Cultural Orientations of sport managers

Various interpretations of sport management are cultural constructs underpinned by core assumptions and values held by members of professional communities. Sport managers world wide share common problems, but differ in how they resolve them. These universal differences emerge from the relationships they form with other people, and their attitude to time, activities and the natural environment. This paper examines the role of sport managers’ cultural orientations in the interpretation and practice of sport management. Using a multiple dimension model (Hampden-Turner and Trompenaars, 2000) it sketches the cultural profiles of fifteen sport managers from seven countries. A combination of methods was employed including questionnaires, interviews and participant observation. It is contended that the culture of sport management concerns a social process by which managers get involved in reconciling seven fundamental cultural dilemmas in order to perform tasks and achieve certain ends. Thus, a knowledge of the cultural meaning of sport management in a particular country would equip sport managers with a valuable tool in managing both the cultural diversity of their own work forces and in developing appropriate cross-cultural skills needed for running international events, marketing campaigns, sponsorship deals and joint ventures

The political process of constructing a sustainable London Olympics sports development legacy

This study attempts to develop a research agenda for understanding the process of constructing a sustainable Olympic sports development legacy. The research uses a social constructivist perspective to examine the link between the 2012 London Olympic Games and sustainable sports development. The first part of the paper provides justification for the study of sport policy processes using a constructivist lens. This is followed by a section which critically unpacks sustainable sports development drawing on Mosse’s (1998) ideas of process-oriented research and Searle’s conceptualisation of the construction of social reality. Searle’s (1995) concepts of the assignment of function, collective intentionality, collective rules, and human capacity to cope with the environment are considered in relation to the events and discourses emerging from the legacy vision(s) associated with the 2012 London Olympic Games. The paper concludes by proposing a framework for engaging in process oriented research and highlights key elements, research questions, and methodological issues. The proposed constructivist approach can be used to inform policy, practice, and research on sustainable Olympic sports development legacy

Origami voting: a non-cryptographic approach to transparent ballot verification

International audienceOver the past four decades, fear of election manipulation and hacking has spurred the security technology community to propose a variety of voting systems to implement verifiable voting. Most of these rely on hard to understand cryptographic protocols, which can affect whether users actually verify their selections. Three-Ballot and Vote/Anti-Vote/Vote, two related systems among the few non-cryptographic end-to-end verifiable voting systems, made improvements in security while eliminating complex protocols. They unfortunately suffered from usability issues, and although they did not require cryptographic primitives, they still relied on electronic devices. To address this, we introduce three folded-paper based systems that allow verifiable voting and resist common attacks despite not relying on any cryptography or electronic devices. The proposals are based on 1) semi-translucent ballots, 2) masking tape, or 3) folding and punching. These Origami voting methods help users understand the underlying mechanisms and give them a direct geometric approach to verification

What do they do? Competency and managing in Brazilian Olympic Sport Federations

This study explores the link between management competencies of 15 presidents of Brazilian Olympic Sport Federations (OSF) from the state of Minas Gerais and how they actually manage. Overemphasizing the conceptual importance of managers’ competencies at the expense of what they actually do can lead to the creation of an illusory image of the model manager whereas in reality such a person hardly exists. A mixed research sequential transformative design was employed where two theoretical frameworks guided the study and the initial quantitative phase of the research was followed by a qualitative phase of observations and interviews. Qualitative and quantitative data were analysed with QSR NVivo 10 and SPSS. Presidents of OSFs perceived themselves as facilitators, visionary leaders and innovators, who are expected to develop the organization into a more professional entity. They have been working mainly on the people and information plane of management and were less concerned with conceptual issues, instant results and specific deadlines. OSF presidents’ competencies were intended to deliver greater organizational effectiveness but this was difficult to achieve due to the lack of strategic skills and resources. Presidents’ competencies were also not necessarily doing the right things and were only partly delivering the desired results. Understanding sport managers’ competencies and how they relate to their daily activities is important not just for the purposes of staff selection and appraisal and for development and learning, but also for the constant realignment of management as a science, intuition and practical activity.This work was supported by the CAPES, scholarship (13262/13-0); and the State Department of Tourism and Sport through the State Act of Incentive to Sports