Unlocking the IOC: Challenges for a Global Sport Institution

The Olympic Games has developed into the most prestigious regularly sporting event in the world. Hundreds of millions of televisions viewers around the globe watch the Games with fascination and the winners become national heroes and in some cases global idols. The modern Games was established by and belong to the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which is the regulatory body of the constituents in the Olympic Movement as traced in the Olympic Charter. They try to constrain and set rules for others in the field of sports as well. During a period of twenty years the IOC changed its character from a relatively small ideal and in economic terms relatively poor organisation to a corporate commercial giant imposing power and influence globally. The IOC today is a hybrid organisation; a mix of a traditional club, a corporate entity and with some elements of representative democracy.

The prestige and mystique of the Games are drawn from old traditions and the IOC’s success is due to its founders “inventing of at tradition”. Capitalising on this the organisation has become one the most powerful in the sporting world. As the organisation was growing its influence at the turn of the century it went through a crises; not the first one in its history, but probably the most serious crises of legitimacy the organisation has experienced. A reform process was conducted and implemented affecting its organisational structure and moral virtue. The challenge today is how this will affect the organisation and its role as the evolving super-power in modern sport. The IOC has several times been locked in by traditions more or less a product of its own organisational history and the path defined in pioneering years. Deep problems of legitimacy have brought a reform process with the potentiality of unlocking the organisation. So much ambiguity, however, are imprinted in the reform process, so it is open to question in the future how this will affect its position as a global institution in the world of sport.