Building legitimacy at Sport Canada: pitfalls of public value creation?

Abstract

Legitimacy building is an increasingly recognized feature of bureaucratic practice under networked governance. Mark Moore's (1995) model of 'public value creation' captures the strategic imperative to build credibility, legitimacy and support for policies and programmes in this context. As an emerging 'narrative' in public organizations, it combines perspectives on managerial and political leadership and is therefore useful to explain bureaucratic experiences with legitimacy building and their implications for policy. This article investigates the efforts of Canada's federal sport agency to secure legitimacy and explores the implications of public value creation on future policymaking. Drawing from interview data as well as public and internal documents, the study outlines Sport Canada's initiatives to establish sport's 'benefits', collaborate widely and add value in terms of equity and ethics. Two related implications (or storylines) are considered and discussed: (a) the tendency for public value creation to reduce the policy sector to anecdotal understandings in the eyes of political authorizers, and (b) the propensity for building public value to result in over-commitment due to the accumulation and embedding of new collaborations, mandates and target populations. Points for practitionersMark Moore's 'public value' approach resonates with practitioners because of its realist portrayal of politics in public administration. Generating support and legitimacy for existing or proposed policies and programmes is acknowledged to be particularly important in contexts where networks are prevalent. This article investigates legitimacy building within federal sport, a sector which has been reliant on networked governance since its inception and where substantive efforts have been aimed at raising its profile. The case cautions against persistent case-building and public value creation because continuous justifications may ultimately raise questions regarding the credibility of bureaucratic advice and of the likely success of programme commitments.

The Modernization of Policy-Making Processes in National Sport Organizations: A Case Study of Athletics Canada

“…More specifically, our analysis built upon the works of Green and Houlihan (2005) to examine the consequences of modernization over a ten year period (2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012), and in doing so, contributes an in-depth empirical case study to the small but growing body of literature that has examined the reforms of amateur sport organizations in recent years (e.g., Adams, 2011;Grix, 2009;Houlihan & Green, 2009;Sam, 2009Sam, , 2011. In relation to limitations and directions for future research, it is acknowledged that this investigation did not originally set out to study the consequences of NSO reform.…”

“…Adams, 2011;Green & Houlihan, 2005, 2006Grix, 2009;Grix & Parker, 2011;Houlihan & Green, 2009;Sam, 2009Sam, , 2011 even despite the concept's lack of precision. This is not to suggest that the concept of modernization is meaningless.…”

“…Second, and in building on previous scholarship, this investigation provides a more detailed understanding of how these broader sociopolitical shifts (such as modernization) are influencing the specific decision-making processes of NSOs. Previous scholarship has adopted a broader analytical focus by attempting to examine and understand the nature of these socio-political influences on, for example, governmental agencies (e.g., Houlihan & Green, 2009;Sam, 2011) or to explain the overall decline of a particular sport (Grix & Parker, 2011) rather than focusing specifically on the consequences of such reforms on the managerial and decision-making practices of sport organizations further down the delivery chain (i.e. NSOs, clubs etc.).…”

Tensions and contradictions in sport’s quest for legitimacy as a political actor: the politics of Swedish public sport policy hearings

“…Research elsewhere notes that multiple claims potentially result in the addition of new mandates and/or in the cycling of policy objectives (cf. Sam 2011, Sam andRonglan 2016).…”

“…On the other hand, an increasing use of civil society organisations for welfare delivery make state actors more reliant on the expertise and legitimacy harboured by these organisations, thus promoting their role as 'insiders' in public policy processes (e.g. Casey 2003, Casey and Dalton 2006, Jenkins 2006, Bar-Nir and Gal 2011, Sam 2011, Almog-Bar and Schmid 2014, Meier and Fuchs 2014. Perhaps in recognition of this reliance, political parties in the United Kingdom (UK) and New Zealand, for example, now include sport as part of their election manifestos (cf.…”