Culture Change in Elite Sport Performance Teams: Examining and Advancing Effectiveness in the New Era

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

“…Nonetheless, the foundation and orientation of many organizational change management models appear to limit their potential to inform culture change in professional sport performance teams. Specifically, organizational-based knowledge has been restricted by many non-empirical, atheoretical, esoteric, n-step, and self-promoting studies (as space precludes detailed discussion of these challenges here, please see reviews and arguments in Cruickshank & Collins, 2012a, 2012bCruickshank et al, 2013b;du Gay & Vikkelsø, 2012;Sorge & Witteloostuijn, 2004;Wetzel & Van Gorp, 2014). As such, leading organizational scholars have called for a philosophically and methodologically refined approach to future study in the management of change (du Gay & Vikkelsø, 2012;Pettigrew, 2012;Van de Ven & Sun, 2011;Wetzel & Van Gorp, 2014).…”

Culture Change in a Professional Sports Team: Shaping Environmental Contexts and Regulating Power

“…Indeed, as formal conceptualisation of elite team culture change has only recently arrived, present guidance on this change management process is almost only available from business fields [cf. 2,6]. Due to major methodological limitations within this latter line of enquiry alongside the hazards of applying business-based culture change solution to sports team performance settings [6], initial literature has therefore identified the need for domain-specific study into the processes and mechanisms of successful professional team culture change [2].…”

“…Helping lay foundations for the conceptual and practical development of elite team culture change, Cruickshank and Collins [2] recently applied contemporary theorising in sport psychology, social psychology, and organisational studies to define team culture as "a dynamic process characterised by the shared values, beliefs, expectations and practices across the members and generations of a defined group" [p. 340]. Using this definition as a theoretical basis, the same authors subsequently conceptualised elite team culture change as the management-led establishment of shared and group-regulated values, perceptions, and behaviours across the performance department which persist over time and facilitate enduring high performance [2].…”

“…Helping lay foundations for the conceptual and practical development of elite team culture change, Cruickshank and Collins [2] recently applied contemporary theorising in sport psychology, social psychology, and organisational studies to define team culture as "a dynamic process characterised by the shared values, beliefs, expectations and practices across the members and generations of a defined group" [p. 340]. Using this definition as a theoretical basis, the same authors subsequently conceptualised elite team culture change as the management-led establishment of shared and group-regulated values, perceptions, and behaviours across the performance department which persist over time and facilitate enduring high performance [2]. As a tangible applied activity, culture change is also: context-dependent (i.e., dependent upon performers and support staffs' agreement and/or accordance with change); context-shaped (i.e., shaped by the needs and opinions of high ego/status performers, diverse support staff, outcome-occupied Board, emotionallyattached fans, and sensationalising media); and context-specific (i.e., specific to the unfolding scenarios of manager takeover at a team with bespoke history, traditions, resources, and stakeholder expectations).…”

“…While high performing cultures are central to the sustained success of professional sport performance teams, sport psychology currently offers limited understanding on how they can be actualised [1,2]. Acknowledging the pan-continent 'sacking pandemic', whereby professional team managers are regularly fired for failing to deliver consistent results in short order [3][4][5], this knowledge gap in culture change delivery is a notable constraint in the optimisation of team performance and managerial longevity.…”