Embracing Cultural Contexts and Critical Reflexivity: (Re)presenting the Global Sports Industry in Research and Practice

Abstract

Management arises out of ordinary human relationships within which people make individual and collective choices based on their cultural values and beliefs. To date, however, there has been limited analysis of the centrality of “culture” and “cultural issues” within the social practice and scholarly study of sport management. The author champions the case for a more conceptually-reflexive approach to sport management in theory and practice—one rooted in the problematical engagement with “culture.” It is argued that a “culturalist” approach would enable sport management students and practitioners to better understand the dynamics of diversity within the sports industry and the appropriate cross-cultural and multicultural skills needed. The development of cultural sensitivity within the field of sport management requires deliberate personal, theoretical, methodological and practice interventions. The article features the author's own personal journey toward embracing and articulating a wider historical, multicultural, critically-reflexive approach to the field of sport management. The author encourages practitioners to exude less certainty about the existing range of topics and program benchmarks and experiment more with conceptual approaches which engage the concepts of cultural identities and praxis.