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

Paper published in Journal of Management History

Now that the World Cup is over and summer is coming to an end, we at Soccer Mad Boffins think it a good time to reflect on a few achievements from the past few months.

As usual, we shall publish a summary of all our summer speaking events and conferences soon, but before that we'd like to bring your attention to a paper published recently in the Journal of Management History, in which we look at the institutional logic of professional soccer clubs and how attempts to work with local government were frustrated by the particular character of professional sport, using the near-bankruptcy of Middlesbrough football club in the 1980s as a case study.

In the paper we propose two concepts: 'Shadow Hybridity' and 'Institutional Logic of Professional Sport' which extend existing theories about organizational hybridity and also institutional logic.  

The paper should be of interest to anyone studying these areas, as well as sports and public management more generally.

The paper can be found by clicking on this link although you or your institution will need a subscription to the journal in order to read it.


Here is the full abstract and citation details:

Purpose

Existing studies of the finance of English Association Football (soccer) have tended to focus on the sport’s early years, or on the post-1992 Premiership era. The authors examine a case from the turbulent 1980s charting the struggle for economic survival of one club in a rapidly changing financial, economic, political and demographic landscape. The purpose of this paper is to examine not only the financial management of a football club during this time, but also the interventionist role of the local authority during this turbulent period.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors investigate the financial difficulties of a sport business, Middlesbrough Football and Athletic Company Limited, examining the broader economic context, drawing on unseen archival sources dating from the 1980s to analyze the relationship between club, local and national government and the regional economy.

Findings

They not only examine the financial management of the football club but also analyse the interventionist role of the local authority in supporting the club which had symbolic value for the local community.

Practical implications

This paper is relevant to policymakers interested in the provision of local sports facilities and the links between elite sport and participation.

Originality/value

The authors show that professional sports clubs are driven by a different institutional logic to state organizations and the findings enable them to define these differences, thereby refining Thornton et al.’s (2012) typology of institutional orders. Furthermore, the case study highlights practices involving informal partnership between state and sport that the authors label as shadow hybridity.

Keywords:

Cross-sector collaboration, Institutional logic, Hybrid organizations, Professional sport, Public sector intervention

Citation:

Alex G. Gillett, Kevin D. Tennent, (2018) "Shadow hybridity and the institutional logic of professional sport: Perpetuating a sporting business in times of rapid social and economic change", Journal of Management History, Vol. 24 Issue: 2, pp.228-259, https://doi.org/10.1108/JMH-11-2017-0060