Sport and Organizational Studies

TLDR

Sport has been used to study management topics such as compensation-performance relationships and executive succession, yet no systematic effort has examined the rationale, benefits, and potential of conducting organizational research within sport. This article investigates how research conducted in sport can enhance understanding of management and organizations, emphasizing creative and innovative approaches to achieve such contributions. The authors provide a general overview of the rationale for studying organizational phenomena in sport, review existing research, and discuss several phenomena they have examined within this domain. The article argues that using sport as a context can yield novel insights for organizational research that are not yet evident in the literature.

Abstract

A number of phenomena of interest to management and organizational scholars have been investigated within the context of sport (e.g., compensation-performance relationships, escalating commitment, executive succession, sustainable competitive advantage). The authors are unaware, however, of any systematic effort to address the rationale, benefits, and potential of conducting organizational research within sport. The purpose of this article is to investigate how studying within the context of sport can contribute to an understanding of management and of organizations with a focus on how such contribution can be achieved with creative and innovative research approaches. The authors present a general overview of the rationale for studying organizational phenomena within sport and provide a concise review of such research. With this as background, the authors discuss a number of organizational phenomena that they have studied within the domain of sport. The article suggests how organizational research might benefit by using sport as a context in ways not yet evident in the literature.