Organizational Behaviour in Sport

"A number of textbooks have been published that examine organisational behaviour issues in sport. They are all highly instructive, but tend to do it in conventional ways by taking generic models of organisational theory, group dynamics, and interpersonal relations, and inserting a few sport-related cases. This book is different because it first and foremost provides a detailed contextual frame that both connects sport to the world of business, and sets it apart from it. Within this strong sport-business frame it uses hardened theories of workplace behaviour to illuminate the ways sport works, and how it can ultimately work better. In taking this approach this book highlights the various individual, interpersonal and organisational behaviours that occur when delivering the sport product to its various stakeholders.

The book has three additional strengths:

First, it is written by two highly experienced sport management academics: James Skinner is Director of the Institute for Sport Business, and Professor of Sport Business, at the London campus of Loughborough University in the UK. Bob Stewart is the Sport Management Program Director at the College of Sport and Exercise Science at Victoria University in Melbourne in Australia. Between them, Bob and James have 40 years of teaching and research experience. They have also published more than 20 books that examine the commercial, social and cultural development of sport. They have the ideal background for putting together a book that examines the complex behaviours of people working in sport setting, be they highly bureaucratised sport businesses, or informal community associations and clubs. They both write very clearly and concisely and bring prosaic theories and concepts to life by linking them to highly grounded cases and incidents. This fusion of theory and practice threads its way through the entire book, and places it in a league of its own.

Second, the book has something for everyone. There are 21 succinctly written chapters together with more than 40 cases that cover everything you wanted to know about managing people in sport settings. Specific chapters are allocated to sport’s special features, organisational design and structure, culture and climate, job analysis and selection, orientation and induction, rewards and incentives, training and development, personality, perception, motivation, emotions, attitudes and job satisfaction, group behavior, team dynamics, interpersonal communication, safety and risk, stress and aggression, conflict, misbehaviour and dispute resolution, power and politics, bargaining and negotiation, and, finally, change and organisational realignment. The coverage is broad, but it is also deep.

Finally, everything is superbly glued together by the overarching proposition that sport enterprises will only fulfil their potential if their staff – be they highly paid or volunteers – are managed in ways that enhance their technical skills, creative capabilities, and interpersonal sensitivities.

I unreservedly recommend this book to anyone who wants to find out how best to manage people working in the sport industry. Students and practitioners alike will find it a highly valuable resource that offers fresh insights at every turn of the page. Essential reading!" - Aaron Smith, Professor of Management, RMIT University, Australia