This abstract reports on a study in which data are to be collected during 2016. The results will be presented during the 2016 ISSA conference. The background of this project is the increasingly complex and demanding institutional environment of sport clubs. Key features of this environment are ongoing processes of instrumentalization, professionalization and commercialization, and changes to sport participation patterns. At the core of the project is an analysis of the execution of sport club governance within this contemporary institutional environment. With an empirical focus on sport club board meetings, the primary decision making arena of sport clubs, the purpose of the project is to create knowledge on how boards construct and negotiate meaning as they conceal, frame, handle, and resolve the potential tensions between issues raised by the membership of the club and issues emanating from the club’s institutional

environment. The project is theoretically based in an institutional outlook on framing (Goffman, 1974) and data will be produced through video-recorded observations of the meetings of sport clubs. The project has the potential to theoretically and methodologically enrich the research field concerned with voluntary sport governance, a field that is primarily positioned within a business administration paradigm. In addition, with its design, the project will avail for a contribution to research concerned with public- and private sector-generated issues’ impact on sport clubs. As such, the project will provide knowledge of the ramifications of sport clubs’ external relations on their autonomy, orientation, and function.