The board–executive relationship in team sport charitable foundations: unpacking trust building through ‘exchange currencies’

Team sport charitable foundations are organisational formats that serve as the delivery mechanism for the professional teams’ social responsibility and community engagement. In this organisational setting, however, the boundaries between charitable foundation and ‘parent’ team are frequently illdefined, thereby rendering board dynamics distinctive. Such distinctiveness lies in the fact that the composition of the board consists of members of the ‘parent’ sport team organisation, chief among them often being the owner or chairperson of the team and/or its CEO. The purpose of this chapter is to unpack a specific type of board group dynamic – namely the board–executive relationship – in the context of professional sport teams’ charitable foundations. More specifically, acknowledging that governance is a process-based exercise, the present study examines process elements that can improve the charitable foundations’ perceived performance, that is, trust and ‘exchange currencies’ between thefoundations’ executives/CEOs and the boards. The study examines organisational governance, with an implicit focus on the board’s role on perceived organisational performance.