Who’s on Board: Gauging Team Commitment among Collegiate Baseball Players through Their Coaches’ Bases of Power

Abstract

Who’s on BoardGauging Team Commitment among Collegiate Baseball Players through Their Coaches’ Bases of Power Kevin Warneke (bio) and Dave Ogden (bio) Sports coaches who believe they merely must be adept at evaluating talent, calling plays, and scouting opponents may be underestimating the scope of their responsibilities. Coaches, as with workplace supervisors, must understand how to achieve optimal results from their subordinates (i.e., players). Basically, they must understand what makes their players tick. Decades of research have focused on supervisor-subordinate relationships in the workplace. Supervisors must be cognizant of social bases of power their subordinates give them, how their subordinates are motivated, and how to gauge their subordinates’ commitment to their organization. Baseball coaches and managers are no different. They, too, must understand that their players may be motivated by different means. Managers must understand that some players may view them as experts—and readily follow their instructions. Other players, however, will view them as people who can reward their actions and punish them for miscues—and readily follow their instructions. The results may be the same, but the courses of action taken to achieve them are different. This study takes tenets of leadership and organizational loyalty and applies them to the baseball dugout. By examining the correlations between bases of power given to coaches by subordinates, and players’ commitment to their teams, coaches may better understand how to interact with their players. Such interactions may, in turn, optimize the chances of developing players properly and winning games. Those correlations are addressed through the following research questions: RQ1: Does organizational commitment grow stronger the longer a player is with a college team? RQ2: Does organizational commitment vary among players based on the position they play? [End Page 67] RQ3: Does organizational commitment negatively correlate with coercive power? RQ4: Does organizational commitment positively correlate with reward power (or legitimate power, expert power, and referent power)? RQ5: Do correlations between organizational commitment and the various types of social power differ among players based on the position they play? RQ6: Does the player’s legitimate power given to the coach decrease the longer a player is with a college team? RQ7: Does the player’s reward power given to the coach decrease the longer a player is with a college team? RQ8: Does the player’s expert power given to the coach decrease the longer a player has been with a college team? Literature Review Adults play an integral role in the development of youth in sports. Athletes typically experience organized sports for the first time under the tutelage of volunteer adult coaches. While most coaches understand the strategy of their sports, they may not be adept at understanding the effects their behaviors have on players. They also may not be proficient at reading the behavioral cues players express. Researchers, during the past decades, have focused on how coaches interact with their players. “In essence, researchers studied coaching behaviors and not ‘traits’ or characteristics.”1 Some researchers have developed a meditational model of coach-player interactions.2 Its basic elements are coach behaviors, which lead to athlete perception and recall, which lead to athletes’ evaluative reactions. The premise of their model stipulates that the way players interpret their coaches’ behaviors affects the way they evaluate their sports experience. The research is ripe with examples of studies that focus on player reaction to and interpretation of coach behavior. In addition, evaluating coach-player relationships has led to insight on team cohesion, player feelings, the motivational forces behind coach and player satisfaction, and the way athletes describe their physical selves.3 Other scholars have examined the relationship between perceived leadership behaviors and team cohesion in high school and junior college baseball and softball teams. Those scholars found, in their study of 307 athletes from twenty-three teams, that teams were more cohesive with coaches who were perceived as high in training and instruction, democratic behavior, social support, and positive feedback, and low in autocratic behavior.4 [End Page 68] Simo Salminen and Jarmo Liukkonen measured coach-athlete relationships using the Leadership Scale for Sports with 66 Finnish coaches and their 400 athletes as participants. Results indicated that coaches who pay attention...