The tension between professionalisation and volunteering in sports clubs

Increasingly, sports clubs attempt to overcome challenges using professionalisation, such as hiring paid employees and adopting strategic planning and management tools from the business sector. While professionalisation and volunteering are crucial for most sports clubs, they are in a field of trade-offs, where transformation processes can also be associated with negative side effects. This article analyses tensions between professionalisation and volunteering in sports clubs. Empirical research is framed by an actor-theory approach focused on professionalisation of structures of expectation, constellation and meaning. Case studies of sports clubs (n = 19) include expert interviews and focus group discussions. The findings show these tensions as: (i) workload reduction versus overburdening of volunteers, (ii) useful division of roles versus role conflict between full-time staff and volunteers, (iii) increase in willingness to engage versus loss of motivation by volunteers.