Abstract
The suspension of major sporting competitions due to the global COVID-19 pandemic had a substantial negative impact on the sporting industry. As such, a successful and sustainable return to sport will require extensive modifications to the current operations of sporting organizations. In this article we argue that methods from the realm of sociotechnical systems (STS) theory are highly suited for this purpose. The aim of the study was to use such methods to develop a model of an Australian Football League (AFL) club’s football department. The intention was to identify potential modifications to the club’s operations to support a return to competition following the COVID-19 crisis. Subject Matter Experts from an AFL club participated in three online workshops to develop Work Domain Analysis and Social Organization and Cooperation Analysis models. The results demonstrated the inherent complexity of an AFL football department via numerous interacting values, functions and processes influencing the goals of the system. Conflicts within the system were captured via the modeling and included pursing goals that may not fully reflect the state of the system, a lack of formal assessment of core values, overlapping functions and objects, and an overemphasis on specialized roles. The current analysis has highlighted potential areas for modification in the football department, and sports performance departments in general.
Highlights
On the 11th March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 outbreak as a global pandemic (World Health Organisation, 2020)
The Australian Football League (AFL) club football department abstraction hierarchy is presented as Supplementary Material
The initial finding of the current study demonstrates the inherent complexity of an AFL football department via the multiple and interacting factors that influence the behavior, and the diverse set of actors who share responsibility for the performance of the system
Summary
On the 11th March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 outbreak as a global pandemic (World Health Organisation, 2020). In the days and weeks that followed, the global sporting industry was brought to a sudden halt (Evans et al, 2020; Parnell et al, 2020; Toresdahl and Asif, 2020) This began with the National Basketball Association (NBA) in the United States suspending competition after a player tested positive for COVID-19. With Crisis Comes Opportunity followed by the suspension of all other major sporting competitions, including the world’s biggest sporting event, the Olympic Games, to be held in Tokyo in July 2020 (Sato et al, 2020). To put the situation in context, the scheduling of the Olympic Games has only previously been interrupted due to the second World War. From March 2020 onward, elite sport worldwide entered largely unchartered territory
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
