Table 3 - uploaded by Richard Tacon
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Source publication
This report presents the findings from a research project focusing on the governance
of national governing bodies of sport (NGBs) in the UK. Governance has become an
increasingly important issue that NGBs in the UK have had to address over the last
decade due to examples of poor management, financial failure, and increased public
funding for sp...
Citations
... researchers have identified that the process of modernization of sports organizations has brought changes in the role and structure of the organization's governing bodies, as well as in the decision-making processes of these organizations (Walters et al., 2010). Considering the above-mentioned theories, the indicators of modernization pointed out by the literature were then organized by three primary areas: strategic, operational, and structural aspects (O'Brien et al., 2019;Sam et al., 2018;Thibault et al., 1991). ...
... The process of modernization in sports organizations has brought changes in the role and structure of the organization's governing bodies, as well as in the decision-making processes of these organizations G. Walters et al., 2010). According to Slack and Parent (2006), these changes in the way sport organizations operated also could be stimulated by an external force, as legal and governmental enforcement and regulations. This could be the case of Brazilian National Sport Organizations, which need to comply with the requirements of Brazilian legislation to be abl ...
National Sport Organizations are increasingly expected to modernize their management practices and comply with governance principles. This research developed, validated, and applied a questionnaire to assess the modernization process of Brazilian Olympic NSO’s. The first stage established the components of modernization based on a review of academic literature. Next, these components were used to create a questionnaire to audit Brazil’s 35 Olympic NSO’s. Data collection involved gathering and analysing material from organizational policies, strategies, and websites. Results suggest that most Brazilian Olympic NSO’s have a moderate - weak adherence to modernization aspects of management. NSOs that present a high stage of modernization tend to present better practices of governance. In Brazil, it appears that the government and Brazilian Olympic Committee are sources of pressure for NSO’s to modernize their management and governance.
... C. Bull et al., 2020). Furthermore, such interventions cover a wide range of social objectives, such as public health, equal opportunities, ethnic integration, urban regeneration, democracy and crime (Fahlén, 2017;Walters et al., 2010). Sport constitutes a key input for health and well-being policies and susceptible to deployment as a strategic tool for intervening in several of the "problems" facing contemporary societies (Doherty et al., 2022;Österlind, 2016). ...
Purpose
Sports events are a fundamental strategic tool for the development of sports policies and can influence the social and economic dynamics of territories. This study analyses the perceptions of the local community on the social and economic impact of a set of sports events integrated into a local government-promoted sports policy intervention.
Design/methodology/approach
We applied a questionnaire to a sample of 157 residents in the host city for the sports events held under the auspices of the European City of Sport 2018 (Braga, Portugal).
Findings
The results demonstrate how the city’s residents perceive the event generated positive impacts on that region in different dimensions, specifically in terms of the city's image and social benefits. Residents also expressed satisfaction with the sports policies pursued by the municipality.
Practical implications
Sport events are crucial to the social and economic dynamics of regions and can underpin the development of sports policies. This study identifies relevant factors for decision making on future local community sports events.
Research Contribution
Our study helps managers and politicians seeking to develop a more efficient structuring of their strategies to maximise the positive impacts that sports events can generate in various territorial contexts.
... At the individual level, strengthening relational resources internally and externally with key stakeholders may provide access to resources during times of significant change. Stakeholder analysis could be used to identify key internal and external stakeholders and rate their power and influence in relation to an individual's role, or a team's project to determine which relationships to focus on (Walters et al., 2010). Relationship networks developed in this way can help organizations to sense potential significant changes, as well as being a source of additional organizational resources in times of adversity. ...
Objectives
Although organizational resilience research has identified the characteristics of elite sport organizations that successfully deal with significant change, further research is needed to understand how they function. The objective of this study was to explore the psychosocial processes underpinning organizational resilience in elite sport.
Design
and method: Using interviews supplemented by timelines compiled from documentary analysis of public online sources, data was gathered during 43 interviews with 22 participants from 10 elite sport organizations across an 8-month period. Participant roles included chief executive officers (n = 5), directors (n = 7), board members (n = 2), middle managers (n = 4), support staff (n = 2), head coach (n = 1), and senior athlete (n = 1). Reflexive thematic analysis of the data was conducted from a critical realist standpoint.
Results
The data analysis yielded two core processes of sensing (internal and external mechanisms, diversity of perspectives, evaluating and monitoring) and adapting (mirroring current resource availability, open and frequent communication, acute versus chronic change), and two supporting processes of strengthening resources (quality and quantity of human and financial resources, relationships as source of additional resources) and shielding from risk (internal risk mitigation, external influencing). These data were interpreted to indicate that these processes are not sequential, or temporally distinct, but instead cumulatively contribute towards an organization’s resilience capability.
Conclusions
As the first empirical investigation exploring the psychosocial processes underpinning organizational resilience in elite sport, the results provide a unique framework and practical implications to help those working in and with elite sport organizations successfully navigate uncertainty and change.
... Alm, 2019; Geeraert, 2015Geeraert, , 2018; six used questionnaires (i.e. ASOIF, 2017ASOIF, , 2018Burger & Goslin, 2005;Chaker, 2004;Walters et al., 2010;Zintz & Gérard, 2019); two used interviews (i.e. Boya, 2016;O'Boyle & Shilbury, 2016); two used mixed-methods (e.g. ...
Research question
Given the plethora of governance principles proposed by academics, government agencies, and sport governing bodies, this study systematically reviewed the current landscape of governance principles in sport.
Research methods
Following the PRISMA, PIECES, and the University of Warwick protocols, a search of academic and grey literatures resulted in 594 unique records. After screening the records for relevance and quality, 73 records (12%) remained.
Results and findings
Most sources were non-empirical, originating from academic working groups and sport governing bodies located predominantly in Europe. Overall, 258 unique governance principles were found. Transparency, accountability, and democracy dominated frequency-wise, while Board-related principles were the most popular focus, followed by stakeholder engagement. The list of principles was synthesized through an inductive thematic analysis into four categories: structure-based, process-based, outcome-based, and context-based. Empirical studies demonstrated governance principles’ assessments in national and international sport organizations to be average at best.
Implications
Findings highlight the systemic and multi-dimensional nature of governance. The four governance principles categories point to academics and practitioners seeing/enacting governance in different ways: structurally at different levels of the organization (i.e. including and beyond the Board), in the organization’s managerial processes, as desired organizational outcomes, and according to their specific context. Researchers and practitioners should endeavour to be purposeful in their use of terms (e.g. ‘principle’ vs ‘indicator’), define their terms, and offer greater details to present higher quality assessment outcomes. We encourage researchers to use more robust, evidence-based governance principles and sophisticated measures/advanced analyses in future assessments of governance.
... As a result, from the target population of 229 organizations that had achieved The Standard, 74% were contacted (all those where emails had been available) with 170 e-mails distributed with an explanation of the context of the research and the web-based survey. A web survey was used, using the Survey Monkey website, since previous research has shown this to be an effective means of distribution (Walters, Trenberth, & Tacon, 2010). This was sent through e-mail where possible to the Equality Lead or the Chief Executive or Chairpersons of these organizations. ...
In 2004, the four UK Sports Councils introduced the Equality Standard for Sport. The purpose of The Standard was an approach of policy development through consultation and partnership with National Governing Bodies and built on the lessons learnt through the Racial Equality Standard for Sport (2000). Furthermore, The Standard aimed to recognize the multiple nature of inequality, beyond racial grounds and embrace a wider set of protected characteristics. Whilst this widening scope to The Standard is a positive move, its methodology and focus is still largely founded on an outcome based approach grounded in an audit culture. Previous research on The Standard was critical of this over reliance on the formalized audit approach, its failure to encourage organizations to be reflective on their history and culture and to promote organizational involvement in creating equality policies. This paper provides a comparative analysis to the previous review of The Standard and aims to examine what difference it is making in terms of equality, diversity and inclusion within sports organizations. Results indicate that there is proactive work carried out by sports organizations to widen the appeal of their sports with previously underrepresented groups but it is not clear how much of this work is from a direct result of The Standard. Furthermore, although many organizations had an aspiration to achieve Intermediate Level, very few have progressed beyond the Preliminary Level.
... Many sports governing bodies [1][2][3] adopt the principles of risk management [4,5] to guide their governance policies [6]. An essential aspect of this process is monitoring an organisation's performance [7], which is particularly important for contact team sports, as the risk of injury is usually higher than that observed in non-contact sports [8]. ...
... Injury-group 2: K 2 -= 0.068 days -1 /0.477 weeks -1 , 2 [P injured ] 0 = 39.3%; Injury-group 3: K 3 = 0.016 days -1 /0.110 weeks -1 , 3 [P injured ] 0 = 17.4%). Figure 6 shows the time-to-event curve obtained for the percentage of all unresolved injuries using Eq. ...
Background:
Injuries in team sports are normally characterised by the incidence, severity, and location and type of injuries sustained: these measures, however, do not provide an insight into the variable injury-burden experienced during a season. Injury burden varies according to the team's match and training loads, the rate at which injuries are sustained and the time taken for these injuries to resolve. At the present time, this time-based variation of injury burden has not been modelled.
Objectives:
To develop a kinetic model describing the time-based injury burden experienced by teams in elite team sports and to demonstrate the model's utility.
Methods:
Rates of injury were quantified using a large eight-season database of rugby injuries (5253) and exposure (60,085 player-match-hours) in English professional rugby. Rates of recovery from injury were quantified using time-to-recovery analysis of the injuries.
Results:
The kinetic model proposed for predicting a team's time-based injury burden is based on a composite rate equation developed from the incidence of injury, a first-order rate of recovery from injury and the team's playing load. The utility of the model was demonstrated by examining common scenarios encountered in elite rugby.
Conclusions:
The kinetic model developed describes and predicts the variable injury-burden arising from match play during a season of rugby union based on the incidence of match injuries, the rate of recovery from injury and the playing load. The model is equally applicable to other team sports and other scenarios.
... The demand for good governance and the resulting question as to what kind of board member and manager competences this requires has been a stimulus for research into the governing of sport organizations (De Vries et al., 2007). In the Netherlands (Anthonissen & Boessenkool, 1998;Noordegraaf, 2008;Trommel, 2009;Van 't Verlaat, 2010) and internationally, the governance of sport has become an important research topic (Cuskelly & Hoye, 2007;Gammelsaeter, 2010;Grix, 2010;King, 2009;Kjaer, 2004;Rhodes, 1996Rhodes, , 1997Shilbury & Ferkins, 2011;Smith, 2009;Walters, Trenberth, & Tacon, 2010). This research addresses not only questions about good governance, but also changes in: the financing system of sport organizations (Geurtsen & Doornbos, 2007;Van 't Verlaat, 2010), the effectiveness of work processes (Bayle & Robinson, 2007;Winand, Zintz, Bayle, & Robinson, 2010), and the architecture of voluntary associations (Huizenga & Tack, 2011). ...
The governance of national governing bodies of sports such as
sport federations is becoming increasingly complex. An important
driver of this is the widening of the scope of activities of these
federations, from servicing local sports clubs or providing sport
activities, to involvement in professional sports and media businesses
and aspiring to a wider social role in accordance with governmental
objectives. This development is analysed from the
viewpoint of hybridization of organizations. Hybridity appears
when organizations cannot (or can no longer) be described as
completely belonging to the civil communities, private sector, or
state sector and become an organization containing a mix of sectorial,
structural, and/or mission related elements. Quantitative and
qualitative data is used to analyse how many of the national sport
federations become more hybrid in their goals, use of resources,
governance model and even in their identity. Since hybridity can
create problematic tensions and governance dilemmas, the way in
which the federations react to this development has also been
studied. Hybridity has consequences for the role of different stakeholders
in the governance process. Not all federations are involved
in hybridization, but if they are, they are capable of coping with
this by adapting their strategy. Some of them, however, are opting
to develop into branch organizations and become fully hybrid
organizations
... Rather than providing a carte blanche for sports organisations to operate with complete autonomy, a series of performance indicators were established to align the objectives of developing sporting talent and increasing sport participation overall (Walters, Trenberth, & Tacon, 2010). These essentially tethered sports organisations to centrally-determined monitoring and evaluation measures in order to encourage greater cohesiveness and efficiency (Houlihan & Green, 2009). ...
... The performance indicators established the expectation that NGBs would use their resources effectively to simultaneously improve elite sport and to broaden grassroots sport participation within the general population (Taylor and O'Sullivan, 2009). Game Plan brought into focus a number of shortcomings in NGB governance particularly in relation to a lack of transparency, financial control, and monitoring and reporting (UK Sport, 2003) which has resulted in the development of a Competencies Framework that promotes better management, improved financial processes, and strategic planning (Walters et al., 2010). Consequently, in order to receive Sport England funding NGBs are now obliged to outline Whole Sport Plans which detail how investments are to be used to secure sport outcomes including talent development and the numbers of people playing sport as part of the broader Sport England's aim of increasing participation and UK Sport's aim of developing and maximising the performance of UK elite athletes. ...
Forty-nine county sports partnerships (CSPs) work together with national governing bodies of sport (NGBs) to support and develop sports coaching in the United Kingdom. Partnership has been promoted as a key means by which agencies are able to address complex issues, but to date there has been little, if any, research into the effectiveness of partnership working between NGBs and CSPs in their support of coaching delivery. NGB officers (n = 13) and CSP Coaching Development Managers (or equivalent) (n = 23) were asked (via online questionnaire and telephone interviews) about their experiences of partnership working. Findings demonstrate that successful partnership working relies heavily upon ‘buy-in’ from both parties and an adequate amount of funding to support coach development. The paper concludes by suggesting that it is likely that partner agencies may need to be persuaded about the value of partnership working due to the required investment and the perceived burdens of collaboration. © 2016 Canadian Association for Leisure Studies / Association canadienne d’études en loisir.
... It has been observed that sport organisations have moved towards increased bureaucratisation and professionalism as part of a process of modernisation (Li et al., 2012;Sherry et al., 2007;Stewart, 2007;UK Sport, 2003Auld, 1997) changes in the way that governing boards are structured and selected have been noted, such that not all members of sport organisation boards are necessarily representative of the member body (Walters et al., 2011). There appears to be an increasing trend towards appointing people to boards who have specific expertise that may fill gaps in the skill sets available in the elected group of members, such as someone with finance or legal expertise (Walters et al., 2011;Houlihan and Green, 2008;Henry and Lee, 2004;Auld, 1997). ...
... It has been observed that sport organisations have moved towards increased bureaucratisation and professionalism as part of a process of modernisation (Li et al., 2012;Sherry et al., 2007;Stewart, 2007;UK Sport, 2003Auld, 1997) changes in the way that governing boards are structured and selected have been noted, such that not all members of sport organisation boards are necessarily representative of the member body (Walters et al., 2011). There appears to be an increasing trend towards appointing people to boards who have specific expertise that may fill gaps in the skill sets available in the elected group of members, such as someone with finance or legal expertise (Walters et al., 2011;Houlihan and Green, 2008;Henry and Lee, 2004;Auld, 1997). This trend raises questions about the "representativeness" of governing boards given the traditional view that the board members should be representative of the membership of the organisation. ...
... The delegation of policy development to working groups, or commissions with a defined purpose might be examples of deliberative democracy in sport organisations. With respect to selecting board members, deliberative democracy might be in evidence when people with specific skill sets who may not be a part of the formal membership of the organisation, are selected, in consultation with the membership, based on an established need to fill the board with a desired set of skills (Walters et al., 2011;Houlihan and Green, 2008). ...
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how the existing mechanisms for legitimising
member based sport organisations can lead to poor governance and how accepted democratic
processes can be manipulated to suit the personal agenda of individuals over the vision of the
organisation.
Design/methodology/approach – Three cases are provided to illustrate how, it is relatively easy for
individuals to manipulate the established rules in order to obtain and retain power.
Findings – The self-regulatory nature of sport assumes that elected representatives put the
organisation’s interests before their own and that they always act in the best interests of the members.
The evidence, provided in this paper, suggests that this assumption may be inappropriate.
Research limitations/implications – The case studies provided occurred within the boundaries of
one continental grouping of countries and may be considered biased due to the specific demographic
characteristics of this part of the world and the relative lack of development of sport systems that
exist there.
Practical implications – The paper raises important questions about the appropriateness of the
legitimising mechanisms that affect sport and the challenges that face modern sport organisations.
Social implications – The paper may provide a basis for arguing that the concepts of democracy
and autonomy in sport organisations need to be reviewed if their autonomy is to be maintained.
Originality/value – This paper provides a basis for challenging the basis of how sport is structured
and how member based sport organisations are legitimised to operate as they do.
Keywords Management, Legitimacy, Olympic, Sport organizations, Elections, Ethical governance
Paper type Case study
... Polish running market will be the empiric area of deliberations, which, due to its dynamic development, became an interesting area of competing not only in sports, but also in organising and managing. As it turns out, marathon and other mass runs organisers are subjects of the market game and, stumbling upon a previously unknown phenomenon of competence, started to seek and implement organisation solutions known and used in the activity of commercial entities [Mallen, Adams, 2013, p. [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25]. One of them is to build and improve the architecture of relations and cooperation with outer stakeholders. ...
The business character of major sport events attracts attention of many stakeholders operating in the B2B and B2C market. In order to prepare a successful event, the organizers of marathon events need to create a multilevel business network and collaborate with many groups of different stakeholders. The rate of involvement and expectations vary for every group of stakeholders, that is why the organizers of marathon events need to apply various strategies of collaboration with every single group in order to satisfy the needs of everyone. The concerned group of events includes marathon events, which are specifically the subject of the analysis in this article.
