Strategic Planning for Nonprofit Sport Organizations: Empirical Verification of a Framework

Abstract

While it is one of the central topics in the study of organizations, the concept of strategy has received little attention in the sport management literature. This paper is, in part, designed to help fill some of this void. Specifically, the purpose of the paper is to empirically verify a framework proposed by Thibault, Slack, and Hinings (1993) for the analysis of strategy in nonprofit sport organizations and to locate a sample of national level sport organizations within this framework according to their strategic type. The results of the study support the existence and utility of the two dimensions identified in Thibault et al.'s framework. They also reveal that there are common characteristics within the organizations that constitute each of the framework's four strategic types. The identification of these characteristics provides us with a preliminary understanding of the strategic initiatives being pursued by those sport organizations.