Governmental subsidies and coercive isomorphism. Evidence from sports clubs and their resource dependencies

This contribution aims to analyse the adoption of subsidy conditions by voluntary sport clubs in relation to their dependence on government funding. Using a sociological neo-institutional approach based upon Pfeffer and Salancik’s (1978) resource dependence theory and DiMaggio and Powell’s (1983) concept of coercive isomorphism, this paper analyses the possible use of sport clubs by governments as instruments of sport policy. Data for these analyses are drawn from the Flemish Sport Club Panel 2009 and the Flemish Local Sport Authorities Panel 2010. The results show that sport clubs display a variety of resources. Although subsidies from the local government are relevant resources for the majority of voluntary sport clubs, the significance of these subsidies in the overall budgets is limited. Nevertheless, the outcomes of a multinomial logistic regression model indicate that there is a relationship between the share of governmental subsidies in the total income of sport clubs and their adoption of subsidy conditions with regard to the qualification of the sport technical staff. In general, however, the effect of the coercive pressure of the government through its funding seems to be rather low. Nevertheless, local sport authorities consider subsidy regulations as an effective instrument to achieve policy goals. Policy implications are discussed.