Governance, identity and institutional change: the case of professional soccer.

Summary Professional soccer clubs exhibit the characteristics of many organizations in an exacerbated way. Through their case, this thesis offers an original insight into the issues of governance and organizational identity in a context of institutional change. Part I analyzes the governance dynamics of the clubs and highlights the importance of urgency, accentuated by the high level of media coverage of the field, as well as the existence of identity claims linked to a change in institutional logic. Part II shows how some actors have made this change possible by actively redefining the boundaries of the field through discourse and the development of proto-institutions. Finally, Part III highlights the role of management tools and a reinterpretation of past failures in adapting organizational identity to this new logic and insists on the importance of 'sameness' as the deepest layer of identity.