Gathering of sport clubs, strategic and logic stake : the case of athletism clubs of Lyonnais Metropole ; Regroupement de clubs sportifs amateurs : enjeux stratégiques et logiques : le cas des clubs d'athlétisme de la métropole de Lyon

The grouping of non-professional or amateur sports clubs is a partial or total pooling of their resources. Despite that it has been centrally and generally evoked in scientific researches based on business companies, grouping only has been partially conducted in research studies in the sport field. Our study aims to remove those non-professional/amateur sports clubs from anonymity, expose them to the public eye and facilitate their understandings as well. To accomplish this goal, we used a multidisciplinary approach of sport organizations (including their sociology, management and economy). To understand the phenomenon of grouping non-professional sports clubs. In order to grasp that phenomenon, we need to inquire about the factors at the origin of the groupings, the implementation of such decisions and, finally to inquire on their consequences on the daily life of the sporting club. To answer to inquiries, we analyzed meticulously, the organizational challenges of these groupings, their methods and process, the strategies and logics of action of the main actors, and the consequences of these groupings in the daily life of the club, particularly, on the aspects of culture and identity, economic and sporting, and as regards to the governance within the meaning of Gérard Charreaux (1997). The data collected under an analytical method were of two types: those principals were based on observations and talks and those secondaries were based on newspaper cuttings and documents internal to the clubs and FAF. The principal data consisted of 10 formal talks of an average of 50 minutes each and a hundred abstract talks, conceived in a spirit of complementarity and stepping. The secondary data were collected from 25 numbers of the Le Progrès newspaper from 1999 to 2015, which comprised approximately 50 pages of newspaper cut on the groupings of clubs, the GA and DC reports, meetings of trainers, as well as the status and special regulations of clubs and FAF. All those data were analyzed according to the triptych: ...