Emphasising the culture in culture change: Examining current perspectives of culture and offering some alternative ones

Abstract

Culture change has rapidly become a topic of interest and importance within applied and academic sport psychology circles. Despite a number of notable advances in the culture change literature though, a critique aimed at some of this research (Cruickshank, Collins & Minten, 2013a) is that it may not be studying culture at all (Gilmore, 2013). Considering and extending this critique, it is contended that sport psychology culture change research to date has been change focused, rather than based in a broader and deeper understanding of culture; an action-orientated approach that limits the clarity and practical utility of what is arguably the fundamental element of culture change – culture itself. To begin to address this issue, a definition of culture (cf. Cruickshank and Collins, 2012) is examined in detail so as to draw out fundamental assumptions about culture that have not been comprehensively considered in sport psychology culture change literature. To further broaden disciplinary understanding of culture, some alternative perspectives of culture are then presented.