Personnel and human resource management specifics of basketball clubs

Abstract

The article aims to explore and present the personnel structures and human resource management specifics of basketball clubs from four post-transitional South-East European countries. First, the author presents the post-transitional context, by conducting analyses of variance ant t-tests highlights the differences between clubs at different quality levels regarding financing and the degree of professionalization, and describes the implications on the personnel structures. The second part analyzes the impact of various stakeholders on human resource management processes, and in that context presents the head coach’s role in observed basketball clubs. The findings show the higher quality clubs have better infrastructure, larger financial budgets and obtain higher percentage of funds from private sources. First-division clubs are more professionalized and have larger administrative organizational parts compared to their second and third division counterparts. The largest share of responsibility for organizational performance is on head coaches, athletes, and clubs' presidents. The sporting directors’ influence on human resource management related decisions and their responsibility for the performance increase, while the influence of the clubs' presidents decreases with the quality of division. Finally, sponsors' representatives and athletes’ agents are also relatively more influential in higher-ranked clubs.