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Swedish Sport Policy in an Era of Neoliberalism: An Expression of Social Entrepreneurship?

Since the turn of the millennium, Sweden has, like many other countries, become more neoliberal in many areas, including that of sport. The government has increased its expectations on the sports movement and become more result-oriented, which, for example, its revised motives for supporting the spo...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Bjärsholm, Daniel, Norberg, Johan R.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8473874/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34589703
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fspor.2021.715310
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author Bjärsholm, Daniel
Norberg, Johan R.
author_facet Bjärsholm, Daniel
Norberg, Johan R.
author_sort Bjärsholm, Daniel
collection PubMed
description Since the turn of the millennium, Sweden has, like many other countries, become more neoliberal in many areas, including that of sport. The government has increased its expectations on the sports movement and become more result-oriented, which, for example, its revised motives for supporting the sports movement and the establishment of an audit organization can illustrate. However, in contrast to other countries, the Swedish government has not introduced any financial cutbacks in its support for sports. Rather, the opposite is true. The financial support has increased significantly over the last two decades. In the paper, we argue that this contradictory development of Swedish sport policy can be understood as expressions of neoliberalism and social entrepreneurship. As a theoretical concept, social entrepreneurship offers a way of understanding the increased Swedish government support for sport. There are in particular two underlying reasons for this claim. Firstly, sport is considered as a solution to various societal problems, such as social exclusion and refugee crises. Secondly, much of the increased support has been in form of various large-scale, earmarked, and time-limited political initiatives/reforms and project grants, which all have aimed to achieve social change through sport, such as social inclusion. In the paper, we consider these initiatives as expressions of social entrepreneurship. This paper contributes to the ongoing scholarly debate on how neoliberalism and neoliberal policies in the public sector have affected sport organizations. Also, by using social entrepreneurship theory, we provide new theoretical insights into how sport policy can be understood and analyzed.
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spelling pubmed-84738742021-09-28 Swedish Sport Policy in an Era of Neoliberalism: An Expression of Social Entrepreneurship? Bjärsholm, Daniel Norberg, Johan R. Front Sports Act Living Sports and Active Living Since the turn of the millennium, Sweden has, like many other countries, become more neoliberal in many areas, including that of sport. The government has increased its expectations on the sports movement and become more result-oriented, which, for example, its revised motives for supporting the sports movement and the establishment of an audit organization can illustrate. However, in contrast to other countries, the Swedish government has not introduced any financial cutbacks in its support for sports. Rather, the opposite is true. The financial support has increased significantly over the last two decades. In the paper, we argue that this contradictory development of Swedish sport policy can be understood as expressions of neoliberalism and social entrepreneurship. As a theoretical concept, social entrepreneurship offers a way of understanding the increased Swedish government support for sport. There are in particular two underlying reasons for this claim. Firstly, sport is considered as a solution to various societal problems, such as social exclusion and refugee crises. Secondly, much of the increased support has been in form of various large-scale, earmarked, and time-limited political initiatives/reforms and project grants, which all have aimed to achieve social change through sport, such as social inclusion. In the paper, we consider these initiatives as expressions of social entrepreneurship. This paper contributes to the ongoing scholarly debate on how neoliberalism and neoliberal policies in the public sector have affected sport organizations. Also, by using social entrepreneurship theory, we provide new theoretical insights into how sport policy can be understood and analyzed. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-09-13 /pmc/articles/PMC8473874/ /pubmed/34589703 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fspor.2021.715310 Text en Copyright © 2021 Bjärsholm and Norberg. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Sports and Active Living
Bjärsholm, Daniel
Norberg, Johan R.
Swedish Sport Policy in an Era of Neoliberalism: An Expression of Social Entrepreneurship?
title Swedish Sport Policy in an Era of Neoliberalism: An Expression of Social Entrepreneurship?
title_full Swedish Sport Policy in an Era of Neoliberalism: An Expression of Social Entrepreneurship?
title_fullStr Swedish Sport Policy in an Era of Neoliberalism: An Expression of Social Entrepreneurship?
title_full_unstemmed Swedish Sport Policy in an Era of Neoliberalism: An Expression of Social Entrepreneurship?
title_short Swedish Sport Policy in an Era of Neoliberalism: An Expression of Social Entrepreneurship?
title_sort swedish sport policy in an era of neoliberalism: an expression of social entrepreneurship?
topic Sports and Active Living
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8473874/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34589703
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fspor.2021.715310
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