An Equity Centered Management Approach to Exploiting Sport Employee Productivity

Abstract

A primary goal of sport organizations is to exploit employees’ abilities to their fullest capacities. Sport managers who successfully maximize employee productivity will greatly increase the chances of achieving the organization’s goals and objectives. The full potential of sport employees’ abilities can be realized through the application of the equity component grounded in Adam’s Equity Theory (Adams, 1963). Centered on the premise that the relationship between sport manager and employer must be one of equity, the equity component focuses on achieving equity between what the employee puts into the job, referred to as “employee inputs,” and what the employee gets out of the job from the employer, referred to as “sport manager outputs.” The input-output equity balance is centered on the moral value of fairness. When fairness is achieved, reasonable employees and employers should be mutually satisfied (Mill, 1863/1957). A shared interest between employees in achieving the goals and objectives of the mission of the sport organization is required if an equitable input-output balance is to be achieved. Lower resistance to realizing a proper balance between inputs and outputs should be expected when an employee’s professional interests are naturally aligned with the mission of the sport organization (Kim, 2012). Screening employees during the hiring process to ensure for a congruent employer-employee “fit” is preferable to help ensure for the satisfactory balance of inputs and outputs over the long term. Regardless of the compatibility between the employee’s interest and the mission of the sport organization, the often dynamic nature of sport organizations calls for constant maintenance of input-output exchanges. When seeking to balance the input-output exchange, sport managers will be well served to heed the insight by Jiang and Men (2017) who stated that productivity follows employee engagement, which comes from transparent communication by organizational leaders. The sport manager who hires employees whose interests align with the sport organization mission will be well positioned to achieve an equitable balance between employee inputs and employer outputs. Doing so is supportive of a sport organization that maximizes its potential for employee productivity.