ABSTRACT
This chapter scrutinises the international work of antidoping with the application of stakeholder theory on three distinct levels: 1) the governing level with WADA as the focal organisation; 2) the implementation level with a Norwegian Anti-Doping Organisation as focal unit and 3) the individual political level with the Norwegian sport minister, who has also been the vice president of WADA, as the case. We argue that stakeholder theory has a modest value as a descriptive tool for mapping the pattern of interorganisational relations; however, it obscures power relations and creates an impression of a benign leadership doing its best to accommodate the interests of stakeholders. In other words, stakeholder theory is an ideological construct that suits the interests of established interests. In the case of anti-doping, we find that this is especially prominent for stakeholders such as media, IOC, IFs, etc., rather than athletes – who are impacted to the highest extent by the anti-doping regimes. Seeing the international work on anti-doping as an organisational field, we provide a rationale for considering institutional theory as a suitable alternative analytical framework.
