Governance in Sport: A Scoping Review

Abstract

This article examines the current state of sport governance research within the field of sport management. In adopting Arksey and O'Malley's (2005) framework, a scoping review was conducted involving a comprehensive search of all published literature between 1980 and 2016.The process involved searching four electronic databases and a manual search of sport management journals. The search identified (n=243) journal articles that examined sport governance related issues. Findings are presented as a frequency and thematic analysis. The frequency analysis reveals a notable increase in sport governance research in recent years with a large number of non-empirical studies focused on the not-for-profit sector. The thematic analysis draws upon and extends Henry and Lee's (2004) three notions of governance and identifies sport governance-related topics, research contexts and social issues. Findings indicate that all three forms of governance (organizational, systemic, and political) have contributed to our understanding of sport governance but more empirical and theoretically driven research is needed.Keywords: sport governance, research methods, sport organisation governance GOVERNANCE IN SPORT: A SCOPING REVIEW Governance in Sport: A Scoping Review Governance in sport has become a central concern to sport management academics and practitioners in recent years as evidenced by the number of keynotes (e.g., Shilbury, 2015), special issues (e.g., Dolles & Söderman, 2011), and books (e.g., Hoye & Cuskelly, 2007;King, 2017) dedicated to examining sport governance issues. This interest has emerged, in part, from broader societal concerns surrounding governance (e.g., Enron scandal and the global economic crisis) but also due to recent high profile failures specifically within the context of sport (e.g., Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) and the Russian doping scandal). In general, the application of governance to the sport context sensitizes us to how sport organizations and systems are steered and controlled. Central to the concept of governance is the notion of power, where power lies within sport organizations and systems, and the extent to which power has shifted.Yet despite governance being recognized as a "paradigm-generating concept" (Bellamy & Palumbo, 2010, p. xii) that "has spawned a veritable cottage industry of its own" (Grix & Phillpots, 2011, p. 6), there has been no systematic attempt to capture the extent of this burgeoning literature base by either public administration, management or sport management scholars. It is also evident that despite much academic and practitioner interest in the concept of governance, definitional agreement within the broader public administration and management literature remains problematic. The concept of governance has been described as confusing (Kjaer, 2004), elusive (Pierre, 2000), and fuzzy (Colebatch, 2014), with its application to date being imprecise (Bevir, 2012) and with "too many meanings to be useful" (Rhodes, 1996, p. 660).Furthermo...

Design thinking and sport for development: enhancing organizational innovation

“…The Arksey and O'Malley framework has proven popular and durable, having already been successfully utilized in prior scoping studies in sport management and governance (e.g. Dowling, Leopkey, & Smith, 2018) as well as topic-specific SFD work (e.g. Gardam, Giles, & Hayhurst, 2017).…”

Stadium Attendance Demand Research: A Scoping Review

“…Further, these early reviews, despite their evident merits, have all been limited in scope, as they typically tend to focus on summarizing the robustness of some previously observed effects rather than to present a more holistic overview across the two disciplines. Intriguingly, conducting such a scoping review is still relatively rare in sports economics and/or management research (e.g., Dowling et al, 2018), despite its growth in popularity in loosely related fields such as public health and health care services research. 2 In sum, we observe that most authors, concentrating primarily on established sports such as baseball and football, have so far refrained from exploring numerous sporting environments, perhaps most notable niche and women's sports, both of which are likely to benefit significantly from understanding those factors shaping stadium attendance demand better.…”

Dispute resolution, legal reasoning and good governance: learning lessons from appeals on selection in sport

“…The term 'governance' has been recognised as being extremely difficult to define (Callahan, 2006;Dowling, Leopkey, & Smith, 2018); it can be used in a number of different ways with subtly different context dependent meanings and for different and specific purposes.…”

“…This is not to say that there are no studies that note the relevance of legal norms to organisational governance. Dowling, et al (2018) recognise legal norms have 'profound implications' for sports governance, and Bruyninckx (2012) has noted the relevance of the legal framework in the context of good governance. However, it seems to have been viewed outside the typical normative framework for considering good governance and is underdeveloped in that context.…”