Between membership association and joint stock company. How professional soccer clubs overcome the dilemma between member representation and efficient goal attainment by institutional changes

The overcoming of the dilemma of members' contribution and efficient goal attainment leads German soccer clubs to an organizational development process. Three patterns of overcoming this dilemma in clubs of the first German soccer league are discussed. After analyzing theoretical problems of clubs at the point of view of rational-choice-theory, we focus on the three patterns of overcoming the dilemma and illustrate each with a case study. For the case studies we choose three traditional soccer clubs from the Ruhr-area. The three patterns are: (1) The classical German club structure: In this case the control of the resource 'provision of capital' solves the dilemma ad hoc in favor of goal attainment. (2) The stock company structure without a joint investment structure: This pattern preserves the participation of the members only by representatives through the introduction of a supervisory board. (3) Limited liability company as the general partner of a public limited company (a typical German form of a joint stock company): In this pattern the soccer club is transformed into a company, which restricts the members' participation possibilities to symbolic acts in favor of goal attainment. The organizational development process of the German soccer clubs leads in general to a democratic-flexible form of organization.