Creating a corporate anti-doping culture: Understanding the role of sport governing bodies

The World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) vision to promote a new moral order in sport and new forms of organisation and management through the World Anti Doping code (WADC) amount to creating a new corporate culture. WADC’s emphasis on policy implementation places sport governing bodies (SGB) and managers at the heart of the enterprise. This represents a double challenge: (i) to the organisational culture of SGBs as it entails creating shared systems of meaning that are accepted, internalised, and acted on at every level of an organization, and (ii) to the IOC and the WADA in regard to universality and particularity, where the general organisational difficulty is how they are to operate at a global (universal) level whilst such apparently intractable differences exist at the particular (local) level. This paper employs Morgan’s (1997) metaphor of organisations as cultures to develop an understanding of the process of endorsing a global anti-doping policy. It explores the enactment of the WADC using the Bulgarian Weightlifting Federation as a case in point. While a good level of universal approval of WADC has been achieved the main issue remains how to get SGBs practices in line with it

Governance of the London 2012 Olympic Games legacy

© The Author(s) 2011. This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below.This study addresses the governance of the London 2012 Olympics legacy. It presents legacy not as a retrospective but a prospective concept concerned with shaping the future through interactions between the state, market and society. This entails designing systems of governance to guide and steer collective actions towards a consensus amongst various parties concerned. Four modes of governance and a range of policy instruments were examined in the delivery of sustainable London Olympics sport legacy including coercive, voluntarism, targeting and framework regulation. The British government actively created a new policy space and promoted institutional conduct consistent with its legacy visions. The current global legacy framework is lacking the governance dimension and its logic needs to be reconsidered. A meaningful sport legacy requires not top-down approaches but locally informed strategies supported by a developmental design of the Olympic Games informed by sustainable principles

Understanding the changing nature of sports organisations in transforming societies

The paper examined the process of changing in three Bulgarian national sport organisations (NSO) in swimming, weightlifting and field hockey, as the country is undergoing fundamental political, economic and social transformations from state socialism (1945-1989) to democratisation (1990-present). Drawing on the contextualist approach to organisational change (Pettigrew, 1985) the study was concerned with understanding long-term processes in their context. Analysed were NSOs’ conceptual orientation, structures, resources, capabilities and outcomes. Changing was unveiled through the interplay between three levels of analysis - wider political and economic, sport sector, and organisation-specific. The history of changing unfolded over a 25 years period and followed three stages of crisis of governability (1980-1989), crisis displacement (1989-1997) and identity search (1998-2004). Changing was determined by tensions generated in the previous socialist sport system, the new forces in the NSOs’ context, and by managers’ interpretation of events, and was a discovery process. The three NSOs followed different change patterns of shrinking, insulation and expansion. Two key reasons were responsible for those differences - the institualisation of the broader political and sport sector contexts, and NSOs’ choice to pursue narrow elitism (specialism) or the broader aims of sports development (generalism). The contextualist approach allowed us to appreciate the historical, contextual and processual nature of changing and to discuss the role of managers and various forces in shaping its course and outcomes

Canadian national sport organisations’ use of the web for relationship marketing in promoting sport participation

Sport participation development requires a systematic process which involves knowledge creation, dissemination and interactions between National Sport Organisations, participants, clubs and associations as well as other agencies. Using a relationship marketing approach (Grönroos, 1997, Gummesson, 2002, Olkkonen, 1999), this paper addressed the question ‘How do Canadian NSOs use the Web, in terms of functionality and services offered, to create and maintain relationships with sport participants and their sport delivery partners?’ Ten Canadian NSOs’ websites were examined: functionality was analysed using Burgess and Cooper’s (2000) eMICA model, while NSOs’ utilisation of the Internet to establish and maintain relationships with sport participants was analysed using Wang, Head and Archer’s (2000) relationship-building process model for the Web. It was found that Canadian NSOs were receptive to the use of the Web, but their information-gathering and dissemination activities, which make-up the relationship-building process, appear sparse, and in some cases are lagging behind the voluntary sector in the country

Legacy, resource mobilisation and the olympic movement

There has been a growing interest in legacies of the Olympic Games focusing on external tangible outcomes, such as the number of sport competitions, participants and jobs created. Little is still known about the equally valuable internal benefits to individuals and organisational capacities of national sport systems. While the former tends to explore the contribution of the Games to host cities and countries, the latter is concerned with the role of Olympism in developing sport globally. Using a resource mobilisation approach to social movements, this study examines the powers of the Olympic Movement (OM) to generate resources needed for the advancement of its mission. This ability of the Movement is critical if it is to sustain its relevance to the modern world and to deliver on its stated objectives for social change, as well as to leave any lasting legacies from the Olympic Games

The numbers game: quantifying good governance in sport

Copyright © 2022 The Author(s). Research question: The paper interrogates the growing quantification of good governance and its implications for sport organisations. It addresses what shapes the production of governance codes and who decides what aspects of governance to be quantified and how we govern and study the quantification of good governance in sport. Research methods: This is a position and conceptual paper, which reviews three international and two national codes to illustrate the five dimensions of the quantification of governance, including the work required, its reactivity, its tendency to discipline human behaviour, its polyvalent authority, and its aesthetics. Results and findings: The quantification of governance codes requires a significant amount of work and triggers compliance responses from sport organisations, which leads to structural changes and an ever-greater institutional complexity and need for capacity building. Quantification has challenged sport organisations’ autonomy as it does not promote self-governance but rather meta-governance. How the quantification of governance is related to its theorisation and codes’ accuracy validity remains problematic. Implications: The paper challenges the uncritical acceptance of good governance codes as a norm for sport organisations and calls for a reconsideration of our approach in line with a sport-focused model, which acknowledges the value systems, local traditions and institutional frameworks underpinning the model

Towards a conceptual definition of intangible Olympic legacy

Copyright © 2021, Vassil Girginov and Holger Preuss. Purpose Intangible legacy encapsulates the essence of Olympism and its manifestation, the Olympic Games. Despite significant interest in the capacity of the Olympics to produce notable changes in society, conceptual difficulties in defining and measuring intangible legacy persist. The study develops a conceptual definition of intangible Olympic legacy. Design/methodology/approach The study follows a four-step concept definition approach. It examines and integrates three strands of literature including intangibles, social interactions and public value, which is combined with insights from a longitudinal empirical investigation of intangible Olympic legacy for National Sport Organisations (NSO). Findings The proposed concept of intangible legacy defines it an emerging combination of attributes, interactions, processes and technology, with the goal of creating public value which is the ultimate goal of the Olympic Games. Since intangible legacy is qualitative rather than quantitative, a reconsideration of the current research paradigm is also proposed. Research limitations/implications The study develops a new analytical device for the investigation of intangible legacies for specific publics such as NSO. Practical implications The study carries practical implications for Olympic and events/festival promoters as it allows defining and operationalising the key attributes of the concept. Originality/value This is the first study to conceptualise intangible legacy of mega events.International Olympic Committee (Olympic Studies Centre)

Impact of the final thermal sealing of combined zinc/cerium oxide protective coating primers formed on low carbon steel

The final sealing possesses a proven beneficial effect on the protective properties of anodic oxide films on aluminum. In this sense, the present research is devoted to the evaluation of the impact of this procedure on the barrier ability of combined Zn/Ce oxide layers deposited on low carbon steel samples. For this purpose, four samples were submitted to galvanic zinc deposition, followed by spontaneous formation of cerium oxide primer layer (CeOPL). Afterwards, two of the samples underwent thermal sealing in boiling water in order to enhance their barrier ability. Its evaluation was performed by two electrochemical methods: electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) and potentiodynamic scanning (PDS) after 24 hours of exposure to a diluted model corrosive medium (MCM). Other instrumental methods were used in order to describe the effect of this final procedure on the color characteristics and hydrophobicity of the films. The results were collected from multiple tests, followed by statistical data treatment. In addition, the surfaces of the obtained films were submitted to direct observation by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), coupled with energy dispersion X-ray (EDX). Their composition was determined by means of X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS). The acquired data have revealed a detrimental effect of the final sealing in boiling water. It was expressed by the loss of the barrier properties of the Zn/CeOPL films, combined with additional decolorization and hydrophilization. Finally, the mechanism of this detrimental effect was determined by further SEM, EDX and XPS analyses

Evaluation of the electrochemical performance of Ag containing AAO layers after extended exposure to a model corrosive medium

The coating procedure appears to be an indispensable finishing stage in the production of Al based industrial products, engineering facilities and equipment. For this reason, there is an ever-increasing interest towards the elaboration of reliable corrosion protective layers with apparent coverage, adhesion, and barrier properties. In this sense, both the for­ma­ti­on of anodized aluminum oxide (AAO) layer and its further modification with silver enable the elaboration of advanced (Al-O-Ag) films with extended beneficial charac­te­ris­tics. The present research activities are aimed at the determination of the corrosion pro­tective properties of electrochemically synthesized Al-O-Ag layers on the technically pure AA1050 alloy. The structures and compositions of the obtained Al-O-Ag layers were characterized by X-ray diffractometry (XRD) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The research activities were accomplished by means of two independent electrochemical characteri­za­tion methods: electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) and potentio­dynamic scan­ning (PDS). The electrochemical measurements were performed after 24, 168 and 672 hours of exposure to 3.5 % NaCl solution used as a model corrosive medium (MCM), in order to determine the barrier properties and durability of the elaborated Al-O-Ag layers. The analysis of the obtained results has undoubtedly shown that the proposed electro­chemical Al-O-Ag layer formation can successfully be used for the creation of self-standing layers with apparent corrosion protective properties. Besides, Al-O-Ag system can be used as a basis for development of efficient protective layers suitable for application in biologically contami­nated media.</p