New Article: Introducing public management and global sporting mega-events: public value, ecosystems, learning and temporality

We have authored (with Prof Michael Macaulay) a brand new article which serves as the introduction to a forthcoming special issue of the prestigious journal, Public Management Review. Read it here.

The issue will collect authors and studies from around the world; qualitative and quantitative, current, historic, and longitudinal. Each paper contributes to the understanding of public management in the context of global sporting mega-events, and vice versa. 

We will post about the full special issue when it is published later this year.

Foundations of Managing British Olympics: Institutions through Time featured on SBS Spotlight Blog

We have done a post on the book on the School for Business and Society's Spotlight blog!

Topics highlighted include how the 18th Century 'Grand Tour' inspired a revitalisation of the concept of the Olympic Games alongside the new educational ideology of muscular Christianity, which infused the public schools of 19th century England. We consider how this inspired the organsiation of sport, which then borrowed its legitimacy from the 19th century World's Fairs.  At first the Olympics were somewhat ad-hoc and ran parallel to them, but of course in time they would come to overtake them.

So to inspire your viewing of the Milan Cortina winter games which start on Friday, take a look at our post!

Access it here - https://blogs.york.ac.uk/sbs-spotlight/2026/02/03/foundations-of-managing-british-olympics-institutions-through-time/

New Book Out Now: Foundations of Managing British Olympics

 

It has been some time coming, but the first of our long promised books on the Olympics is finally here!

Foundations of Managing British Olympics: Institutions Through Time charts how the British contributed to the development of the Olympic Games as an institution, and how they did this through the development of competitive sport through the nineteenth and early twentieth century.

This intriguing new volume tells the story of how the first modern Olympic revival happened and the role that British sporting movements and administrators played in its success. The book takes the reader from the earliest Olympic revivals in England to London being awarded the hosting rights for the London 1908 games.

To do this we drew on a broad range of research materials - among them archives belonging to the IOC, the British Olympic Associaton, FIFA, the National Football Museum, the English Amateur Atheltics Association, the collections of Lord Desborough, and numerous newspapers.

This volume will be of considerable interest to research academics working on aspects of 19th and early 20th century British, European and World History, including sport, social, business, management, economic and political history.

It is out from today in print direct from Emerald or your favourite bookseller - or also as an eBook or ePub.  Ideal for Christmas, or if you work or study at a universiity perhaps consider getting your academic library to subscribe to the electronic version.

This book is the latest in our series Frontiers of Management History which focuses on new and innovative histories. If you have a book idea connected to the history of business, management or organizations then please get in touch with us.

This is not the last we will do on this topic - watch this space for future releases!

Olympic Soccer is Kicking Off!

Today the first games of the Olympic Soccer Tournament are taking place across Japan. Postponed since 2020 it feels a huge relief that they are actually here, and from a spectator point of view, so hot on the heals of the regional championships (from our European perspective, the UEFA Euros) it feels like a summer feast of football.

Rather than individual Home Nations, for the second time ever there is a combined Team GB for women's game, although there will be no men's team. 

Team GB had a great start at 8.30am this morning (GMT) beating Chile 2-0. 

Elsewhere Australia beat neighbours New Zealand 2-1, Netherlands won 10-3 (yes ten-three!!!!!) versus Zambia, but most surprisingly of all Sweden won against the USA by a clear 3-0 margin. That the USA lost is a slight surprise, but for Sweden to do so in such a confident manner was not predicted.

Team GB next play on Saturday 24th July  in a big game against hosts Japan, before completing the group stage next Tuesday 27th July.

Historically, The USA won inaugural Olympic Gold for women's soccer and have tended to dominate it ever since. But the Olympic Football tournament more broadly dates back to 1900 when an Amateur Great British mens team won Gold, and in fact won it again in two out of the next three editions (the exception being 1904). So, Great Britain does have genuine Olympic Gold heritage. 

So, after 109 years of hurt, it's time that gold came home! Come on Team GB!

Olympic Gold: Feeling Homesick?

FACTOID: Why no men's team in 2012? The BBC website perhaps articulates it best:

"In 2012, when London was hosting, Team GB put forward a men's team for the first time. But subsequent attempts to re-form in 2016 were shelved after the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish football associations didn't back the plans and they haven't been tried again. Because of England's failure to get out of the groups at the Under-21 Euros, Team GB wouldn't have qualified anyway."

Written Evidence for DCMS Committee Inquiry on Major Cultural and Sporting Events

We have had a short report included within the Digital, Media, Culture and Sport Committee's inquiry on major cultural and sporting events.

In the report we provide evidence based on our extensive research of global sporting mega-events such as the Olympic Games and the FIFA World Cup, and England's (as well as UK's broader) experience as hosts.

Our particular report can be downloaded as a pdf file here or viewed as html here

We are thrilled to have been included within the small group of experts whose reports were chosen to be included within the evidence base.

The inquiry examines the role of major cultural and sporting events in celebrating the UK’s national identity. Several events of international importance are due to be hosted in the UK in 2022, prompting this inquiry by MPs. 

The inquiry considers the challenges in the road ahead to the Festival UK* 2022, the start of the FIFA World Cup 2030 bidding process and the Commonwealth Games, among others. 

A key focus will be how the Government is using these events as opportunities to define what the UK means to both its citizens and the rest of the world. 

The Committee sought views on what is needed for these events to bring together the people and values of all four nations of the UK and the kind of impact they should aim to achieve. 

New Article Alert: Sport and Project Management

Greetings!

We are pleased to announce a new book chapter that we have authored has been published.

The paper entitled "Sport and project management: a window into the development of temporary organizations" is included as a chapter within the Handbook of Research on Management and Organizational History, published by Edward Elgar Publications as part of their 'Research Handbooks on Business & Management' Series. 

Abstract:

The historical study of project-based industries allows largely unexploited opportunities for empirical, methodological and theoretical contributions to the field of management history. McDowell (2015) and Scranton (2014) demonstrate that the study of projects can enable an understanding of temporary and virtual organizations that link together multiple agencies each contributing to an overall value or ‘legacy’ comprising outputs and outcomes. This chapter proposes that researching global or continental scale sport mega-event projects can capture these attributes, for example the delivery and associated long-term legacy of the Olympic Games or FIFA World Cup. Project management history therefore offers a window into the delivery of a project as well as a broader opportunity to study the ways that organizations and individuals within them cooperate to deliver outcomes allowing management historians to contribute to debates around the usefulness of such events to society, as well as the institutional context within which they are nested.



The reference details are as follows:

The Chapter:

Gillett, A.G. and Tennent, K.D., 2020. Sport and project management: a window into the development of temporary organizations. In Handbook of Research on Management and Organizational History. Edward Elgar Publishing. 

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.4337/9781788118491.00016

About the book:

Emerging from what was a somewhat staid sub-discipline, there is currently a battle for the soul of Management and Organizational History (MOH), at the centre of which is a widespread concern that much recent work has been more about how one should or might do history rather than actually doing historical work. If ever there was a time for a new volume on MOH, this is certainly it.

The Handbook, which is edited by Kyle Bruce, comprises many interesting and useful chapter clustered into three sections. Part 1 is concerned with 'Classic Foundations', Part 2 gives a platform to 'Alternative Voices' and Part 3 is 'About History'.

Our Chapter is located within Part 2.

Published:

1 April 2020

ISBN:

9781788118484

eISBN:

9781788118491

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.4337/9781788118491

Pages:

 320

Foundations of Managing Sporting Events: Organizing the 1966 FIFA World Cup

Our book 'Foundations of Managing Sporting Events: Organizing the 1966 FIFA World Cup' was recently published by Routledge, as part of their International Studies in Business History series.

The book has been read by academics and non-academics, including individuals from the world of sport. Feedback has so far been excellent, across the board.

More information can be found at the publisher's website here.