Boundary objects at play in the world's greenest football club

Samuel, Anthony, White, Gareth, Thomas, Robert, McGouran, Cathy and Bull, Michael ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6386-6547 (2024) Boundary objects at play in the world's greenest football club. Strategic Change. ISSN 1086-1718

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Abstract

Due to the increase of environmental and societal pressures, organizations are gradually moving away from merely reducing their detrimental effects and heading toward making positive impacts. One sizeable sector of economic activity that is frequently overlooked is that of sport, with football being the largest sector in terms of economic value, fan base and global cultural influence. It is only relatively recently that outliers in the football industry have transitioned from being purely profit-motivated to being both socially and environmentally aware. This transition is challenging because it is being undertaken within the often aggressive masculine environment, as well as having deep-seated socio-historical origins that are found not only within the individual clubs, but also throughout the sport as a whole. One such football club is Forest Green Rovers, which appears to have navigated this journey successfully. However, the research has not yet been able to establish how this has been achieved. This study addresses this research gap by undertaking a four-year examination of the social and environmental initiatives of Forest Green Rovers. This lower league ‘club on the hill’ is globally recognized for its novel approaches and solutions. Through examination of the various Boundary Objects that aid in uniting disparate social groups to effect considerable changes to the ‘match day experience’ and to stakeholders’ consumption behaviors, it explains how their pragmatic, syntactic and semantic functions combine to create an accepted suite of socially and environmentally beneficial initiatives.