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There's been an increasing focus on governance in sports management amongst academics and practitioners over recent years. In fact, that's often been put down to broader societal concerns around governance, not just in sport but around maybe the 2008 economic crisis. This kind of event puts more focus on how our organizations are run and how they make decisions. In a sport that focus has sharpened because of some high-profile governance failures. For example with FIFA but also in athletics with the Russian doping scandal. These kinds of high profile and often debated events sensitize us, bring into sharper focus questions about how sports organizations and systems are directed, run, how decisions are made, and also about where the power lies in those organizations and sometimes about what has changed over the years, how and where power has shifted. In trying to understand the fields of governance, research and practice, there are a number of different definitions and debates and the field is quite broad and often confusing.
The studies might run from the micro-level, those to do with how an individual organization might make a decision. Perhaps how the board of governors is doing, how effective they are. Also down to things like individual sanctions of an athlete, perhaps for a doping violation or how the organization relates, maybe if it's a member organization, to its members. Sometimes those micro-level studies might not be about a single organization though they could be about government agencies or they could me more broadly about sport in society and about other stakeholders who are involved in sport It’s worth, at this point, pointing out that leadership is not exactly the same as governance and vice versa, but that the two do in some ways consider the same issues. For example, leadership might be about an individual or a team of individuals leading an organization and persuading others to follow them towards a set of goals. Governance is more broadly about the decisions that are made, the power, and how that organization works. It’s not just about leadership or a leader, it could be about the broader organization.
Leadership has roots broadly in psychology, obviously, although also in management literature more recently based in psychology; whereas governance, its roots are more in economics and law. But quite often, they are looking at similar issues and sometimes the fields of research and study overlap with each other. One of the reasons why governance has actually been in the spotlight and it's been in focus for sports organizations is the level of change that there has been within the sport. For example, sport has moved from being amateur, perhaps with volunteers running a lot of its organizations, but increasingly it has commercialized and professionalized. The more money has been involved, the more people are concerned about how it is organized, how decisions are made, and to check that the decisions are made correctly; the money is being used for the purposes for which it was intended The focus is more on things like board roles, functions, and the processes of those sports We mentioned earlier in this lecture, organizational, systemic and political perspectives on governance. If you look at this from an organizational point of view, one of the main governance definitions is that of Cadbury. The Cadbury report talks about governance as the system by which companies are directed and controlled. That’s obviously more of a focus on the way in which that organization is set up and often on things like boards of directors who might be responsible for running those companies.
Clearly in sport, it's not always the board of directors. It might also be a federation or other types of organizations who are responsible for the governance of their respective sports. Henry and Lee differentiated between this first type, organization or corporate governance, but also looked at political and social models of governance. Amongst the organizational studies, governance sometimes focuses on strategic capabilities. It’s important to know that the organizations who are involved in that organization of sport are appropriately qualified, that they have the right skills and abilities. For example, that you have someone with financial knowledge in charge of the finances and maybe somebody with legal understanding to be drawing up the contracts. There’s also sometimes a focus on how a group of individuals, maybe a board of directors, work together and who is on the board of directors. I know in sport there was studies about how many people are on the board compared sometimes to larger Fortune 500or FTSE companies and a focus in some studies on the fact that there is only a small number and the question about whether that allows enough checks and balances. Enough different opinions in decision making to make sure that the organization-it doesn't have blind spots and isn't making decisions that may be great for sport, but might for example, not be very good for the sustainability of that organization. In my field, in football for example, if you spend all of your budgets on players but then didn't have enough money to run the stadium and do the day-to-day things, then obviously that would be probably the end of the organization.
The board needs to have the appropriate management ability and also, it needs to work together in a reasonably effective way so that it can make effective decisions. Some of the studies also look at when governance structures don’t work so well and look for example, in situations of conflict how to avoid these when they occur and conflict resolution for example. With Henry and Lee's second governance term, they talk about political structures. Political structures, exactly as it sounds like, in a not-for-profit organization maybe the structure is a little bit more like a democracy sometimes where you might have a number of people who can vote to make a decision. Perhaps they might elect a president or a chair into that organization. The political model of governance is to look at structures that operate a little bit more like political systems. It shouldn't be forgotten that in terms of politics, Chomsky, for example, talked about democracy as being an imperfect system of governance.
Maybe better than having the totalitarian approach where the decisions are all made for you, but not always very efficient. The member associations might have their own strategies and they might report in different ways and have reporting lines and so on, but it's worth bearing in mind that you need to look at the way in which decisions are made. Maybe that in some structures it’s very hard to actually make progress. Perhaps if you have a voting structure there might be lobbying and certain people trying to vote against each other. How would you actually make a decision when you get into complex situations when, for example, you are bidding to host a sporting event, maybe you need more than one round, and then you take the lowest votes out and then you have to vote your gain and so on? This is all a structure to try to reach a decision. Clearly, if you have a relatively small board of directors, you might be able to make a decision much more quickly. Whilst it is great for everybody to have a voice in a political governance structure, you have to look at how decisions will be made to make sure that they are able to move at an appropriate rate.
They don't take too long to make sure that decisions can be made to make sure that they are making the best or the most effective decisions where possible. To summarize, you need rules for decision-making. In elective or voting systems, you might actually need to look at how you're going to have continuity. You elect somebody, perhaps they say that they're going to deliver against a vision or strategy that is appealing, but then what is the cycle? How frequently do you change your vision and your strategy, and how then do you achieve long-term, orientation for that organization? Henry and Lee also talked about social governance. Social governance really is the focus on ethics, principles and practices; the way in which sports organizations should operate. When we talked at the beginning of this lecture about some of the situations that have arisen, there have been for example, doping scandals, then that's actually about the way in which governance can make sure that the sport behaves in the way that it should. It’s not just about making a decision, but it's about making decisions that would be socially and ethically responsible for that organization. That might be down in part to the leadership and management; the values and strategies of those who are involved in the sport. Also, putting in place practices to be able to protect certain things; whether that's diversity, whether it is anti-doping, whether it's making sure that the organization operates within the financial good practice and within the law for example, and that it is behaving in a way that is socially responsible. The social perspective focuses on rules and regulations; how the sport's organized and how it's controlled.
Just as a reflection point in summary, think for a moment about your own sport and sports with which you're familiar and what you'll learn about that Sportif you think about it, firstly, from an organizational perspective about, for example, commercially or a board of directors and how decisions are made in that way, or, is it more of a political structure with voting; maybe a cycle of how frequently a president or a leader is elected and those people may be having different values or visions. Then, finally, about the social perspective, which might think about the ethics and the social role of those sporting organizations. It’s not that any one of these wholly or best captures the governance issues facing sports organizations. In order to understand governance in sport, maybe you need to think about each of those in turn and use the different lenses to look at sport and its governance. As a quick review of some of the papers that have been written in sports governance, in research over the years, there has been a focus in some of these on the way in which sport has changed. Not just with commercialization, professionalization, but some of the changes that might come from technology, some of the changes that might come because of a particular ethical scandal or issues that are faced the sport. Some of the governance issues might look at particular changes to the rules of a sport. Whether it is about transfers or wage caps or other mechanisms that are put in place.
Of course, we've seen a recent example in the Rugby Union Premier League in England about Saracens finding a way of paying what they say is within the wage cap, but through a different mechanism which has caused them to be fined in the regulations of that sport. For example, in horse racing has been a change in the funding structure sin some cases with changes in ways money might filter through from betting, from gambling and whether or not that's appropriate in all cases, so you've seen some changes there. We talked earlier in this module about wage caps and rule changes and so on that have applied to some other sports.
There are also some governance studies that look at specific sporting events and how these are organized, but also what legacy you would expect from something like the London Olympics.[?], for example, looked at the London 2012 Olympics. There are a number of studies, for example, by [?]and others that look at the legacy of the Olympics and other sporting events. It’s important that governance in that sense is looked at in order to make sure that there are countries that continue to be interested in hosting sporting events. Those events are in themselves well run, as far as possible to budget and that everything runs smoothly with them. In practice, and in some of the studies, you also see how changes to a governance structure or arrangement might have an impact on how the organizations within that sport operate. Sometimes you'll see a new organization that has been created as a result of something that's happened, like WADA. You might see comparisons between how different sports deal with a particular issue, whether that's commercialization, whether it is to do, for example, with anti doping. The case of WADA, this led to stricter sanctions and changes to the way the rules of the sport were actually operated. In summary, in this lecture, we’ve introduced the role and concepts of sports governance, we’ve talked about organizational, systemic, social and political governance structures, we have evaluated these governance structures sin relation to sport and identified some of the drivers of change in sports organizations.
How do Henry and Lee (2004) define the following perspectives on sports governance? Summaries the main governance topics and debates within each perspective:
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