National Governing Bodies Of Sport Research Articles

Social Media Education Provided by National Governing Bodies of Sport: An Examination of Practices for Youth Olympic Games and Olympic Games Athletes

Social media provides athletes with many opportunities as well as challenges. Scholars have argued for proactive, educational social media training instead of traditional policy and punishment models, yet research on this topic is limited. Therefore, this study sought to understand the social media training/education national governing bodies (NGBs) provided to athletes ranging from Youth Olympic Games (YOG) to Olympic level, and to examine NGB communication employees’ perceptions regarding athletes’ social media use and their organization’s social media training. Utilizing uses and gratifications theory, a sequential mixed method was employed involving a survey of U.S. NGBs and in-depth interviews with NGB communication personnel. While most NGBs used proactive, educational social media training for Olympic athletes, few did the same for YOG athletes. NGB employees felt social media use posed significant benefits or gratifications to athletes, and education and training helped to enhance those benefits as well as minimize the challenges, or failed gratifications, athletes experience on social media.

The Paradox of Gender Diversity, Organizational Outcomes, and Recruitment in the Boards of National Governing Bodies of Sport

Diversity have become a desired value in sport organizations. However, regardless of the aspiration towards more gender diverse leadership, women leaders remain a minority. Diversity and its impact on group performance has also increased interest among scholars. Building on information/decision-making theory and the concept of the right fit, this paper introduces a new theoretical model that sheds light on the contradiction of gender-biased recruitment/selection processes in sports organization boards and the impact of diversity on organizational outcomes. The model is partly tested with survey data from the Finnish National Governing Bodies of Sport (NGBs). This paper shows that, because of the gender-biased recruitment/selection process, the benefits of gender-diverse organization boards may not be fully actualized, which not only affects the functioning of sports organizations, but may also limit women’s inclusion on sports organization boards.

Theorising organisational resilience for sport management research and practice

ABSTRACT Purpose/Rationale: Helping individuals and teams achieve their goals by being resilient is an established research field in sport. How sport organisations can be resilient in adversity is comparatively neglected, so the purpose is to provide firm foundations for conceptualising organisational resilience in sport management. Research question: “How can organisational resilience best be theorised for sport management research and practice?” Design/Methodology/Approach: From a critique of the resilience literature, a new Framework for Organisational Resilience Management (FfORM) is developed, based on the theory of organisational resource conversion and the separation of normative and descriptive levels. The FfORM is applied to sport management contexts, including the resilience of National Governing Bodies of Sport (NGBs) to reductions in UK Sport funding. Results and Findings: Organisational resilience is conceptualised as a means to an end, to achieve externally generated goals, emphasising its dynamic, temporal nature. The FfORM illuminates the challenges for NGBs in developing organisational resilience because of trade-offs in the actions they take. Practical implications: As well as being an evaluation tool, the FfORM will be of utility to sport organisations addressing the unprecedented challenges arising from COVID-19. Research contribution: Development of theory on organisational resilience, for use in both sport and other contexts.

Gender, Leadership, and Governance in English National Governing Bodies of Sport: Formal Structures, Rules, and Processes

Within this article, the authors explore the extent to which the administrative and governance hierarchies, rules, and processes of two English national governing bodies (NGBs) reproduce or resist gender segregation and male dominance within their leadership and governance. Drawing on Bourdieu’s theory of practice, the authors expand upon current literature to better understand the workings of gender power relations at the structural level of organizational practice. Semistructured interviews with male and female leaders were supplemented by an analysis of formal documents. The authors found that gender power relations privileging men were simultaneously conserved and resisted within the two NGBs. While resistance to male-dominated leadership and governance was evident, transformational organizational change was lacking. This highlighted the limitations of strategies being primarily driven through top-down, policy-based approaches. The authors end the article by emphasizing the importance of a combined approach at the structural, cultural, and individual levels to enable sustainable and transformational organizational change.

Gender diversity in sport leadership: an investigation of United States of America National Governing Bodies of Sport

ABSTRACT Research question: This article examines if gender diversity within the governance structures of the National Governing Bodies of Sport (NGBs), within the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) has an impact on gender membership in sport. Research methods: Employing Kanter's [(1977). Men and women of the corporation. New York: Basic Books] theory of Critical Mass as a lens to examine the USOPC's Diversity and Inclusion Scorecard. Results and Findings, and Implications: The results indicate that females are largely under-represented in leadership roles within NGBs. Findings also indicate a positive correlation between female representation in the leadership structure of NGBs, and the ability of the NGB to achieve female membership benchmarks, thus supportive of Critical Mass Theory. The implications of the study supports both an ethical case for female representation, but highlights a clear business performance case for greater gender diversity in the senior roles of leadership within NGB's in the USPOC.

Innovation in national governing bodies of sport: investigating dynamic capabilities that drive growth

ABSTRACT Research question: To what extent are dynamic capabilities present in, and drive the performance of, U.S. Olympic National Governing Bodies (NGBs)? Research methods: Guided by a critical realist perspective we used qualitative semi-structured interviews with the CEO or Executive Director of four U.S.-based NGBs of sport. We examined the effect of dynamic capabilities on the so-called ‘3M’ (members, medals, and money) performance of four purposively selected NGBs. Results and findings: Our findings indicate that NGBs with varied performance in outcomes relating to membership, medals and money had notable differences regarding their approach to innovative leadership, organisational learning, market alignment and resource acquisition and mobilisation. The historical structural context also plays an important role in influencing the behaviour of NGBs. Implications: This paper identifies how frameworks such as Dynamic Capabilities can be applied and further examined in order to drive sustained innovation and enhanced organisational performance specifically within NGBs of sport.

No plan B: the achilles heel of high performance sport management

ABSTRACTResearch question: The severity and immediacy of funding cuts to UK National Governing Bodies of Sport (NGBs), driven by the ‘No Compromise’ policy framework for Olympic funding, triggers a cyclical need for turnaround management. Adept strategies during times of considerable challenge is stark, yet literature investigating turnaround management within NGBs remains limited. Consequently, this paper examines two questions: how do NGBs respond to UK Sport funding cuts and how are their responses enabled or restricted by their organisational context?Research methods: A case study methodology was used to develop in-depth insights into how three NGBs responded over a 12-month period of turnaround management. This was informed by 21 semi-structured interviews with chief executives/presidents, performance managers/head coaches and elite athletes. The actions of the NGBs were analysed through a thematic analysis that made use of Boyne’s [2004. A ‘3Rs’ strategy for public service turnaround: Retrenchment, repositioning and reorganization. Public Money & Management, 24(2), 97–103] 3 Rs of turnaround strategy.Results and findings: The results highlight that NGBs’ turnaround strategies were constrained by extreme funding dependency and a prohibitive institutional environment that led to states of flux and a focus on short-term operational survival. As a result, the measures taken undermined future success.Implications: An embedded feature of the ‘No Compromise’ framework is severe funding cuts. This should be a significant theme in NGB strategy development. The evidence of this study is that NGBs do not prepare, nor react strategically, when faced with the prospect (or fact of) severe cuts. Consequently, the cases of turnaround management in this study signal the urgent need for further research into the impact of the ‘No Compromise’ framework on the management of NGBs.

Implementing the community sport legacy: the limits of partnerships, contracts and performance management

ABSTRACTResearch questions: Community sport policy is at the centre of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games legacy plans. Specifically, the policy goal is to achieve year-on-year growth in mass sports participation. The government has committed significant public funding to the policy (£950 million between 2008 and 2017), a specific delivery system has been developed, and a number of techniques have been employed to manage and oversee policy implementation. This paper utilises Marsh and Smith’s [(2000). Understanding policy networks: Towards a dialectical approach. Political studies, 48, 4–21. doi:10.1111/1467-9248.00247] dialectical network approach to examine the community sport policy process, drawing particular attention to the effect of contemporary technologies of governing policy implementation [Green, M. (2009). Podium or participation? Analysing policy priorities under changing modes of sport governance in the United Kingdom. International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics, 1(2), 121–144. doi:10.1080/19406940902950697].Research methods: The study is guided by a critical realist ontology and based on an analysis of qualitative data from 42 semi-structured interviews undertaken within three sub-regional partnerships in England. The interviews were conducted with senior managers and board representatives from National Governing Bodies of Sport (NGBs), local authorities, and County Sport Partnerships (CSPs). The data were recorded, transcribed and analysed through the application of principles from Grounded Theory, namely open and axial coding, in order to identify significant themes as well as relationships between themes.Results and findings: The findings reveal a number of factors that restrict or inhibit the implementation of policy by community sport agents. These include the conflicting beliefs and values of key policy agents, the challenges associated with enforced partnerships, a lack of open discussion regarding policy learning, funding decisions which prioritise new staff for NGBs and CSPs, leaving limited funding for implementation, and NGBs’ insular approach to planning implementation of policy.Implications: Whilst partnerships, contracts, and performance management systems may be considered vital to contemporary governance, the evidence suggests that such tools may have adverse effects on policy implementation and, at least in the case of enforced partnerships, make the process of implementing policy more challenging than it otherwise might be.

Predicting the Evolution of Sports Federation Membership: AnImportant Tool to Asses National Governing Bodies’ Strategic Planning

Quantifying the potential market of sports licenses is key in order for National Governing Bodies of sport (NGBs) to be able to design good strategic planning. We compared the classical methods of univariate prediction and the Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) methods. Reliability of the available data was verified with the Time Series Regression with ARIMA Noise, Missing and Outliers (TRAMO) method, and the existence of a trend was verified using Daniel’s test. For the purposes of this study—the researches collected and analysed secondary data from a 40-year series in 45 sports in Spain covering a very long period of time in a variety of sport disciplines. The study shows that, with the available data, short-and mid-term forecasting is possible in a number of sports, but not in all of them. It also proves that Holt’s classical method of exponential smoothing is the one that yields best results. Golf, Basketball, Athletics and Hunting NGB show worrying prospects of decline levels and need an immediate change in the strategic plans. Other than for forecasting the evolution of athletes in the mid-term in order to improve strategic planning in NGBs, the present findings can be useful for public authorities to define their aid policies for NGBs, and they can also helpcompanies in the industry to anticipate market developments.

Competition or coalition? Evaluating the attitudes of National Governing Bodies of Sport and County Sport Partnerships towards School Sport Partnerships

The article analyses the concept of partnership and specifically explores the significance for the operation of partnerships, in the areas of youth and community sport, of the perspectives that partners bring to these relationships. The general context for the analysis is the increasing use of partnerships by government for the achievement of its sport policy objectives. The article examines the triangular relationship between School Sport Partnerships (SSPs), National Governing Bodies of Sport (NGBs), and County Sport Partnerships (CSPs). The specific context for the analysis is the decision by the Secretary of State for Education to remove funding from SSPs and the impact that this had on the triangular relationship. The study uses data from a number of semi-structured interviews and questionnaires with CSP and NGB representatives to explore their interpretations of this change. The findings present agents’ perspectives in three discrete areas: the value and effectiveness of SSPs, the broader implications of the cut in funding SSPs for the sport policy community, and partners’ responses to the cut in SSP funding. The findings include: (a) that whilst NGBs regretted the loss of SSPs, CSPs were more equivocal; (b) whilst NGBs considered SSP development managers to be facilitators, CSPs were more likely to see them as gatekeepers; (c) both NGBs and CSPs saw the dramatic contraction of the SSP programme as detrimental to the achievement of their own objectives; and (d) inter-personal relationships and local political context significantly affected the perspectives that both NGBs and CSPs had of their partnership with SSPs.

‘Grow and Sustain’: the role of community sports provision in promoting a participation legacy for the 2012 Olympic Games

The introduction of the Sport England strategy in 2008, with the ambition to develop a ‘world leading community sports system’, offered the opportunity to truly engage grassroots sport delivery with the process of reversing the decline in active sports participation. Unfortunately this opportunity appears to have been missed, with the return to a top down imposition of a ‘sport for sport's sake’ agenda using unprepared and under resourced National Governing Bodies of Sport (NGBs) as the agents of management and delivery, a model that has generally not proven to be successful in the past. It would appear, therefore, time to rethink community sports provision and to find alternative methods of delivery to realize the government's ambitious targets relating to 2012 London Olympics legacy. To add to the debate, this article provides a consideration of the provision and delivery of sporting opportunities in the context of a grassroots organization at community level. It discusses whether sports organizations that are controlled and organized locally facilitate and enable individuals to participate and whether they sustain sport and physical activity programmes on behalf of their residents. To adopt this approach would involve utilizing and enhancing the skills of local people in order to sustain and progress the opportunities offered by recruiting coaches, managers and administrators from the local residents. With this structure in place, it would enable all members of the community to volunteer, organize and meaningfully participate in, and contribute to, an innovation designed to promote healthy lifestyles.

How Should National Governing Bodies of Sport Be Governed in the UK? An Exploratory Study of Board Structure

ABSTRACTManuscript Type: EmpiricalResearch Question/Issue: This study explores the most appropriate board structure for national governing bodies (NGBs) of sport in the UK. Sports are a very important aspect of UK society, involving a significant number of participants and spectators, occupying a key role in furthering the nation's health, and, at the elite level, a source of considerable national pride. From a governance perspective, NGBs of sport are non‐profit organizations, managing both professional and amateur sports, and administering the allocation of considerable amounts of funds, especially public funds. The study was motivated by a renewed interest, not least from government, in ensuring NGBs had an appropriate structure to ensure optimal decision‐making for their stakeholders.Research Findings/Insights: We interviewed 22 senior administrators involved in sports in the UK. Our interviews sought to ascertain their views on the appropriateness of applying a number of key board reforms, currently seen as good practice, to NGBs of sport. The overall consensus is as follows: (1) NGBs should reform the composition of their boards to better reflect business demands; (2) board size should be in the range of five to 12 members; (3) NGBs should have different individuals occupying the positions of CEO and chairman; and (4) boards of NGBs should possess more non‐executive directors.Theoretical/Academic Implications: This research adds to our understanding of governance in non‐profit organizations generally and NGBs of sport in particular. Ascertaining the views of key administrators and advisors in sport provides a novel contribution to the governance in sport literature. Our findings allow us to develop a number of propositions capable of being examined further in subsequent research.Practitioner/Policy Implications: The results of this study feed into an important on‐going debate regarding the appropriate governance structure of sport NGBs in the UK. A key finding is that boards in NGBs should move away from being only representative, but should also include members with specific business expertise as well as a greater element of non‐executive monitoring.

Innovation in sports coaching: the implementation of reflective cards

Despite the well‐supported concept that reflective learning leads to the nurturing of personal and professional development within sports coaching, the process is often overlooked by coaching practitioners due to the all too familiar barrier of time. As such, this paper is in line with recent calls to bridge the gap between ‘in’ and ‘after’ action reflections‐on‐practice. Specifically, the paper investigates the utility of reflective cards (r‐cards), based upon the perceptions of three equine sports coaches. Qualitative methods were employed through an action‐reflection inquiry process, involving the management of change whilst participants reflected in‐action over a six‐week period. Participants engaged in two reflective conversations via focus groups, where discussions included the use of the r‐cards (in‐action) and the r‐learning record sheets (on‐action). A procedure of both inductive and deductive content analysis elicited five emergent themes: the practicality of r‐cards; conscious awareness of the reflective process; development of craft knowledge; potential for coach development; commonality of reflective competencies. Results indicated that the r‐cards are a fast and focused way to reflect‐in‐action, allowing decisions to be brought into consciousness, thereby empowering coaches to take ownership of their practice whilst endorsing the need for coaches to be disciplined in their noticing. Consequently, National Governing Bodies of Sport (NGBs) and coach educators must be aware of the potential of using such methods to engage coaches in reflective learning in order to build upon and improve current coaching practice.

Independence and Accountability

The UK National Anti-Doping Organisation (NADO), the Drug Free Sport Directorate (DFSD), is located within the same organization, UK Sport, which is responsible for maximizing elite sport success. This article evaluates the demand for an independent NADO, which comes not only from within the UK but also from international anti-doping agencies. The concept of independence is examined within the context of broader concerns with accountability and the relationship between the NADO and its stakeholders. Using data from a survey of both National Governing Bodies of sport (NGBs) and elite athletes and interviews with major policy actors it is argued that the concern of elite athletes and NGBs is less with the location of the NADO within UK Sport, but with questions of accountability and communication. It is argued that enhanced independence would, in itself, be no guarantee of either neutrality or of greater effectiveness and may well be counter productive. Moreover, using Hood's rationale for administrative reform there is little evidence that a more independent NADO would be more efficient, equitable or robust. However, it is also argued that the current network of accountability relationships is focused on secondary stakeholders and those primary stakeholders, such as elite athletes and their NGBs, are marginal thus risking an erosion of the current high level of trust.

A Framework for Understanding the Performance of National Governing Bodies of Sport

Although much research exists on the performance of organizations little literature exists that allows understanding of the performance of national governing bodies (NGBs) of sport. The research in this paper aims to facilitate this understanding and presents the results of a programme of research carried out with French NGBs. In the main phase of the research, utilizing an adaptation of Lawrence and Lorsch's theoretical framework, case study research was carried out with 11 French NGBs in order to understand their strategy and management practices in relation to their organizational performance. Analysis of these case studies, alongside previous research that has focused on the relationship between strategy/organizational structure and performance, leads to the proposal of a framework through which to explain NGB performance in the field of sport. This framework seeks to accommodate the relationship between strategy, management and operational performance.

Scratching the Back of “Mr X”: Analyzing Gendered Social Processes in Sport Organizations

The purpose of this research was to analyze social processes as an integral part of gender relations. A theoretical framework was developed using a three-part conceptualization of social processes. Data were collected during semistructured interviews with 35 individuals in three National Governing Bodies of sport in the UK and during unstructured interviews and observation in meetings and sport events attended by the participants. The data were coded and analyzed, and three gendered social processes were examined: informal networking, dress codes, and the use of humor. In the conclusion section, future directions are offered addressing the implications of this research for sport management practitioners, educators, and researchers.

Organisational Structures and Contexts in British National Governing Bodies of Sport

This paper reports the findings of the first stages of a research project which investigates the organisational structures of the National Governing Bodies of Sport (NGBs) in Britain and the strategic management styles which these organisations employ.