AUTHOR
Hultin, Marcus; Lundh, Erik

DEPARTMENT
Business Administration and Social Sciences / Industrial marketing and e-commerce

SUMMARY
Sports teams often set an outstanding example on how to deal with cultural diversity. Teams playing on a professional level all over the world, often have players with different nationalities. Very little research has been conducted of how to manage cultural diversity in a sport team. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to gain a deeper understanding of how cultural diversity in sport teams is managed. The thesis has a qualitative approach and the empirical data was gathered through two interviews with two teams participating on a high level of competition, namely Akropol BBK (basketball club) and Assyriska FF (soccer club).

Since almost none research was conducted in this area we chose to focus on theories concerning how to deal with cultural diversity in an organization or company. The main findings from this thesis is that, sport teams and especially cultural diverse sport teams recruit members by their skills and competences and not by their national or cultural background. Further on, the manager needs to be aware about the diversity in the team. People coming from different backgrounds cannot be treated equally, since they have different values and beliefs. Moreover, the manager should decide that during practices and matches one language should be spoken. This prevents the creation that small groups are formed with members from same countries talking their own language.

ISSN 1404-5508 / ISRN LTU-SHU-EX--05/003--SE / NR 2005:003