%0 Journal Article %T Empresas municipais de desporto: contributos para a sua caracteriza£¿£¿o legal, funcional e relacional %A Carvalho %A Maria Jos¨¦ %A Moura %A Jos¨¦ Cancela %A Oliveira %A Nancy %J Revista Portuguesa de Ci¨ºncias do Desporto %D 2009 %I Scientific Electronic Library Online %X the present work approaches a thematic that is not commonly explored and researched in sport sector, although its extreme importance for the development and management of sport at the local level. since we are devoted to the problem of characterization and functioning of the organizational structures that surround sport, the scope of the present work is the set of municipal enterprises that consider sport in their code of economic activity. the main objective of our work is to characterize these entities, which are considered as local enterprises, regarding their legal and operational framework, particularly their size, location, turnover, labour force and main code of economic activity. these companies became more and more frequent in the portuguese municipalities during the last decade, as a new culture of management in various areas, namely in sports management, whose organizational and legal framework recently suffered significant changes due to the publication of the legal framework for the local enterprise sector, law 53-f/2006, of 29 of december. this law will be in the core of our analysis in the present work. %K municipal enterprises %K organizational structures %K municipality. %U http://www.scielo.gpeari.mctes.pt/scielo.php?script=sci_abstract&pid=S1645-05232009000200005&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en