Does local leadership promote the acquisition and utilisation of sport-related knowledge? Attitudes of Finnish municipality politicians and administrators in sports decision-making

Abstract

In their decision-making, municipalities increasingly face the challenge of creating value through the transfer of knowledge resources. While local decision-makers are responsible for sport-related decision-making, a much-debated question is whether sport-related knowledge is acquired and utilised throughout the decision-making hierarchy. Building on Max Weber’s bureaucratic notions of rational-legal authority and other research, it is hypothesised that group-based leadership has a crucial function in the acquisition and utilisation of sport-related knowledge among local decision-makers. Drawing on large-scale survey data from 1 037 top decision-makers in Finnish municipalities, we show that the acquisition and utilisation of sport-related knowledge in local decision-making is determined by group-based leadership skills. The leadership of middle-level (i.e. committee) political decision-makers was particularly important in the acquisition and utilisation of sport-related knowledge. These findings support the view that the current debate on knowledge-based sports policy making should pay attention to administrative structures and leaders’ abilities to foster sport-related knowledge across groups.