In sports, there seems to be an eternal interest in discovering young talents and refining them into elite adult athletes. The dilemma of selecting talent, while at the same time ensuring every child´s right to participate, needs to be addressed and have consequences in social practice. This dissertation elucidates the discourse of selection and the process of selecting young sporting talents during final selection camps for youth national teams in football, hockey and floorball in Sweden. More specifically, the aim is to analyze how talent selection is organizationally legitimized, how “selectability” is produced in interaction and how specific narratives are used in success-stories. The empirical material includes research interviews, performance appraisal interviews (between district or national team coaches and the player) and field studies during ongoing final selection camp. Drawing on a discursive-narrative approach, the aim is to investigate how selection is discursively legitimized and, by using narrative analysis, how positioning in talk-in-interaction functions. The first article investigates the construction of legitimate selection within the Swedish Sports Confederation by analyzing their organizational documents, sport journals and literature for coach education. The findings show how a specific set of narratives are used to legitimize selection and how legitimacy works both individually to those within the selection system and on a wider arena of welfare politics. The second article investigates the co-construction of selectability in small story-interaction during interviews between the coach and a player in the final selection camp. The analyses highlight how this narrative genre produces certain stories and preferred positions. The third article analyzes how the young participants, in research interviews during final selection camp, uses discursively shared narratives to produce personal stories of success. The findings illustrate how the personal stories of success are balancing the dilemmatic space, positioning yourself as outstanding and at the same time appear a humble team player. The principal contribution of this dissertation is to show how talent is organizationally legitimized and how selectability is produced in interaction, as well as illustrate how specific stories are used in stories of success. This work investigates the discursive framework for selection and how rationalities for talent selection are produced (and reproduced) and co-constructed in narrative interaction. In this apparatus of selection it takes more than physical talent to be chosen; it takes talking talent. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following paper was unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 3: Manuscript.</p>

Abstract In accordance with several scholars in the field of human resource management, developing employee commitment towards the employing organization is valuable due to the assumption that it increases their satisfaction, productivity and adaptability. By taking a pedagogical perspective focusing on impact processes, the aim of this master thesis is primarily to identify the constructions and functions of interpretive repertoires, of a few employees, in their descriptions of how the experience of Nynas’ Corporate Group Induction has influenced their commitment to Nynas, but also to categorize the constructions and functions of interpretive repertoires in a booklet underlined during the Corporate Group Induction, which I refer to as “This is Nynas”. In addition, the aim is to identify if other employees at Nynas share similar experiences, regarding the influence of the Corporate Group Induction. Moreover, the primary methodological approach used and theoretical perspective taken in this study is discursive psychology, based upon the premises of social constructionism. The empirical material is mainly consisting of interviews with six employees at Nynas, as well as of an analysis of the booklet “This is Nynas”. Additionally, the empirical material consists of a web-survey, based upon a five-point Likert scale, containing a sample of 25 employees. The study has identified two main interpretive repertoires in the booklet “This is Nynas”, explicitly the identity and the internalize repertoires, as well as subversions of these repertoires. In relation to this, the study has found that the interviewees in their language use to a large extent emphasize the interpretive repertoires constructed in “This is Nynas”. Furthermore, this master thesis have identified that the interviewees constructed certain interpretive repertoires when describing the experience of the Corporate Group Induction, and its influence on their commitment to Nynas, namely: the enhancement, the involvement, the development, the reciprocity and the constancy repertoires. Moreover, the study illustrates that the interviewees generally highlighted the Corporate Group Induction as having a strengthening influence on their commitment to Nynas, especially in relation to feelings of being a part of the company, due to the fact that they experienced themselves as active participants during the program. Furthermore, the result shows that the interviewees perceived the Corporate Group Induction as a sign of reciprocal dedication between themselves and Nynas, particularly on the subject of their integration into the company. Finally, the study has found that the experience of those who participated in the survey corresponded to a high extent with the interviewee’s experience of the Corporate Group Induction, and its influence on their commitment.      Keywords: induction program, Corporate Group Induction, social constructionism, discourse analysis, discursive psychology, discursively constructed, reflexivity, commitment, affective, continuance, normative, Likert scale, late modernity, strategic sampling.