Culture change in a professional sports team: Shaping environmental contexts and regulating power

ABSTRACT Although high performing cultures are crucial for the enduring success of professional sport performance teams, theoretical and practical understanding of how they are established and sustained is lacking. To develop knowledge in this area, a case study was undertaken to examine the key mechanisms and processes of a successful culture change programme at English Rugby Union's Leeds Carnegie. Exploring the change process from a 360 degree perspective, semi-structured interviews were conducted with team management, one specialist coach, six players, and the CEO. Analysed and explained through decentred theory, results revealed that culture change was effectively facilitated by team management: a) subtly and covertly shaping the physical, structural, and psychosocial context in which support staff and players made performance-impacting choices, and b) regulating the 'to and fro' of power which characterises professional sport performance teams. Decentred theory is also supported as an effective framework for culture change study

Driving and sustaining culture change in professional sport performance teams: A grounded theory

Objectives As part of the recent upsurge of work on management and organizational factors in elite sports teams, researchers have focused on the team management-led creation and regulation of high performing cultures. The purpose of this study was to therefore add to a recently developed model of culture change best practice in Olympic sports teams, as led and perceived by incoming performance directors, and conceptualize culture change best practice in professional sports teams, as led and perceived by incoming team managers. Design and method A pragmatic research philosophy and corresponding grounded theory methodology were used to generate a practically-meaningful model of this culture change process from the perspective of UK-based professional team managers. Results Perceived best practice in team manager-led culture change was found to involve a finite phase of initial evaluation, planning, and impact adjoined to the enduring management of a holistic, integrated, and dynamic social system. With the former process acting as the catalyst for successful change, this model revealed that optimal change was felt to primarily rely on the constant acquisition, negotiation, and alignment of internal and external stakeholder perceptions. Conclusions Based on the model's principles, the optimization of professional team culture is defined by a manager's initial actions and never definitively achieved but rather constantly constructed and re-constructed in complex social and power dynamics. Beyond providing a conceptual backdrop for continued research in this area, the model is also a tool on which the practice of professional team managers and their supporting sport psychologists can be based

Use Them or Lose Them: a study of the employability of sport graduates through their transition into the sport workplace

Over a number of years there have been concerns regarding the employability of UK sport graduates within the sport industry. Research and policy on employability have focused on employability as an individual construct, identifying the attributes graduates’ need to develop in order to be employable. This paper questions these approaches and explores employability through the sport graduate’s transition into the workplace. In order to examine the graduate in situ within the workplace, case studies were undertaken of four sport science graduates. These were constructed using interviews with the graduates and significant others within their organisation. The key findings suggest that employability is a complex phenomenon that is a synthesis of the interaction between the graduate, their employer and their job. From the findings an Interaction Theory and Model of Graduate Employability in Sport has been developed and the implications for the employability of sport graduates are identified. Keywords: graduates, employability, attributes, employers, sport industry, organisational commitment