Leveraging cooperative strategy - cases of sports and arts sponsorship

Sammanfattning: This thesis describes and analyzes factors that shape and characterise cooperative strategy in sports and arts sponsorship. Organisations in the fields of sport and art are becoming increasingly dependent on sponsors for survival and growth. Relative to the impact that these externally acquired resources have on decision making, a theoretical and practical understanding of how such relationships develop, and the factors that influence their outcome, is lagging behind.Sponsorship strategy is based on the indirect exchange relationship between a sponsor and its customers. The relationship between the two is mediated by a sports or arts organization. In the studies I am developing theory on how dynamic capabilities of sports and arts organizations are formed in the interaction with their sponsors and how these can leverage cooperative strategy. The findings are presented in four articles. They are based on two longitudinal case studies: the first, with a large scale sports entity; the second, with a Swedish arts organization. Both were in the process of developing and implementing sponsorship programs. I studied these two organizations, and their interactions with selected sponsors, through a combination of research techniques - including interviews and action research - over a three year period.This is the first attempt to empirically demonstrate how capabilities and resources in the sports and arts fields are formed and evolve through interaction with commercial sponsors. Key factors that impact the value creation from combined resources through partner capabilities are: transparency, legitimacy, goal convergence, power asymmetries, resource complementarities, and systems for knowledge sharing. Individual level capabilities are network brokers who hold responsibility for both internal resource mobilization and identifying potential synergies between partners. Organizational capabilities are the infrastructure through which partners operated.