the year. This is really important
from a sports perspective.”
During the budgeting process top management considers the
two logics jointly, insofar as they decide on how to allocate
resources to the two units. However, since revenue forecasts tend
to be rather stable and expenses in both units are to a large extent
fixed, the budgeting process is not contested to any great extent and
no major compromises are being considered at this stage. As one
of the top managers explained: “The budgeting process is not that
complicated. The previous year’s budget is often simply adjusted a
little, but the main reason why it is so straightforward is that we
exclude sales of players from the budget.” This is different when
10
We acknowledge that important compromises between the sports and business
logics may happen during budget preparation to arrive at the final approved budgets.
Our focus in this study has primarily been on PMS and we have therefore no further
details about compromises during budget preparation.
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extraordinary investments are contemplated during the year, as
we shall see below.
4.5. Performance measurement systems
When explaining the performance measurement systems at
FClub, all interviewees emphasize that they have a dual nature.
On the one hand, there are two unique sets of detailed perfor-
mance measures, one for headquarters and the other for the Sports
Unit. These metrics are not discussed by the top management team,
but, rather, are used to follow-up on the sports and business log-
ics separately within the two units. On the other hand, there are
three measures that are continuously monitored by the manage-
ment team, and this is how the sports logic and business logic are
brought together. These metrics are: league-table position (sports-
related), financial result (business-related) and amount of equity in
the balance sheet (business-related).
4.5.1. Unique sets of metrics for the headquarters and the Sports
Unit
The headquarters monitors the largest revenue streams (sou-
venirs, tickets sales, sponsorships and advertising) on a weekly
basis and the largest expense types (event, administration, com-
mercial) on a monthly basis. The person responsible for the revenue
stream or expense category presents the outcome of a comparison
to the budget and explains any deviations identified to the CEO and
CFO, explaining the subsequent remedial action. The weekly anal-
ysis of revenues was recently introduced to FClub. The CFO and
the CCO explain that the main advantage of this is that they are
able to learn more about the effects of various types of events and
commercial activities undertaken. It also allows them to stay up-
to-date and detect trends earlier and, in case of a negative trend, to
undertake remedial action before it is too late.
The Sales and Marketing Department has implemented mea-
sures on an even more detailed level. In this department, all account
managers have their own sales targets against which they are mea-
sured. Each account manager is able to track the progress against
the budget on a daily basis every time they log in to the system. The
CCO explains that he feels that this has allowed the department to
act more professionally. All individual sales metrics aggregate to
the total revenue stream from sponsorships and advertising. In the
case of an account manager missing his sales target, for example,
a discussion can be held that focuses on the underlying reason for
missing the target and analyzes how he can change the trend: “I
mean we are not an American company. It is not like I will fire any-
one for not reaching his or her target the first quarter. However, if
it happens again and again, maybe this is just not the right place
for the person in question.” (CCO).
Within the Sports Unit, a variety of non-financial measures that
reflect the drivers of sports performance are monitored on a daily,
weekly and monthly basis. In general, the ability to measure and
compare performance within sports is expressed by the CSO as
follows:
“Sports, and football in particular, is extremely measureable. It
is very easy to see which team is the best. It is not like you have a
Table ranking the best law firms or banks. . .. For us it is so much
more obvious. It is extremely measureable and excuses do not
really work in football.”
The ability to, in a very detailed manner, measure parameters
affecting and reflecting sport performance has increased during the
last years, according to the CSO:
“I feel that the daily operations have taken substantial steps
in recent years toward some kind of ultra-professional orga-
nization whereby we measure a urine-sample from the players
Please cite this article in press as: Carlsson-Wall, M., et al., Performance measurement systems and the enactment of different institu-
tional logics: Insights from a football organization. Manage. Account. Res. (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mar.2016.01.006
9
when they arrive in the morning. We are then able to analyze
what they have eaten, what they have been drinking and how
they have slept in order to create an individual player profile to
optimize the work-outs, training, etc.”
Thus, on a daily basis, measures are applied on an individual
level for each football player in order to determine the optimal
workout and nutrition plan. This process enables the CSO and
the coaches to check what the football players have been eating
and drinking and to assess their sleeping habits according to pre-
specified recommendations. For a license to be obtained to play at
an elite level, overall health-tests are conducted on each player,
including for example blood-tests and tests of physical fitness and
health.
Additionally, each game is analyzed in terms of the results of
the game and the statistics with the intention of revising and ame-
liorating the tactics for upcoming games. The statistics include
measures such as running capacity, pass completion rates, posses-
sion statistics, cross-completion rates and goals per shot, and these
are measured on an individual player level as well as on a team
level. The Sports Unit also has a part-time employee who monitors
competitor statistics with the specific aim of adapting the tactics
for forthcoming games, and similar measures are applied in this
process.
The unique sets of detailed measures for the headquarters and
the Sports Unit described above illustrate another aspect of the
structural differentiation between the two logics (c.f., Kraatz and
Block, 2008; Berry et al., 1985). The managers in FClub emphasize
the importance of having separate performance measurement sys-
tems in the headquarters and the Sports Unit because the respective
notions of what constitutes good performance are so different in the
two units. As one top manager11 put it:
“In the daily operations we cannot relate sports performance
and financial results all the time, as otherwise we would end up
in endless discussions about details. This would not be produc-
tive at all. Headquarters focuses its daily operations on business
and has its separate measures, while the Sports Unit is all about
sports with its detailed sports-related measures. We give the
Sports Unit a budget to work with. This is the only way to run a
football club efficiently as I see it.”
The CSO agreed: “The CEO can’t even kick a beach ball. He isn’t
supposed to, so that’s not a problem. He is as skilled at football as I
am at Excel. That’s okay as long as you accept that we have differ-
ent roles.” Thus, our observations confirm the idea that maintaining
separate PMS for different areas can be beneficial to avoid ‘endless
discussions’ and conflict (Brignall and Modell, 2000). Once the bud-
get is set, each unit is free to pursue its unit-specific objectives with
the help of a unique set of detailed performance measures.
At the same time, however, we see integration of the two logics
in the form of a set of performance measures that are continuously
monitored by the top management team and that create ‘concur-
rent visibility’ (Chenhall et al., 2013) for both sports and business
objectives. To this, we now turn.
4.5.2. Performance measures discussed by the top management
team
The top management team includes all the department heads:
the CEO, CFO, CSO, CCO and the Manager of the Communication and
Service Department. This group has weekly meetings where sports
and business related issues are discussed and debated. All top man-
11
For certain quotations we are required to not use the specific title of the intervie-
wee, such as CEO, board member, CSO, in order to preserve anonymity for somewhat
sensitive points of view.
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agers emphasize the importance of these two types of meetings for
integrating commercial and sport perspectives. As the CSO put it:
“I am the only one representing the Sports Unit. . . we try to
connect the departments, in an attempt to make sure that the
decisions we make in the Sports Unit resonate with those taken
in [FClub] Merchandise. Naturally, this is what we are striving
to achieve.”
The top managers argue that the PMS is an important tool when
discussing and debating sports and business objectives. Three per-
formance measures are used in the discussions, one sports-related
and two business-related: league-table position where the target
is to be top-three in the league (sports-related), financial result
where the target is a null financial result (business-related) and
amount of equity in the balance sheet where the target is equity
of at least 50 m Euro12 (business-related).13 The three metrics are
reported for each top management meeting: league-table position
is found in the newspaper and financial result and amount of equity
is prepared by the CFO. No formal reports are compiled with the
three measures; rather, the performance measures are integrated
by means of accounting talk (c.f., Ahrens, 1997; Carlsson-Wall et al.,
in press; Hall, 2010). Regarding the league-table position, one of the
top managers commented: “We all read the newspapers and watch
the games of course so everyone is always updated on where we
are placed in the league.” The two financial measures are presented
orally by the CFO at the beginning of the meetings. The intervie-
wees all argue that the relationship between the two financial
measures and the sport-related one is complex; in some situa-
tions they perceive that the different objectives compete with each
other, whereas in other situations they do not. This gives rise to a
continuous discussion in the top management team about sports
and business, and here the different managers mobilize the PMS to
support their respective standpoints.
4.5.3. Making compromises on the basis of the performance
measures
In the following, we will discuss a number of situations related
to the purchase and sale of players, which differ in terms of how
the sports and business logics are related to each other through the
mobilization of the PMS. These situations are characterized by dif-
ferent levels of performance assessed using the sports and business
indicators, respectively. They do not cover all possible combina-
tions between sports and business performance, but only those
scenarios that managers reflected on.14 Buying good players can
be very expensive, in terms of the price paid to the selling club,
and also the signing-on bonus and the monthly salaries paid to the
players. A large part of the club’s revenues comes from the sale of
players. Over the years this has varied for FClub, but the revenue
from the sale of players can amount to as much as 20% of the total
revenue. In addition, as previously mentioned, both the unplanned
purchase and sale of players are excluded from the budgeting pro-
cess since they are so difficult to forecast. As one top manager put
it: “Revenue from the sale of players is not in the budget, it is a sort
of buffer.”
There are two transfer windows in football, one in January and
the other in July-August. Since the transfer window in July-August
12
50 m Euro is not the actual figure. It has been changed to preserve anonymity.
The figure corresponds to the total amount of share capital in the balance sheet.
13
The three measures are not connected to incentive systems. Top managers have
a fixed salary and do not receive any bonuses.
14
Thus, the five situations discussed below are empirically grounded. That is, when
asked to elaborate on how PMS were used during the meetings, the top managers’
unisonal answer was: “It depends”, and then they discussed different situations. No
further situations than those described below were discussed by the FClub man-
agers.
Please cite this article in press as: Carlsson-Wall, M., et al., Performance measurement systems and the enactment of different institu-
tional logics: Insights from a football organization. Manage. Account. Res. (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mar.2016.01.006
is in the middle of the season for FClub15 , this is where a tension
between sports and business logics typically emerges. As the CEO
described it:
“As a CEO, you really appreciate that they [the three perfor-
mance measures] exist, as it can be difficult to put your foot
down and decide what level of risk you are willing to take—both
from a financial and a sports-based perspective. It often hap-
pened that if you, as a CEO, said no to a certain investment, you
were questioned: ‘Are you really willing to take that risk from
a sports perspective?’ This happened the other way around as
well; if you suggested an investment, people would ask you,
‘Okay, so are you willing to take the financial risk?”’
Situation 1: FClub is winning and is placed in the top three in the
league
The CEO exemplified one situation where the sports and busi-
ness logics are in harmony: when the team is continuously winning
and placed in the top three in the league. As he put it:
“Let me be concrete. Take year [refers to a particular year].When
we are at a top place in the league, then sports and business are
really connected, there is no conflict at all. I mean the easiest
way to get a profit is simply to win all games. It does not matter
how you win, 7–0 or 1–0, the fans, players and everyone will be
happy. The home games are especially important to win. . . then
ticket sales go up, people want to come to experience the feeling
of winning. And you do not need to buy any additional players,
because you are already top in the league with the players you
have. And sponsors and companies want to be associated with a
team that is winning. It is almost as if the sponsors are standing
in line to do business with you.”
Sports and business logics are in harmony in this situation inso-
far as there is a positive cause-effect relationship between the
sports performance and the financial rewards. As the quote sug-
gests, there is little ambiguity in this positive relationship in the
sense that it is not really a matter of interpretation whether the two
logics are positively related or not. It is quite obvious that “everyone
will be happy” if the club is winning.
All the other top managers agreed with this statement and the
CSO explained that he would often mobilize the sports-related per-
formance measure to argue the case for the importance of winning
and that winning would also lead to improved finances: “I have
to remind the others that all these business-related things, yes we
need them. But at the end of the day, what we really need is to win
the games.” However, as one top manager points out, to “‘simply’
win the games” is very difficult as the Swedish national league has
a number of very competitive teams: “Some years we are contin-
uously in the top three, definitely, but some years we win some,
lose some and have to fight hard to be among the top five or six
teams. So this means that there are often situations when there
is a continuous trade-off between the business objectives and the
sports-related ones.” Such situations are described next.
Situation 2: FClub has relatively stable finances and is placed 6th
to 9th in the league
When the summer transfer window opens, FClub can be in a
situation referred to by a board member as “an OK situation, not
very good, but not alarming either”. This means relatively stable
finances and the team is placed 6th to 9th when half the season has
been played. In such a situation, if the CSO wants to buy additional
players, for, say, 5 m Euros upfront with annual salaries of 2 m Euros,
he needs to sell players first, so he has to save 2 m Euro in salaries
15
Note here that Swedish football seasons differ from the typical season structure
in Europe where the season starts in August.
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and get paid at least 5 m Euros for the players sold. As one top
manager put it:
“In such circumstances, the board has a clear message: You can-
not buy additional players until you have sold players for the
same amount. Here we simply use financial arguments: We have
a target of a null financial result. You already have your sports
budget, now perform and be top-three in the league· · ·We have
been in this situation a number of times over the years· · ·You
sell first, and then buy. This is totally driven by the null financial
result target.”
Similarly, another top manager explained:
“We have the financial measures, and then we have the sports-
related target of being in the top three in the league. Both of
these are very important, but under normal circumstances, the
financial measures are most important. I mean, we are a limited
company. There are certain requirements on a limited company.
We need to be financially sound”.
What we see here is thus a compromise in favor of the business
logic. Even though the sports performance is not satisfactory com-
pared to the target of being among the top 3, additional investments
that could improve the sports performance are not deemed to be
justified. It seems more important to have stable finances than to
improve sports performance in this case.
Situation 3: FClub has financial problems and is placed 6th to 9th
in the league
All top managers emphasized that FClub has had periods when
the financial situation has been problematic over the years, often
because it has had some years with large losses and therefore the
equity was below the 50 m Euro target. The easiest way to record a
quick accounting profit is to sell players. However, such a strategy
often requires that these players actually get exposure, i.e., that they
play games from the start instead of only being substitutes. This
creates a situation where the best 11 players from a financial point
of view might not be the optimal starting formation for the next
game. Specifically, one or two (often young) players who are good,
but not good enough to be included in the eleven best, should start
the game to get exposure and match experience. In these situations,
the CEO will request the CSO to allow those one or two players to
play. The CSO explained that if he is provided with solid financial
arguments by the CEO, he will accept the situation and take the
appropriate action. As one top manager put it:
“We provide financial arguments, always related to the impor-
tance of a null financial result and equity of at least [50 m Euro].
If we are, say, in sixth place in the league, it does not matter
so much if two young players are brought on to play to get
exposure. Then [the CSO] is, of course, not terribly happy, but
he usually understands and accepts the situation. And the fans,
media etc., they simply won’t know whether player A should
play instead of player B, of course, they think that the best 11
players always play.”
Similarly, as another top manager described this situation:
“When we started the previous year, we were in a tough financial
situation, especially when it came to the financial measure of hav-
ing equity of at least [50 m Euro]. So we needed a good year showing
a profit. This meant that we had a clear requirement to impose
on the CSO—we need to sell players, to return to [the required
50 m Euro] in equity.” The CSO explained that he had a very good
relationship with the head coach. As he put it:
“This summer we had a situation when we had to sell players
for financial reasons. And we did. As long as they provide me
with solid arguments, such as we need to do this to improve the
financial result, to improve equity etc., then I have no problem
Please cite this article in press as: Carlsson-Wall, M., et al., Performance measurement systems and the enactment of different institu-
tional logics: Insights from a football organization. Manage. Account. Res. (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mar.2016.01.006
11
with this. And then I also have the head coach with me, we
are both loyal to the club. I have an insight into the financial
situation of the club.”
Similar to the previous situation, we can thus see a compromise
in favor of the business logic, made specifically to get back on the
path towards financial stability. Unlike in the previous case, here,
the sports performance is even compromised by deciding not to
play with the best possible team.
Situation 4: Risk of relegation—placed 10th or lower in the league
FClub has also been in the situation that the sport performance
has been very disappointing during the first half of the season, so
it either comes in at a place in the league which would mean rele-
gation or close to such a place. This, according to the managers, is
when FClub is placed 10th or lower in the league. Then all managers
agree that emotions often take over, and FClub buys new players
when the summer transfer window opens, even if this means a
financial loss at the end of the year. As one top manager explained:
“One common situation is that we have played really well one
year, and the next year is not so good, say we are in tenth place in
the league. Then fans, media and the CSO argue that we need to
do something, we need to strengthen the team with new play-
ers. And then the target ‘We need to be in the top-three in the
league, do not forget this’ is always used in the argumentation.
And then we might give in, and hope that if we do something
drastic we will start winning again. We buy new expensive play-
ers before we have sold the ones we already have. And then we
cannot get rid of the players we thought we could sell, and end
up with total salaries that are far too high. And of course, there
is no guarantee that we will start winning. This is very danger-
ous. Nevertheless, we do behave like this sometimes. There is
so much emotion! We are a team that should be in the high-
est national league, not the second highest league, we simply
cannot be relegated . . . This pressure of having to succeed in
sports. It is not possible to resist. . . there are so many emotions
attached to it.”
Similarly, another top manager said:
“When buying players, we always debate: ‘If we buy this guy
from, say, Ghana, we might have a chance to reach the top-three
after all, in spite of the bad performance during the first half of
the season, but then our financial result will likely be negative;
what is most important?’ I would say under normal circum-
stances, it is financial result, but if we are at risk of relegation,
then the sports-related objectives are more important. . . Say if
you did a survey among FClub supporters, do you want to have
good finances and run the risk of relegation or do you want to
win? Everyone would probably say, ‘Do not risk relegation. Win,
win, win!’ Then the financial situation is secondary.”
A third manager described the situation as follows:
“A few years ago, we ran the risk of relegation. And then during
the summer transfer window, we felt: ‘This is not good, not good
at all. If we do not do something, we will be relegated.’ Then we
spent more—for a new goalkeeper, two new forwards etc., we
said yes, yes. Here the sports performance really took over; there
are so many emotions attached to this, you cannot resist. You
just hope that you will start winning again. But it had a tough
price, the financial result was negative, equity was far below
[the 50 m Euro mark].”
Thus, all managers agreed that in FClub there are strong emo-
tions involved when facing the risk of relegation. Consequently,
in this situation, sports performance is mobilized to argue for
decisions that will almost certainly have negative financial conse-
quences for FClub in the short-term. In other words, it seems that
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12 M. Carlsson-Wall et al. / Management Accounting Research xxx (2016) xxx–xxx
the sports logic is prioritized here at the expense of the business
logic.
However, in this situation, the cause-effect relationship
between the logics is not unambiguous. Even though the short-term
deterioration of the financial result is quite obvious, relegation to
the second league would also imply considerable financial losses
in terms of lost revenues due to the TV-license agreement, reduced
ticket sales and lost sponsorship deals. Therefore all managers
agreed that the negative financial consequences for FClub in the
short-term are more than compensated by the long-term financial
gains that avoiding relegation would bring. As one top manager put
it: “Relegation just cannot happen. This would hit our revenues so
hard in the next year. Here business and sports really are aligned.
We should do everything we can to avoid relegation even if our
short-term financial result suffers.” In other words, what we see
here is that the relationship between the sports and the business
logic is enacted in such a way that a positive cause-effect relation-
ship between the logics emerges. Succeeding in sports is regarded
as a condition for a sound financial performance.
Situation 5: Placed 4th to 5th in the league and sensing the possi-
bility of winning the league
All managers agree that one of the most emotional situations is
when the team is performing well, but has had some unlucky losses
and has therefore landed in 4th or 5th place in the middle of the
season. This means that everyone senses the possibility of winning
the league, if the sports performance could just be improved a little
bit. Apparently, in these situations, it happens that rash decisions
can be made to acquire player contracts with the aim of winning
the season. The external pressure from supporters and fans, all of
whom want to win, and the emotions attached to winning by the
management team, contribute to making such decisions. Here the
sports-based measure is mobilized, as one top manager stated:
“You fall into some sort of collective spiral that does not really
exist in ordinary companies. We all want our team to win. . . and
when we are placed 4th or 5th the fans shout ‘More!’, and the
CSO shouts ‘More!’. Well, everyone shouts ‘More!’.”
Similarly, another top manager explained:
“[W]ith so many emotions and the winning instinct, we often
buy new players and bet on winning the league when we feel
we have a good chance, even when this means running into
financial losses.”
This issue is something that is persistently recognized within
the sports industry, and as the CEO of the Swedish Elite Football
Association stated: “I’ve seen this happen in several elite football
clubs. The external pressure [when a team has the chance of win-
ning the national league] causes businessmen on the board to lose
their heads and fail to reason in a structured manner.”
Thus, in this kind of situation, sports performance is prioritized
over short-term financial performance. This is similar to what we
observed in situation 4, with the difference that here it is the upside
potential rather than the downside risk that justifies the investment
in sports. Interestingly, this decision is not rationalized on the basis
of the financial benefits that would also go along with winning the
league. The business logic is mainly enacted in terms of the short-
term financial situation. Therefore, in the eyes of the managers, one
logic is indeed compromised against the other and, with the benefit
of hindsight, this is viewed critically.
Table 1 provides a summary of the five different situations in
terms of the relationship between the sports and business logics
and the use of the PMS. These will be discussed in more depth in
the following section.
Please cite this article in press as: Carlsson-Wall, M., et al., Performance measurement systems and the enactment of different institu-
tional logics: Insights from a football organization. Manage. Account. Res. (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mar.2016.01.006
5. Discussion
Our empirical account of performance measurement in FClub
allows us to make a set of theoretical observations regarding the
nature of compromises between different institutional logics and
the role of performance measures in informing such compromises.
5.1. Institutional logics and situation-specific compromises
Our findings support the existing literature with regards to the
importance of structural differentiation as a strategy to manage
institutional complexity (Berry et al., 1985; Kraatz and Block, 2008).
Many details related to sports performance were only monitored
in the Sports Unit and were not considered in relation to financial
performance at all, however it was the latter that was discussed
at headquarters level. Additional instances of structural differen-
tiation were the separation between headquarters and the Sports
Unit in terms of both the organizational structure and the allocation
of separate budgets. There is evidence in our case study that such
structural differentiation was perceived to be beneficial for avoid-
ing lengthy discussions about trade-offs and to show respect for
the expertise of the respective managers (see Brignall and Modell,
2000).
A key tenet of our paper however is that institutional logics
may relate to each other in more complex ways than previously
acknowledged. The literature suggests that different logics may
create tension or conflict in organizations insofar as they imply
competing courses of action (Battilana and Dorado, 2010). Some
authors suggest that logics may be instantiated as more or less
compatible across fields and organizations (Greenwood et al., 2011;
Besharov and Smith, 2014), depending on how the logics are filtered
on the field or organizational level. Yet, these studies still seem to
assume that there is a constant degree of compatibility within an
organization. In contrast, we argue that different institutional log-
ics may be more or less compatible in different situations within an
organization, and that this is the case because of ambiguous cause-
effect relationships between the activities and outcomes that relate
to the logics.
Indeed, our empirical study shows that the sports and the busi-
ness logics are sometimes in harmony with each other, because
the given situation is characterized by a course of actions or events
that benefits both sports and financial performance (see situation
1). There is, in other words, a rather unambiguous cause-effect
relationship between the two logics in the sense that good sports
performance implies financial rewards. In other cases, in contrast,
the cause-effect relationship is more ambiguous and this ambi-
guity allows for different enactments of the logics. Ambiguity in
this context results from the fact that measures taken to improve
sports performance (e.g., buying players) typically have negative
short-term consequences for the business logic (i.e., cash outflow
and decreased financial result), but may have positive ones for the
business logic in the longer term (i.e., subsequent revenue due to
winning a league, not being relegated). The positive effects are
thereby closely related to the commercialization of professional
sports. As Slack (1998), p. 1) observes, “Sport is big business and
big businesses are heavily involved in sport”. Hence, while finan-
cial resources are typically needed to improve sports performance,
such an improvement in turn has positive financial consequences.
Because of this bi-directional relationship between the two log-
ics, organizational actors have discretion in how they enact these
logics (c.f., Goodrick and Salancik, 1996), which leads them to per-
ceive a tension in some cases (where the first relationship is given
prominence), but not in others (where the latter relationship is
stressed).
In line with this, we find that in three situations (2, 3 and
5), FClub’s top management acknowledges a conflict or tension
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Table 1
Summary of the five situations.

Situation The distance between the Enacted relationship between the institutional Compromising behavior
sports-related performance logics
measure and the target to
be top three in the league

1 Placed among the top
three in the league
2 Placed 6th to 9th in
the league and
relatively stable
finances
3 Placed 6th to 9th in
the league and
financial problems
4 Placed 10th or lower
in the league
5 Placed 4th to 5th in
the league
None, target achieved The sports and business logics are in harmony:
success in sports leads to improved finances
Medium (Zone of The sports and business logics are enacted as
indifference) conflicting: buying new players would
jeopardize the short-term financial situation
Medium (Zone of The sports and business logics are enacted as
indifference) conflicting: improving the short-term financial
situation requires sports compromises
High (risk of relegation) The sports and business logics are enacted as
being in harmony: avoiding relegation means
avoiding negative financial consequences the
next year
Low (sensing the The sports and business logics are enacted as
possibility to become conflicting: trying to win the league implies
champion) running into financial losses
No compromise needed
The business logic is prioritized over the sports
logic: sell first, then buy
The business logic is prioritized over the sports
logic: use players who need exposure so they
can be sold, even if they are not the best ones
No compromise needed. Buying new players is
in line with both logics
The sports logic is prioritized over the business
logic: buy new players even if this means
running into financial losses

between the two logics which they address by prioritizing one of
them and thus compromising the other one (see Table 1). In situ-
ations 2 and 3, they prioritize the business logic (i.e., they decide
against making additional investments), while in situation 5, they
prioritize the sports logic (i.e., they decide to invest). In all of these
situations, they enact the business logic by pointing to the short-
term financial burden that the additional investment brings. This is
different in situation 4, where they enact the business logic pri-
marily in terms of the (uncertain) financial benefits of avoiding
relegation. Because of this enactment, the tension between the
two logics disappears (or is at least strongly reduced) such that
managers can think of the two logics as being in harmony.
Thus, our study demonstrates that compatibility of logics varies
not just between fields and organizations (Greenwood et al., 2011;
Besharov and Smith, 2014), but also between situations within an
organization. Depending on the particular situation, the same two
logics may be experienced as either conflicting or compatible. In
those cases in which they are conflicting, some kind of compro-
mise is made. In order to understand why these compromises are
sometimes made in favour of one logic and sometimes in favour of
the other, we need to look more closely at the information from the
performance measures.
5.2. Performance measures, compromises, and non-linear
performance rewards
The literature suggests that performance measurement systems
can function as structural solutions to the problem of competing
logics by producing ‘concurrent visibility’ for the different institu-
tional demands (Chenhall et al., 2013; Sundin et al., 2010). The three
key performance indicators that are routinely monitored in FClub
do indeed create such concurrent visibility for the sports and the
business logics, respectively. FClub’s top management enacts these
two logics when making sense of the current league-table posi-
tion, financial result, and amount of equity in the balance sheet. In
contrast to the existing literature, however, our particular focus is
not on the design of such ‘compromising accounts’ (Chenhall et al.,
2013), but rather on their situated use. In examining different sit-
uations that are characterized by different levels of performance
on the key indicators, we can improve our understanding of how
compromises are actually made in organizations.
Such a focus on different levels of performance is in itself
fairly original when considering the understanding of performance
measurement, for, while there is a substantial body of research
on how managers mobilize performance measures (e.g., van der
Veeken and Wouters, 2002; Ahrens and Chapman, 2007; Jordan and
Messner, 2012), little is known about how they make sense of differ-
ent levels of performance, i.e., varying outcomes of the performance
metrics. These outcomes and their distance to the performance tar-
gets, however, turn out to be important for understanding why the
business logic is prioritized in some cases, while in others the sports
logic has priority.
In particular, we find that the business logic is prioritized in
those situations (2 and 3) where sports performance is medium,
i.e., when the team is placed 6th to 9th in the league. In such a
case, the probability of winning the league or of being relegated
is rather low and therefore additional investments in sports are
not warranted even though they could be expected to lead to an
improvement in sports performance. This is because, in terms of
the consequences of sports performance, it makes little difference
for the club if they come in fifth or eighth in the league. The club
will have missed its goal of being among the top three, but it will
also not be relegated to the second division. There is thus a certain
‘zone of indifference’ with respect to sports performance. Similarly,
financial implications are not really different within this medium
range of elite sports performance. Importantly, this implies that
the business logic is enacted in terms of the short-term financial
outflows that additional investments in players would cause. It is
not enacted in terms of the potential long-term benefits of winning
the league or avoiding being relegated—presumably because the
probability of these events is considered to be rather low.
This is different in situations 4 and 5, where sports performance
is rather low (10th or lower) or rather high (4th or 5th), respectively.
Here, the probability of being relegated or of winning the league is
considered much higher and therefore sports performance could
either be really bad or really good. In other words, improvements
or deteriorations in sports performance would lead the club out
of the ‘zone of indifference’. This prospect apparently leads man-
agers to compromise the (short-term) financial stability of the club.
Note, however, that such a decision is not necessarily experienced
as involving a tension, because the business logic may be enacted
not primarily in terms of the short-term financial outflows but in
terms of the long-term financial benefits of increased sports per-
formance. In our case, this was visible in situation 4 when the risk
of being relegated was associated with financial losses that, in the
eyes of the managers, had to be avoided at almost any (short-term)
cost.
The key to understanding these differences in the compromis-
ing behavior is thus the meaning attributed to different levels of
sports performance—when interpreted both with respect to the

Please cite this article in press as: Carlsson-Wall, M., et al., Performance measurement systems and the enactment of different institu-
tional logics: Insights from a football organization. Manage. Account. Res. (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mar.2016.01.006
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sports logic and the business logic. Within the ‘zone of indifference’
that characterizes medium league positions, changes in sports per-
formance (e.g., from 6th to 5th) are of little consequence in terms
of both sports and financial rewards. However, the same marginal
change (i.e., by one position) will be much more consequential if it
leads the club to either win the league or be relegated to the sec-
ond league. It is this non-linearity in the performance rewards that
explains the difference in the compromises reached in the two sets
of situations (2 and 3 versus 4 and 5).
This non-linearity is quite typical for many professional sports.
In the extreme case, it materializes in the form of a ‘winner-takes-
all-market’ (Frank and Cook, 1995) where only winners receive
rewards. In less extreme, but still ‘winner-oriented’ settings, win-
ners receive a disproportionately large share of the rewards (in
terms of fame, recognition, financial compensation etc.). Football
has been described as being strongly winner-oriented, as “con-
sumers and investors are interested primarily in winners, and to be
a winner intensifies the market position of the athlete, the club, or
the team” (Szyszczak, 2007). In a league system, such as in football,
a non-linear effect also applies to the bottom end of the league, as
relegation is commonly associated with disastrous effects in terms
of both sports and finances.
So far, the accounting literature has discussed non-linear
reward functions mainly in the context of budgeting and executive
compensation. Hopwood (1972) suggests that enforcing discrete
budgetary targets can be problematic as managers may then focus
on ‘hitting the number’ at the expense of other valuable perfor-
mance criteria. When monetary rewards are distributed only for
achieving the budgetary target, the result is an ‘everything or noth-
ing’ payment scheme that invites gaming behaviour (Healy, 1985;
Jensen, 2001a; Libby and Lindsay, 2010). In a sense, this is quite
similar to the disproportionate nature of rewards in the context of
football leagues. Here and there, managers may become ‘obsessed’
with discrete performance values (i.e., budgetary target and partic-
ular league positions, respectively) and invest themselves heavily
in attempting to attain these values. To be sure, football teams
do not have the possibility to ‘manage’ their league position in
the same way as managers can manage their earnings. They may,
however, compromise their short-term financial stability in antic-
ipation of (uncertain) rewards. In other words, the behavioural
reactions that we observe in FClub are structurally not that different
from the behavioural reactions that we can observe in budgeting
settings, insofar as both are related to the existence of non-linear
performance rewards.
In this context, it is also noteworthy that our interviewees
referred to the situations in which they would anticipate extraor-
dinary rewards or losses as highly emotional situations. Being close
to achieving an outstanding sports result (i.e., winning the cham-
pionship) apparently triggers strong emotions which at times lead
managers to compromise some other objectives (i.e., a null financial
result) that would be given a high priority under normal circum-
stances. Similarly, being in a performance range that signals the
risk of relegation also triggers strong emotions. Again, we can see
parallels to accounts of emotional stress or anxiety in the context
of the budgeting process (Hopwood, 1972). Our observations also
resonate with the more general idea that certain technologies, like
rankings or performance measures, can “entice and seduce actors
to make imagined . . . futures a reality” (Boedker and Chua, 2013).
League tables, in this sense, constitute an ‘affective technology’
(ibid.) that display both the upside potential and the downside risk.
Our findings suggest that the emotional appeal of such technologies
is particularly pronounced in the case of non-linear performance
effects, when actors anticipate—on the basis of the information pro-
vided by the system—extraordinary rewards or losses. Note that the
non-linearity is sometimes explicitly made visible in how informa-
tion is displayed. Football league tables, for instance, are sometimes
Please cite this article in press as: Carlsson-Wall, M., et al., Performance measurement systems and the enactment of different institu-
tional logics: Insights from a football organization. Manage. Account. Res. (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mar.2016.01.006
designed in such a way that the positions at the top and bottom of
the league are marked in particular colours so as to highlight the
particular consequences (in terms of winning the championship or
being relegated) associated with these positions.
6. Conclusions
This paper has examined the role of performance measurement
systems (PMS) in a particular subfield of popular culture, i.e., sports.
We have analyzed the way in which managers in a football orga-
nization use a set of performance measures—league-table position
(sports-related), financial result (business-related) and amount of
equity in the balance sheet (business-related)—to manage the co-
existence of two institutional logics, the sports and business logics.
We make three main contributions to the literature.
First, we contribute to the institutional logics literature (e.g.,
Besharow and Smith, 2014; Greenwood et al., 2010; Lounsbury,
2007; McPherson and Sauder, 2013; Thornton and Ocasio, 2008)
and the related accounting literature (e.g., Amans et al., 2015;
Ezzamel et al., 2012; Lander et al., 2013) by detailing that, in
addition to variation between fields and between organizations,
different degrees of compatibility between logics are also found in
different situations within an organization. Previously, the litera-
ture has mainly concentrated on tensions and competition between
logics. Our findings suggest that the relationship between logics is
situation-specific, i.e., there is an ambiguous cause-effect relation-
ship between the logics that allows for different ways of enacting
a given logic in specific decision-making situations. Depending
on the particular situation, the sports and business logics were
experienced as either conflicting or compatible. When they were
conflicting, managers used the information from the PMS to make a
compromise. The actual outcomes of the metrics, and the possible
effects that decisions would have on these outcomes, were impor-
tant when explaining why these compromises were made in favour
of one logic or the other.
Our second contribution is to the PMS literature (e.g., Chenhall
et al., 2013; Hall, 2011; Jordan and Messner, 2012; van der Veeken
and Wouters, 2002). Our findings suggest that, in addition to ana-
lyzing how compromises are designed into the PMS as has been
documented in previous literature (e.g., Chenhall et al., 2013;
Kaplan and Norton, 1992; Sundin et al., 2010), emphasis also needs
to be placed on how compromises are made on the basis of such
PMS. We found that the meaning of different levels of sports perfor-
mance was key for understanding the differences in compromising
behaviour—when the performance was interpreted with respect to
both the sports and business logics. Within the ‘zone of indifference’
that characterized medium league positions, changes in sports per-
formance were not perceived to be consequential for either sports
results or financial rewards. However in situations where the sports
performance was relatively strong or weak, improvements or dete-
riorations in sports performance had taken the club out of the
central ‘zone of indifference’, with the result that managers became
prepared to compromise the short-term financial stability of the
club. This non-linearity in the performance rewards explained the
difference in the compromises reached in various situations in
our case organization. We also found that the situations in which
extraordinary rewards or losses were anticipated were highly emo-
tional. This supports the idea that accounting technologies, like
rankings and performance metrics, have an affective dimension
(Boedker and Chua, 2013). We contribute by detailing how the
emotional appeal of such accounting technologies is particularly
pronounced in the case of non-linear performance effects.
Finally, our study contributes to the emerging literature on
accounting and popular culture (Jeacle, 2009a; 2012; Jeacle and
Carter, 2014). As Battilana and Dorado (2010, p, 1420) put it: “Deal-
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M. Carlsson-Wall et al. / Management Accounting Research xxx (2016) xxx–xxx
ing with multiple logics is challenging for organizations because it is
likely to trigger internal tensions that may generate conflicts among
organizational members, who are ultimately the ones who enact
institutional logics”. Many popular culture organizations can be
considered such hybrids. Scholars have emphasized, for example,
that the tension between financial and artistic logics is a signifi-
cant theme in popular music and that most artists struggle hard to
find a balance between artistic recognition and economic wealth
(Jacobs and Evans, 2012; Smith and Jacobs, 2011). Similarly, Jeacle
and Carter (2012, p. 724), exploring high street fashion retailers,
discuss the clash between art and business in the fashion indus-
try. While the tension between sports and financial performance
is similar to the one between artistic and financial performance,
the field of sports is particular insofar as a ‘competitive dimension’
is inherent to it. This competitive dimension materializes in the
distinction between winners or losers, or gold, silver and bronze
medalists, etc. And it has probably facilitated the surge of ‘mea-
surement’ in sports—in a more pronounced way than is apparent
for other forms of popular culture. Hence, while performance mea-
surement practices are considered alien to many areas of popular
culture, and are only symbolically associated with a business logic
(c.f., Ezzamel et al., 2012), this is not really the case for professional
sports, where measurement abounds. Indeed, what our case shows
is how strongly the sports logic is infused with measurement, not
only regarding outcomes (e.g., football scores, league ranking), but
also with respect to the means of achieving outcomes (e.g., urine
sample, overall health tests, game statistics).
In terms of future research, we see a need for more studies inves-
tigating whether, and to what extent, multiple institutional logics
do indeed compete with each other in specific decision-making sit-
uations within organizations. Developing a better understanding
of these situations is critical to the institutional logics perspec-
tive because it is here that logics are transformed into action (c.f.,
McPherson and Sauder, 2013). Our findings suggest that perfor-
mance measurement systems can play an important role when
managers enact logics and craft compromises. Future studies could
look at other management controls such as policies and procedures,
incentive systems, strategic planning or cultural controls to deepen
our understanding of how organizations manage the co-existence
of multiple institutional logics.
Another area for future research is related to accounting and
emotions. In our paper, we considered emotions on the part of man-
agers. But emotions may well also emerge on the part of customers.
Cultural products are to an important extent ‘emotional’ products
that revolve around entertainment or passion. As noted by Cooper
and Johnston (2012) for instance, the field of football has an abil-
ity to arouse strong passionate attachments among stakeholders.
Are emotions on the customer side also related to accounting tech-
nologies? For instance, football fans look at league tables and on this
basis discuss the prospects of a club. Similarly, customers of haute
cuisine restaurants may be influenced by restaurant critics and the
number of stars or tokens they distribute. Music fans will learn
in the media about sales of their preferred artists’ records. In all
these cases, there are forms of accounting that customers are con-
fronted with. It seems worthwhile to explore to what extent these
accounting technologies create, moderate, or eliminate emotions
on the part of customers in these various settings.
Acknowledgements
This paper has benefited from comments by two anonymous
reviewers as well as by Tony Davila, Michael Lounsbury, Sven
Modell, Julia Mundy, Marek Reuter, Nicole Sutton, participants at
the workshop on Managing Popular Culture, University of Edin-
burgh Business School, April 2015, and participants at the research
Please cite this article in press as: Carlsson-Wall, M., et al., Performance measurement systems and the enactment of different institu-
tional logics: Insights from a football organization. Manage. Account. Res. (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mar.2016.01.006
15
seminar series in management control, Stockholm School of Eco-
nomics. We are also grateful to Ellen Ekblom and Denise Stengård
for research assistance and Suzanne Lidström for language editing.
Appendix A.
Interviews
Chief Executive Officer (CEO), FClub 2014-01-17Chief Exec-
utive Officer (CEO), FClub 2014-01-24 Senior Manager, Sports
Business Group of Deloitte 2014-02-05Chief Commercial Offi-
cer (CCO), FClub 2014-02-06Chief Executive Officer (CEO), FClub
2014-02-06Chief Executive Officer (CEO), FClub 2014-02-13Chief
Financial Officer (CFO), FClub 2014-02-13Chief Sports Officer
(CSO), FClub 2014-02-20Chairman of the Board, Football Sec-
tion 2014-02-24Chief Financial Officer (CFO), FClub 2014-03-24
Supporter Liaison Officer (SLO), FClub 2014-03-24Chief Financial
Officer (CFO), FClub 2014-04-08Chairman of the Board, Supporter
Organization of FClub 2014-04-08Chief Executive Officer (CEO
of SEF), SEF 2014-04-09 Former Chief Executive Officer (For-
mer CEO), FClub 2014-04-11Head of Markets, Official Sponsor
2014-04-11Chairman of the Board, FClub 2014-04-14 PR-specialist,
Freelance for FClub 2014-04-14 Board Member, FClub 2014-04-16
Sports Coordinator, FClub. 2014-04-24.
Chief Executive Officer (CEO), FClub 2015-02-16.
Chief Sports Officer (CSO), FClub 2015-02-16.
Board Member, FClub 2015-02-16.
Direct observations
Direct observation 1, Tour of the headquarters 2014-01-17
Direct observation 2, Annual Meeting for the Football Section 2014-
03-06 Direct observation 3, Supporter Seminar 2014-03-15 Direct
observation 4, Additional Supporter Meeting 2014-04-10 Direct
observation 5, Attended home-game with the Board of Directors
2014-04-13 Direct observation 6, Tour of the training facilities
2014-04-24.
Internal documents
Budget template.
Code of conduct contract template.
Code of conduct, “Way to play”.
Annual reports, 2001–2014.
Planning documents.
Description of the organization.
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tional logics: Insights from a football organization. Manage. Account. Res. (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mar.2016.01.006