Governing bodies of sport as knowledge brokers in Sport-for-All communities of practice

Abstract

Delivering Sport-for-All is a major challenge for sport organizations and policy-makers worldwide. Sport-for-All is a practical activity and a knowledge intensive field, characterized by dispersed knowledge creation and sharing processes involving numerous agencies, professionals and volunteers; in other words, it is a community of practice. Communities of practice are vehicles that allow knowledge sharing and creation in intensive and dispersed settings. Learning in communities is enhanced by knowledge brokers, a role typically assumed by governing bodies of sport as part of their formal mandates. In this study, the authors use a community of practice lens to look at Sport-for-All. The authors collected and analyzed data on Sport-for-All communities on the regional (Flanders), national (Australia and England), and international (Sport and Development) level by interviewing key people in each of the communities, and by interrogating virtual knowledge repositories (websites) and public web-based data. Results indicated the existence of Sport-for-All communities of practice with governing bodies of sport acting as brokers in those communities for sharing knowledge, exploration of new ideas, and knowledge creation. However, governing bodies of sport are not strategically exploiting the full potential of online tools to enhance the communities. They ought to focus on supporting the communities by taking a more strategic approach and using new media tools, and let the community of practice standards emerge instead of determining them.