Sustainable development principles in U.S. sport management graduate programs

Abstract

This study assesses the engagement of academic programs in sport management with global problems by using the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals as a proxy measure of these problems, and gauges the degree to which sport management programs are positioning themselves as providers of knowledge and expertise in the area of sustainable development. To this end, the authors examined the program descriptions, learning outcomes and curricula of 84 graduate programs in sport management or closely related fields at 65 R1 universities in the United States. Using inductive thematic analysis, they identified seven themes that are shared across multiple program curricula. The seven themes were labeled: sport sociology and sport ethics; globalization and economic growth; sport for development and peace; health; climate, environment and sustainability; gender; and inequality, discrimination and social justice. The overall results indicate that the discipline has coalesced around a key set of skills and content areas. This standardization may come at the expense of adaptability and responsiveness to changes in sport and in society. Academic programs are generally unwilling to depart from a twentieth-century model of education built around a supposition that the sport manager's primary responsibilities are revenue generation and liability mitigation. As the unsustainability of late capitalism becomes increasingly difficult to ignore, students and educators will find it correspondingly complicated to reconcile the contradiction between sport-as-business-enterprise and the notion that sport itself can contribute to social or moral development. This long-standing compromising attitude and failure to acknowledge the need for wholesale change will only require much more disruptive and perhaps radical reform in the future. Faced with pressure from various stakeholders, many sport organizations employ sustainability units or departments. Although imperfect, these efforts often exceed those made by academic programs.

How Higher Education Institutions Walk Their Talk on the 2030 Agenda: A Systematic Literature Review

“…They often prioritize the dominant SDGs based on the different field/courses and future job profiles, as well as incorporate general sustainability concerns (e.g., gender equity and poverty) into coursework (Baena-Morales et al, 2020;Castro et al, 2020;Gómez-Llanos and Durán-Barroso, 2020;Manolis and Manoli, 2021;Orozco-Messana et al, 2020a, b;Perales Jarillo et al, 2019). The studies that consider all SDGs involve the application of innovative solutions and technologies (i.e., course-tailored and scaffolded methods), along with the redesign of majors and courses to integrate SDGs (Adach-Pawelus et al, 2021;Ashraf and Alanezi, 2020;Ličen and Jedlicka, 2020;Priyadarshini and Abhilash, 2020;Useh, 2021) Table 3 summarizes the main takeaways from the literature on teaching and SDGs at the micro-level.…”

An evaluation of the environmental values, beliefs, norms, and behaviors of sport management students in higher education institutions

“…Similarly, graduate students may have attended a variety of sport events and taken part in sustainable initiatives promoted by the sport organization at the event. Also, graduate students in sport management programs often obtain assistantships in the athletic or campus recreation departments (Ličen and Jedlicka, 2022), thus possibly having experience with some of the campus sustainability efforts. Furthermore, graduate students on teaching assistantships are often assigned to teach undergraduate classes and some of these classes are with a sustainability focus.…”

Professionalism in Sports Administration: a Literature Review

“…According to Ličen & Jedlicka (2020) the initial endeavors to describe and comprehend the concept of professionalism were commenced by social researchers. Cunningham et al These perspectives have been criticized with their heavy dependence on professionalism occupational scales (Happonen & Minashkina 2019, Razak et al, 2019.…”