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Copyright © 2012. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Organizational Culture and Identity: Sport, Symbols and Success : Sport, Symbols and Success, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2012.

Copyright © 2012. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Organizational Culture and Identity: Sport, Symbols and Success : Sport, Symbols and Success, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2012.

FOCUS ON CIVILIZATIONS AND CULTURES

ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE AND IDENTITY SPORT, SYMBOLS AND SUCCESS

Copyright © 2012. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

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Organizational Culture and Identity: Sport, Symbols and Success : Sport, Symbols and Success, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2012.

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Organizational Culture and Identity: Sport, Symbols and Success : Sport, Symbols and Success, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2012.

FOCUS ON CIVILIZATIONS AND CULTURES

ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE AND IDENTITY SPORT, SYMBOLS AND SUCCESS

AARON C. T. SMITH BOB K. STEWART AND Copyright © 2012. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

GERVASE HAIMES

Nova Science Publishers, Inc. New York

Organizational Culture and Identity: Sport, Symbols and Success : Sport, Symbols and Success, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2012.

Copyright © 2012 by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means: electronic, electrostatic, magnetic, tape, mechanical photocopying, recording or otherwise without the written permission of the Publisher. For permission to use material from this book please contact us: Telephone 631-231-7269; Fax 631-231-8175 Web Site: http://www.novapublishers.com NOTICE TO THE READER The Publisher has taken reasonable care in the preparation of this book, but makes no expressed or implied warranty of any kind and assumes no responsibility for any errors or omissions. No liability is assumed for incidental or consequential damages in connection with or arising out of information contained in this book. The Publisher shall not be liable for any special, consequential, or exemplary damages resulting, in whole or in part, from the readers’ use of, or reliance upon, this material. Any parts of this book based on government reports are so indicated and copyright is claimed for those parts to the extent applicable to compilations of such works.

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Independent verification should be sought for any data, advice or recommendations contained in this book. In addition, no responsibility is assumed by the publisher for any injury and/or damage to persons or property arising from any methods, products, instructions, ideas or otherwise contained in this publication. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information with regard to the subject matter covered herein. It is sold with the clear understanding that the Publisher is not engaged in rendering legal or any other professional services. If legal or any other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent person should be sought. FROM A DECLARATION OF PARTICIPANTS JOINTLY ADOPTED BY A COMMITTEE OF THE AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION AND A COMMITTEE OF PUBLISHERS. Additional color graphics may be available in the e-book version of this book.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Organizational culture and identity : sport, symbols and success / editors, Aaron C.T. Smith, Bob K. Stewart, Gervase A. Haimes. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 978-1-62100-301-4 (E-Book) 1. Sports--Social aspects. 2. Sports administration. 3. Organizational sociology. I. Smith, Aaron, 1972- II. Stewart, Bob K. III. Haimes, Gervase A. GV706.5.O74 2011 306.483--dc23 2011032393

Published by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. † New York

Organizational Culture and Identity: Sport, Symbols and Success : Sport, Symbols and Success, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2012.

CONTENTS Chapter 1

Exploring Sport Culture

Chapter 2

Understanding Sport Culture

19

Chapter 3

Contextualizing Sport Culture

45

Chapter 4

Conceptualizing Sport Culture

73

Chapter 5

Identifying Sport Culture

93

Chapter 6

Hardwiring Sport Culture

125

Chapter 7

Practicing Sport Culture

139

Chapter 8

Transmitting Sport Culture

171

Chapter 9

Cultivating Sport Culture

191

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Index

Organizational Culture and Identity: Sport, Symbols and Success : Sport, Symbols and Success, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2012.

1

203

Copyright © 2012. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Organizational Culture and Identity: Sport, Symbols and Success : Sport, Symbols and Success, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2012.

Chapter 1

EXPLORING SPORT CULTURE

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INTRODUCTION This book is for readers who want to not only destroy the tyranny of tradition that keeps many organizations in the managerial dark-ages, but also transform clubs, associations, agencies and businesses into something of greater value. It provides instructions on how to create cultures that deliver strong attachments and high performance. However, our task is not as simple as it appears, since culture and its mirror image identity, are slippery concepts, and present many challenges to anyone who wants to tackle them head-on. With the above points in mind, we need to secure an early agreement on exactly what constitutes culture and identity, and how they work, before we proceed any further. To get the record straight at the beginning, we arguethat organizational culture and identity comprise the shared values, beliefs and assumptions that influence the attitudes, habits, customs and behavior of an organization’s members (Schein, 1985). Culture and identity also have a private and a public dimension since they reflect the internal and external perceptions of an organization. Examining an organization’s culture and identity can be a demanding exercise, but it is worth the effort since it enables a better understanding of how groups, or subcultures within them, behave and work together, and consequently how others perceive them. The significance of culture and identity has intensified since the 1980s, when the concepts first flourished, because they shape the mechanisms through which organizations adapt to and resist changes in the environment, and either enhance or squander opportunities to obtain any competitive advantage. All organizations are embedded with one type of culture or another, even when dysfunctional or in disarray. In fact, under-performing organizations notoriously covet old traditions and customs, even when faced with marginalization at best, or irrelevance at worst. Culture operates as the underlying force preserving old ways of doing things. Culture is like the elephant in the room. Everyone knows it is there, everyone knows it is shaping the agenda, but no one wants to talk about it, much less try to change it. This book explores the role played by organizational culture in sport, and explains its development, expression and potency. While we focus on sport culture, our explanations and interpretations apply equally to all forms of organization. Culture can be a repository for crazy beliefs under the guise of historical truth and wisdom passed down through the ages. It can also be a recipe for redundancy and chronic

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Aaron C. T. Smith, Bob Stewart, and Gervase Haimes

failure. Not all cultures deliver good outcomes, even those renowned for their strength and resilience. In reality, old cultures can often be disastrous cultures. Moreover, dysfunctional cultures can be so embedded within an organization’s identity—that is, the ways they see themselves—that nothing seems to be able to change them. For the outside observer the amount of effort that some organizations invest into preserving old identities does not make sense. On the other hand, appropriate cultures drive performance, leverage powerful histories and change quickly in turbulent conditions. Sport organizations with great cultures find ways of winning because drive and ambition lies at the heart of their identities. This book aims to assist the reader in diagnosing culture and lay bare its underlying beliefs and assumptions. It will also show how sport cultures can be reinvented, rebuilt and redesigned so that they create a productive, high performance environment. Organizational culture and identity provide an understanding of how and why an organization does things, the way the people within the organization behave, and the perceptions held sovereign by stakeholders. Put another way, culture provides a means by which an organization’s members interpret the way things are done, and what happens in daily working life. It governs individual actions and behavior including how others, both inside and outside the organization, regard individuals. The examination of organizational culture as an avenue for understanding complex social phenomenon has generated great interest from both theorists and practitioners. This widespread interest in culture reflects a need to ascertain the degree to which organizational components may be manipulated, thus providing leaders and managers with the opportunity to create better quality, more productive, profitable, and sustainable enterprises. It is within the desire to understand more about the functioning of organizations that the concept of organizational culture has taken shape. Just as nations have cultures that influence their citizens, organizations have cultures that shape their members’ behaviors. However, sport organizational culture has proven to be elusive in diagnosis and impact. The goal of assessing and changing sport culture in a systematic and value-enhancing way motivates this book’s production. All organizations possess cultures, but some are stronger than others, and these cultures can exert a powerful influence on individual behavior and organizational outcomes. Given the emergence of sport business as an independent discipline of theoretical study, in concert with a growing body of literature demonstrating sport’s peculiar economies, one argument suggests that sport cultures may possess unique characteristics. We share this view and argue that the key to successful sport culture lies with understanding how it is created, transmitted, maintained, and challenged within a specific context. In short, we present in this book a theory or template outlining how to cultivate a fit between culture and identity, and between identity and the environment, because a tighter alignment means, all other things being equal, improved performance. In this opening chapter we lay the foundations of our analysis of organizational culture in general, and sport culture in particular. These foundations underpin our analytical frame, which centers on the idea of a ‘culture escalator’. We scale the escalator to secure a deeper understanding of the concept, a feel for how it can be mapped, and a clue as to how it can be changed. We begin by explaining how the organizational culture concept first emerged. Following on, we connect sport culture to values as well as to a broader cultural context. In the penultimate part of this chapter, we introduce the notion of identity, which plays a pivotal

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Exploring Sport Culture

3

role in the expression of culture and the way we argue that it should be approached. Finally, some key concepts commonly wielded throughout this book will receive attention.

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THE ‘ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE’ CONCEPT It is in the field of anthropology that the concept of culture has been developed most fully. Anthropologists set themselves the task of investigating, interpreting and translating the behavioral and social patterns of groups by trying to understand the manner in which they relate to their environment. Modern organizational theorists have been relatively slow in picking up on the anthropological concept of culture, however the notion first seriously entered the management literature in the form of an article by Andrew Pettigrew in 1979 entitled On Studying Organizational Cultures (Pettigrew, 1979). Many organizational researchers have difficulty in conceptualizing culture, predominantly because they are influenced by the traditional views of organizational theory, in which observable behaviors both dominate and camouflage underlying values and motivations. They have, nonetheless, addressed and assessed diverse elements of culture. These elements vary in their subjectivity in addition to their observability and availability to both researchers and organization members.In effect, widely variable types of information on cultures have been sought in an effort to garner knowledge about the way in which organizations function. Although elements of commonality exist concerning how researchers conceive and define culture in organizations, much inconsistency and controversy can still be found in the literature. As a basic example, one of the pioneers of culture, Schein (1997) invoked a more psycho-dynamic view claiming culture as an unconscious phenomenon; a deeper level of basic assumptions and beliefs where conscious beliefs represent artifacts and symbolic representations. Schein discards the superficial focusing instead on the unconsciously held fundamental concepts of right or wrong that an organization might interpret as correct or incorrect values. These values are painstakingly built up by organizational members as they gradually learn to interact and achieve their collective and individual aims. Ouchi (1981), in contrast, sought a more materialist view where artifacts and tangible items, such as the office landscape, are seen not just as the physical manifestations of the existing culture, but also as important parts of the culture itself. While organizational culture has been defined in a variety of ways, a number of themes recur. First, culture is inflexible; second it is determined by the members of an organization; third it is shared by members of an organization; and finally, while its influence on behavior can be profound, its core assumptions are frequently hidden from most organizational members (see for example, Hofstede, Neuijen, Ohayv & Sanders, 1990; Kilman, Saxton & Serpa, 1985; LanganFox & Tan, 1997; Reichers & Schneider, 1990; Schein, 1997; Siehl & Martin, 1990). For our purposes, and following on from Schein’s analysis, we believe that as a working definition, organizational culture may be considered a collection of fundamental values and attitudes common to members of a social group, and which set the behavioral standards or norms for all members (Ogbonna & Harris, 2002a; Pettigrew, 1979). The variability in perspectives on organizational culture ranges from an interest in the most easily perceived and visibly apparent artifacts such as the environment, architecture,

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technology, and audible behavior, to its deep psychological manifestations. Some researchers and practitioners tend to target a particular element of culture, describing what remains as insignificant, or existing only as a symptom of the ‘deeper’ phenomenon. Beyer and Trice (1993), for example, argued that organizational rites are the richest, and some of the deepest sources of cultural understanding, and consider all other cultural manifestations as superficial. Drucker (1992) would have disagreed, advocating that an analysis of organizational habits is more revealing. Morgan (1986) offered another view showing the ways in which metaphors have been used to examine organizations, and proposed that metaphors illuminate distinctive cultural patterns. A different approach again was taken by Pedersen and Sorensen (1989) who viewed culture as simultaneously: an analytical tool for the researcher; a managerial key-tool to improve economic output; a tool of change; and as a cognitive sense-making tool for organizational members. These four approaches to studying organizational cultures interrelate, indicative of the way in which researchers often combine different perspectives, assuming that the value of the concept is not confined to diagnosis as it offers insight into organizational behavior. The notion that culture—if it is to be of any significant value—must be appropriate to the environment or context in which the organization functions represents another recurring theme throughout culture studies and one that we develop in some detail as part of the fit between identity and context. Culture can therefore be used to shape the values, expectations, assumptions and norms of employees, prescribing the behavior of the organization. It is uncontroversial, and even somewhat banalto claim that the appropriateness of culture links with organizational success. Less understood, however, are the elements of culture that might be best manipulated in order to maximize performance. This issue constitutes the principle interest of our book. In addition to the appropriateness of a culture, the idea of culture strength has also been associated with performance. Strength refers to the intensity or pervasiveness of the culture. It has been argued that strong cultures lead to appealing outcomes such as unity, commitment and coordination, thus contributing to enhanced organizational performance. However, strong organizational culture can prove to be a liability when it does not align with the context of its operating environment. Thus, strong cultures must additionally be appropriate for performance to be positively affected. Both empirical and popular management literatures have argued that culture impacts organizations significantly, in particular, the behaviors and motivations of its employees, its response to change, and ultimately its success (Detert, Schroeder, & Mauriel, 2000). Culture has also been related to creativity and innovation (Subramanian & Ashkanasy, 2001), as well as employee commitment, cooperation, efficiency, job performance and decision-making (Goodman, Zammuto, & Gifford, 2001). One of the troublesome issues associated with diagnosing organizational culture comes with the intuitive interchangeability of terms used to describe it, from references to collective ‘mental programming’ to broad notions of ‘values’ and ‘beliefs’. Some culture researchers such as Hofstede (1998a) argue that all these different terms do not mean the same thing. Hofstede (1998b) provided an inventory of 51 terms that can be used to describe what he calls the mental programs of individuals and their collective display. Three of the most common terms are attitudes, beliefs and mores. The two terms employed in our earlier working definition of organizational culture were values and attitudes.

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An attitude indicates a relatively enduring collection of beliefs around an object or situation predisposing an individual to respond in some preferential manner (Hofstede, 1998a). A value, on the other hand, reflects a broad tendency to prefer certain states over others (Hofstede, 1998a). For Hofstede (1991), these elements contribute to a view that organizational culture is a kind of mental programming that differentiates members of one organization from another. This definition holds consistency with Ogbonna and Harris (2002a) and Pettigrew (1979). But these definitions only take us so far. Next, we need to consider what is already known about organizational culture in general, and sport organizational culture in particular. But, before interrogating these ideas, we need to reflect on some studies that have been done on culture and the workplace, culture and industry, and culture and national identity.

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THE HISTORICAL MAP: CULTURE AS CONTEXT Metaphors can provide a useful way of examining organizations. Morgan (1986) proposed that organizations operate as mini-societies possessing their own distinctive patterns of cultures and sub-cultures. This close-knit group both create, and become subject to, what Morgan termed ‘corporate culture’. Organizational members are influenced by common patterns of belief, shared meanings, codes of conduct, and operating standards; that is, the cultural context in which they work and behave. Morgan suggested that an effective method of appreciating the nature of an organization’s culture is to simply observe its day-to-day functioning from an outsider’s perspective. The dominant character of the culture will become evident, as patterns of behavior, language, themes, images, and rituals appear, thereby illuminating actions and events that have taken place, and been subject to a process of reality construction. An individual’s perception of this reality provides meaning and understanding for their own behavior. An organization, therefore, performs within a shared reality. It is this construction of reality that fundamentally shapes culture. Organizational structure, rules, policies, goals, missions, job descriptions, and work procedures provide primary points of reference for the way employees perceive the contexts in which they work. In addition, every aspect within an organization contains a rich symbolic meaning. Symbolic meaning offers one of the strengths of the culture metaphor, because it directs attention to the significance of every manifestation of organizational life, including the ostensibly irrational. According to Morgan, the culture metaphor stimulates deeper insights other approaches hide from view. It provides a focus for action, and assists in the interpretation of organization-environment relations. Strategy formulation changes as well with culture providing ‘normative glue’ holding the organization together and illuminating processes of organizational change. Once an organization comes to appreciate why it responds with particular and predictable behaviors to certain stimuli, it can take measures to manipulate how it functions in future situations. As a result, organizational culture, and the context it mirrors, delivers a powerful tool of change-management.

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CULTURE AND SPORT ORGANIZATIONS To Hinings and Greenwood (1988), ideas and beliefs within an organization connect with its systems and structures. They contended that the core values held within an organization drive strategic change. Similarly, Slack and Thibault (1988) determined that structural elements in organizations closely align with their core values. Taking one step further, Kikulis, Slack and Hinings (1992) and Cousens (1997), showed how organizations can be distinguished on the basis of a combination of institutionalized values and structures; culture and change remain locked together. Of course, we should also be wary of how core cultural values obstruct or constrain change. While the links between values and change have been established, little research has specifically investigated sporting cultures. In one of the earliest examples, Pawlak (1984) examined the organizational culture of three sports associations: the Polish Judo Association, the Polish Weightlifting Association, and the Polish Kayaking Association. He subsequently identified three predominant values imposed on the organizations by the senior management, which were encapsulated into three fundamental goals: sport success, the development of discipline, and increasing participation. These values were then linked to the associations’ management processes, where primary importance was attributed to the centralization of decisions, efficient information dissemination and decision-making processes, and tight organizational structure. Once again, the organizational components inextricably connected with cultural identity, working reciprocally to both enable and constrain performance. Another comprehensive and seminal sporting culture study was undertaken by Lee (1989), involving the analysis of leadership style, strategy, and organizational culture, as well as their relationship with sporting success. Not surprisingly, the results showed that specific cultural practices were important for successful sporting performance. Cultures that integrated the values of competitiveness and teamwork were deemed advantageous, as was an environment that encouraged strategic thinking. In similar work, Scott (1997), linked organizational culture to the management of intercollegiate athletic organizations and acknowledged the importance of what he termed ‘democratic ideals’ in high-performance ‘positive’ cultures. Yet another study reinforced the importance of organizational culture to success in a US intercollegiate sport setting (Smart & Wolfe, 2000). Their study of Pennsylvania State University’s Football program isolated its source of competitive advantage as the history, relationships, and trust of its coaching department, all embedded within a performance-driven culture. In the Australian sporting context, Smith and Stewart (1995) concluded that success in a professional sporting club is linked to characteristically masculine, achievement-oriented, and disciplined cultures, all within an environment rewarding collective identity over individual self-interest. At the same time, the club struggled to maintain performance, wrestling with a culture placing little value on long-term planning. As we shall see, any organization more comfortable with the familiar than the new, will struggle to accommodate the rapidly changing sporting environment. More recently, Colyer (2000) employed a competing values model to develop cultural profiles for selected sporting organizations in Western Australia. While differences in a suite of important values offer a useful method to compare organizations’ cultures (see Quinn &

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Exploring Sport Culture

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Spreitzer, 1991; Quinn & Rohrbaugh, 1981; 1983) the method struggles to incorporate national cultural pressures and the indigenous idiosyncrasies of specific sporting sectors.

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NATIONAL AND INDUSTRY CULTURE The influence of industry macro cultures and national culture on understanding organizational culture has revealed important variables that need to be accommodated in management practice. Most studies of national culture have relied on Hofstede’s (2001) research detailing cultural dimensions explaining behavioral differences in corporations. For example, Hayton et al. (2002) reinforced the importance of Hofstede’s work after reviewing 21 empirical studies that examined the association between national culture and entrepreneurship. Apart from a reliance on Hofstede’s conceptualization of national culture among the studies reviewed, Hayton et al. (2002) noted that “researchers should give greater attention to the interactions among cultural dimensions and the simultaneous influence of cultural, regulatory, and industry characteristics on aggregate entrepreneurship” (p. 49). Moreover, the authors also called for the need to “examine the interaction between national and organizational culture and their joint effect upon corporate entrepreneurship” (p. 49). Our lesson points to a significant variable to consider when forging a cultureenvironment fit. For example, Harrison, McKinnon, Panchapakesan and Leung (1994), showed that decentralization, responsibility of control centers and analytical planning and control, are more important to Western than Asian organizations. In addition, Pulendran, Speed and Widing (2000), showed that some national cultures encourage a marketorientation. We might infer that national culture pressures local enterprises towards certain structures and ideologies, a particularly powerful influence in some nations thoroughly committed to traditional sporting pastimes. Equally, we can probably expect that all sport organizations share some common cultural characteristics. In one example, Chatman and Jehn (1994) demonstrated through their survey research of 13 firms representing four industries, that each industry possessed stable dimensions of organizational culture. They did, however, note that the dimensions varied across industries. This implies that sport organizational cultures will hold some features as common. Chatman and Jehn concluded that industrial membership is a pivotal factor determining characteristics of organizational culture. In the next chapter we discuss the special features of sport culture in detail. Understanding the indigenous features of sport is important because they can override national cultural pressures as well as augment them. This was illuminated in the study undertaken by Wallace, Hunt and Richards (1999) analyzing the relationships between organizational culture, climate and values from a police force. They concluded that organizational members held some cultural perspectives at odds with Hofstede’s national data. For example, scores for ‘Individuality’ were low. This is not surprising given the critical nature of teamwork and chain of command in a police organization. However, we would infer that industrial circumstances can override national cultural characteristics, particularly with strong cultures, as we might expect in the police, or perhaps even in a sport organization. Further support for an industry-specific examination of organizational culture was provided by Ogbonna and Harris (2002b) in their study of culture in the hospitality industry in the United Kingdom. The authors concluded that industrial specificity offers the best

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method for “uncovering the practical utility of organisational culture” (p. 34). Velliquette and Rapert (2001) explored this practical utility of organizational culture in services marketing. It was not surprising that their results demonstrate that high-performance service organizations share specific, supportive cultural characteristics. In short, an organization’s identity is forged in the crucible of national, industrial and historical cultural forces.

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SPORT CULTURE AND IDENTITY Despite the common use of ‘culture’ in observations about sporting failures and successes, research into sport organizational culture has been limited. During the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s, most sport research focused on the economic and social aspects of sport (Dabscheck, 1975; Gorman & Calhoun, 1994; 1999; Quirk & Fort, 1992; Yiannakis & Greendorfer, 1992). However, since the mid-1990s attention has turned more towards the behavioral performance of sport organizations, particularly due to their increasing economic importance and business orientation (Kikulis, Slack, & Hinings, 1995; Parks, Zanger, & Quartermain, 1998; Shilbury & Hamilton, 1996; Skinner, Stewart, & Edwards, 1999; Slack, 1997; Smith & Stewart, 1999). Nevertheless, the specific analysis of sport organizational culture has been limited to a handful of studies by Hinings et al. (1996), Roberts et al. (1998), Shilbury and Hamilton (1996), Slack (1997), Smith and Stewart (1999), and Smith and Shilbury (2004). A few other studies addressed organizational culture as a phenomenon to be considered, without exploring it any further (Parks, Zanger, & Quartermain, 1998; Shilbury, Quick, & Westerbeek, 1998) or in the context of voluntary and semi-professional sports (Colyer, 2000). In each of these studies, culture was found to be a key factor in shaping the management and operations of sport organizations. They all confirmed that high-performance sport organizations possess strong and appropriate cultures. Sport organizations operate at several levels, consisting of sometimes disparate subcultures. Unlike other commercial organizations, where financial objectives receive priority, sport organizations work with numerous and sometimes competing objectives. Sport consumers, or ‘fans’, for example, desire short-term performance by way of a winning team, often driven by emotion, whereas the organization’s management team works towards longterm financial survival and sustained performance. We examine the needs and expectations of sport fans in detail in chapter three. Although competing objectives can be found in disparate shareholder goals in a commercial organization, there is a greater personal stake and emotional involvement in sport organizations not usually associated with their commercial cousins. Even within any given sport organization, a clash of cultures can occur given that staff focus on the players and the game, rather than the business. Nevertheless, a business focus emerges, due to corporate and financial regulations, alongside the behavioral aspects of the sport team that the organization serves. Even though a sport organization is a bounded social entity, made up of individuals working towards common goals within a structured activity system, it has to manage stakeholders, who may not be direct employees and who can have a significant impact on performance. In this book, we try to make sense out of all these variables and ideologies. We strive to examine organizational culture and identity, and use them to frame and explain the structures, strategies, behaviors and performances of sport organizations.

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Exploring Sport Culture

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WHY IS SPORT CULTURE IMPORTANT? For reasons that we will shortly explore, the notion of culture tends to receive only superficial treatment by practitioners and educators. Part of the reason lies with culture’s social and anthropological background, which does not intuitively appeal to the commercially-minded, market-oriented, number-crunching executive. Sometimes, interrogating culture may be seen as too distant from work-related outcomes, or that too much arms-length ‘critiquing’ of sport and organizations fails to accommodate the commercial realities of business. These arguments can then be easily fused with the view that the examination of culture may create a chronic tension within an organization about its identity, strategic management, and commercial outlook. For some, the critical analysis of culture contains the inevitable danger that the organization will be declared socially or culturally ‘flawed’. But our view remains that the history and tradition associated with any organization—and sport organizations in particular—need to be understood in order to achieve any subsequent improvement in performance. Furthermore, any attempt to diagnose and improve sport culture must also account for how sport is wielded as a tool for communication and shared understanding. Sport simultaneously incurs global and local implications, rarely best described in absolute terms. It is within its texture and grain that the idiosyncratic features of sport and organizations should be explored. For example, although some “commentators decry the demise of the nation at the hands of rampant globalization, some display a steadfast belief in the enduring relevance of the nation as a source of identity and differentiation” (Andrews & Silk, 2005, p. 172). We agree with Wheaton and Beal (2003) who claimed that only by recognizing the multiple ways in which media and cultural representations form can we understand the relationships between internal cultural characteristics and external perceptions of identity. In fact, sport’s ubiquity means that it acts as de facto cultural shorthand (Silk & Andrews, 2001), appropriated by advertising, politics and colloquial language. Whannel (2005) suggested that in the digital era, sport represents one of the few cultural norms that can regularly provide ‘water-cooler’ moments, precisely because sport allows individuals “to express their otherwise silenced identities through a common interest in a symbol, text or icon” (Harris, 1998, p. 5). This fact underpins our argument that identity offers one of the best methods for coming to terms with culture. At the same time, we caution against a view that constrains the analysis of sport or organizations to a single interpretive lens. Sage (1990), for example, reduced sport to “one of the various cultural settings in which the hegemonic structure of power and privilege in capitalist society is continually fortified” (p. 209). Such an observation leaves little room for complexity in the relationship between sport fan and object, which can range from the rational cost-benefit appraisal of an entertainment experience to the subtle devotion of quiet mourning after a heavy loss. If sport were reducible to hegemonic structures, then we would all be Manchester United and New York Yankees supporters. Yet, we should be careful not to dismiss the realities of sport’s commodification and media impact (Whannel, 2002). There are genuine issues to be considered in terms of media representations of the body (Oliver, 2001), diminishing levels of physical activity (Headley, 2004), questions about the social and moral obligations of sport stars as role models (Harris, 1994), and pressures to conform to social sporting rituals involving the heavy consumption of alcohol and recreational drugs (Duff,

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Scealy, & Rowland, 2004; Peretti-Watel, Beck, & Legleye, 2002). All of these contribute to organizational cultures in powerful ways. In the next part of this opening chapter, we consider the place of sport and culture by framing its discussion within the concept of Hirsch’s (1987) cultural literacy. The notion of cultural literacy rests on the premise that functional literacy is not just a matter of being able to read and write, but also a matter of possessing sufficient background knowledge to be able to communicate with others in a meaningful way. We argue that every manager requires a body of historical and cultural knowledge—including theory—in order to understand the traditions and values underpinning contemporary sport, and the management practices dedicated to their oversight. To that end, in order to be a fluent and articulate contributor to sport culture, managers must assume the requisite conceptual and linguistic vocabulary. Although this vocabulary can change quite sharply from one sport sector to another, sufficient overlap shows that all sport shares a common history and set of cultural understandings, and that these shared understandings come from a knowledge of its origins, chronology, belief systems, critical incidents, turning points, and memorable performances. We propose that the development of sport’s cultural literacy comes only from exposure to a diverse background of disciplines and analytical devices, of the kind that must go beyond conventional business interpretations. In the following section we introduce the concept of cultural literacy and develop its application for the sporting context.

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CULTURAL LITERACY The idea of cultural literacy centers on the argument that functional literacy is not just a matter of being able to read and write. In addition, individuals need to hold sufficient background knowledge to be able to communicate with others in a meaningful way. Words and their meanings are contextually fluid, so the ability to draw on common cultural interpretations influences successful communication. This approach to cultural literacy was refined by Hirsch (1987, 1988), who argued that literacy was really all about shared knowledge, and the “collective memory” that it creates (Hirsch et al., 1988, p. ix). A repository of shared knowledge enables people to communicate with others. Cultural literacy represents the “basic information needed to thrive in the modern world” (p. xv). From a management perspective, possessing the requisite skills to perform in an organization will not be enough, as any new employee will attest. The ability to competently ‘read and write’ in cultural terms depends upon the possession of background information, which in turn enables individuals to comprehend material, decode jargon, get to the point, grasp implications, and situate the unstated context of the communication. With the assistance of two colleagues, Hirsch (1988) published The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, which identified and defined a collection of common cultural knowledge covering people, places, sayings, happenings and ideas. The dictionary contained 23 cultural categories, ranging from proverbs, folklore and literature, to politics, business and medicine. Each cultural category contains at least 400 entries, and in the case of world politics, offered topics as varied as demagogue, glasnost, Marxism, neo-colonialism, republicanism and Trotskyism. Over two decades old, Hirsch’s (1988) first edition of the Dictionary of Cultural Literacy failed to include reference to sport. Although his compilation was not definitive,

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Hirsch claimed that it illustrated the scope and character of knowledge that literate Americans share. Liu (2000) thought that Hirsch’s omission of sport was unfortunate given the extent and intensity of sporting jargon used in the United States, and sport’s centrality in the American psyche. Metaphors from baseball are especially pervasive, such as playing ‘hard ball’ (to figuratively take a firm stand on an issue), ‘three strikes and you’re out’ (now appropriated by a crime bill introducing prison for life for repeated violent criminals), and the ‘bases are loaded’ (representing a high pressure situation). Liu and Farha’s (1996) work demonstrated that football metaphors were almost as enduring. After all, short of ‘scoring a goal’, the term ‘touchdown’ is particularly common in business and colloquial language. In fact, cognitive scientists have argued for some time that metaphors are indispensable communication tools through which common understandings of the world and specific contexts can be shared quickly. Lakoff and Johnson (1980) indicated that the mind’s ordinary conceptual system operates fundamentally on a metaphorical basis. According to Browne and Neal (1991), literacy refers to the ability to understand and use standard forms of communication in a particular context and toward a targetted goal. Literacy demands a context-specific fluency in a medium of communication. It works relative to both the form of communication and the context in which it is employed. As an extension of this thinking, we draw upon Heath’s (1983) concept of a ‘literacy event’, which she defined as an act of communication that represents any occasion in which a piece of writing is integral to the nature of participants’ interactions and their interpretive processes. Like Ferdman (1990) and Gee (1996), we expand Heath’s definition to include any communicative acts, or ‘texts’ integral to the nature of participants’ interactions and interpretations. Within this expanded concept, popular film and entertainment, music, sport and web content would be considered as text (Morrell, 2004). In an organization, pivotal texts would also include history, tradition, past employees, leaders, and major events, for example. Given the contextual nature of cultural literacy, it is influenced by popular modes of communication, of which none have been more powerful than television, although the Internet has introduced a new generation of communicative acts. The emergence of new forms of media involves significant processes of social tension and transformation (Whannel, 2005). However, the ‘unifying force’ of sport, through mega-events such as the FIFA World Cup and the Olympic Games, has been able to generate global cultural literacy bound together through the common language of sport. As a result, names such as ‘Dream Team’, Ben Johnson, and Michael Phelps have entered into the mainstream lexicon. Footage of Roger Bannister breaking the tape in the first four-minute mile, Pele’s sublime skills for Brazil in the World Cup, and Muhammad Ali and George Foreman’s ‘rumble in the jungle’ are part of sport’s cultural literacy, and available to view at your convenience on any number of Internet video-sharing sites. The concept of cultural literacy can be used to appreciate the formation and subtleties of culture. It also helps to reveal which information is really essential on one hand, and which is secondary on the other. That is, every organization holds a body of contextual knowledge required for the proper understanding of the traditions and values that underpin contemporary sport practice. This collective memory enables managers to not only better comprehend issues and developments, but to get to the point when making policy and setting strategic direction. It also helps practitioners to grasp the implications of their decisions, and to articulate the cultural and commercial context in which these decisions are made.

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We also propose that sport’s ubiquity gives it an unusual role as a kind of de facto cultural shorthand, often appropriated in colloquial language. Sport culture allows individuals to express their normally suppressed identities through common symbols and shared beliefs. We also propose that cultural literacy can be best cultivated in a commercial and cultural context where the present is fused with the past, and contemporary practices are integrated with valued traditions. For these reasons we conceptualize sport organizational culture management as an escalator that moves its stakeholders from one level of understanding to another, where each level provides an increasingly complex, but more illuminating level of understanding. This ‘culture escalator’ also signals the view that success comes with the cumulative acquisition of contextual, conceptual and practical knowledge, where understanding is translated into not only the practice and transmission of culture, but also its transformation. Figure 1.1 depicts the structure of this book using the notion of The Culture Escalator. Why Knowledge culture is about sport important products and markets Concept Complexity of Sporting Context Cultures Sport Sport and Organiz- Business ations Culture

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National and Industry Culture

Sport’s Special Cultural Feature

Sport Culture and Identity

Knowledge How to think about sport about culture consumers and behavior Fan Behavior Organization Theory Sport Consumers Culture Theory Moderating Influences

What culture means to identity

Fan Motivation

Strategy

Culture in Mind A Jungian Approach Identity

How the mind manages culture Emotional States and Judgment

How culture is delivered through rituals Features of Rituals

Functions of Evolutionary Rituals Psychology Mechanisms Evolution of Rituals and Cognition

Performance Fan Attachment

Subcultures and Multiple Identities

Contextual Influences on Sport Fan Behavior

Mapping Culture

Impact

Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior Criticisms of Evolutionary Psychology

Cultural Dimensions

Cultural Literacy

Change

PRACTICING Sport Culture

How culture How to use is expressed culture for through success narratives Memory Cultural and Ideas Change Stories as Cultural Units

Stabilizatio n and Resistance to Cultural Diagnosing Change Sport Stories Leadership for Culture Telling a Good Story Risk of Cultural Ritual Failure Connections CULTIVCultural ATING Thickness Sport Culture TRANSMITTING Sport Culture

CONCEPT- IDENTIFY- HARDUALIZING ING WIRING Sport Culture Sport Culture Sport Culture UNDERSTANDING Sport Culture EXPLORING Sport Culture Cultural Cultural Meaning Knowledge

CONTEXTUALIZING Sport Culture

Cultural Perspectives

Cultural Mechanisms

Cultural Change

Figure 1.1. The Culture Escalator.

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Cultural Development

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CONCLUSION In this chapter we introduced the concept of sport organizational culture and outlined why it remains so important for success. In particular, we noted the relationships between organizational culture and identity, and organizational structure, strategy, behavior and performance. Environment, including the national and industrial context, may be located at the epicenter of these relationships, where a fit between culture and context delivers a performance impact enabling a competitive edge to be secured. We also drew attention to the notion of cultural literacy as a way of reinforcing the importance of cultural knowledge, and explained how this knowledge can be used to sustain performance and deliver success. Finally, we introduced the concept of the ‘culture escalator’ as a method for thinking about the knowledge required to make culture work successfully for a sport organization. A ninelevel escalator was formulated, beginning with exploration, which begins at the conceptual ground floor. It then moves up to understanding and contextualizing, goes to conceptualizing, identifying and hardwiring, and then finishes with practicing, transmitting and cultivating. We spend the remainder of the book exploring steps two through nine of the escalator’s ascent. Chapter two, Understanding Sport Culture, provides a macro analysis of sporting culture. It charts the cultural features of the sport industry that make it both commercially special and culturally unique. We claim that sport’s cultural features have been overstated. At the same time, a number of new and novel features have emerged, while other features have eroded as a consequence of sport’s relentless corporatization. Our analysis concludes that sport leagues, competitions and clubs possess idiosyncratic cultures that demand considered and sometimes counterintuitive management responses in order to maximize performance. Chapter three, Contextualizing Sport Culture, explores the micro dimension of sport’s distinctive industrial context. It identifies the different relationships that fans construct with their favorite sports, teams, and events, and examines the impact of moderating factors and contextual influences on the fan-sport relationship. We maintain that an understanding of the mechanisms affecting sport consumption holds a particularly crucial role in managing cultural performance. To that end, we demonstrate how psychological, social, cultural and economic factors influence sport fans’ behaviors. As in any organization, customers’ needs and expectations shape culture. Conversely, organizational culture affects customers’ behaviors. Chapter four, Conceptualizing Sport Culture, delivers the heavy lifting of the book, examining the literature on organizational theory, culture, and identity as well as their application to sport organizations. Here we offer a simple account of the key ideas and principles that make managing sport cultures so critical to success. Our particular approach prioritizes the role of organizational identity, which we begin exploring in chapter five, Identifying Sport Culture. We show how to map culture and diagnose how the beliefs of organizational members may be noticeable through visible artifacts such as symbols, heroes and rituals, while the more covert aspects of culture, such as values and assumptions, are manifested in behavioral patterns. These patterns collectively distinguish each sport organization, infusing them with unique cultural characters. In fact, our sport cultural mapping explains how to chart any organizational identity while specifying which areas require attention for change. To us, organizational identity represents the social glue that binds the interactions of organizational members to a common psychological experience. In so doing, identity creates shared meaning and purpose in organizational life.

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For us it also provides an interpretive framework from which we can explain how organizational members make sense out of their experiences. Armed with this more theoretical knowledge, we can confidently work through the specifics of affecting cultural performance. Also in this chapter we explain first, how culture and identity affect organizational structures, strategies, and behaviors, and second, how they might be manipulated to achieve the most effective and efficient performance that an organization can expect out of its limited resources. We argue that not only must organizations combine a strong culture and identity, but also that the resultant culture matches the environment. We take the further step of addressing how to bring about change by managing subcultures and multiple identities. Chapter six, Hardwiring Sport Culture, tackles how evolutionary psychology can be employed to better understand sport culture and its elastic and intractable properties. It reviews the position and research of evolutionary psychology, explains its potential as a cultural perspective, examines its criticisms, and reveals its utility to management practitioners. If, as we claim, a portion of human behavior has been programmed into the brain, then it must have a profound impact upon organizational identity. Sport meets some primal needs, and culture management needs to reflect these deep impulses in order to deliver improved cultural outcomes. Chapter seven, Practicing Sport Culture, explains how organizational rituals shape culture, but equally, provides managers with a powerful method of introducing cultural shifts. Rituals hold a symbolic and functional role in organizations. We argue that rituals are best understood as a rich engagement between an organization and its employees, simultaneously reinforcing prevailing cultural values, and sometimes undermining them. Organizational rituals also add symbolic meaning to working lives. We hypothesize that rituals canalize culture, channeling ideas, emotions and behaviors in line with cultural norms. It remains essential that managers understand how to use rituals because they can both entrench existing cultural values as well as transform them. Chapter eight, Transmitting Sport Culture, describes how and why organizational stories offer relevant sites for understanding organizational culture and behavior. We demonstrate that organizational stories open portals to viewing organizational members’ social constructions of their environments. Our contribution includes tools for better understanding sport organizations, their cultures, and the behaviors communicated in stories. At the same time, we outline the most effective method of constructing stories for enhancing cultural memorability. Chapter nine, Cultivating Sport Culture, summarizes how the cultural escalator works. Specifically, the impact of culture and identity is mediated through strategic responses via organizational processes and structures derived to deal with the environmental forces within which organizations perform. In this way organizational strategies and performance link with organizational cultures and identities. In the next chapter we take the first step on the escalator and begin to unravel the complexities of sport organizational culture by assessing its peculiar cultural features. Although sport may be a business, it still possesses characteristics that defy normal business principles.

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REFERENCES Andrews, D. L., & Silk, M. (2005). Global gaming: Cultural toyotism, transnational corporatism and sport. In S. J. Jackson & D. L. Andrews (Eds.), Sport, culture and advertising: Identities, commodities and the politics of representation (pp. 172-191). New York: Routledge. Beyer, J., & Trice, H. (1993). How an organization’s rites reveal its culture. Organizational Dynamics, 15(4), 5-23. Browne, R. B., & Neal, A. G. (1991). The many tongues of literacy. Journal of Popular Culture, 25(1), 157-186. Chatman, J. & Jehn, K. (1994). Assessing the relationships between industry characteristics and organizational culture. Academy of Management Journal, 37(3), 522-523. Colyer, S. (2000). Organizational culture in selected Western Australian sport organizations. Journal of Sport Management, 14, 321-341. Cousens, L. (1997). From diamonds to dollars: The dynamics of change in AAA baseball franchises. Journal of Sport Management, 11, 316-334. Dabscheck, B. (1975). Sporting equality: Labour market vs. product market control. Journal of Industrial Relations 17(2), 174 - 190. Detert, J., Schroeder, R., & Mauriel, J. (2000). A framework for linking culture and improvement initiatives in organizations. Academy of Management Review, 25(4), 850863. Drucker, P.F. (1992). Managing for the future. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann. Duff, C., Scealy, M., & Rowland, B. (2004). The culture and context of alcohol use in community sporting clubs in Australia: Research into 'attitudes' and 'behaviour': Centre for Drug Studies, Australian Drug Foundation. Document Number) Ferdman, B. M. (1990). Literacy and cultural identity. Harvard Educational Review, 60(2), 181-204. Gee, J. (1996). Social linguistics and literacies: Ideology in discourses. London: Routledge Falmer. Goodman, E.A., Zammuto, R.F., & Gifford, B.D. (2001). The competing values framework: Understanding the impact of organizational culture on the quality of work life. Organizational Development Journal, 19(3), 58-68. Gorman, J., & Calhoun, K. (1994). The name of the game: The business of sport. New York: John Wiley. Harris, J. (1994). Athletes and the American hero dilemma. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Harris, C. (1998). Introduction In C. Harris & A. Alexander (Eds.), Theorizing fandom: Fans, subculture and identity (pp. 3-8). Cresskill, N.J.: Hampton Press. Harrision, G., McKinnon, J., Panchapakesan, S., & Leung, S. (1994). The influence of culture on organizational design and planning and control in Australia and the United States compared with Singapore and Hong Kong. Journal of International Financial Management and Accounting, 5, 242-261. Hayton, J.C., George, G., & Zahra, S.A. (2002). National culture and entrepreneurship: A review of behavioural research. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 26(4), 33-52. Headley, S. (2004). Background notes on obesity and sport in young Australians. Youth Studies Australia, 23(1), 42-46.

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Heath, S. B. (1983). Ways with words: Language, life, and work in communities and classrooms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hinings, C.R., & Greenwood, R. (1988). The dynamics of strategic change. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Hinings, C. R., & Thibault L. (1996). Values and organizational structure. Human Relations, 49(7), 885-916. Hirsch, E. D., Kett, J., & Trefil, J. (1988). The dictionary of cultural literacy: What every American needs to know. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Hirsch, E. D. (1987). Cultural literacy: What every American needs to know. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Hofstede, G. (1991). Cultures and organizations: Software of the mind. London: McGraw Hill. Hofstede, G. (1998a). Attitudes, values and organizational culture: Disentangling the concepts. Organization Studies, 19, 477-492. Hofstede, G. (1998b). Identifying Organizational Subcultures: An empirical approach. Journal of Management Studies 35(1), 1-8. Hofstede, G., Neuijen, B., Ohayv, D. & Sanders, G. (1990). Measuring organizational culture: A qualitative and quantitative study across twenty cases. Administrative Science Quarterly, 35, 286-316. Hofstede, G. (2001). Culture’s consequences: Comparing values, behaviours, institutions and organizations across nations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Kikulis, L., Slack, T., & Hinings, B. (1992). Institutionally specific design archetypes: A framework for understanding change in national sporting organizations. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 27, 343-370. Kikulis, L., Slack, T., & Hinings, B. (1995). Sector specific patterns of organizational design change. Journal of Management Studies, 32, 67-100. Kilman, R.H., Saxton, M.J., & Serpa, R. (1985). Introduction: Five key issues in understanding and changing culture. In R.H. Kilman, M.J. Saxton & R. Sherpa (Eds). Gaining control of the corporate culture (pp. 1-16), San Francisco: Jossey Bass. Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago, Il: Chicago University Press. Langan-Fox, J., & Tan, P. (1997). Images of culture in transition: Personal constructs of organizational stability and change. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 70(3), 273-295. Lee, M. (1989). Organizational culture and performance in NCAA sporting teams. Campus Review, 5(1), 27-35. Liu, D., & Farha, B. (1996). Three strikes and you're out: Baseball and Football in American English. English Today: An International Review of the English Language, 12, 36-40. Liu, D. (2000). 'Hitting singles' & 'scoring runs': Sports metaphor in American English and American life as sports. Alpha Vision, 1(1), 10-16. Morgan, G. (1986). Images of Organization. London: Sage Publications. Morrell, E. (2004). Linking literacy and popular culture: Finding connections for lifelong learning Norwood, MA: Christopher-Gordon Publications. Ogbonna, E., & Harris, L.C. (2002a). Organizational culture: A ten year, two-phase study of change in the UK food retailing sector. Journal of Management Studies, 39, 673-706. Ogbonna, E., & Harris, L.C. (2002b). Managing organizational culture: Insights from the hospitality industry, Human Resource Management Journal, 12(1), 33-53.

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Oliver, L. (2001). Images of the body from popular culture: Engaging adolescent girls in critical enquiry. Sport, Education and Society, 6(2), 143-164. Ouchi, W.G. (1981). Theory Z. Boston: Addison-Wesley. Parks, J.B. , Zanger, B.R.K. & Quartermain, J. (1998). Contemporary sport management. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Pawlak, G. (1984). Organizational culture in functioning of sport associations. International Committee for the Sociology of Sport: Eighth Symposium, Paris: ICSS. Pedersen, J.S., & Sorensen, J.S. (1989). Organisational cultures in theory and practice. London, UK: Gower Publishing. Peretti-Watel, P., Beck, F., & Legleye, S. (2002). Beyond the U-curve: the relationship between sport and alcohol, cigarette and cannabis use in adolescents. Addiction, 97(6), 707-716. Pettigrew, A. M. (1979). On studying organizational cultures. Administrative Science Quarterly, 24, 570-581. Pulendran, S., Speed, R., & Widing, R. (2000). The antecedents and consequences of market orientation in Australia. Australian Journal of Management, 25, 119-133. Quinn, R. E., & Rohrbaugh, J. (1981). A competing values approach to organizational effectiveness. Public Productivity Review, 5, 122-140. Quinn, R., & Rohrbaugh, J. (1983). A spatial model of effectiveness criteria: Towards a competing values approach to organizational analysis. Management Science, 29, 363-377. Quinn, R.E., & Spreitzer, G.M. (1991). The psychometrics of the competing values culture instrument and an analysis of organizational culture on quality of life. Research in Organizational Change and Development, 5, 115-142. Quirk, J., & Fort, R. (1992). Pay dirt: The business of professional team sports. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Reichers, A. E. & Schneider, B. (1990). Climate and culture: An evolution of constructs. In B. Schneider (Ed.), Organizational climate and culture (pp. 5-39). San Francisco, CA: JosseyBass. Roberts, K., Pratt, M., Weymes, E. & Gilson, C. (1998). Peak performing organisations. Long Range Planning 31(6), 894-899. Sage, G. (1990). Power and ideology in American sport. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics Books. Schein, E. (1985). How culture forms, develops and changes. In R.H. Kilman, M.J. Saxton, R. Serpa & Associates (Eds.), Gaining control of the corporate culture (pp. 17-43). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Schein, E. (1997). Organizational culture and leadership (3rd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Scott, D. (1997). Managing organizational culture in intercollegiate athletic organizations. Quest, 49, 403-415. Shilbury, D. & Hamilton, L. (1996). The Strategy Culture Relationship at Port Adelaide Football Club: A case study. 2nd Annual Sport Management Association of Australia & New Zealand (inc.) Conference, Southern Cross University, Lismore, NSW, Southern Cross University. Shilbury, D. Quick, S., Westerbeek, H, & Funk, D. (2009). Strategic sport marketing. Allen & Unwin: Sydney.

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Siehl, C. & Martin, J. (1990). Organizational culture: A key to financial performance? In B. Schneider (Ed.), Organizational climate & culture (pp. 241-281). San Francisco: Jossey Bass. Silk, M., & Andrews, D. L. (2001). Beyond a boundary?: Sport, transnational advertising, and the reimaging of national culture. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 25(2), 180-201. Skinner, J., R. Stewart, et al. (1999). Amateurism to Professionalism: Modeling organizational change in Sporting Organisations. Sport Management Review 2, 173-197. Slack, T., & Thibault, L. (1988). Values and beliefs: Their role in the structuring of national sports organizations. Arena Review, 12, 140-155. Slack, T. (1997). Understanding Sports Organizations: The application of organization theory. Champaign Ill, Human Kinetics. Smart, D., & Wolfe, R. (2000). Examining sustainable competitive advantage in intercollegiate athletics: A resource based view. Journal of Sport Management, 14, 133153. Smith, A., & Shilbury, D. (2004). Mapping cultural dimensions in Australian sporting organisations. Sport Management Review 7(2): 133-165. Smith, A., & Stewart, R. (1999). Sports management: A guide to professional practice. St Leonards: Allen & Unwin. Smith, A., & Stewart, R. (1995, December). Sporting club cultures: An exploratory case study. Australian Leisure, pp. 31-37. Subramanian, N., & Ashkanasy, N.M. (2001). The effect of organisational culture perceptions on the relationship between budgetary participation and managerial job-related outcomes. Australian Journal of Management, 26(1), 35-54. Velliquette, A., & Rapert, M. (2001). A profile of organizational culture: Implications for services marketing. Services Marketing Quarterly, 23, 69-86. Wallace, J., Hunt, J., & Christopher, R. (1999). The relationship between organisational culture, organisational climate, and managerial values. International Journal of Public Sector Management, 12, 548-564. Whannel, G. (2002). Media sport stars: Masculinities and moralities. London: Routledge. Whannel, G. (2005). Pregnant with anticipation: The pre-history of television sport and the politics of recycling and preservation. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 8(4), 405-426. Wheaton, B., & Beal, B. (2003). 'Keeping it real': Subcultural media and the discourses of authenticity in alternative sport. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 38(2), 155-176. Yiannakis, A., & Greendorfer, S. L. (1992). Applied sociology of sport. Champaign, Ill.: Human Kinetics Book.

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Chapter 2

UNDERSTANDING SPORT CULTURE

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INTRODUCTION The management of elite, contemporary sport is complex because the product it delivers to participants and fans contains so many idiosyncrasies. This claim accompanies the view that while professional sport seems like just another form of business, it has a range of special features that demand a customized set of practices to ensure its effective operation. In this chapter, we examine the unique features of sport’s culture in the light its commercial and socio-cultural context. We propose that while both business and sport are concerned with widening market share, building profits, and strengthening brands, the presumption that sport has a monopoly over the delivery of intense emotional experiences, tribal belonging, and strong interpersonal relationships, cannot be defended. However, we conclude that while sport’s economic and social progress has created an industry built around complex bureaucracies that turn over billions of dollars every year, it has also created a more diverse and heterogeneous system of structures and experiences that remain troublesome to conflate to a handful of special cultural features. Sport has an ambiguous history when viewed from a management perspective. As Stewart and Smith (1999) noted, the management of sport has traditionally been divided between two contrasting philosophical approaches. At one extreme, sport is viewed as a unique cultural institution containing a host of special features where the reflexive application of standard business practices not only produces poor management decision making, but also erodes its rich history, emotional connections, tribal links, and social relevance. At the other extreme, sport is seen to be nothing more than just another generic business enterprise subject to the usual government regulations, market pressures and customer demands, and best managed by the application of standard business tools that assist the planning, finance, human resource management and marketing functions. Over time these divisions have been blurred along with sport’s corporatization, and through the emergence of sport management as an academic discipline. Sport is additionally complicated by the fact that it exists in both commercial and not-for-profit forms like other cultural services such as theatre, art, music, health care and education. On the other hand, it is also culturally distinctive in the sense that despite its growing commercialization, it possesses many special features. Our chapter focuses on these “distinct and special features which make sport a unique institution” (Stewart & Smith, 1999, p. 87). In particular, we (1) critically

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review the features of sport considered culturally special or unique, (2) consider whether these features are genuinely distinctive in the current environment, and (3) decide whether they are sufficiently distinctive to warrant a situational or customized approach to sport’s cultural management.

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THE COMPLEXITY OF SPORTING CULTURES Studies of organizational culture, while as disparate as the number of researchers pursuing its investigation, generally emphasize its superficial dimensions. Moreover, organizational culture is frequently seen as mono-cultural. That is, perceived at one level, and as one entity. Organizations tend to be perceived as a giant cultural mass, constructed equivalently throughout, and with little or no internal variability. However, this approach lacks sustainability. Sporting club cultures are inherently poly-cultural, and can be understood readily at several levels, or as several entities: as an organizational or administrative unit comparable to other business organizations; as a supporter organization, which holds different aims, objectives and traditions (such as winning matches in preference to making a financial profit); and as a player unit, where motivation may vary from glory to money. While a player may perform for a club because of loyalty or remuneration (or any number of other reasons), the supporters are usually passionately attached to the clubs’ colors and traditions, expecting only on-field success in return. The difficulty in using mono-cultural thinking is that it cannot be used to accurately assess a poly-cultural organization. In sporting cultures there is the additional hurdle of translating and adopting a culture directly from traditional business theory. It remains dangerously simplistic to assume that a sporting organization should adopt the methods and practices of a traditional business without addressing the issue of culture. While business methods can be transferred to accommodate the organizational strategies of a sporting club, a direct transfer fails to confront the issue of what makes the culture of a sporting organization differ from that of a commercial enterprise. Ideal business culture reflects a willingness by employees to embrace a standard of performance that promotes quality in the production of goods and services, in the attempt to generate a financial profit. This cultural ideology, while cognizant of business necessities, fails to cater for the more diverse structures that exist in sporting organizations. In any business, fiscal realities must be acknowledged, but in a sporting business additional behavioral variables require recognition and respect. While different businesses have different cultures, they are less variable than the cultural differences between individual sports. It cannot be assumed, for example, that a single unified culture exists for all sports. The original idea of sport has changed. Early modern sport in the west was designed by ‘educated’ gentlemen as an alternative reality to work and commerce, and was controlled rigidly by strict, enforceable laws. However, sport has spread, multiplied and been modified beyond recognition. Like all living cultures, sport changes incessantly, dynamic in nature and subject to constant reinterpretation by its participants. The only consistency in sporting culture is the pursuit of competition, the love of winning, and the ability to summon strong emotional responses in both victory and defeat.

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SPORT AND BUSINESS CULTURE The special cultural features of sport, its demarcation from business, and its implications for effective management, are considered either explicitly or implicitly by most authors when writing about sport’s social and cultural development. As Slack (2003) observed, an indicator of the strength of an academic discipline like the study of sport is the quantity and quality of the literature it wields. Sport’s unique nature and context have been highlighted by Mangan and Nauright (2000), and developed in Hess and Stewart’s (1998) book, More than a Game, as well as in their most recent analysis of Australian Rules football’s commercial and cultural evolution, A National Game (Hess, Stewart, Nicholson & de Moore, 2008). The theme common to these commentaries is that sport represents a unique cultural institution that operates in a commercial environment. A decade earlier, Slack (1998) indicated that the management of sport was differentiated from general management due to a belief in the social value of sport, rather than on the exclusive basis of its economic value. Around the same time, Slack (1996) emphasized the importance of connecting contemporary management issues and theories to the management of sport by not only bolstering the credibility of sport management, but by also using sport as a testing ground for broader management theory development Foster, Greyser and Walsh (2006) tackled the sport-as-a-unique institution issue by compiling lists of cultural features professional sport and business have in common, and areas where they differ. They concluded that whereas sport and business share a common concern for value creation, branding, funding new sources of revenue, product innovation and market expansion, sport is significantly more concerned with beating rivals, winning trophies, sharing revenue, and channeling the passions of both players (the employees), and fans (the customers). The other important point made by Foster, Greyser and Walsh is that athletes are now business assets, instrumental in attracting fans, sponsors and media exposure. It therefore comes as no surprise that unlike business, a sport’s service deliverers—the players—earn far more than their ostensible supervisors, the club administrators. Similarly, Hoye, Nicholson and Smith (2008) suggested that sport has a number of distinctive features, which they argued are most clearly played out in different ways across sports’ three sectoral landscapes, the corporate, the not-for-profit, and the public. They contended that the unique attributes of sport organizations influence how sport managers apply theories, principles, and strategies. Unique attributes included “consumer behavior, the relationship between sport and government, regulatory regimes, strategy, organizational structure, human resource management, organizational culture, governance, and performance management …” (p. 507). In other words, the management of sport invokes the same basic considerations as any other form of business management, but the specific application is subject to a range of contextual quirks that demand customized adjustments. The idea that sport is not the same as the for-profit, commercial business sector was addressed in the 2000 the Nice Declaration on Sport (European Council, 2000), when it introduced the term ‘specificity of sport’ in reference to sport’s special characteristics. In doing so, it became clear that sport was not just a convenient or casual way of filling in leisure time, but was also an important cultural institution that delivered significant social benefits to a diverse spread of communities. The Declaration urged that the European

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Community should, despite an absence of direct power in the area, take account of the social, educational, and cultural function inherent in sport that makes it special. The more recent White Paper on Sport (Commission of the European Communities, 2007) confirmed sport’s unique status when it announced that the specificity of European sport can be approached through two prisms, the first in the form of the specificity of sporting activities and rules including the provisions for preserving competitive balance and outcome uncertainty, and the second, the specificity of the sport structure, in the form of its pyramidal representation and peak authorities. The specificity of sport has been recognized by the European Commission in numerous ways, the most notable being the Bosman case, which led to a 1995 European Court of Justice decision regarding the freedom of association for workers. The case profoundly influenced the player transfer system by removing the restrictions placed on player movements within the European Union, allowing them to move freely to other clubs at the end of their contractual terms. While the Bosman case exemplifies the specificity of sport, it does not lead to a general exemption from European Union law. It does, however, lead to some fluidity and grey area where some of the features of sport’s organization are overlooked to the extent that they do not contravene European Union Competition Law and that any anti-competitive effects are legitimate in the context of sports’ rules. As a result, sporting competitions in Europe enjoy relative freedom in determining the rules concerning the technical features of games, the composition of competitions, and the regulation of transfer periods. On the other hand, governing bodies of sport have less control over rules preventing multiple ownerships of clubs in the same competition, the enforcement of anti-doping regulations, and cartel-like collusion. The special features, or specificity, of sport have also been mired in a high degree of structural ambiguity, and a cursory review of different governance systems in sport around the world reveals that the push toward corporatization has delivered a range of substantially different business models. As Foreman (2003) observed, there are numerous facets of sport’s organizational structure to consider that go well beyond its legal status. They include systems of governance, patterns of ownership, the mix of stakeholders, corporate partnerships, and sport’s regulatory context (Hoye & Cuskelly, 2007). Even where the imperative of commercial success is at its most powerful in professional team sport, there is considerable diversity, ranging from the membership based clubs of Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and sub-continental Asia, to the listed public shares of European football clubs, and the privately owned franchises of the US ‘big four’ leagues (NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL). Foreman’s suggestion that this suite of elements also affects the choice of management practices used is supported by Noll (2003), who argued that different governance and business models have a significant influence on management practice. Of all the contextual forces observed to affect sporting structures and practices over the last decade, it has been the impact of commercialization that has received the greatest attention. Szymanski and Kuypers (1999) emphasized sport as an entertainment business capable of generating prodigious sums of money and imposing into the lives of billions of people across the globe. Accordingly, the problems of running a sporting business are much like those found in any other business. To Szymanski and Kuypers, clubs like any other commercial enterprise, must generate revenues by selling their product to the paying customers; they must engage in advertising, marketing and promotion, and they have to invest in facilities which enable them to distribute and sell their product in the right environment

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(Szymanski & Kuypers, 1999, p. 7). Subsequent to Szymanski and Kuypers analysis of professional team sports in the UK, a raft of scholarly monographs appeared that dealt with the so called peculiar economics and business arrangements of large scale sport with a focus on North American and European sport leagues. Three of them used the title ‘The Business of Sport(s) (Foster, Greyser & Walsh, 2006; Humphreys & Howard, 2008; Rosner & Shropshire, 2004), while others like Lewis’ (2004) ‘Moneyball’, were designed to stun the reader with stories of rampant commercial excess, extravagant power, and shady deals. They all agreed that sport had an immense power to generate cash, and there seemed to be little to differentiate it from a casino, theater or shopping mall. Add in the moral uncertainties associated with outsourcing the manufacture of sporting wear to developing nations and the deleterious effect that sport has on the environment, and you are left with what Thibault (2009) described as an ‘inconvenient truth’. If there is indeed a difference between sport business and other forms of business, then sport economists like Szymanski (2009), might argue that it is to be found in sport’s idiosyncratic structures. Clubs, Szymanski observed, are the “fundamental units of modern sport” (2009, p. 9), having emerged from civil societies under freedom of association. As a result, an organizational model of sport developed that was based on an alliance of independent clubs within associations and federations, and established largely on amateur, not-for-profit principles. However, variations of this model have also taken hold. At one extreme are those spectator sports vulnerable to commercial entertainment, and therefore become heavily modified by broadcasters and other commercial interests like sponsors. At the other extreme are sports restrained under the hand of political doctrine such as in communist states and centrally planned economies, or underpinned by strong cultural values advocating amateurism, with the United States collegiate sport system being a good example. For Szymanski, the commercial pressures are not only producing a class of highly paid sport entertainers, but are also challenging the viability of traditional sporting structures and the very “soul” of sport (Szymanski, 2009, p. 26). Although the special features of sport appear in a variety of works associated with sport and its management, with Foster, Greyser and Walsh (2006) being a good recent example, there have been only a few attempts to systematically address their importance and implications for good management practice. Hoye et al. (2008) reviewed what they described as the unique features of sport management, but their discussion was narrowly grounded in conventional aspects of management, like strategy and human resources. Hoye et al. argued that the best way to tackle sport management was to inject sport’s idiosyncrasies with a healthy dose of business management practices. While this approach was useful, it did not have much to say about what it is that makes sport qualitatively different from other products and services. For this reason, the following critical analysis will examine whether it is plausible to maintain the argument that sport has many distinguishing cultural features. We contend that the claim for unique status has eroded substantially commensurate with sport’s increasing corporatization and heterogeneity. In pursuing sport’s special cultural features, we observe some difficulty in defending any characteristics on the basis of their generalizability across all sport. As a result, we note the relative ease with which any putative special feature can be falsified by contrary examples. On the other hand, we are not comfortable with claim that sport at the professional level is just another form of business, and that its so-called special features are nothing more than a reactionary attempt to preserve the myths that support, for example, the view that sport has to be regulated in ways that other businesses

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should not, in order to secure the best quality experience for fans and customers. Neither are we convinced that sport has no more social benefit than a visit to a cinema, an expedition to a local shopping complex, or a holiday in the West Indies. With these conflicting propositions in the back of our minds, we will proceed to examine the claims made about sport’s idiosyncratic cultural features, and see if they have indeed been washed away by the tide of corporatism and hard-nosed pragmatism.

SPORT’S SPECIAL CULTURAL FEATURES

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A challenge of any analytical approach to assessing sport’s special cultural features lies in the selection of suitable organizing principles. In this instance, we have determined to shadow the features of sport articulated by Stewart and Smith (1999), with the intention of providing a critical review of their current status, and assessing their relevance to contemporary sport management practice. In 1999, Stewart and Smith specified 10 distinctive features of sport they claimed impact upon its management. For the purposes of this chapter, these cultural features have been conflated to four interrelated variables. First, the sport experience is a heterogeneous and ephemeral experience mired in the irrational passions of fans, commanding high levels of product and brand loyalty, optimism and vicarious identification. Second, sport’s objectives favor on-field winning over profit. Third, sport competition is subject to variable quality, which in turn has implications for the management of competitive balance and anticompetitive behavior. Fourth, sport’s supply works around a fixed supply schedule. Each of these dimensions is reviewed next under specialized headings and appears below in Figure 2.1. Cultural Variables Sport Experience Objectives Competition Supply

Tensions Loyalty, Identification and Irrational Optimism Transforming the Sport-field into a Workplace Winning and Profit-making The Dilemma of Corporate Sport Variable Quality and Competitive Balance Structures for Collaborative Behavior Using Technology to Manage Supply Managing the Fishbowl-Experience of Players Managing Players as Assets The Confounding Influence of League Structures

Figure 2.1. The Tensions of Sport Organizational Culture.

Loyalty, Identification and Irrational Optimism Stewart and Smith originally described this first set of features as four separate characteristics. They began their analysis by noting that professional sport is a highly intangible product where satisfaction comes from experiences that center on watching others engage in various forms of structured physical activity. When looking at spectator sport they

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note that its core feature is its capacity to intimately engage fans and deliver intensely emotional and loyal attachments to teams and clubs. Underpinning loyalty is a powerful sense of identification, where fans experience belonging and vicarious emotions. Such strong identification with the sporting product produces a low cross elasticity of demand, which means that one form of sporting product cannot easily be replaced by another. This low degree of substitutability also means that a team can regularly under-perform, but still not sacrifice its fans to a better performing team. For Stewart and Smith, sport’s ability to arouse strong passionate attachments, unstinting loyalty, vicarious identification, and blind optimism, makes it a special experience that markedly differentiates it from both consumer goods like plasma television screens, motor vehicles, and cosmetics, and even the more service-based products like airline travel, cinema-watching and supermarket shopping (Pine & Gilmour, 1999). But, is the distinction now as marked as Stewart and Smith declared more than a decade ago? On the one hand there is little doubt that sport elicits intense vicarious pleasure, lifelong personal attachments, and highly charged memories. The volume of empirical literature that supports this contention is vast, and a range of persuasive work in multiple cultural contexts has demonstrated sport’s power to incite, arouse and connect (Giullanotti, 2002; Hardy, 1999; Hornby, 1995). It was even found that some sport consumers are passionate to the point of addiction (Rein, Kotler & Shields, 2006; Stewart, Smith & Nicholson, 2003; Queenan, 2003). On the other hand, the mechanisms of attachment are not unique to sport, and the psychoemotional benefits of sport consumption are not particularly distinctive from those conferred through other patterns of consumption. While sport fan experiences meet a number of important psychological, social and cultural needs ranging from escapism, stimulation, and entertainment, to national pride, cultural celebration, and a sense of community and personal identity, they are not peculiar to sport (Armstrong, 2002; Chen, 2007; Crawford, 2004; Fink, Trail & Anderson, 2002a; Funk, Mahony, Nakazawa & Hirakawa, 2001; Hinch & Higham, 2005; Milne & McDonald, 1999; Zhang et al., 2001). Moreover, a number of contextual variables mitigate the psychological, social and cultural drivers of sport consumption, including demographic factors like age and gender, the expected quality of the game, and the venue in which it is played. As a result, such factors moderate individual fan motivation and the resulting degree of emotional attachment held by fans to teams and events. In a recent work, Smith and Stewart (2007) identified in excess of 30 different factors impacting upon fan behavior, but they concluded that most of them are merely proxies for more fundamental needs, such as cultural connections, collective identity, entertainment and excitement. At the same time, a range of consumption experiences that have little to do with sport can meet these needs. Shoppers who salivate over a $1,000 Gucci handbag have much in common with sport consumers, since they too are prepared to pay good money to secure some vicarious identification and reflected status. Neither are shoppers necessarily any less superficial, ephemeral or irrational than their sporting counterparts. Consider the fact that consumers seek variety in their use of hedonic, or pleasure-eliciting, products (Ratner, Kahn & Kahneman, 1999). In addition, more options not only lead to positive consumer reactions because of the value placed on choice, but more options also makes it increasingly difficult for consumers to make up their minds, leaving them confused and indecisive. Kahneman (2000) explained this paradox in terms of an inability to predict future satisfaction. Consumers fail to choose optimally because they either fail to accurately predict which option will generate the best experience, or because they

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ignore their own predictive calculus. In short, the fewer the options the easier it is to work out which one is best (Hsee & Hastie, 2006). Consumers generally like to predict the consequences of their choices and then act on them, but as Heath and Tversky (1991) and Kahneman and Tversky (2000) have demonstrated, not only are consumers poor at predicting the consequences of their decisions, they are also poor at acting on them even if they are initially sound. As a result, people still eat to obesity, smoke cigarettes despite the health warnings, consume alcohol and binge-drink excessively, buy uncomfortable sport-cars, ride dangerous motorbikes, pay exorbitant prices for imported shoes and cosmetics, and watch reality television when they could quite easily do something real themselves. It thus becomes clear that sport consumers use sport to meet their needs and extend their personal sense of self in the same ways that all consumers use discretionary leisure and luxury products to build self-esteem and confirm their identity (Ahuvia, 2005; Belk, 1988; Timothy, 2005). Sport consumers are no more irrationally optimistic than any other kind of consumers, and their exuberance, passion and pleasure-seeking behavior is similar to the behaviors described in studies on the fashion industry, luxury goods, cigarettes, alcohol, hospitality and tourism (Belk, Ger & Askegaard, 2003; Ratneshwar & Mick, 2005). Sport consumption is not so much the exception as the exemplar of contemporary consumer behavior. In consequence, the key question is less a matter of what it is about sport that is unique in cultivating ardent consumers, but rather what mechanism is responsible for building powerful relationships between consumers and products. Many theorists believe that the answer is found in social identity theory (Tajfel, 1981; 1982; Tajfel & Turner, 1986), which has been used to explain group and individual behaviors (Platow et al., 1999). Central to this theory is the concept of identification where sport consumers employ social categories to define others and locate themselves in the social world (Cornwell & Coote, 2003). Identification with a team, club or athlete may be a means of constructing or bolstering one’s self-concept (Ferrand & Pages, 1996; Jones, 2000; Wiley, Shaw, & Havitz, 2000), and can be motivated by factors including the need to maintain and enhance positive personal and social self-evaluations, the need to belong, and a sense of self-efficacy through vicarious achievement (Fink, Trail, & Anderson, 2002b; Hughson, 1999; Morris, 1981; Platow et al., 1999; Wann, 1995; Wann & Branscombe, 1993). A critical conclusion is that emotional attachment is more strongly implicated when an individual is motivated to construct a sense of self through identification (Fink et al., 2002b). Although sport commands identification through heightened emotional attachment, so too do other consumption-based behaviors. While indigenous to sport, emotionally-charged identification is not exclusive to sport, and it would therefore be misleading to conclude that this constitutes a special cultural feature. Comparisons between conventional consumers and sport consumers are also complicated by the tendency of researchers to study extreme forms of sport fandom. While ‘die-hard’ and passionate fans are obviously appealing cohorts to examine, the elucidation of their motivations and behaviors provides an imbalanced picture of sport consumption. Like all consumption, sport is subject to a “bewildering array of values, attitudes and behaviors” (Stewart, Smith & Nicholson, 2003, p. 206). Sport consumers are not all passionate and fanatical, and nor do they all live vicariously through their favorite team or player in order to bolster their personal identities. Equally, their loyalty can be variable, their attendance irregular, and their interest erratic (Stewart, Smith & Nicholson, 2003).

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Transforming the Sport-Field into a Workplace On balance, the dichotomy between winning and profitability, as well as performance and tradition, has been eroded with sport’s commercial expansion. As Stewart and Smith (1999) observed about the transformation of sport into sport business, “The subsequent focus on rationalization and productivity has forced sport managers to translate their human and material resources, particularly players, into economic equations in which the division of labor, efficiency, regulation, rational work practices and management control become crucial management issues” (p. 88). In fact, this focus on improving the efficiency of human capital has become endemic to all elite sport. In Olympic sports like track and field, and swimming, nationally-determined macro variables such as demographics and elite development pathways play a significant role in improving performance in international sport events (Digel, 2002). In fact, Oakley and Green’s (2001) analyses revealed that close to a decade ago national elite sport development systems around the world were starting to look more homogenous as a result of adopting business models to manage their sporting enterprises. In their analysis of the changes in professional sport between 1970 and 1997, Cousens and Slack (2005) similarly found that sport’s structures had converged commensurate with the drive for higher levels of performance. Despite the managerial drive in sport for more revenue and improved efficiency, many sport fans still argue for the prioritization of on-field success, and the celebration of competitive ideals which privileges it above conventional profit-seeking endeavors. And, for the critics of contemporary sport, the increasing focus on financial imperatives has eroded the inherent value of sport and its social utility. As Stewart and Smith (1999) cautioned, some fans have been marginalized by the corporatization of sport’s management practices, with such warnings prominent for at least a decade (King, 1998; Nash, 1997). In a similar critical vein, Milton-Smith (2002) lamented that there has been a failure of major global sporting institutions in dealing with the consequences of globalization: “Disillusionment with the Olympic Games mirrors the disenchantment with the perceived values of globalization, including winning at any price, commercial exploitation by MNCs, intense national rivalry, cronyism, cheating and corruption and the competitive advantage of advanced nations” (Milton-Smith 2002, p. 131). Gems (1999) also warned that professional sport had canalized meaning for its consumers through an American ‘ideological imperialism’ that emphasizes the homogeneity and commodification of the sport product, however culturally precious. Belk (1996) and Ritzer (1998) also predicted that sport business would take a McDonald’s approach, emphasizing standardized products punctuated by the ‘hyper-reality’ of overzealous marketing. From an economic perspective, Ross and Szymanski (2006) suggested— perhaps wryly—that a McDonald’s structural franchise system presented an illustrative model challenging the conventional wisdom that sport leagues should be organized and operated by stakeholding clubs. Sport’s McDonald’s is more like NASCAR, which is an entity independent of the competing teams and drivers, and can therefore impose broadcasting, marketing and other commercial arrangements in the best interests of consumers without the competing and inefficient agendas of individual owners. On the other hand, Rein, Kotler and Shields (2006) would probably approve of NASCAR’s positioning, since they emphasized the need for constant adaptation in order for sports to remain competitive in a cutthroat and competitive marketplace. To achieve this they favor a strategic approach that features segmentation through fan identity leading to brand-

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building. Noteworthy in their modeling of the sport industry is the presence of seven characteristics of the marketplace: (1) a pressurized competitive environment; (2) higher fan expectations; (3) the paradox of commercialism; (4) new technology; (5) individualism; (6) changes in family structure and behavior; and (7) time pressure.

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Winning and Profit-Making The passions associated with sport fandom, according to Stewart and Smith (1999), not only produce blind and unswerving loyalty, but can at times also override commercial imperatives. That is, consumers and clubs will, for the most part, weigh wins and trophies more highly than a healthy balance sheet. On the other hand, they also asserted that commercial pressures instigate the demise of longstanding traditions if undermining future success. At the same time, Stewart and Smith argued that fans who value tradition will often use it to resist club attempts to commercialize the management process. While Stewart and Smith considered these tensions between performance and tradition, and profits and winning, to be indicative of a special cultural feature, their analysis did not fully explain the nuances of on- and off-field performance, and the variance between different sporting competitions and leagues. Separating the rhetoric and bright-lights of professional sport from its prosaic position as just another product in the entertainment marketplace is a challenging managerial exercise. The difficulty in grasping the common threads running through sport is compounded by the fact that while professional sport is a form of business most volunteer-driven participationsport is not. The complexities of sport management are exaggerated by the vast chasm that divides the pay-per-view world of corporatized global-sport-entertainment from the parochial, kitchen-table world of preparing for a Saturday afternoon match at the local sports ground. Moreover, the global, revenue-maximization orientation of some professional sports (Chadwick & Arthur, 2007) such as Formula-1 motor racing and boxing, can be contrasted with other teams and clubs in professional sports, that while enveloped by profit-seeking owners, do not overtly pursue profit, but rather sacrifice an operating surplus to secure an onfield advantage. The extravagance of European professional football salaries is a case in point, and in general, participants in professional sport will use whatever marketing and management tactics are required to acquire success. While proper funding is as important for sport organizations as it is for other commercial enterprises, financial resources are most often deployed towards competitive success rather than returned to shareholders in the form of dividends. In the United States there are still no definitive conclusions about whether teams are profit-maximizers where the balance sheet rules, or utility maximizers where a high winloss ratio is the true measure of superior performance (Fort & Quirk, 2004). In the end, according to Zimbalist (2003a), it is difficult to distinguish profit-maximizing behavior from any other organizational practice. As Szymanski and Kuypers (1999, p. 7) commented about the imperative sport organizations share: “Above all they have to pay wages to players and invest in the development of talent in order to achieve winning performances, perhaps for their own sake, but also to keep the public interested in the club and willing to pay for its product.” In other words, success is a function of a strong revenue stream.

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The Dilemma of Corporate Sport Of most interest to our analysis of sport’s special cultural features is the commercialization paradox. Although their strategic marketing advice is geared towards bolstering the commercial success of sport brands, Rein, Kotler and Shields (2006), acknowledged a tension between sport as a business and sport as a game-centered social institution. In this uneasy balance, sports are faced with the challenge of extracting commercial value from their brands without compromising the intrinsic ‘integrity’ and spirit of the game. Fuelled by a celebrity ethos and the centrality of entertainment, it is easy to undermine the brand and diminish its status as a heroic form of human endeavor. As a consequence, sport’s quintessential nature is at risk whenever it commercializes itself to secure a larger share of the market. However, it also means that unless sport commercializes, it will be unable to survive in the contemporary competitive landscape. This commercial paradox, which Stewart and Smith addressed only fleetingly, constitutes a genuine special cultural feature of professional sport. The appeal of this paradox amplifies when taken in tandem with Rein, Kotler and Shields’ (2006) assessment of sport’s twin advantages. The first advantage is its attractiveness as a live product experience capable of commanding significant advertising and broadcasting interests, while the second advantage is the increasing ability for sport brands to become their own content providers and media distributors. However, these emerging features of sport are not without their problems. The live product, which means the at-game-experience, is the beating heart of sport, but is offset by its potential to become a tacky vehicle for selling other, often banal products. In addition, the vertical integration of the sport and its distribution offers great scope for control of the product but risks the introduction of vertical restraints that could lead to anti-competitive behavior. Moreover, when the lines blur between the contest, its participants and its distribution, there is also the potential for a serious loss of emotional attachment of fans to teams, and a fall off in fan interest. Despite the dire pronouncements linked to sport’s rampant commercialization, fears that traditional and so-called authentic fans will abandon professional sport have proved to be unfounded. The evidence indicates that professional sport enjoys a greater following than ever before (Westerbeek & Smith, 2003), and this is precisely because sport managers have wielded commercial business practices to bolster the watching and viewing experiences of fans. In fact, professional sport has effectively ridden on the back of international broadcasting and new media into the twenty-first century and in doing so has strengthened its position in the entertainment marketplace (Wenner, 1998; Wright, 1999; Smith & Westerbeek, 2004). If consumers of sport are somehow more traditionalist or ideologically pure than other kinds of consumers, it has not translated into diminished ratings for ‘McSport’. While some fans have bemoaned the loss of traditional values and practices, far more fans want comfortable seating, easily available merchandise, game statistics at their fingertips, replays and expert commentary, interactive technology, and a steady supply of nachos, hot-dogs and Coke. Sport has been transformed into a fast-moving consumable experience that fits neatly into the ‘iPod society’, and as a result has gone well beyond being a symbol of a pleasant Saturday afternoon at the neighborhood sports ground. This transformation has also cut through the tension between the need to make a profit and the desire to achieve on-field success. In the contemporary sports world it is now

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acknowledged that winning is most likely to come from having both a large revenue stream and a surplus of income over expenditure (Syzmanski & Kuypers, 1999; Gerrard, 2005; Foster, Greyser & Walsh, 2006). In other words, the wealthiest sport organizations, which include teams sent to the Olympic Games as well as sport clubs, associations, and leagues, are generally speaking also the best on-field performers.

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Variable Quality and Competitive Balance Another pervasive claim about the sport product is its variable quality leading to unpredictable performance levels. Stewart and Smith (1999) argued that this phenomena is not only troublesome, but also an unavoidable feature of professional sport. Try as they might to perform consistently at the highest level, the same athletes and players will not always win. The news is not all bad, however, because, unlike other parts of the service and entertainment industry, inconsistency and uncertainty feature as important product qualities. Stewart and Smith declared that sport is one of the few products that actually depend upon unpredictability for success, and the result is another paradoxical relationship. In this case, whereas clubs, teams and players aspire to win by the largest margin possible, the popularity of sport leagues rely on high levels of competitive balance in order to ensure close and exciting contests. Of all the special cultural features identified by Stewart and Smith, the issue of quality is the most vexing, since it is so multi-dimensional and subjective. At the outset, it has to be conceded that winning does not always equate to quality in the eyes of many sport consumers, who will rank sport’s aesthetic appeal, excitement, atmosphere, social interaction, and camaraderie more highly (Fink, Trail & Anderson, 2002a; Zhang et al., 2001). However, unlike other competing entertainment products with similar commercial realities, like theatrical performances, musical groups, and artistic creations, where so much time is spent rehearsing in order to guarantee consistent and reliable service delivery, sport actually puts resources into ensuring an unpredictable result. Again, unlike professional wrestling, where every move and incident is choreographed, and every result is carefully stage-managed, competitive sport relies on unscripted and uncertain outcomes to build tension, excite the fans, and consequently deliver a quality consumer experience. While one-sided contests and long-term on-field domination by a few clubs can lead to declining attendances and shrinking television audiences, the jury is still out on the precise role of competitive parity. The evidence about the relative importance of outcome uncertainty remains ambiguous (Borland & Macdonald, 2003; Szymanski, 2003), even though it is used as a key indicator of a quality sport experience. To compensate for the variable quality of the core, on-field sport product, sport organizations also offer a range of supplementary products and services like merchandise and hospitality that can be more easily controlled for quality. Since these augmented products are important for cross-subsidizing the core on-field activities of sport organizations, they have to be handled with a careful awareness of customer satisfaction and service quality. Consistency and ongoing performance improvement for auxiliary services are even more important to sport organizations than they are to other organizations because of the dramatic fall in quality that can come from poor weather, an overwhelmingly one-sided contest, injury to star players, and a half-empty stadium devoid of atmosphere.

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Although the conventional wisdom says there is too little competitive balance in most sport leagues as evidenced by the tendency of the same clubs and teams to dominate, it has also been suggested that from an attendance and revenue-maximization viewpoint, the strongest and most popular clubs do not win enough (Szymanski, 2006). However, this remains true only until such point as the strong become too dominant and the assumption amongst consumers becomes that the strong never lose. Despite the evidence that strong teams attract big crowds even where the result is not seen to be in doubt, sports leagues continue to allocate significant resources to the construction of regulatory mechanisms aimed at maintaining competitive parity and ensuring outcome uncertainty. While these regulations are for the most part effective, they introduce a further special, but complicating cultural feature in the form of anti-competitive behavior. As Stewart and Smith (1999) and Stewart, Dickson and Nicholson (2005) argued, most professional sport leagues operate as cartels. That is, a collective of firms which through collusion act as a single supplier to a market; a point reinforced by Downard and Dawson (2000), Sandy et al. (2004), Dabscheck (2007), Macdonald and Booth (2007) and Stewart and Dickson (2007). Sport leagues gravitate toward cartel-like behavior because they rely on the cooperation of teams and collective agreements on areas like salary ceilings, player recruitment and drafting, admission pricing, game scheduling, income-redistributions, and broadcasting arrangements to maintain an equitable competition and to maximize marketing and licensing opportunities (Gratton & Taylor, 1986; Davenport, 1969; Demmert, 1973; Schofield, 1982; Stewart, Dickson & Nicholson 2005, Szymanski & Kuypers, 1999). Teams and clubs depend on the continued on- and off-field success of their opponents. But in most industries, organizations are not permitted to cooperate in this way as it is considered anticompetitive behavior and is typically prohibited by law. This produces a third paradox, or conundrum for sport. Clubs must compete in a hostile environment against numerous, aggressive rivals while at the same time cooperate with these rivals to the degree necessary to benefit the entire group (Szymanski & Kuypers, 1999). The incentive to operate as a cartel is therefore powerful in sport, since restraining the desire of a few clubs and teams to dominate a league or competition can actually increase revenue and profits for all members of the league or competition. Professional sport has used forms of anti-competitive behavior to amplify its commercial impact, protect its brands, and increase revenues through collective marketing efforts. Anti-competitive behavior is a distinctive cultural feature of contemporary professional sport (Noll, 2002). And, like other industrial clusters that manage to create cartel-like structures, such as the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), it presents both opportunities and challenges for its management.

Structures for Collaborative Behavior Morgan (2002) observed that key stakeholders in sport, such as spectators, club officials, the organizing body, clubs, and broadcasters, rarely have congruent interests. The corollary is an ongoing disagreement about the best way to structure, govern and regulate a sporting competition, as well as arguments over the management of teams, the movement of players, and the distribution of revenues. While broadcasters favor interventions that maximize viewer interest, club officials seek resources to bolster their team’s talent pools, and organizing

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bodies want to maintain strict custodianship of the game. The complexities of collaborative behavior are compounded when different political systems are used to frame the structure and operation of professional sport leagues. In Barros, Ibrahímo and Szymanski (2002), there is a detailed exploration of the dichotomy between what is described as the North American ‘profit-maximizing’ model and the European ‘utility maximizing’ model. There is also a discussion of the ways in which North American and European anti-trust legislation delimits the potential for what economists like Szymanski and Ross refer to as horizontal and vertical restraints. Horizontal restraints exist between competing firms supplying rival products to suppliers, while vertical restraints exist between firms each playing a role in the delivery of a particular product in the market (Szymanski & Ross, 2007). In sport the primary focus is on horizontal restraints, particularly cartel-like behavior where anti-competitive collusion may allow clubs to limit competition or fix prices at the expense of the consumer. However, Szymanski and Ross (2007) point out that vertical restraints are also potentially anticompetitive where member clubs of a league control its organization and the movement of players. The issue lies in the distinction between a contest organizer and a contest participant. A blurring of the two is not only ambiguous in terms of the interests of consumers, but may also be economically inefficient (Szymanski, 2003). For example, a governance system independent of the league or competition’s participants can have significant implications on the deployment of revenue. In the cases of the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), the governing body of European soccer, and the Australian Football League (AFL), the governing body for Australia’s indigenous football code, some resources are diverted into developmental activities for the long-term benefit of the sports; financial decisions which would not be sanctioned by owner clubs. The differences between the North American and European governance models are also highlighted in their league structures. Whereas the North American leagues are closed systems where the same teams participate no matter what their league standing in the previous year, the European governance model extols the benefits of a promotion and relegation system. It can bolster interest in championship standings at the top and bottom of the competitive ladder, provide the opportunity for numerous teams from a single city to compete for a place in the highest league, and remove incentives for team relocation given that it is less expensive to buy more talent in order to win promotion (Noll, 2002; Zimbalist, 2003b). Professional sport has been forced to grapple with a range of challenges over the last decade, with Compton and Howard (2002) noting that both North American and European sport have had to regularly confront rising player salaries, vastly different levels of operating revenue between teams, fierce sponsorship rivalry, and heavy-handed broadcasters.

Using Technology to Manage Supply According to Stewart and Smith (1999), sporting clubs and competitions are traditionally restricted to what economists would call fixed short-run supply, or a highly inelastic production curve. The supply of the core sport product—for example, the on-field performance—cannot be increased in the same way that a manufactured good like a motor car or a generic service like dental work can. Only a certain number of games can be played during a season, and irrespective of the spectator demand, attendance is always limited by the number games scheduled and the seating capacity of the venue. Conversely, when there is

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limited demand, unsold seats represent revenue lost forever. In these instances the sport product cannot be stored and re-sold another day. Stewart and Smith (1999) went on to claim that professional sport is in the vanguard of technological development as a means of increasing product supply. Subsequent developments have largely born this claim out, although it would be more accurate to say that professional sport became a notable vehicle for the commercial utilization of new technology without being a special case. There are now a myriad of mechanisms for reproducing, repackaging and reselling sport, as there are for other information and entertainment services. They include World Wide Web platforms, such as blogs and social networking sites, email, web video, podcasts, vodcasts, websites, pop-ups, spam, virtual worlds, wikis, electronic commerce (such online and mobile payments), MySpace and Facebook. Add to these mobile communications technologies like Bluetooth, mobile phones, personal digital assistants, wireless, SMS (short message service), MMS (multi-media messaging service), 3G mobile/cellular phones and mobile gaming consoles, all of which are free from the restrictions of traditional land-based connections and offer new distribution channels. They offer fans an additional forum by which to experience, and indeed, re-experience their favorite sport event, but they do nothing to differentiate sport from a whole array of service-based products that are equally as effective in filling these disparate content deliverers through re-packaging and re-presenting. The handset presence of sport provides a convenient and novel experience for sport fans, but does nothing to give a sport its own special or unique presence.

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Managing the Fishbowl-Experience of Players Players and athletes are at the heart of professional sport, and they are a fundamental reason why fans pay good money to attend games and events. The history of sport demonstrates that sporting heroes, particularly when they perform at the very highest level, will attract enormous crowds who come just to watch them perform. Examples have included Babe Ruth in American Major League Baseball, Stanley Matthews in English soccer, Donald Bradman in Australian and international cricket, Pele in Brazilian and international soccer, and Michael Jordon in American basketball (Cashman, 1984; Le Feber, 1999; Goldblatt, 2006). There are many equivalent examples in contemporary sport, including Tiger Woods in international golf, and David Beckham in world soccer. With the growing professionalization of sport at the local level around the world, there is now considerable interest in players in all sports of inter-city and provincial leagues. Even in these local competitions there is an insatiable media interest in not only what players do on the field, but also what they do off the field. In becoming the center of media attention they have also become local celebrities, and every misdemeanor, and ever so slightly social deviant behavior is allocated front page headlines (Hess et al., 2008). This development means that players live a fishbowl existence where their behavior is scrutinized on a daily basis. Moreover, clubs, teams and leagues have become increasingly sensitive to any negative publicity that arises from player misbehavior, and have put in place a raft of rules and codes of conduct that provide sanctions for players in contravention. Sport organizations have hired lawyers, counselors, agents and psychologists to assist players in managing their behavior, and when players go outside of the narrowly proscribed limits, a

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team of experts and specialists is invariably there to guide them through the maze of media scrutiny and commentary that inevitably follows. The pressures on players to behave appropriately, and not to make fools of themselves or undermine the reputation of their clubs, are more onerous than in nearly any other occupation. Whereas music, film and television celebrities are almost expected to flaunt illicit drug use, sexual impropriety and financial extravagance, sports stars are expected to be exemplary citizens and solid role models for impressionable children. The media scrutiny becomes breathtakingly intense when sexual assaults or drug use is involved. In respect of drug use, one of the most discussed cases involved Ben Cousins, an elite Australian Rules footballer who played for the Perth WestCoast-Eagles in the Australian Football League. In 2007, he admitted he had taken numerous illicit drugs during his football career, and was barred from the game after admitting he was a drug addict (Stewart, Dickson & Smith, 2008). But it is not just the media spotlight that has applied pressure to athletes to conform to behavioral guidelines. Sport organizations have begun to introduce conduct-related clauses in player contracts, which are also appearing in an increasing number of collective bargaining agreements (Dabscheck & Opie, 2003). Nowhere are assumptions about sport’s fishbowl more obvious than in the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) rise to power, and the control they exert over the lives of players and athletes. The prevailing policy approach to substance use in sport rests on the proposition that punitive sanctioning will deter drug use and remove ‘drug cheats’ from competition. This policy position is driven by WADA, supported by the International Olympic Committee and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, and followed by national and international sporting bodies all over the world. Current global drug management policy aims to regulate drug use by (1) specifying a list of prohibited drugs, being careful to distinguish between those drugs that demonstrably improve on-field performance, and those drugs that are illicit and undermine the health and well-being of players and athletes as well as tarnishing the reputation of sport itself, (2) listing a raft of suspensions and fines for players and athletes who have been found to have used, possessed, supplied or trafficked any banned substances, and (3) providing for a tribunal-style process whereby allegations are heard, judgments made, and penalties imposed where appropriate. Stewart and Smith (1999) were silent on the ‘fishbowl’ experience of players, and the omission represents a substantive gap in their list of sport’s special cultural features. The experiences of players have now not only become the one constant in the weekly reporting cycle of professional and elite level sport by the media, but also fall under the watchful eye of anti-violence campaigners, equal opportunity proponents, anti-discrimination officials, gender equity activists, doping agency officers, and drug investigators.

Managing Players as Assets Another feature of contemporary sport that Stewart and Smith (1999) failed to adequately grasp was the massive increase in player salaries and recruiting costs, and how they impact on the management process in professional sport. Clubs are now confronted by the issue of how to not only deal with players who earn more than the club’s chief executive officer and senior management team, but also how transfer fees should be dealt with. In these instances players

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are increasingly counted as assets, and indeed given a value in the same way that an item of machinery or office equipment is listed as an asset and allocated a value. In theory, an increased payroll for a team should have a causal impact on competitive success. That is, it should pay to pay, at least in terms of on-field performance. The economic modeling of Hall, Szymanski and Zimbalist (2002) revealed an unimpressive correlation between team performance and payroll in US Major League Baseball and for English Football between 1980 and 2000, although it was seen to be increasing since the mid-1990s. For European football on the other hand, Simmons and Forrest (2004) concluded that relative spending on team payroll is a good predictor of team league standings. The player-as-assets issue arises especially in professional sport leagues where teams are able to trade players through a transfer market. In English Premier League football, where large transfer fees are standard, transfer fees are listed as assets and amortized over the contract life of the player. Take for instance Manchester United Football Club player Cristiano Ronaldo, who transferred from Porto, in Portugal in 2003. His transfer fee was just under GBP 12 million, and he signed with Manchester United for five years. Using the straight-line method of depreciation his fee was amortized at around GBP 2.4 million a year, and charged as an expense against revenue for each of the five years of his contract. After two years he was valued at around GBP 7.2 million (i.e. 12 less 4.8). At the end of his five-year contract his value would technically be zero. However, in practice his value and his potential transfer price is likely to be positive, unless he was cut down by injury. In fact as a result of his recent impressive on-field performances, his real 2009 value and transfer fee would be higher than his 2003 purchase price. The bonus here is that unlike other assets that lose value over time and are depreciated, many players will in fact have increased in value. However, in some countries, and in those sports where there is no transfer market, the balance sheet will show players as having zero value at the end of their contract. Under these conditions clubs’ assets will be seriously undervalued, and this peculiar feature constitutes another management issue to be dealt with. Stewart and Smith (1999) said little about this issue, and it now constitutes a problematic oversight from their analysis. Treating players as assets means that like any other part of the club’s capital stock, they need to be fully maintained and given maximum support to ensure their optimal performance. The implication is that players have enormous bargaining power, but players can also be treated like cattle and traded at the whim of coaches, managers, and team owners, not to mention the unobserved but not-so-subtle influence of sponsors and broadcasters.

The Confounding Influence of League Structures The fact that many of the above so-called special-features are not exclusive to sport is further complicated by the growing disparity of sporting organizations and structures. There are four major transnational models for the governance of sport at the highest level (Morgan, 2002). First, there is the traditional national governing body pyramidical hierarchy exemplified by traditional European sports like swimming, badminton and collegiate sport in the United States. Second, there is the distinctive North American cartel structure operating in its ‘Big Four’ national leagues. Third, there is the oligarchy model illustrated in English Premiership football. Finally, there is the promoter-led structure found in boxing. While these

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broad classifications can illuminate the presence of common special features, they are also becoming increasingly blurred and fragmented as a consequence of sport’s commercial and competitive pressures. For example, NASCAR functions somewhere between a monopoly and a promoter-led licensed franchise. Tennis and golf are strictly committed to an international, hierarchical model but the power and money resides with its tournaments, which are owned and operated by nationally sanctioned venues. Cricket and rugby are also organized within an international and national hierarchical framework, but have been vulnerable to the forays of new commercial ventures like Super-league rugby and the Indian Premier League. These four governance structures make for differing management outcomes, but there is little evidence that they fundamentally change the fan experience. They all view sport as a contest where highly skilled teams of relatively equal strengths will produce the highest quality outcomes. And, where these performance-differences are inappropriately wide, they will for the most part act to create greater levels of parity. The common managerial assumption is that sport is at its best when there is collaborative intervention to ensure a quality experience for fans.

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CONCLUSION Over the last 10-20 years professional sport has been interrogated from various perspectives, with sociologists, historians, lawyers and management theorists leading the charge. On balance they found that sport is both commercially special and culturally unique. Our review in this chapter of these special and unique cultural features indicates that (1) the distinctiveness of some of them have been overstated, (2) a number of new and novel features have emerged, while (3) other features have been eroded in line with sport’s relentless corporatization. While it is inappropriate to conclude that the cultural features discussed above demand a specialized form of management practice, our analysis suggests that sport leagues and competitions still have many idiosyncrasies that demand considered and strategic responses. In the first place, sport is still characterized by fierce, loyal and passionate fans who experience a strong, vicarious identification with their favorite players and teams. It remains one of the few products that deliver engaging experiences that become part of our collective memory. However, even the most strident sport fans are also motivated by other benefits of the sport product, including aesthetic appeal, entertainment, and social interaction. As a result, the needs of sport fans are similar to those sought by consumers for a range of other discretionary leisure products like the cinema, the art gallery and the theater. In addition, some of the distinctive features of sport have been eroded as a consequence of the pressures for homogenization arising from commercial development, global expansion and cultural marginalization. Traditionally, the major difference between business and sport was the importance of profit and return-on-investment for business, and the preference for winning and on-field success for sport. While it is clear that winning is sovereign in professional sport, there is a growing recognition that revenue and profits, and the resources that money attracts, are the keys to successful performance. Moreover, the evidence suggests that winning is also the fastest route to profitability. This means that it is no longer a case of

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either or, but of both aims being met through an interdependent managerial strategy that builds a strong platform of quality resources from which to launch a high win-loss ratio. While the corporatization of sport over recent years may have resolved the dilemma of how to balance profits against performance, no such solution has been secured for the issue of quality in sport. The ambiguous nature of sport product quality is exemplified in the ways in which different stakeholders approach it. For example, many club officials and die-hard fans view quality primarily in terms of consistent winning, whereas regulators and the run-of-themill sports follower are more likely to perceive quality in terms of competitive balance and outcome uncertainty. Added to this ambiguity is the complicating fact that the core sport product is now surrounded by services and merchandise that are used to provide a more consistent and multi-faceted sport experience. The capacity of sport to adjust supply by broadening the delivery platform is an important strategic development, but it is not unique to sport, and is now commonplace with a whole range of information and entertainment experiences. On the other hand, the corporatization of sport has brought players to center-stage, both on and off the field. As a result their fishbowl existence and integral contribution to the commercial progress and asset growth of clubs and associations is something that sets sport apart from more prosaic businesses and industries. Finally, professional sport is embedded in a fundamental structural and operational paradox that complicates its management at every strategic turn. It arises out of the fact that sport’s commercial progress and subsequent corporatization is a two-edged sword. While on one hand it allows sport to tap into new markets by changing its shape and features, on the other hand it fractures all those traditions that made it attractive to fans in the first place. Overall, the evidence suggests that the special features of sport identified by Stewart and Smith in the late 1990s are now less distinctive. Many of the eclectic features associated with any given sport structure or system may be novel, complex, and even contradictory, but they are no more so than the services delivered by the arts (Cray & Inglis, 2008) or the hospital and health management sectors (Somers & Perry, 2008). When added to the changes that have taken place to sport over recent years, the special features of sport are in need of wholesale revision. While professional sport is still both similar to and different from so-called conventional business, its key features and contextual weightings have changed. Both business and sport are concerned with widening their market share, building profits, and strengthening the brand. At the same time, the view that sport has a monopoly over the delivery of passion, loyalty and strong identification is difficult to defend. There are now only four features that clearly distinguish sport from business, instead of the ten that Stewart and Smith had initially marked-out. First, sport performance is fundamentally unstable, and as a result is in constant need of hands-on management in order to engineer a level playing field, and guarantee a minimum level of quality. Second, sport can get away with a number of anti-competitive practices that would normally put the CEOs of business enterprises in jail. Third, sport players and athletes are put under a level of scrutiny and held up to standards that would not be tolerated in other spheres of commercial endeavor. Finally, the constant rating of players, their perception as income earning assets, and the tight constraints that are placed on their behavior and movement between clubs would rarely take place in any other business enterprise or industry. So, in short, while professional sport has undergone significant structural and operational change over the last ten years, it still has enough idiosyncratic features to justify a customized set of management practices.

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At one extreme, even at its most hard-core professional level, sport has been re-badged and re-organized as a not-for-profit cultural practice that delivers a range of memorable experiences and social benefits that the commercial for-profit sector under-supplies. At the other extreme it is built around a set of market-driven forces that make it just another product situated in a competitive marketplace delivering just another package of ephemeral, banal and for the most part, forgettable, experiences to its customers At the same time, and under both of these extreme structural circumstances there are still a number of idiosyncratic features that give sport its special character, and that reveal themselves in both the profit and non-profit sector as well its different forms of governance, be it pyramidal/hierarchical, cartel-based, an oligarchy, or promoter-led. In summary, despite the changing face of sport over the last ten years, and despite the severe, indeed sometimes fundamental weaknesses contained in the Stewart and Smith (1999) model of sport’s special features, some of their broad conclusions are worth revisiting. Although the details of their 1999 analysis are, for the most part, outdated, there are three general points that are difficult to refute. First, “… a failure to recognise sport as a business will produce poor performance, and second, management strategies that ‘gives no recognition to its special features” (p. 97), will fail to deliver optimal outcomes. So too does their pronouncement that “…it is precisely these special features which demand the application of sophisticated and ‘professional’ business principles” (p. 98). In the next chapter we dig deeper into these special cultural features by examining the contextual variables at work.

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Chapter 3

CONTEXTUALIZING SPORT CULTURE

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INTRODUCTION The relationship that sport fans and consumers construct with sport teams and leagues is central to their decisions to engage in sport-related experiences, and travel long distances to do so. It also shapes the cultural context in which sport organizations operate. In this chapter, we explore a number of factors pivotal to the fan-sport relationship, including the (1) underlying drives of fans, (2) factors which moderate fan motivation, (3) factors that impact upon fan identification and team attachment, and (4) contextual influences linked to the team, game or league fixture. These factors contribute to sport consumption but are less often considered as variables influencing sport culture. This chapter explains the different relationships that fans construct with their favorite sports, teams, and events, and examines the impact of moderating factors and contextual influences on the fan-sport relationship. We aim to categorize the mechanisms affecting sport consumption in order to better understand the central factors shaping sport culture. By making these factors transparent and revealing how they sculpt a cultural context, we lay a foundation for discussing culture and identity. Our model of sport consumption appears in Figure 3.1.

UNDERSTANDING FAN BEHAVIOR Sport fans and consumers are the fulcrum upon which sport leverages its popularity. They watch live television broadcasts, listen to radio commentary, read the sports pages of the daily newspapers, dial into sport web sites, buy sport branded merchandise, and travel extensively to attend matches (Horne, 2006). Sport consumers spend significant parts of their time talking to other consumers about a variety of sport issues that range from the prosaic to the obsessive. Sport consumers pay considerable sums for obscure, and sometimes ‘tacky’ memorabilia (Mason, 1999), and invest an enormous amount of energy in things that are frequently ephemeral and transient (Booth & Tatz, 2000). At the same time, the sport consumer experience meets a number of important psychological, social and cultural needs. These needs range from escapism, stimulation, and entertainment, to national pride, cultural celebration, and a sense of collective and personal identity. Moreover, for the most part, this experience not only utilizes significant time and resources, but also produces enormous amounts of

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energy and passion. As a result many sport consumers will undertake both frequent and distant travel in order to engage with the object of their consumption (Hughson, 1999; Wann, Melnick, Russell & Pease, 2001). The cultural context of sport plays a foundational role in stimulating the passion that defines sport organizations and the identities many of them exemplify. Figure 3.1 Model of Sport Consumption Sport Consumption Motives

Moderating Influences

Psychological Socio-Cultural Social Belonging

Age Gender Race / Ethnicity

Factors Influencing Consumer Attachment Sport Consumer Attachment Attraction Centrality Identification

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Sport Consumption

Contextual Factors that Moderate Sport Consumption Behavior Sport context Competition Physical environment Economic Promotional Social context

Figure 3.1. Model of Sport Consumption.

We know that some sport followers are so passionate that their interest borders on the addictive, an axiom of sport allegiance that has been borne out in both serious research (Giullanotti, 2002; Rein, Kotler & Shields, 2006; Stewart, Smith & Nicholson, 2003) as well as popular and anecdotal commentary (Hardy, 1999; Hornby, 1995; Queenan, 2003). This fanatical compulsion provides the emotional glue that binds fans to teams, and maintains the faith, even when the team is performing poorly. Calhoun and Gorman (1997, p. 237) use the term ‘fan equity’ to describe the “relentless emotional and physical investment” that fans have in their favorite teams, where fanaticism gives teams an “added measure to prosper and survive” (p. 237). We also know that other consumers have a more casual relationship with sport leagues and teams. In these instances, their general interest can shift in response to wins and losses, the location of the venue, the appearance of star players, and even a late change in the weather. Notwithstanding the frequent fickleness of fans, Hinch and Higham (2005)

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Contextualizing Sport Culture

determined that the key characteristics of sport attractions are the uncertainty of outcomes, the role of athletic display, the kinesthetic nature of sport activities, and the visceral nature of many types of sporting engagements. According to Hinch and Higham these traits increase the potential for sport attractions to supply sport fans with authentic and meaningful experiences. At the same time, Hinch and Higham’s findings beg the question as to what exactly constitutes an authentic and meaningful experience, and what resources fans are prepared to invest to secure it. While authenticity and meaning can be highly subjective end-points, they are strongly related to the nature and intensity of individuals’ investment in a sport object as well as the degree to which this investment is allied with the formation of self-identity (Giulianotti, 2002). As more research is conducted on sport consumers and their behavior, it becomes increasingly clear that the sport consumption experience is a complex one (Crawford, 2004). As already noted, sport fandom cannot be reduced to a few basic drives and needs, and although sometimes revealing, it is not a simple task to slot fans into simple typologies based on a single factor that drives their sport-related behavior. While a few studies have attempted to derive a single set of variables that influence fan behavior, the best studies have apprehended the importance of multi-factorial analysis. For example, Chen (2007) determined four clear but interrelated antecedents of loyalty for sports tourists: satisfaction, attachment, involvement and commitment. Sport consumers therefore not only use teams and players to construct identities and a sense of self, but also use them to simply fill in their leisure time. Fans can be remarkably loyal, but they can also be fickle and critical. In the midst of this continuum is an array of factors affecting sport consumption in general as well specific decisions to travel long distances to secure a special experience, or participate in a special sport event (Weed & Bull, 2004). As a way of mapping the travel dimension of sport fandom Gibson (1998) identified three different types of behavior associated with sport tourism, the first involving active participation, the second related to spectating or event tourism, and the third associated with visitation for nostalgic reasons. Robinson and Gammon (2004) also highlighted the complexity of sport tourism motives and the difficulties associated with specifying their interaction and influence. Kurtzman and Zauhar (2005) similarly considered sport tourism travel motives and noted their potential economic, intellectual, social, political, and consumer values aspects. We pick up on these themes in this chapter. One of the challenges in undertaking our analysis lies in dealing with an inherently diverse set of empirical observations including psychological inventories, case studies, ethnographies, sociological interpretations, economic models, marketing and branding analyses, as well as a vast catalogue of environmental descriptors. Despite the limitations in trying to find common ground upon which to discuss this panoply of data, we contend that the attempt is worthwhile if only to better appreciate the intersections between ostensibly unrelated methods and results. Upon closer investigation it becomes clear that seemingly unconnected approaches have yielded some consistency, despite being couched within different research lenses and conceptual jigsaws. Our approach here has been to begin with the confluence of as many different methodological and contextual approaches as possible, and then radiate out with increasing speculation as we venture further from the common junction. We anticipate that this synthesis will not only provide an improved understanding of the mechanisms and processes of sport consumption, but also shed light on the formation of sport culture. .

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Our chapter categorizes the empirical work on sport consumption into four dimensions. First, we begin by discussing the underlying motives of sport consumption, and what it is that attracts people to sport leagues and teams, and the locations in which they play. Second, we review the factors that moderate these underlying motives, and third, analyze the mechanisms of fan attachment to the sport object. Finally, our chapter addresses those factors and influences outside the psyche of the fan that may impact upon their decisions to consume sport.

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BECOMING A SPORT CONSUMER Research has identified a number of psycho-social motivations behind sport fans’ consumption behaviors that have mainly been used to develop and validate scales to identify fan motivations and interests. For example, Wann’s (1995) Sport Fan Motivation Scale (SFMS) highlights eight motivations, including eustress (positive stress or arousal, stress release), escapism (diversion from daily life), entertainment, aesthetic pleasure (the beauty of sport performances), group affiliation, family needs (spending time with family), potential economic gain (gambling), and self-esteem (personal enhancement). Trail and James’ (2001) Motivation Scale for Sport Consumption (MSSC) produced a similar model of fan motivation and interest, which integrated Wann’s (1995) studies with the Motivations of the Sport Consumer Scale of Milne & McDonald (1999). The nine factors of the MSCS include vicarious achievement, knowledge acquisition, drama, aesthetics, appreciation of athlete’s skills, physical attraction to athletes, escape, family and social interaction. New and refined motivation scales continue to be developed (Funk, Mahony, Nakazawa and Hirakawa, 2001; Zhang et al., 2001). Armstrong (2002), for instance, articulated the cultural affiliation variable, which expresses a sport fan’s preference for events and sports where the majority of athletes and spectators are from the fan’s ethnic group. This variable echoes the ‘similarity’ factor suggested by Bilyeu and Wann (2002), which holds that fans may enjoy watching athletes with demographic similarities to themselves. While the reservoir of theoretical models ascribing motivations to sport fans is ever growing, and whilst, on the surface each theorists’ set of motivations appear distinctive, the differences are often semantic (Wann, 1995). Here, we reduce the findings in the literature on sport consumption motivation to three underpinning dimensions: psychological, socio-cultural, and social belonging, as shown in Table 3.1. Table 3.1. Key Dimensions and Motives for Sport Consumption Behaviors Dimension Psychological

Socio-Cultural Social Belonging

Motive Eustress Escape Aesthetic pleasure Drama and entertainment Family and social interaction Cultural connections Tribal connections Vicarious achievement

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PSYCHOLOGICAL MOTIVES Sport fans seek fulfillment of various emotional and intellectual needs through the consumption of sport. The drive towards stimulation, stress release, escape, entertainment and aesthetic pleasure enables the fan to experience positive feeling and thought states. Psychological motives can also be defined as those factors concerned with the individual interest and enjoyment extracted from an activity (Wann, Brewer & Royalty, 1999).

Eustress

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The human need for positive stress and psychological arousal is often referred to as eustress (Wann, 1995). Sloan (1989) emphasized the cathartic role of sport where bodily contact and shouting allows the venting of aggression in a socially sanctioned forum. Emotional states of excitement and anxiety accompany sport spectating experiences, which may invigorate and stimulate fans (Wann, Brewer & Royalty, 1999). Indeed, such emotional states are known to stimulate the physiological systems of the body to produce adrenalin and the brain to produce the pleasure-linked neuro-chemical dopamine (Smith, 2006). Wann, Scharder and Wilson (1999) suggested that the high levels of action played out in team competition provide a high degree of stimulation for spectators. At the most basic level sport watching can elicit pleasant levels of sensory stimulation essential for the maintenance of mental health (Gratton & Taylor, 1991; Scitovsky, 1976; Wann, Melnick, Russell & Pease, 2001). At its most complex, the stimulation sport offers provides a marked departure from the concerns of daily life where the travel component plays an integral role heightening the experience.

Escape The stimulation and arousal provided by sport also acts as an antidote to the routine ordinariness of everyday life in highly organized, but ‘unexciting societies’ (Elias & Dunning, 1970). The drive toward combat and collision sports like Ultimate Fighting, American football, Australian football, rugby and person-on-person sports like soccer, handball, and basketball, therefore have a strong attraction to fans who want to escape from their routine and regulated work environments into a world of passion, spontaneity and uncertainty. Team sports, which offer higher degrees of action and interaction, attract spectators motivated by the need for stimulation and diversion (Wann, Brewer & Royalty, 1999). Fans take the role of the “shouting, screaming, arm waving spectator” before returning to their “more restrained roles of parent, employee and civilized citizen” (Guttmann 1986, p. 156). For many fans, sport watching is the ultimate escape experience (Cohen & Taylor, 1992; Fink, Trail & Anderson, 2002a; Mackay, 1996). Moreover, proximity to home is likely to have an inverse relationship to the escape intensity, and as a result events that require additional travel to a distinctive and different sport-scape become a particularly desirable adventure. Sometimes fans may act in ways that contradict their conventional behaviors. According to Graburn (1983), the desire to maintain a consistent lifestyle can merge into ritual inversion.

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Away from the expectations and boundaries of everyday settings, familiar patterns can give way to inverted behavior. Thus, physical escape can fuel a kind of ritual inversion impetus, the implications of which are substantial, as Weed (2001) described in his account of football hooliganism at Euro 2000, where many English fans were particularly loud and aggressive. One interesting point Weed highlighted was that while the fans were intimidating, there was little actual violence. In most cases the posturing, bravado, and psychological domination were sufficient to escape from the constraints of everyday life. At the same time, there are some fans who use sport to escape from an over-stimulated rather than an under-stimulated situation. Bilyeu and Wann (2002), for instance, found that African American fans use sport to escape to a calmer space more frequently than European fans, and hypothesized that this was due to increased stress symptoms experienced by African Americans as a minority group. Sport can therefore be used to both escape a stressful world, and capture a heightened level of arousal.

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Aesthetic Pleasure Sport watching offers aesthetic pleasure to fans. While winning can provide a sense of personal worth, sport consumers are also prepared to pay in order to experience excellence (Bilyeu & Wann, 2002; Fink et al., 2002a; Smith, Patterson, Williams & Hogg, 1981). For many fans the great attraction of sport is its ability to constantly provide memorable incidents that remain in the collective memory. They are the “great moments” of sport in which drama, virtuosity, and sheer beauty is realized (Kupfer, 1988, p. 467), and the ability to claim attendance when such moments transpired adds to their memorability for those who did not (Weed & Bull, 2004). Sport’s aesthetic experience may in fact be the result of a fan’s interaction with the sport object rather than merely a passive visual reaction. From an artistic perspective, the relationship between a spectator and a sporting ‘artwork’ can be conceptualized as a relationship between a viewer and a mirror. Using a developed version of Lacan’s idea of the ‘Gaze’, Urry (2002) suggested that the ‘tourist gaze’ is constantly updated and reinterpreted, often driven by the sheer novelty of the visual space a tourist has encountered (Carrier, 1986). In this sense, the ‘sporting gaze’ can deliver ongoing aesthetic pleasure for the fanatical observer despite apparent repetition. To take the ‘sporting gaze’ one step further, we might speculate that it is not only a consequence of the artworks contained in the sporting ‘museum’, but also of the curatorial interpretations layered upon that artwork by sport marketers. The appreciation of the athletes’ physical skills (Fink et al., 2002a) can be seen as a response to excellence and elegance in sporting performance. In addition, interest in sport events can be influenced by the ‘sex appeal’ of the athletes competing. David Beckham’s capacity to draw soccer crowds is not only a function of his skills, but also his good looks and glamorous life-style. The aesthetic response may also be broader than the action on the field of play. Some evidence suggests that the aesthetic enjoyment of sport may stretch across a consumer’s entire experience of the environment including the venue, its region and the city itself (Stewart & Smith, 1997). For the sport fan, it is not just the sporting event which engages their aesthetic evaluation, but also the full suite of accoutrements that go along with sport’s consumption, including the trip itself, the presence of companionable fellow travelers, and the behavior of the non-sporting public with whom the fan interacts.

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Drama and Entertainment Sport watching also provides entertainment, intense enjoyment, and instant drama (Cashman, 1986; Fink et al., 2002a; Sloan, 1979; Stewart, 1995; Wilson, 1990). Through watching an engaging contest, fans can not only embrace the sensory delights, but also be part of a theatrical experience. Sport entertainment provides spectacular events and images that “appeal to the eye by their mass proportions, color and other dramatic qualities” (MacAloon, 1981, p. 243). An appealing blend of high performance, carnival, theater, emblems, and noise allows consumers to capture an intense experience of drama and entertainment (Crawford, 2004). Sometimes this drama unfolds long in advance of the game itself, as sport consumers can derive substantial satisfaction from expanding expectations associated with the preparation for the event, and the group travel experience leading up to the main game (Fairley, 2003). In their study of college football fans in the United States, Gibson, Willming and Holdnak (2003) drew attention to the importance of ‘tailgating’, which involves extreme socializing in the car park for several hours before the game. Groups of fans begin experiencing the anticipated drama of the sport contest based on interaction that takes place in and around their vehicles. Consequently, entertainment for sport fans need not be confined to the sporting arena, thus reinforcing the centrality of the tourism and travel experience in the consumption of sport.

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SOCIO-CULTURAL MOTIVES Sport has always had a strong social dimension, be it playing as part of a team, watching others play, or just talking to friends and colleagues about it. It acts as an interpersonal juncture where people gravitate in units of families, supporters, and state and national cheersquads. It provides a point of travel convergence, a gathering place, and shared activities. Individuals and groups may travel to see a sport or team as a means to a social goal that extends well beyond the activity itself (Wann, Brewer & Royalty, 1999)

Family and Social Interaction Sporting events provide an opportunity for families to spend time together, and in this respect, a sport experience is a vehicle for fulfilling family needs in much the same way as a vacation or weekend outing. However, a number of studies have suggested that the family motive may sometimes have a negative correlation with fan behavior or team identification (Fink et al., 2002a; Trail & James, 2001; Wann, 1995; Wann, Brewer & Royalty, 1999). If a spectator is motivated to attend a sporting event in order to share an enjoyable experience with their family, then the nature of the game they attend and the team who is playing may be irrelevant (Fink et al., 2002a). On the other hand, the need to foster social relationships with ‘like-minded’ others cement feelings of belonging (Fink et al., 2002a). The family and social interaction motives reflect the drive toward group affiliation, and the desire to identify with something bigger than oneself (Wann, Brewer & Royalty, 1999). Family and social

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interaction relates to the impact of associated experiences rather than the sport experience itself. These may include a cultural connection, which is described next.

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National Culture Connections Fans use sport as a form of cultural celebration. To this end, “mythical images”, symbols and icons represent an instrumental part of a fan’s sporting experience (Segrave & Chu, 1996, p. 60). The Olympic Games exemplify this need by the importance it attaches to the Olympic torch relay, the lighting of the flame, the Olympic oath, the closing ceremony, and its capacity to “distribute vast symbolic energies” (MacAloon, 1981, p. 5). For sporting clubs, the theme song, club colors, insignia and mottos fulfil the same function by providing powerful images that signify a common affiliation and “shared humanity” (MacAloon, 1981, p. 251). In short, sport can bring meaning into a secular society (Guttmann, 1986), but given the infrequency of large, culturally-relevant sport events, consumers must make an effort in order to engage with it. To Deery, Jago and Fredline (2004), these types of events are exemplars of the sport experience. The drive for cultural connections through sport may transcend national citizenship and extend to racial and ethnic cultural heritage. Bilyeu and Wann (2002) found that fans enjoy watching athletes with demographic similarities to themselves. Armstrong (2002), concluded that African American consumers are influenced by the motive she labels ‘cultural affiliation’, which expresses the desire of fans to watch sports and attend events where athletes and spectators are mainly from their own ethnic/racial group. She concluded that events offering culturally-relevant sport and entertainment will be the more desirable. In a similar way, Kulczycki and Hyatt (2005) and Ramshaw and Hinch (2006) found that many sport fans will travel to live events for nostalgic reflection and as a mechanism to embrace their cultural heritage. Fairley and Gammon (2005) suggested that viewing sport acts as an incubator for hatching nostalgia.

SOCIAL BELONGING MOTIVES Whilst psychological and socio-cultural motives help describe why a fan is attracted to a sport object, it is clear that not all fans experience the same degree or strength of identification. The degree to which a fan identifies with a team is an important issue since it may predict their loyalty and behavior (Fink et al., 2002a). Chen (2007) concluded that satisfaction, attachment, involvement, and commitment are the essential progenitors of loyalty. Thus it is useful to differentiate between psychological and belonging motives here, as the former describe attraction and the latter the strength of sport object identification. Psychological motives are internal to individuals whereas belonging motives are a function of a sport consumers’ interaction with a sport object. Fans with stronger identification have sport more deeply embedded in their self-concept, and are more likely to attend games and travel greater distances to do so, purchase merchandise, spend more on tickets and products, and remain loyal (Fink et al., 2002a; Madrigal, 1995; Murrel & Dietz, 1992; Wann & Branscombe, 1993). This attitudinal and behavioral divide is used by Giulianotti (2002) to

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develop a four quadrant typology to differentiate sport fans. His traditional versus consumer axis reflects the basis of a fan’s investment in the sport object, the former representing a popular cultural affiliation and the latter a market-centered, consumption-based relationship. His second axis, hot versus cool, self-evidently distinguishes the degree to which the sport object is instrumental to a fan’s formation of self. What is novel in Giulianotti’s typology are the structural relationships between fan categories, which most notably reveal a degree of social paradox. For example, fans might possess a hot loyalty to a sport object while simultaneously treating it as a symbolic form of consumption. Such a view of ‘disorganized capitalism’ may provide a needed counterpoint against typologies that reveal none of the grey area, ambiguity or paradox that is characteristic of much research concerning sport fans. The outcome of a strong psychological connection to a team is loyalty, where support can continue regardless of circumstances and the location where the consumption transaction occurs (James, Kolbe & Trail, 2002). Motives that contribute to social belonging are likely to be the most salient to team identification (Fink et al., 2002a). The more closely an individual associates their sense of self with a team, and the more self-esteem they extract from that team’s successes, the greater their degree of emotional attachment, and the more committed they will be to engaging with the team. Similarly, a person’s sense of belonging to a sport team and/or fan group may contribute to a feeling that the group is an extension of the self; that their self-identity coalesces with the group identity. In practice this means that where the group goes, so too do those members for whom individual and group identification is blurred. Although fans want their sport to be exciting, dramatic, memorable, and symbolically significant, as Morris (1981) argues, they also want it to provide some sense of collective identity. Watching, reading, and talking about sport create a feeling of continuity and familiarity that comes from participating in a seasonal ritual. The weekly cycles of the dramatic match, the pre-game argument, the mid-week review and post-match media analysis, are repeated within a cultural framework insulated from the political and economic realities of the real world (Cheska, 1978). Fans want to feel part of a tightly bound community that celebrates current events that have their roots in the distant past (Beisser, 1967; Cooke, 1994; Smith et al., 1981). A sense of community and belonging are frequently associated with the sport experience. For instance, watching and taking about sport not only enables fans to share a common interest in the ‘game’, but also allows them to express their allegiance to a club, team, or player (Melnick, 1993; Smith et al., 1981; Wann & Branscombe, 1993), often through the demonstration of a personal sacrifice like the preparedness to travel long distances or endure lengthy queues. The powerful allegiance-signaling elicited by sport is similar to that demonstrated in religion (Sosis, 2000; 2004; 2005). Moreover, the connections that fans make with teams and athletes are an important source of personal identity (Hughson, 1999; Sandercock & Turner, 1981; Trail et al., 2000).

Tribal Connections One form of social belonging manifests as sport fandom is used to re-live or capture ancient ceremonies and primitive social practices. For example, Morris (1981) argued that contemporary sport is the modern counterpart of ancient hunting patterns. In particular, team sports like the various football codes provide strong tribal connections allowing members to play out a variety of traditional roles and practices. In sport clubs, as a modern form of

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tribalism, the tribal elders comprise the club president or chairperson, senior officials, coaches, senior referees, and medical support staff. The elders and players enact tribal rituals that re-enforce the sport’s values and regulates the behaviors of its participants. Rituals include pre-game activities and the location of signs, slogans, and billboards. The players are of course, the tribal heroes, cheered and lauded as they perform on the field of play. Central to the tribal practices are the fans, or tribal followers who accentuate inter-tribal rivalries through the purchase of memorabilia, dressing in club colors and provocatively inciting the followers of other sporting tribes. They also construct tribal chants and team songs, which are used not only to assert their identity, but also to intimidate rival tribes and declare their affiliations long before arrival at the sport contest (Morris, 1981, pp.86-94).

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Vicarious Achievement and Self Esteem The other dimension of belonging comes through the opportunity fans have to associate with a successful player or team in order to pretend that they too are successes. In other words, they share the warm after-glow of a championship, premiership, pennant or major player award (Mackay, 1996). The depth and intensity of the identification can vary significantly. At one end of the intensity continuum are the ‘fair-weather’ fans whose identity is directly linked to team success, and whose attendance at events will wax and wane. At the other end are the passionate supporters whose lifestyle and values are tightly aligned to their favorite teams and clubs, even when success is scarce (Sutton, McDonald, Milne & Cimperman, 1997). Through association with a successful team, individual fans can extract a sense of empowerment, social status and self-esteem (Trail et al., 2000). The vicarious achievement motivation parallels the self-esteem motive popularized by Wann (1995), which referred to the desire to preserve a positive self-concept through a sporting team’s successes. It also bears some resemblance to the motive to acquire knowledge, articulated by Trail and James (2001), where the more knowledge an individual has, (e.g. team statistics and club history), the greater their potential sense of mastery and confidence, and the greater their connection with the team. However, it has also been suggested that the acquisition of knowledge represents a separate drive for pleasure through learning (Trail et al., 2000). Associating with a successful team can enable an individual to derive a sense of selfesteem, or a feeling of vicarious achievement and accomplishment. Kerstetter and Kovich (1997), for instance, discovered that women’s basketball spectators in the United States experienced feelings of personal competence and mastery through watching athletes perform, thus further enhancing their enjoyment of the game and support for their favorite team. While sport fans value the vicarious benefits of team success, being motivated by the drive for self-esteem means that they must deal with the disappointment of player scandals and poor team performance. If the team is seen as an extension of the self, positive benefits will be associated with team successes, but negative consequences will ensue in times of poor performance (Kahle, Duncan, Dalakas & Aiken, 2001). In two seminal studies on sport fan identification, Cialdini et al. (1976) and Tajfel (1981) found that sport fans who identified with a successful team were more likely to publicize their affiliation. This was seen as a case of basking in reflected glory, or ‘BIRGing’. On the other hand, Crocker and Major (1989) and Cialdini and Richardson (1980) found that fans were more circumspect in publicly

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pronouncing their support of under-performing teams. In these instances, team identification was ‘down-played’ particularly in public discourse. This behavior has been defined as cutting off reflected failure, or ‘CORFing’. Jones (2000) determined that football fans manage CORFing by adopting a high degree of ‘in-group favoritism’ where feelings of solidarity and emotional closeness are conferred upon ‘fellow travelers’ where the discussion transitions away from the result and moves toward the quality of play and the performance of the referee. In this respect, there is a close relationship between fellow sport travelers when their impetus for visitation is common.

MODERATING INFLUENCES ON FAN MOTIVATION While research has identified the kinds of drives responsible for compelling sport fan behavior, it is clear that not all sport fans are equally motivated by the same factors or aggregate of factors. In particular, demographic variables perform this mediating function, and include age, education, income, gender and race.

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Age, Education and Income Studies by Wann (1995) and Armstrong (2002) suggest that a negative correlation exists between age and group affiliation, suggesting that older fans have a weaker affiliation, although this is not a universal finding (Wann, Schrader & Wilson, 1999). From an economic perspective, Armstrong’s (2002) study revealed that income was negatively correlated with five motives including eustress, economics, esteem, group affiliation and cultural affiliation. In other words fans on higher incomes were less likely to attend games for reasons of economic gain, bolstering of self-esteem, positive stress or group affiliation. The evidence also suggests that sport following diminishes with age and income. That is, older people on high incomes are less interested in watching a sport event.

Gender Of all the demographic variables explored, gender has received the greatest level of research attention to date (Bilyeu & Wann, 2002; Fink et al., 2002b; James & Ridinger, 2002; Wann et al., 1999). One observation claims that sport is gendered in favor of men since many of its values are based around aggression, mental toughness, external discipline and character building, all of which are core dimensions of ‘traditional’ male identity. However, while females frequently view sport differently to men, they still perceive themselves as sport fans (Dietz-Uhler, Harrick, End & Jaquemont, 1999). At the same time, males and females may be motivated to consume sport for different reasons. Men are more likely to be motivated by economic factors such as gambling than women (Armstrong, 2002; Bilyeu & Wann, 2002; Wann, Brewer & Royalty, 1999), and women are more highly motivated to consume sport for family reasons (Bilyeu & Wann,

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2002; Wann, 1995; Wann, Brewer & Royalty, 1999). Wann (1995), and Wann, Schrader and Wilson (1999) revealed that males were more likely to engage in sport consumption behaviors for reasons of positive stress (eustress), self-esteem, escape and aesthetic pleasure when compared to females. Fink, Trail and Anderson (2002a) suggested that the ‘acquisition of knowledge’ and ‘social interaction’ motives played a more significant role in men’s identification with sport teams than in women’s identification. The evidence from these studies reinforces anecdotal examples of men being more likely than women to engage in extreme sport-related experiences.

Race / Ethnicity It has been reported that racial differences may not only moderate fan motivation, but that different motivations may also be relevant to different racial groups (Bilyeu & Wann, 2002; Wann, Bilyeu, Holliosborn & Gambouras, 1999). Bilyeu and Wann (2002) compared African American and European American spectators, and noted that the former scored higher on the ‘escape’ subscale. Armstrong (2002) concluded that motivations differ between racial groups, and identified seven motives relevant to African American sport consumers: eustress, group recreation, aesthetics, cultural affiliation, group entertainment, escape and personal investment (economic and psychological).

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INTENSITY OF FAN ATTACHMENT So far it is clear that a number of motivational categories describe why fans are attracted to engage with a sport object, and that demographic factors may moderate these motives. At the same time not all fans experience the same degree of emotional attachment as a result of their interactions, leaving us with the need to address the mechanisms of fan attachment, as well as how some fans become more or less attached than others. Weed and Bull (2004) conceptualized these complex variables in terms of an interaction between activity, people and place. The idea of attachment has been discussed in relation to concepts such as loyalty, identification, psychological connection and emotional involvement. The terms identification and attachment are often used interchangeably (Wann, 1995; Wann & Branscombe, 1993). It is generally accepted that the intensity of the connection between the sport fan and their team, club or player has a direct impact on their consumption decisions. For example, the degree to which a fan identifies with a team can predict their loyalty and the extent to which they are prepared to sacrifice resources and time (Fink et al., 2002a; Wakefield & Sloan, 1995). As noted earlier, fans with a stronger identification are more likely to travel to attend games, purchase merchandise, and report intentions to attend future games (Branscombe & Wann, 1991; Fink et al., 2002a; Madrigal, 1995; Matsouka, Cheelladurai & Harada, 2003; Murrel & Dietz, 1992; Wann & Branscombe, 1993). The concept of ‘attachment’ between a sport fan and their sport object covers a range of emotional intensities. Some ‘die-hard’ fans (Wann & Branscombe, 1990) experience strong attachments with their loyalty to the team remaining steadfast irrespective of performance or

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location of play. In contrast, other ‘fair-weather’ fans (Wann & Branscombe, 1990) experience weaker levels of attachment and follow conditionally. Given this continuum between what Giulianotti (2002) would call hot and cool, a number of studies have attempted to explicate the factors which influence fan attachment (Crossett, 1995; Ferrand & Pages, 1996; Wiley, Shaw & Havitz, 2000). These factors can be integrated into three broad mechanisms: (1) attraction, referring to the degree of pleasure and personal interest in fan activities, (2) centrality, referring to the importance of fan activities to an individual’s lifestyle, and (3) identification, referring to the association between an individual’s selfconcept and the sport object. These dimensions have been identified primarily on the work of Wiley et al. (2000) as shown in Table 3.2. Table 3.2. Factors Influencing Fan Attachment Factor Attraction*

Definition Degree of pleasure and personal interest in fan activities. Importance of fan activities to lifestyle.

Descriptors High levels of enjoyment and pleasure in fan activities lead to high levels of attraction. Centrality* Fan activities are central if other aspects of life are organized around them, and the activities form a major part of the fan’s social life. Identification Association between self-concept The sport fan activity provides an avenue for the and sport object. acquisition of a social identity, and the selfexpression of that identity. * (Wiley, Shaw and Havitz, 2000).

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Attraction, Centrality and Identification Wiley et al. (2000) used the concept of involvement to explain how consumers develop strong emotional attachments to sport. They identified three factors influencing the strength of involvement with a sport activity. They were first, attraction, second, self-expression, and finally, centrality. Consumers who derive high levels of enjoyment from an activity are ‘highly attracted’ to the activity. Self-expression is an indicator of the meaning an activity has for its participants, and the extent to which it contributes to self-image and self-identity. Millward (2006) connected these variables with the travel imperative demonstrating that the European identities cultivated from participation in the most prestigious European football competitions are largely restricted to those fans whose clubs participate. Millward’s study confirms that consumers whose sport activities provide a strong sense of identity will put a high value on self-expression. Centrality measures the extent to which the activity is integrated into the person’s lifestyle. The activity is central if other aspects of life are organized around it, if it is a major part of the person’s social life, or if it is valued for its health and fitness benefits. The nature of the sport activity itself is likely to be pivotal here. For example, the requirement for travel, its association with the sport object, and the experience of the trip will all affect centrality. According to Ferrand and Pages (1999), involvement has four core dimensions. First, involvement is a product of personal interest in the game. Second, involvement arises from the pleasures associated with the expression of that interest. These first two dimensions correspond with Wiley et al.’s (2000) concept of attraction, which suggests that high levels of

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enjoyment and personal interest will mean that an individual is ‘highly attracted’ to the activity. The third of Ferrand and Pages’ (1999) dimensions suggest that involvement occurs because of the desire to identify with a sport experience, product, or team. This identification conveys the “capacity of an event or team to symbolically locate supporters within an ‘emotional community’” (p. 9). This variable correlates with Wiley, Shaw, and Havitz’s (2000) ‘self-expression’ concept, and is not far from the attraction, self-expression, centrality to lifestyle, and risk model derived by Funk, Ridinger and Moorman (2004). The final dimension of Ferrand and Pages’ (1999) model of involvement proposes that involvement is likely to be maintained where the risk of experiencing negative consequences is low. However, the results also suggested that the risks and costs associated with poor team performance were not all that significant in explaining a failure to attend regularly or take out a membership. This view is supported by Mahoney, Madrigal and Howard (2000) who suggested that fans with high psychological attachment resist changing preferences in response to ‘conflicting experiences’ resulting from a lack of team success. Ferrand and Pages (1999) found that fans who gained the most pleasure from games, and those who identified most strongly with the team, were most likely to attend matches and take out season memberships. Attraction and identification are two key factors determining the degree of attachment experienced by fans. Ferrand and Page’s (1999) conclusions suggest that fandom comprises both a ‘rational’ component that is linked to the immediate pleasure to be gained from the sport watching experience, attraction, and an ‘emotional’ component that arises from a sense of belonging and team identification. Jones (2000) demonstrated how identification with a sport team (and its heavy emphasis on emotional connections) becomes the pivotal means of signifying loyalty and commitment and producing “enduring leisure behaviour” (p. 284).

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CONTEXTUAL INFLUENCES ON SPORT FAN BEHAVIOR As we have argued, sport fandom has a lot to do with socio-cultural attraction, psychological and self-concept motives, and fans’ emotional attachments to teams and players. However, these motives and strong individual and collective connections can only partly explain the behavior of fans, since the degree of emotional or psychological connection a fan experiences for a team or club, does not necessarily translate into event attendance. For instance, Ferrand and Pages (1999) showed that emotional attachment does not always leads to regular attendance. Similarly, Mahoney, Madrigal and Howard (2000) found that while fans with high psychological attachment resisted changing preferences in response to the ‘conflicting experiences’ resulting from a lack of team success, they were not always regular ‘attenders’ at games. The behavior of sport fans—particularly the question of game and event attendance and the decision to travel—is a function of more than strong motives, emotional connections, and a strong attachment to a player or team. Research reveals that attendance is also connected to the context within which the sport experience occurs, which means that the passion and involvement of fans will be weighed against a variety of broader cultural, economic and physical factors and circumstances. They are all part of the fan’s decision-making calculus. Table 3.3 provides a summary of the contextual factors revealed in literature.

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Table 3.3. Contextual Factors that Moderate Sport Consumption Behavior. Factor Sport context Competition

Physical environment Economic Promotional Social context

Sub-factors Sport Features Sport Setting Reciprocity Balance of competition Uncertainty Quality of visiting teams Likelihood of winning Venue Facilities Prices Income of fan Special experiences Product attachments Alternative activities Social change and fashion Fractured traditions Corporatized sport

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Sport Context Sport Features At the most basic level, differences in the decision making calculus of fans will be mediated by the type of sport, and the setting in which the sport event occurs. Wann, Brewer and Royalty (1999) reported that fans of individual sports, such as tennis and auto racing, were motivated more by aesthetic concerns than fans of team sports such as football and volleyball, with the latter being more influenced by eustress and self-esteem. They also found that individuals who preferred non-aggressive sports such as baseball and soccer were more motivated by aesthetic concerns than fans of combat sports like ice-hockey, who were comparatively more influenced by economic drivers such as price. Sport Setting Motivational differences are also the result of the setting in which an event occurs (Bernthal & Graham, 2003; Kahle et al., 1996; Wann, Brewer & Royalty, 1999). Football games, for instance, can occur in a number of non-professional settings, such as high school and college, as well as numerous professional settings including state, national and international contexts (Wann, Brewer & Royalty, 1999). Bernthal and Graham (2003) found that fans of minor league baseball are motivated to attend games according to different variables than fans of collegiate baseball. It is also worth noting that technological advances are increasing the number of different settings in which sport can be viewed, including digital transmission and mobile phones. Moreover, many of these technologies provide engagement with the sport object without necessitating physical attendance. Technology itself might not necessarily be the key. Weed (2006; 2007) showed that watching significant sport events remotely, but in the presence of others can produce just as much exhilaration or

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disappointment as actual attendance. This is because a significant aspect of the experience is its collective and communal nature.

Reciprocity According to Crossett (1995), the attachments that fans establish with clubs, teams and players are reinforced when the athletes themselves demonstrate ‘reciprocity’ by pronouncing their loyalty to the club and the fans. The sport context (in this case the behavior of athletes themselves) may reinforce the behavior and motivation of sport fans to undertake lengthy journeys to attend important matches or events.

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Competition The Balance of the Competition When deciding whether to attend a game, fans will be influenced by the closeness of the contest. Anticipation of a high quality event will be reflected in a higher level of fan arousal, and a boost to crowd size (Borland & Lye, 1991; Borland & Macdonald, 2004, Cairns, Jennett & Sloan, 1986; Demmert, 1973, Foster, Greyser & Walsh, 2006, Quirk & Fort, 1992). Parity in competitions has also been connected with increases in attendance levels (Booth, 2000; Macdonald & Booth, 2007, Fuller & Stewart, 1993). Generally, the closer the expected result of the match or event, the more likely fans will be prepared to travel to see it (Cooke, 1994; Dobson & Goddard, 2001; Marcum & Greenstein, 1985). On the other hand, fans will be less enthusiastic about a game in which the outcome is seen as a forgone conclusion. An examination of the premier Scottish Soccer League showed that games which were expected to be close and which had a bearing on the championship, attracted the largest crowds (Jennett, 1984), although it could be observed that there is some danger of circular logic at work here given that the largest teams with the largest supporter bases would be likely to be involved. Similarly, Ferrand and Pages (1996) discovered that the single most important variable affecting fan attendance was the possibility of seeing an exciting match where neither team was expected to dominate. Consistent results were found with premier Australian football league clubs, where a close seasonal competition was associated with larger crowds (Borland & Lye, 1991; Borland & Macdonald, 2004; Fuller & Stewart, 1993). The Quality of Visiting Teams We have known for nearly four decades that games between clubs with low win-loss ratios will not attract fans, even if it they are expected to be close contests (Demmert, 1973; Canes, 1974). Moreover, when a good team is playing a poor team, a good home team will attract substantially more attendance than a poor home team. The prevailing axiom established decades ago that fans would rather identify with a winning team than a losing team and will pay for the opportunity, still prevails (Borland & Macdonald, 2004; Demmert, 1973; Noll, 1974). When a team is doing well, attendances will be high regardless of which opponent it is matched against. When a team is doing poorly, fans need an additional incentive to attend, like comfortable seating, an opposing team with a good win-loss record, star players, or some other attraction. A study of Major League Baseball in the United States

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has shown that promotional campaigns and special discounts are effective in building crowds in these cases (Marcum & Greenstein, 1985). However, it is unclear the extent to which these results may be applied confidently to other settings and contexts.

The Likelihood of Winning As indicated in the previous section, fans achieve not only satisfaction from identifying with a winning team, but will also attend games more frequently if they believe their team has a strong chance of winning. This tendency to commit more strongly to teams when they are winning is the result of wanting to bask in their reflected glory, as discussed earlier. A team that consistently loses will have difficulty attracting large attendances (Dobson & Goddard, 2001; Covick, 1986; Demmert, 1973; Zhang, Pease, Hui & Michaud, 1995). Kochman (1995) found that home team spectators required more than a 60 percent chance of winning before attending a Major League baseball game. One explanation was that it costs too much to attend a Major League Baseball game with only the off chance of witnessing a win. Hill and Green’s (2000) research revealed that the league ranking of teams has an influence on fan attendance. Winning teams attracted more spectators than losing teams. Similarly, Mahoney and Moorman (2000) found that fans preferred to watch the best performing teams. Fans also enjoyed watching teams they disliked, particularly when they were expected to lose, but generally preferred “best performing teams over the most disliked teams” (Mahoney & Moorman, 2000, p.136).

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Physical Environment The Venue and its Facilities Sport venue features and facilities can have a strong impact upon fans’ decisions to attend a sport event. A facility will attract fans if it is able to provide an attractive setting, a convenient layout, good directional signage, a visually appealing and ‘watchable’ scoreboard, comfort, a better and proximate view of the contest, or is easily accessible (Bernthal & Graham, 2003; Borland & Lye, 1991; Crawford, 2004, Fuller & Stewart, 1993; Lascue, Giese & Toolan, 1995; Wakefield, Blodgett & Sloan, 1996; Wakefield & Sloan, 1995). Hill and Green (2000) found that stadium facilities can “enhance the likelihood that supporters of a home team will attend future games” (p. 157). Parking and the quality of food and beverages in particular had an effect on the decision to attend. They also found that the expectation of a large crowd increased the likelihood that fans would attend. Robertson and Pope (1999) determined that the standards of stadium design, food and drink, ticketing, child facilities, access and other auxiliary entertainment options had an effect on attendance levels. Not only were these quality factors a draw-card for fans, but were also a negative influence on attendance when seen to be inadequate or below expectations. Thus, service quality can influence the likelihood of attendance at a sporting event (O’Neil, Getz, & Caulson, 1999). Fans clearly want a comfortable and safe sport watching experience, and will usually pay for the privilege. Weather Conditions The weather can affect match attendances by influencing both the conditions under which spectators watch the game, and the quality of the game itself. Studies of American Football in

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the Great Lakes area showed that a sunny day enabled people to engage in substitute leisure activities (Noll, 1974). Climate can in fact be a narrow window of opportunity; a temperate climate with the close proximity of a variety of water-based activities discourages attendance, but so too does rain and the cold (Baimbridge, Cameron & Dawson, 1996).

Economic

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Prices Within a season, admission prices to sport events are usually fixed, although they can vary between venues. Between seasons, however, prices can change significantly, and can impact upon a fan’s decision to attend sport events. However, longitudinal data have indicated that total attendances have been only marginally influenced by admission prices (Fuller & Stewart, 1993; Morley & Wilson, 1986; Thompson, 1991). The demand for spectator sport is therefore generally price ‘inelastic’. Strong fan identity and loyalty makes fans price insensitive (Dobson & Godard, 2001, Sutton et al., 1997). An increase in admission prices and the cost of attending is not likely to diminish fan attendance to a marked degree. Studies of team sports leagues in the United States and England produced similar results (Cairns et al, 1986; Foster, Greyser & Walsh, 2006; Noll, 1974). The potential for economic gain through gambling has been identified as a variable influencing sport spectatorship (Wann, 1995), although the precise relationship between sport gaming and tourism is ambiguous. Some limited data suggest that tourists are more likely to engage in gaming than they are in their indigenous environment (Leonard, 2001), particularly when tourism is used as a ‘Trojan Horse’ disguising the gambling opportunity (Leiper, 1989). Income Levels of Fans The relationship between income and match attendance is an inverse one. As real personal disposal income increases, there will, all other things being equal, be a fall in attendances. Longitudinal studies in Britain showed that for every one percent increase in consumer expenditure between the 1950s and the 1980s, the demand for football fell by one percent (Cooke, 1994). Borland and Lye (1991), and Morley and Wilson (1986), concluded that increasing income levels led to a fall in Australian football match attendances during the 1970s and 1980s. In economic terms sport can be considered an ‘inferior good’; as fans become wealthier they develop more exotic patterns of consumption and spend less on traditional sport activities (Dobson & Goodard, 2001).

Promotional Special Experiences Special experiences will generally gain the attention of fans (Horne, 2006). The experience may involve the participation of a star player or personality, or the likelihood of a record-breaking performance. It may also involve an expectation of a dramatic or even violent encounter or the anticipation of highly skilled and aesthetically pleasing play. The appearance of a ‘personality player’ and belief that fans are obtaining value for money, are increasingly

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important triggers for consumers to attend sporting events (Zhang et al., 1995). Other ‘valueadding’ experiences include the expectation of a special occurrence, a special player match up, the presence of a glamour player, a complementary display or event, and attractive drinking and eating facilities. The contest is just part of the total package or experience (Kahle et al., 1996). In fact, the travel experience itself can even provide the most powerful value-adding or value-diminishing effect.

Product Attachments Promotional strategies, particularly when accompanied by admission concessions, sales vouchers and merchandising discounts, are important influences on fans’ decisions to attend a game. An American study of basketball indicated that advertising, direct mail outs, give-away prizes, the promotion of upcoming games, and the provision of premium seating can increase crowd sizes (Zhang et al., 1995). A similar study of baseball showed that promotional campaigns were effective in bringing fans to games, particularly where the probability of the home team losing was high (Marcum & Greenstein, 1985). Zhang, Pease and Smith (1998) also found that the promotional effect of viewing home games on commercial or pay television, as well as listening on the radio were positively associated with subsequent attendance at a game. Bernthal and Graham (2003), in their comparison of Minor League versus Collegiate Baseball spectators, found that Minor League fans consider added entertainment such as promotions and giveaways a more important factor in their decision to attend.

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Social Context Alternative Activities The availability of alternative activities will also influence match attendances (Gratton & Taylor, 1986). While this factor is not usually significant in influencing the variations in weekly attendance figures, it can be used to explain a decline in long term per capita sport tourism. For example, crowds at Premier League soccer in England during the 1940s and 1950s averaged around 41,000, while later crowds averaged only 12,500 (Guttman, 1986). Since then, the cinema, the arts centre, the motor vehicle and the development of other sports like basketball, netball, and baseball cut into the market for traditional winter sports (Cashman, 1986). Consumers also became increasingly mobile and were more able to choose between an increasing number of leisure and entertainment alternatives. This trend is continuing as many more major events and festivals in the arts and are conducted. The choice between competing leisure activities has never been more demanding. Social Change, Fashion and Fads A combination of changing family and inter-gender relations and the increasing participation of women in the work force have also changed sport fan behavior. More males have taken on additional family responsibilities as gender roles have been liberated, and as a result, sports watching is just one of a number of weekend activity options. At the same time, average working-hours have increased, and consequently diminished the free time of families. Changing social relationships can work in other ways as well. The halo effect, where the

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attitudes of friends, colleagues and reference groups influence the behavior of individuals, can impact on decisions to attend sports events. An American study of minor league baseball competition showed that the positive views of friends about the game, as well as its potential to provide exciting entertainment, were important in drawing crowds to games (Wakefield & Sloan, 1995).

Corporatized Sport Fans frequently mourn the loss of player loyalty to clubs, and the growing influences of business and business-people over sport (Aris, 1990; Crawford, 2004; Gorman & Calhoun, 1994; Horne, 2006). The commercial entrenchment of sport has also stimulated strong intercity rivalries. It has also created a colorful variety of images and icons that links fans even more closely to the collective personality of the club, its players and the city or region in which they are embedded (Rein, Kotler & Shields, 2006; Schaaf, 1995).

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CONCLUSION Modeling the fan-sport relationship and the factors which impel individuals to make consumption decisions is monumentally troublesome, since fans are not motivated by individual or psychological needs alone, but by a complex set of social, cultural and economic factors (Trail et al., 2000; Wann, Royalty & Rochelle, 2002; Wann, Schrader & Wilson, 1999). However, despite this messy array of variables, it is still possible to identify those core elements that influence sport consumers’ decisions and therefore the key variables shaping sport’s cultural context. From a broad perspective, four dimensions of fan behavior can be observed. These are (1) the motives which drive individual participation in sport fandom, (2) factors like age and gender which moderate these motives, (3) the strength of the emotional attachment to a sport, team, or club, and (4) the contextual influences which facilitate or obstruct consumption behavior. The motivations towards sports fan behavior can be aggregated under three key categories: psychological, socio-cultural and self-concept motives. Psychological motives revolve around the fan’s need to manage feeling and thought states. Fans are motivated by a need for entertainment, theater, spectacle, excitement, arousal, escapism and drama. Where entertainment can provide solid foundations to consume, many sport fans seek to be involved in something more selective and special. Socio-cultural motives refer to environmental forces embedded in the fabric of the society in which sport consumers live or within the social units in which they interact. This may take the form of national, state, ethnic or community pride. It is also manifest in the recognition of sporting traditions and all the rites and rituals that accompany them. These are powerful symbols of meaning that illuminate the values and assumptions that underpin the apparently irrational behavior of fans. The third category, social belonging motives, pivots around the need for a collective identity further to that associated with their cultural traditions This need for collective identity may be tribal and provides the avenue for the preservation and escalation of self-esteem. Nothing achieves this better than a winning team, where, over time loyalty is rewarded and reinforced.

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At the same time a number of contextual factors will modify these psychological, social and cultural drivers of sport consumption. They include demographic factors like age and gender, the expected quality of the game, and the facilities in which it played. The factors will moderate the motives relevant to an individual sport fan, and the resulting degree of emotional attachment of fans to teams and events. The available evidence suggests that attachment is a strong causal stimulus for sport consumption. Although this chapter has reviewed in excess of 30 different factors impacting on fan behavior, many of them are merely proxies for more fundamental fan needs, such as cultural connections, collective identity, entertainment and excitement. While human activity is motivated by the most basic of needs, the nuances of sport fan formation and the relationship between these underpinning needs and fan behavior remain under-developed despite many insightful empirical studies undertaken thus far. A major problem in studying sport fan behavior lies with the multiplicity of often-conflicting forces. For example, the entertainment value of a sport event can either be facilitated or obstructed by contextual variables such venue quality or the skill of the competing teams or players. In addition, the cultivation of an identity, the desire for a vicarious experience, or the need to engage in some form of tribal ritual can be enhanced or hindered as a result of having to deal with practical issues like the availability of reliable public transport and ticket prices. Nevertheless, we have laid out the important variables that comprise a sport organization’s cultural context. With these as a foundation, we can now conceptualize sport culture.

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Chapter 4

CONCEPTUALIZING SPORT CULTURE

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INTRODUCTION In order to place culture and the culture escalator into context, it is essential to understand the theories and concepts underpinning organizations. In this chapter we outline the foundations of organizational theory and map how thinking about organizations has evolved. Mapping the progress of theory reveals the deep suppositions that have been made about organizations, the ways that they operate, and the nature of culture. There have been numerous distinct periods of thought, each comprising particular assumptions about how best to manage organizations. Not only has each era of organizational thought delivered a different view about what culture might be, but each one has expressed unique preferences about the most effective mechanisms through which a cultural change can be introduced. Typically, these are expressed as theories, which in turn generate hypotheses and predictions about organizational culture and performance. Trying to understand culture without a feel for the history of organizational theory is like getting to know someone without asking about their past. Historical thinking has set the tone for tackling organizational culture. We therefore dedicate the first half of this chapter to charting the development of organizational theory, beginning with its core features, moving through its foundational eras, and culminating in the current perspective. With a solid grounding in place, we use the second half of the chapter to build the concept of organizational culture. In this section we systematically construct an idea of organizational culture, focusing on cultural types, levels, values, assumptions and symbols. We expose the key variables as well as the shaded complexities of the concept. On the other hand, we also illuminate its power and influence as a way of thinking about performance and as a way of conceptualizing organizations. Figure 4.1 presents a conceptual model of sport organizational culture, the foundations of which are assembled in this chapter, and to which we refer throughout the text.

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Figure 4.1 Model of Sport Organizational Culture External Environment

Culture Appropriateness

Culture Strength

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Organizational Behavior

Organizational Rituals & Ceremonies

Organizational Practices

Organizational Structures & Systems

Artifacts

Symbols

Organizational Identity

Values

Beliefs

Organizational Norms

Assumptions

Engrained Thinking

Organizational Culture

Sport Culture

Figure 4.1. Model of Sport Organizational Culture.

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Conceptualizing Sport Culture

75

ORGANIZATION THEORY

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We begin here with an analysis of organization theory’s evolution. Our approach acknowledges that organization theory represents the overarching body of knowledge relevant to culture. In fact, organization theory helps by contextualizing culture and identity. For example, a variety of the schools and streams of management thought illuminate the concepts of culture and identity. Organizations can be interpreted through two major perspectives, organization theory and organization behavior. Organizational behavior focuses on the actions and impact of individuals and groups within an organization (Jackson & Morgan, 1978; Robbins & Barnwell, 1998; Robbins, 2001; Slack, 1997). However, organizational culture and identity are more concerned with impacts upon organizations as whole units. Like organizational theory, culture emphasizes a macro, or holistic approach, that prioritizes strategy, structure, behavior and performance of an organization (Daft, 1998; Hatch, 1997; Robbins & Barnwell, 1998). In short, we remain most interested in the organization as the key unit of analysis. As Brown (1998, p. 4) observed, no field of management inquiry develops “ex vacuo”, or from within a vacuum; they all build on what has gone before. Hence, the field of organizational theory, organizational culture and organizational identity should be seen as concepts which evolved from other organization theories and principles. Most formal definitions state that organizations comprise social entities structured consciously as bounded activity systems that unite organizational members towards achieving common goals and objectives (Robbins & Barnwell, 1998). In simple terms, this means that organizations bring people together to get something done. Today, of course, organizations have become highly sophisticated, including products and services, staff and customers, as well as all of the strategies, structures and activities it employs to enhance performance.

Core Features of Organizational Theory Organization theory can be presented from numerous angles. In fact, it may be viewed as an aggregation of multiple theories and schools of thought that have developed over time (Brown, 1998; Hatch, 1997; McKinley, Mone et al., 1999). Because a number of perspectives and theories have evolved over the last century, definitions can vary (Daft, 1998; Pugh, 1997; Robbins & Barnwell, 1998). Daft (1998, p. 20), for example, claimed that organizational theory represents, “A way of thinking about organizations through patterns of knowledge, accumulated from theories, concerning the investigation and analysis of organizations.” Pugh (1997, p. xii) more broadly considered organizational theory as “… the body of thinking and writing which addresses itself to the problem of how to organize.” Similarly, Robbins and Barnwell (1998, p. 6) defined it as, “The discipline that studies the structure and design of organizations.” Our view is that a synthesis of these statements provides the most useful definition. To that end, organizational theory may be considered a discipline founded in a body of thinking and writing addressing the design and structure of organizations and their processes, through patterns of knowledge gained from the analysis and investigation of organizations. Organization theory seeks to develop ways of thinking about organizations that lead to better performance.

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It should be noted that newer organization theories do not necessarily replace earlier ones, but can also complement and supplement their predecessors (Jackson & Morgan, 1978; Pfeffer, 1997; Quinn & Cameron, 1988; Weber, 1946). It is not enough to describe and analyze different theories of organizations and their underpinning assumptions. We also need to understand how any kind of organization theory can evolve, adapt, or be revised or replaced. Furthermore, organizational theories do not stand alone as independent entities that describe everything about performance. Some theories relate to each other and the nature of this relationship helps us appreciate the way that any given theory seeks to describe and interpret culture and performance. With this in mind, we begin to chart the evolution of theories about organizations with particular attention to perceptions about how to best manage and improve culture.

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History of Organization Theory Variations of organization theory have probably existed in at least crude forms for thousands of years. Religious organizations, for example, have existed for at least 5000 years, while the Egyptians demonstrated an impressive command of organizational concepts in constructing the pyramids (Jackson & Morgan, 1978), even if their sensitivities to human resource issues remained secondary. Shafritz and Ott (1996) provided a chronology of organizations ranging from 1491 BC to 1994 AD, crediting Adam Smith’s (1776) ‘division of labour’ economic theory, in a pin manufacturing business, as one of the first recorded studies of organizations. Smith’s theory had a fundamental effect on the formation and management of organizations in both practical and theoretical ways. The Industrial Revolution stimulated the widespread study of organizations, what they represent, and their best actions to maximize performance (Robbins & Barnwell, 1998). As the eighteenth century’s industrialization led to a proliferation of new organizations, dedicated managers were required to implement new ways of thinking to enhance performance. Interest formed around how organizations should best be structured to achieve an optimum relationship between quality, production and profit. Less concern was allocated to the behavioral aspects of managing organizations or the implications for workers (Daft, 1998; Hatch, 1997; Robbins & Barnwell, 1998). Most chronologies of organization theory suggest that it blossomed in the twentieth century (Hatch, 1997; Lynch & Dicker, 1998; Robbins & Barnwell, 1998). Hatch (1997), for example, used the notion of organizational theory ‘perspectives’ in order to present a coherent timetable for its emergence. We provide a brief outline of organization theory’s development while firming its relevance to culture and identity.

The Classical Perspective (c1900 Onwards) Emerging at the start of the twentieth century, the classical perspective represented the first serious study of organizations. It split into two schools of thought, the ‘Scientific’ stream pioneered by Frederick Winslow Taylor, and the ‘Administrative Principles’ stream advanced by Henri Fayol (Hodgetts, 1986; Robbins, 2001).

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Taylor (1912) advocated four principles of scientific management believing than an approach based on ‘initiative and incentive’ would generate better results. His principles focused on (1) controlling manual labor on the basis that managers should gather intellectual knowledge based on their experience; (2) managers should scientifically select and progressively develop workers based on their limitations and potential; (3) managers should bring together the science of work analysis leading to the scientific selection of workers, and (4) there should be an equal division of the actual work between workers and managers. In contrast, Fayol, the advocate for ‘Administrative Principles’, came from a mining engineering background where his principles had emerged from experience in turning an ailing company into a successful operation (Hatch, 1997). Fayol believed that management functions rely on the personnel that execute them. In 1916, Fayol published what he claimed were the fourteen principles of management, centering on issues such as span of control, management by exception, departmentalization, unity of command, and hierarchy. However, like Taylor, the idea that management could be reduced to a single best way proved to be too idealistic. Notwithstanding the rigidity inherent in his principles, Fayol’s approach still underlies much of what has since been theorized about the social structure of organizations. Other prominent approaches from the classical perspective included the works of Marx, Durkheim and Weber. Marx’s major contribution to organization theory came in the form of a ‘Theory of Capital’, which placed control at the heart (Hatch, 1997). For our purposes, Durkheim’s most significant contributions involved understanding culture and identity through symbols, myths and rituals (Brown, 1998). Perhaps more than any other, however, it was Weber’s (1924) prescient interpretation of organizational structure around the authority and legitimacy of bureaucracies that laid the foundations for contemporary concepts of organization theory. The classical perspective conceived of organizations as precise, scientific entities to which adjustments could be made after careful analysis (Daft, 1998). Its driving impetus was industrial mechanization made possible through developments in manufacturing engineering (Hatch, 1997). Consequently, organizations were viewed in mechanical terms, where engineering presented the dominant mode of thinking. An engineering mentality also positioned organizations as closed systems, capable of adjustment and change independent from environmental variables. Of course, such a perspective reinforced the use of bureaucratic structures preoccupied with mechanical efficiency. The classical perspective prevailed until the late 1940s and 1950s when post war economic devastation provided a new imperative for growth.

The Modernist Perspective (c1950s Onwards) Seeking to counter the closed system approach, the modernist perspective began by recognizing that organizations operate within a larger environmental context. As a result, they must accommodate structures and practices organized around conflicting stakeholders who compete for power and control. Modernist theorists describe organizations in organic terms, as living systems performing functions necessary to their survival. Similar to the classical perspective, the modernist approach reflected the needs of the time where turbulence characterized the industrial environment.

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In the 1950s, Parsons (1951) presented his view of ‘The Social System’ inherent in organizations. His view delivered the revolutionary angle of treating organizations as systems existing within, and dependent upon, their environments. Systems theory emphasizes an alignment between an organization’s culture, identity, strategy, and the environment. Taking another step, Von Bertalanffy (1968) developed a ‘General Systems Theory’ to explain scientific phenomena from their simplest constituent (atoms and molecules), through to their most complex constituents (groups, societies and organizations). In fact, systems theory remains a central perspective in accounts of organizational culture because, as Kerzner (1998, p. 61) wrote, it “…attempts to solve problems by looking at the total picture rather than through an analysis of the individual components.” In order to undertake a systems-based analysis, an organization first has to be treated as an open system. An open system comprises a set of interrelated organizational elements where each affects all of the others, and each element depends upon the system as a whole to survive (Cummings, 1980; Lewis, 1998; Roman, 1986; Tuman, 1988). Biological analogies tend to feature prominently in attempts to clarify the concept. For example, the human body entails a system made up of inter-dependent organs which all rely on the entire bodily unit to work. Systems theory therefore proposes that organizations operate with elements that contribute to their internal and external environments, and which influence its collective behavior. Perhaps the most important elements come in the form of culture and identity. Systems theory also highlights how organizational parts may be differentiated and integrated (Robbins & Barnwell, 1998). Hence, it recognizes how specialized departments (differentiation) must work together (integration) for an effective outcome. At the same time, the modernist approach considers environmental factors pivotal to organizational performance. Organizational systems operate within an environment, which influences internal processes and outcomes. Success or failure can depend on environmental factors outside the direct control of the managers (Cleland, 1999). Within the general environment, several groupings or sub-environments have the potential to influence an organization. According to the modernist view, managers need to be aware of the following: 







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The economic and market environments, including the finance markets, trading conditions, product market and competition, labor market, skills base, industry sector culture, shareholders, investment, trade unions and insurance markets; A technological environment or knowledge of how to do things; a social environment that includes attitudes, desires, expectations, intelligence, education, beliefs and customs of people in a given group or society e.g. in a sporting organization they might be the fans, members, supporters and sponsors; A political/legal environment consisting of laws, statutes, regulations, government agencies and their actions, which affect all enterprises and include professional regulations, standards, health and safety; An ethical environment, which is closely aligned to values and beliefs, and includes sets of generally accepted and practiced standards of personal and professional conduct; and, A physical environment such as office facilities, training ground as well as the impact of weather and climate.

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Managers in business organizations must identify the environments in which the organization operates and continually respond to them in order to perform their roles. Despite the powerful addition of a systems perspective, organizational theory still embraced a linear and causal approach. But as we all know, the same role, event or message can mean different things to each person working in an organization.

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The Symbolic-Interpretivist Perspective (c1980s Onwards) More than any other, Weick’s (1969) ‘Enactment Theory’ has become associated with the symbolic-interpretivist perspective. Weick claimed that people see what they want to when studying organizations. To that end, members of an organization bring events and structures into existence, setting them in motion as a part of their everyday activities. Similarly, individuals acting within organizations produce structures that did not previously exist (Weick, 1969). According to Weick, reality is ‘socially constructed’. Naturally, this concept remains instrumental to culture and identity given the importance of perception in their establishment. Culture and identity become socially constructed as organizational members reach a tacit consensus about the way things should be done. Berger and Luckman (1966) took a similar approach suggesting that the social order is crafted through human interaction and understanding, and further developed through shared histories and experiences. Such enactment underpins culture because it reflects the material and symbolic actions taken by members who perform certain actions based on familiarity or previous experience. Familiarity involves preconceptions about how actions should be performed, and what the outcomes will be. As a consequence, basic underlying assumptions about how things should be done become entrenched and immobile. The symbolic-interpretivist perspective recognizes that what organizational members understand about cultures, identities and environments may not always reflect real or tangible things. Organizational members create culture, identity and environments as mental constructs to help them make sense of their working lives. The symbolic-interpretivist perspective becomes useful by offering a voice to unspoken assumptions, revealing where they are shared. Moreover, the process of continually creating and reconstructing ideas about what it means to work in an organization leads to new interpretations and insights. Most importantly, a symbolic-interpretivist perspective places organizational culture at the fulcrum of change. It regards organizations as a conglomerate of meanings created by its members through shared history, experiences and values (Hatch 1997). Culture can be interpreted through a ‘semiotic’—signs and signals-based—view of organizations where symbols, artifacts, ceremonies and other objective material reveal layers of values and meanings. This approach can be taken even further where every individual’s personal reality should be acknowledged, and a multiplicity of options exists about management and cultural development.

The Postmodernist Perspective (c1990s Onwards) Postmodernists deconstruct elements of organizational structures and create new ones in their place (Hatch, 1997), contrasting with the functional approach taken by the modernist

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perspective. Postmodernists believe that knowledge about organizations incorporates so many independent elements that it can never possibly cohere into a single, complete and unified picture. As a result, innumerable different organizational compositions can work. In fact, the postmodern approach aims for flexibility and the ability to adapt to a continually changing and complex environment (Daft, 1998).The postmodern approach holds some connection with organizational culture as they both share an interest in how interdependent variables fit together within an organization. By comparison, modernists view organizations as unified entities subject to only periodic refinement. Postmodernism places more importance on horizontal relationships favoring empowerment and equality rather than the vertical hierarchical approach of Fayol and Weber. The advantage of the postmodern approach lies with its readiness to challenge convention and explore novel organizational configurations. In abandoning the principles of the modernist perspective, the manager can determine if cultures, identities, behaviors and strategies, can or need to be changed to enhance performance. Sport organizations demand cultures which can adapt fluidly to change. To that end, our approach marries a focus on the inter-relationships in organizations as depicted by the systems perspective, with the semiotic (symbol-based) emphasis of symbolic-interpretivism, and the freedom of postmodernism. In the next section of the chapter, these foundational perspectives will become recognizable in the organizational culture theory we introduce.

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ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE THEORY In this section of the chapter, we re-introduce organizational culture and lay the foundations for later connections with identity. We present three models of culture, the first to understand what culture means (Schein, 1992), the second to interpret how culture operates within an organization (Hatch, 1997), and the third model to explain how culture and identity interact dynamically (Hatch, 2002). A long list of organization theorists have dabbled with culture as a means of analyzing organizations and their performance (Albert, Ashforth et al., 2000; Czarniawska & Wolff, 1998; Dutton & Dukerich, 1991; Gioia, Schultz et al., 2000; Hatch, 1993; 2002; Heskett, 1992; Hofstede, 1980; Kotter & Peters & Waterman, 1982; Schein, 1985; Schultz, Ravasi & Rekom, 2003). Although each commentator takes a different approach, a consensus holds that organizational culture significantly impacts upon performance. Chiefly, managers use the concept of culture to make sense out of the complex elements that make up an organization. Culture and identity concepts provide a tangible way for managers to tackle powerful influences that normally remain covert or tacit. Instead of trying to introduce major changes in response to every environmental shift, managers try to develop a culture and identity capable of accommodating change automatically. Equally, a culture mired in security and inertia will serve as a serious obstacle to performance in a dynamic environment. Culture has been developed most fully in anthropology. In this context, culture can be collectively defined as the prevailing values and beliefs common to a group of people. Anthropologists set themselves the task of investigating, interpreting and translating the behavioral and social patterns of groups by trying to understand the manner in which they relate to their environments. Modern organizational theorists have been relatively slow in picking up

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on the anthropological concept of culture. They started well, by accepting Weberian views which recognized organizations as complex entities influenced by individuals seeking ends that were meaningful to them (Rojek, 1985). From here, they branched out in several directions, many of which proved less fruitful than imagined. General systems theorists, such as Miles (1975), acknowledged that while people in organizations operate the technology and run the processes, they also have much of their behavior determined by the system they operate. Therefore, the systems view highlights the significance of external or underlying forces that might impact upon behavior. Culture can be one of these forces. However, systems theory tends to emphasize group rather than individual behavior. This may not necessarily be wrong for an overview of organization theory, but it does create problems for an in-depth study of culture. Modernists, such as Kahn (1974), exhibit the same limitation by ignoring the view that group behavior has its basis in individual interpretation and definition. Such rigidity fails to take into account the possibility that an individual’s interpretation may be different from that of a group, or that one group in one organization may interpret something different from another group in a different organization. Thus, in Company A, participation in certain decision-making processes may mean freedom, while in Company B, it may be translated to mean little more than company policy. The tendency to ignore individual actions in favor of group responses has additional problems related to understanding culture. In contrast, the humanistic perspective is less interested in generalized concepts or models, and more interested in the personal experiences and choices of individuals. For example, Maslow’s (1970) infamous model of selfactualization and self-fulfillment epitomizes the humanistic approach to organizational behavior, which in turn has the potential to be examined within a cultural context. However, in practice, the ‘Maslovian’ approach tends to focus on the individual, with little acknowledgment of the relationship between the self, others and the outer world. Again, this approach is unnecessarily narrow. We are looking for a richer conceptualization of culture.

Defining Culture The term culture comes from anthropology, usually attributed to Edward B. Tylor who described it as “…that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, arts, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of a society” (Brown, 1998, p. 4). Since then, culture has become known in anthropology as the prevailing values and beliefs common to a group of people. Anthropologists try to reveal how individuals and groups navigate their social circumstances. Of course, most working people spend the majority of their days in social settings determined by their employers. As a result, in the classical era, theorists adapted the anthropological standpoint to focus on organizations (Weber, 1946). At the same time, sociologists such as Durkheim latched on to culture as a way of understanding social norms and beliefs. Durkheim’s enduring legacy proved to be the application of symbols, myths and rituals as windows of cultural expression. Later, sociologist turned organization theorist, Weber (1978) proposed that cultural mechanisms can be used to achieve social order and restraint, without the need to impose control by direct and forced means. Bourdieu (1977) was also interested in the way symbols exert group control through the imposition of cultural boundaries and values that the group considers legitimate.

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In a similar vein, Foucault (1982) described culture as a means through which power and control can be exerted over members of a social organization. Both anthropology and sociology take the position that culture is ubiquitous. For example, sociologist Raymond Williams reportedly observed that, “Culture is ordinary: that is the first fact (Higgins, 2001, p. 11). More importantly for the application of culture in an organizational sense, Williams continued: “Every human society has its own shape, its own purposes, its own meanings. Every human society expresses these, in institutions, and in arts and learning. The making of a society is the finding of common meanings and directions …” (Higgins, 2001, p. 11). Managing organizational culture successfully relies upon finding common meanings and directions for members to pursue and believe in. While the literature on organizational culture tends to lack of an accepted definition, recurring themes include the notions that culture: (1) is largely inflexible; (2) is determined by members of an organization; (3) is shared by members of an organization; and (4) possesses core assumptions substantially hidden from most members because they are rarely documented. Even with these core characteristics identified, organizational culture can arrive in various types, each one prioritizing different values. In fact, values have to be interpreted though the symbolic meanings inherent in rites, actions, ceremonies and other artifacts.

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Types of Cultural Values According to Williams (1995), culture exists through three forms of values, emergent, dominant, and residual, any of which can co-exist in a culture. Williams’ concepts contextualize how a culture operates and how its many variables interact as it clings to stability whilst undergoing change. At any given time in an organization, certain cultural values become apparent as change takes place (emergent values). Meanwhile, other previously held values become marginalized, but still hold some meaning (residual values), and strong values prevail as the primary lens of meaning (dominant values). An emergent value expresses a new belief or way of doing things that differs from existing norms (Booth et al., 1995). Emergent refers to new meanings, beliefs and values, new ways of doing things, and new relationships formed by organizational members that continually change and reform. Emergent values demand new structures and leaders to facilitate their emergence. While all dominant values must have once been emergent values, not all emergent values will become dominant. Dominant values represent the strongest norms held by the majority of members of a society or organization (Booth et al., 1995). The strength of dominant values comes from the commitment a group holds about their accuracy. Sometimes, however, dominant values do not require the acceptance of the majority. Rather, dominant values can also be formed when the majority of powerful members of a group commit to them. For example, an organization’s leaders can link certain values with past or future success. An organization’s dominant values reflect its core ideology and indicate how well its values fit its environment. Typically, dominant values become embedded in mission statements and objectives, underpinning an organization’s philosophy and core ideology. In consequence, an organization may be distinguished on the basis of its dominant cultural characteristics. If the dominant values match the environment, then a cultural fit might be said to exist, which should also be

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evidenced by high levels of performance. On the other hand, if the dominant values do not match the environment, then an organization’s performance would deteriorate. Residual values linger from previous experiences that remain, often subconsciously, as a catalyst for behavior within the current culture (Booth et al., 1995). Residual values may be more transparent because they reappear in times of uncertainty. They tend to reflect what worked in the past, making them difficult for organizational members to displace. In some cases, dormant residual values arise again when the conditions that led to their marginalization disappear. Usually, this accompanies a change in environmental circumstances.

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A New Approach to Organizational Culture A pioneer in anthropology, Clifford Geertz advanced the semiotic approach which tackles cultures through their symbols and language. Geertz’ (1990) semiotics presented a unique advancement in the study of culture because it was the first method to use an insider’s perspective. Accordingly, culture should be understood from the inside-out rather than the reverse in order to truly appreciate its meaning for an organization. For Geertz, culture fundamentally comprises a socially constructed reality. As an implication, rites, rituals, myths, legends, stories and artifacts all contain insightful expressions of deeper cultural meanings. In later chapters we explore these elements in detail. Thinking about organizational culture accelerated in the 1960s and 1970s, assisted by the seminal works of Crozier (1964), Turner (1971), Argyris and Schon (1978) and Pettigrew (1979). In fact, it was Pettigrew’s application of the organizational concept that launched it on to the mainstream management agenda. Culture subsequently inflamed new ways of thinking about old performance issues (Peters & Waterman, 1982), where organizational values and identity suddenly seemed capable of explaining everything from excellence to employee satisfaction. Meanwhile, another stream of research sought to diagnose national cultural features and their impact upon organizations. Hofstede (1980; 1991), for example, explored how behaviors and strategies were implemented in similar organizations but across different national cultures. One of the most significant contributions to the analysis of organizational culture arrived with Edgar Schein. He initially wanted to explain how organizations impart their core values during strategy implementation. But Schein realized that the real key to culture lies with its successful diagnosis (Schein, 1985). On the basis of a layered framework, Schein devised a process of assessment and intervention designed to target problem behaviors and improve performance (Schein, 1999). For us, Schein’s great contribution comes with his emphasis on diagnosis and understanding. For example, interpreting culture demands a deep analysis incorporating layers of rich information, going well beyond observations about the ‘the way things are done’. Furthermore, while superficial observations can be rewarding, their interpretation cannot be undertaken at face value. A more penetrating analysis exposes how hidden values and beliefs are expressed through superficial artifacts, behaviors, symbols and rituals. While hundreds of organizational culture definitions have been offered, Schein’s (1992, p. 12) original conception remains as robust as ever, stating that organizational culture may be seen as: “A pattern of shared basic assumptions that the group learned as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, that has worked well enough to be

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considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think and feel in relation to those problems.” Most researchers suggest that culture can do more than make an organization successful in the short term. For example, culture has been used to explain why some organizations achieve an enduring success through numerous product cycles and multiple generations of leaders. Collins and Porras (1998) reasoned that some organizations manage themselves through their cultures by instilling ‘timeless’ core values into their members. The relation between timeless value and enduring performance foreshadows our interest in managing culture as a unique alignment between an organization and its context. Core values enable organizations to create an environment conducive to high performance. Conversely, if the values reflect rigid authority and myopic thinking, the result can be an organizational culture obstructing success. Our interest in sport organizations arises from their reliance on human, rather than technical, resources. In sport organizations, the effective deployment of human resources provides a critical means of achieving competitive advantage and success (Pfeffer, 1999; Smith & Stewart, 1999; Zellars & Fiorito, 1999). As a result, we think that sport organizations offer an ideal platform to discuss organizational culture. Like Schein we believe that culture operates at numerous levels, some of which remain hidden from easy assessment.

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Levels of Organizational Culture Schein (1992) presented three levels at which organizational culture needs to be diagnosed: artifacts, espoused values, and basic underlying assumptions. Artifacts may be seen at the surface layer of a culture. They display the visible manifestations of an organization’s culture in a form of an overt, tangible declaration. A sport organization’s office layout, jargon, physical environment, clothing, protocols, logos, rituals, ceremonies, myths, stories, and even its playing style, all constitute artifacts. In addition, some researchers consider stories to be another particularly powerful window to understanding cultural meanings. For example, Boje (1991) recounted the story of an IBM employee whose job it was to check identification passes, and who refused entry to the CEO because he had an incorrect badge. The CEO commended the employee for doing his job properly and went away to collect his pass. In this instance the organization clearly valued its rules more than its hierarchy. Although observation seems easy, deciphering the deeper meanings held within artifacts can be more challenging. To interpret artifacts accurately, time must be spent within an organization. Schein advised against trying to interpret lower layers of a culture on the basis of artifacts alone. Interpretations from outsiders can be susceptible to biases. We may for example, infer laziness from informal dress. On the other hand, managers entrenched within an organization fail to make objective assessments. A further challenge is that all parts of an organization generate their own artifacts that can potentially conflict with each other. Some managers may even contradict the values they advocate through their messages, or espoused values. Espoused values tend to be foundational or initial concepts an individual holds about the most effective problem-solving approach. For example, a coach might advocate ‘punishment’ training for poor on-field performance. The important aspect of espoused values relates to the way they become an entrenched way of thinking. Any espoused value that has become an

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automatic response may be understood as a ‘cognitive transformation’ (Schein, 1992; Brown, 1998). Cognitive transformation only persists when the response continues to be successful. A good example can be found during the formation of social groups. Typically, the group defines certain issues or problems it was tasked to resolve. One or more individuals generate proposed solutions to the problems, doing so on the basis of their espoused values; the assumptions they make about the best way of tackling a problem. Espoused values explain why newly formed group dynamics exhibit great complexity compared to the interactions of more mature groups. In the latter, the group creates its own espoused values which serve as ‘rules of engagement’ for the successful resolution of problems. In the early and uncertain stages of group development, some individuals make an overrepresentative contribution, thereby influencing group behavior and its values (Robbins, 2001). Although the views of such leaders tend to take prominence, their potential solutions have no validity until the group had accepted them. Some values will not be the subject of a cognitive transformation because they fail to be accepted. Schein used the term ‘social validation’ to emphasize the process of group acceptance. Social validation facilitates the cognitive transformation process, particularly concerning issues related to moral and ethical behavior. Values accepted through social validation often concern relationships, religion, and ethics, and guide moral and business conduct. In addition, socially validated espoused values play a key role in the induction and training of new recruits. Ultimately, espoused values underpin an organization’s philosophy and ideology. Social validation also provides an insight into how culture operates as a controlling mechanism for behavior. Those values fitting an organization’s espoused position are adopted, but those failing to are removed or rejected. Collins and Porras (1995; 1996; 1998) observed how ‘visionary’ organizations can appear cult-like or elitist. Employees fitting the espoused values blossom under the organization’s elitist values, while those who do not find themselves unwelcome or unsuccessful. The cognitive transformation and social validation of espoused values remain central to culture formation because their credibility relies upon a shared conception of success. Of course, introducing new espoused values can be problematic because they often clash with basic underlying assumptions. Basic underlying assumptions reflect the deepest, most ingrained form of culture. Schein (1992) proposed that basic underlying assumptions drive behavior, based on proven, successful methods of working. Sometimes, basic underlying assumptions have existed for so long in an organization that no one thinks to question their appropriateness. As a result, this deep level of culture tends to be covert, subtly permeating organizations through intangible concepts and tacit beliefs. Like Bourdieu and Passeron’s (1977) ‘Rules of the Game’, basic underlying assumptions underpin organizational members’ behaviors even without their conscious consideration. In fact, basic underlying assumptions can be so strong that organizational members find alternative ways of working inconceivable. On the positive side, actions inspired by basic assumptions offer comfort, security and certainty. However, basic assumptions can exert a negative influence when they obstruct important changes for the benefit of the organization. Cultural strength is associated with performance. Strength refers to the intensity or pervasiveness of the culture (Schein, 1985), or the degree to which organizational members embrace the prevailing assumptions and values integral to the culture. It has been argued since the first major commentary on organizational culture that strong cultures lead to appealing outcomes such as unity, commitment and coordination, thus contributing to enhanced

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performance (Pettigrew, 1979). For example, Gordon and DiTomaso (1992) surveyed a range of insurance companies and concluded that cultural strength predicts short-term performance. Their results supported the work of Denison (1990), Peters and Waterman (1982), and Schein (1985). Schneider and Rentsch (1988), however, cautioned that strong organizational culture can prove to be either advantageous or debilitating. A strong culture can be a liability when it does not align with the context of its operating environment. Thus, strong cultures must also be appropriate for performance to be positively affected. The notion that culture must be appropriate to the environment or context in which the organization functions also appears as a recurring theme throughout culture studies. For example, studies on aligning strategy and culture show that effective strategy implementation demands cultural support (Chapman, 1988). The conclusion seems to be that each organization should foster the development of a culture consistent with the challenges and expectations of its internal and external environments (Dunn, 1991). Culture can therefore be used to shape the values, expectations, assumptions and norms of employees, prescribing their attitudes and behaviors. Thus, the appropriateness of culture links with organizational success (Scholz, 1987). In the end, strong cultures create powerful outcomes, but only when they align appropriately with an organization’s context.

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Cultural Dynamics Adding some further depth to Schein’s conception of culture, Hatch (1993) focused on the importance of symbols and ‘cultural dynamics’. Her notion of dynamism refers to an evolutionary process that imparts both change and stability in cultures through symbolic artifacts, and occurs through four processes: manifestation, realization, symbolization, and interpretation (Hatch & Schultz, 2002). During manifestation culture transmits to individuals through their senses, or through perceptions about the existence of values or the behaviors they should prescribe. The manifestation process therefore allows basic underlying assumptions to become more transparent, and even evolve into espoused values. It also allows intangible assumptions to be translated into recognizable and measurable values. Manifestation occurs proactively, from assumptions into values, or retroactively from values into a revision of previous assumptions. However, the translation of assumptions into values does not occur on a one-to-one basis where one value derives from one assumption. Rather, the translation occurs holistically. Numerous values evolve from multiple assumptions, communicated as the correct way to do things, or as a set of values and behaviors members sense or perceive as the way things ought to be. Realization provides the means through which culture becomes tangible, often in the form of artifacts. Proactive realization means generating something real and tangible from an organization’s intangible values. Values can be realized in many forms including policies, stories, humor, rites, rituals, or physical objects. However, the process only occurs for those values that can be expressed through tangible outcomes. For example, the importance of hierarchy can be symbolized though flashy offices and priority parking. At the same time, risk aversion would be less tangible, embedded in decision-making and ways of thinking. In contrast, retroactive realization occurs when the tangible elements of a culture translate back to their originating values. However, the process modifies the original value in the process.

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For example, the meaning of symbols can change over time in accordance with environmental changes. Some of these shifts can return to shape the deeper values for which the symbol represents. Symbolization lies at the heart of interpreting culture. Prospective symbolization combines an artifact with a meaning to produce more than a mere, surface representation. However, the impact of a symbol depends upon the values of a viewer. In this way, symbolization exploits artifacts through their associations with literal contexts and their wider or ‘surplus’ meaning, which refers to the difference between the full meaning of a symbol and its literal meaning (Ricouer, 1976). Retrospective symbolization reflects upon the symbolic nature of artifacts, and how their meaning has been affected. In other words, the meaning of symbols changes according to how organizational members construct their social realities. Where a symbol may once have held an advantageous meaning, it can shift over time to become a liability. Interpretation involves an iterative process which oscillates between basic assumptions and symbols. Prospective interpretation leads to the revision of symbols, whereas retrospective interpretation causes assumptions to change in symbolic meaning. That is, prospective interpretation affirms and challenges existing assumptions whilst retrospective interpretation reviews and reconstructs symbolic meanings. Successive revisions of cultural artifacts and symbols lead to cultural reinterpretations. An added ambiguity comes with interpretations and reinterpretations because the same symbols can have a different meaning to each individual or sub-group. Nor are interpretations formed independently. They operate as socially constructed realities where interpretation places symbols into the context of basic assumptions. In practical terms, the manifestation process helps to reveal how an organization’s culture becomes known. As an exploratory process, manifestation means exposing how organizational members conceive their positions and their resulting behavior. This brings to the fore the basic underlying assumptions member’s use in their day-to-day work. Subsequently, the realization and symbolization processes show where artifacts and symbols maintain consistency with the values and assumptions shared by organizational members. Interpretation extends this process by clarifying the dynamics of cultural modifications.

CONCLUSION In this chapter we introduced some basic thinking about organizations that has emerged over the last century. We think it provides a useful foundation for considering organizational culture. In fact, every major development in organizational thinking can be seen in current approaches to culture and identity. More specifically, the classical era underpins contemporary organizational theory and helps to expose the mechanisms through which control and power contribute to objectives. However, classicists treat organizations as isolated entities that do not interact with their surroundings or their stakeholders. Quite evidently, sporting organizations confront a multitude of external forces and stakeholders. For example, competition regulators enforce collective rules to increase competitiveness between teams. Furthermore, sporting organizations interact with many other external stakeholders such as fans, supporters, sponsors and the local community. A modernist approach taking a systems

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view therefore helps to complement the classicist focus. Systems theory assists in making sense of the role, influence and impact of organizational parts as well as environmental forces. To systems theory, we add the benefits of a symbolic-interpretivist approach in diagnosing culture and identity through symbols, myths, legends, stories and tangible artifacts. Finally, the postmodernist interpretation of organizations lends a dynamic element where novelty can be pursued without the baggage of traditional methods. Cultural analysis cannot escape complexity because it includes the beliefs held by individuals, how they think things work, interpreting their behavior, understanding physical tangible outcomes like artifacts, and determining what those artifacts symbolize. We also presented some basic propositions about organizational culture. Our approach emphasized cultural diagnosis and the importance of looking deeper than overt meanings. In addition, deeper values and basic assumptions need to be addressed by understanding the dynamic nature of culture where symbols and values reciprocally influence each other to construct an organization’s identity. It is to identity we look next.

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Weber, M. (1946). Classics of organization theory. Fort Worth: Narcourt Brace College Publishers. Weber, M. (1978). Economy and society: An outline of interpretive sociology. Berkeley: University of California Press. Weick, K.E. (1969). The social psychology of organizing. Reading: Addison-Wesley. Williams, R. (1995). The sociology of culture, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Zellars, K.L. & Fiorito, J. (1999). Evaluations of organizational effectiveness among HR managers: Cues and implications. Journal of Managerial Issues, 11(1), 37-55.

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Chapter 5

IDENTIFYING SPORT CULTURE

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INTRODUCTION As an understanding of organizational culture matured, it began to place more emphasis on questioning the ways in which culture develops and affects, or is affected by, other organizational variables. If as we have argued, culture comprises a complex behavioral and social phenomenon, it cannot develop in isolation and remains vulnerable to a suite of disparate variables. However, of all the variables the most powerful takes the form of organizational identity. In fact, we show in this chapter how identity and culture combine inextricably to affect cultural performance. Most commentators propose that organizational culture and identity represent distinct but inseparable forces (Albert & Whetten, 1985; Albert et al., 2000; Ashforth & Kreiner, 1999; Brown & Starkey, 2000; Czarniawska, 1997; Czarniawska & Wolff, 1998; Fiol et al., 1998; Gioia et al., 2000; Whetten & Godfrey, 1998; Scott & Lane, 2000). While culture helps organizational members to make sense of the working world, identity reflects how both members and external observers perceive the organization. Like culture, in part identity entails an individual or personal element. For example, how an individual wishes to be perceived echoes a confluence of personal values, beliefs, morals and experiences. Equally, organizational members hold shared cultural values, beliefs, norms, expectations and experiences that shape their sense of organizational identity. As Corley (2004, p. 1146) observed, identity should be viewed as a “powerful phenomenon in organizations and in the lives of their members.” We would add that identity also influences an organization’s profile and positioning in the marketplace. In this chapter, we focus on how an organization’s identity emerges, and perhaps more importantly, how organizations can modify their identities. We will tackle the origins of thinking in the area, leading up to an examination of how identity interacts with organizational culture. In so doing, we demonstrate how the two concepts influence cultural management. Our next escalator step, however, mobilizes a psychological interpretation of organizational culture to show how its expression pivots upon deep conceptions of individual identity. Figure 5.1 illustrates the connections between the concepts introduced in this chapter.

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Organizational Image

External Perceptions

External Forces

Organizational Identity

Organizational Strategy

Macro Factors History & Ownership Resources Employees & Members Products & Services Context Objectives

Cultural Diagnosis

Organizational Culture

Culture Types & Typologies

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Sub-cultures

Mapping Options

Culture Psychology

Culture Dimensions

Rational Non-Rational Archetypal

Core Criteria

Peripheral Criteria

Descriptive Characteristics

Figure 5.1. Identifying Sport Organizational Culture.

CULTURE IN MIND While the in-depth investigation of organizational behavior is a comparatively new field of endeavor, the tendency to form organized social groups has been a characteristic common to human history. Moreover, the formation of complex social organizations has accelerated over time, in part a result of industrialization, and in part due to the increasing size of human groupings in combination with technological advancements. All advanced civilizations have produced large-scale organizations for industrial, military, governmental, educational, religious, sporting and other purposes (Argyle, 1989). The structure of these organizations has changed historically, and as we described in the previous chapter, methods have been

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developed about how to most effectively design and study them. We noted in the previous chapter that the culmination of this evolutionary process has been the development of a variety of theories of management. Currently, however, social and management scientists study the efficiency and effectiveness of diverse organizational designs in order to determine which is the most productive. This widespread interest in organizations reflects a need to ascertain the degree to which the components may be manipulated, thus delivering better quality, more productive, more profitable, and sometimes even more ethical and responsible enterprises. An organization can be defined as a social entity consisting of groups of people conducting themselves as a unit, with collective goals and objectives (Hunt, 1992). Studies of organizations and their members may be classified into three different levels of analysis: the individual level, the interpersonal level, and the organizational level. In this book we focus mainly on the organizational level as it relates to the total enterprise; its culture, structure and strategy, its position in the marketplace, its ownership, its defensive posture and vulnerabilities. We have argued that culture’s evolution accompanied the desire to understand more about how organizations function. Just as nations have cultures that dictate how members will act toward fellow members and outsiders, organizations have cultures that govern how members behave. Culture conveys assumptions, norms, and values, which in turn impact upon activities and goals, and most importantly, in so doing orchestrates how employees undertake their work, and determines what they view as significant within the workplace. Thus, employees’ behaviors, beliefs and understandings are determined largely by the organization’s culture. Since culture has been related to performance and excellence in the marketplace (Peters & Waterman, 1982), as well as employee commitment, cooperation, efficiency, job performance and decision-making (Wilkins & Ouchi, 1983), it has commanded significant interest. No doubt remains that organizational culture offers a powerful tool in unraveling the conundrum of organizational behavior. At the same time, theorists and practitioners struggle with the intangible nature of culture and its impact on individual psychology. A central problem remains that grasping the concept of culture and its relationship to the individual, the group, and the organization demands a more complete perspective. As in all social entities, modern organizations create intentions and atmospheres that influence behavior, routines and practices. Some organizational researchers have recognized this relationship, regarding culture as a set of prevailing thought systems and processes common to members of a social unit. These systems and processes subsequently form patterns acquired primarily through socialization. In essence, individuals within an organization are exposed to ‘culture revealing’ situations, which might include the observable behavior of other members, their organizational methods, or ‘tangible artifacts’. That is, the photos, honor boards and other memorabilia on show, and interactive communication, or the way in which individuals talk to each other. As we reviewed earlier, concepts such as shared values and beliefs, and common understandings and ideas, form a typical basis for the definition of culture. Many researchers and practitioners, however, have difficulty in conceptualizing culture, predominantly because they fixate upon traditional views where observable behaviors dominate and camouflage underlying values and meanings. They have, nonetheless, addressed and assessed diverse elements of culture. These elements vary in their subjectivity, in addition to their observability and availability to both researchers and organization

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members (Rousseau, 1990). In effect, widely variable types of information on cultures have been sought in an effort to garner knowledge about the way in which organizations function. Although commonality exists in the way researchers conceive and define culture in organizations, much inconsistency and controversy can still be found. We prefer Schein’s psycho-dynamic view. To recap, Schein analyzed culture as an unconscious phenomenon; a deeper level of basic assumptions and beliefs where conscious beliefs represent surface artifacts and symbolic representations. Schein used the terms ‘basic assumptions’ and ‘beliefs’ in a significant way. Schein overlooked the superficial. Rather, his interest lies with the unconsciously held fundamental concepts of right or wrong; what the organization might perceive as correct or incorrect values. These values, which underlie the organization’s culture, do not simply exist or come into being by their own volition. Rather, members painstakingly construct values as they gradually learn to interact and achieve their collective and individual aims (Schein, 1984). Logically, the originators of the organization, together with the more powerful of the organization’s past and present members, are usually the most influential in determining the culture. Thus, Schein preferred to examine the long-held assumptions and beliefs in an organization, believing that they will more likely explain its culture. But in order to take a deeper step, we need to investigate where Schein received his inspiration. The answer lies with the psychological theories of Carl Jung.

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A JUNGIAN APPROACH The eminent psychologist, Carl Jung (1968), provided a useful construct for the analysis of cultural meaning through a three tiered pyramid. The highest level of the Jungian pyramid represents the conscious mind: the totality of a person’s thoughts and cognitive experiences. This corresponds to the first level of culture in a sporting organization, known as the rational level, as shown in the following figure 5.2. The rational level includes those readily apparent and observable qualities of a sporting organization, such as the physical environment, the public statements of officials, the way individuals interactively communicate, the form of language used, clothing worn, and the memorabilia that fills the rooms and offices. One of the most important observable qualities involves the place of sporting heroes, who represent culturally rich and highly visible indicators of the culture sought. Heroes give an insight into the culture of an organization, since they are selected by the ‘rank and file’ as well as the power brokers. In addition, they indicate those qualities respected and admired by a wider audience. The hero presents a powerful figure in a sporting organization, and may be an employee, player, or even a prominent supporter. The hero may also be charismatic, entrepreneurial, or loyal. By understanding the orientation of hero figures, both past and present, trends in cultural change may be mapped. Heroes can be both reactionary and progressive. Heroes that reinforce the dominant culture will not change the values and attitudes that the culture emphasizes. On the other hand, a hero that transcends and transforms the dominant culture will be a catalyst for change in the behaviors and values of an organization. Often a hero commands the most powerful voice in the change management process.

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RATIONAL LEVEL

CONSCIOUS MIND

NON-RATIONAL LEVEL

PERSONAL UN-CONSCIOUS MIND

ARCHETYPAL LEVEL

Culture Levels

97

COLLECTIVE UN-CONSCIOUS

Individual Levels

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Figure 5.2. A Jungian Model of Organizational Culture and Identity.

Tradition offers another window into the culture of an organization. Like heroes, traditions become observable through documents and memorabilia, but may not transparently reveal the underlying values and assumptions that confer them with meaning. Tradition may be preserved by the present cultural identity. At the same time, an organization might display a contemporary cultural personality. Thus, tradition and history provide cultural linchpins upon which a more contemporary cultural character may be launched. In order to bypass the obstacles—in the form of stereotypical views and superficial signs—that can block the diagnosis of culture, practitioners and researchers must analyze natural, observable outcroppings of culture. That is, places where cultural understandings can be exposed. Analyzing high yield sites will deliver a practical insight into the underlying culture. As a result, the rational level deals with organizational rites and rituals because, firstly, their performance is readily apparent, and secondly, in performing these rites, employees generally use other cultural forms of expression, such as certain customary language or jargon, gestures, and artifacts. Rites and rituals are conveyed through myths, sagas, legends, or other stories associated with the occasion. In order to actively assess the rational level of culture, not only must acute observation be employed, but meanings must be attached to overt displays of culture. However, a deeper level of analysis must also be employed. The second and middle level of the Jungian model depicts the personal unconscious, which corresponds to the non-rational level of culture. It incorporates the beliefs, habits,

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values, behaviors and attitudes prevalent in an organization. An accurate assessment of the non-rational level of culture introduces numerous challenges. For example, how employees say they behave and what they state they believe, has to be compared to their actual behaviors. Finally, the deepest level of the psyche, according to Jung, is the collective un-conscious, an innate, primal, virtually inaccessible level of the mind hardwired into humans. It correlates to the archetypal level of culture in organizations, revealed by the meanings held within history, traditions, legends, myths, and stories of an organization, where the deepest cultural values reside. An investigation of the archetypal level can expose core assumptions about sport, leadership, and competition. However, paradoxically, the level appears similar to the most superficial layer of culture, the rational level. In reality, at the rational level, cultural traits are accepted at ‘face’ value, whereas at the unconscious level these same cultural traits are acknowledged as the iceberg’s tip; merely a physical manifestation of a deeper and intensely more complex phenomenon. We show how these levels of culture interact in our analysis of rituals in chapter seven. Jung believed that psychological assessments should be based not simply on the perceived or spoken, but on an overall consideration of the conscious, personal un-conscious, and collective un-conscious, and the impact of prior, if forgotten, experiences (Jung, 1968). Within the Jungian framework, the conscious or rational manifestations of culture can be viewed as the superficial, apparent and observable features that yield concrete, but limited information. Translated into organizational terms and looking deeper into the ‘psyche’ of an organization, the personal un-conscious or non-rational thought processes will surrender additional cultural information reflecting embedded values and beliefs. The furthest and least accessible level of cognitive functioning, the collective un-conscious or archetypal level, generates the most significant cultural insights. Here the investigation of rites, rituals, mythologies, stories, history and traditions occur, and their hidden meanings revealed. Consequently, in order for a true understanding of culture to emerge, a fundamental examination of an organization must include a detailed understanding of all three levels of consciousness. Schein, as we have already noted, advocated that culture manifests on multiple levels or dimensions (Schein, 1984). Ouchi (1981), in contrast, sought a more simplistic view, where artifacts and tangible items, such as the office landscape, are seen not just as the physical manifestations of the existing culture, but as part of the culture itself. Ouchi acknowledged the psychological concepts of Schein, but preferred to see culture as a reality; photographs of life as it were, rather than a series of brushstrokes revealing the artist’s mood and temperament. While both perspectives hold merit, we argue that knowing the artist helps to understand the picture, and vice versa. A Jungian approach to organizational culture reminds us that while culturally meaningful artifacts might be easily observed, it remains dangerous to assume that a simple ‘surface’ view of culture will provide an accurate diagnosis. The investigation of culture can range from the most easily perceived and visibly apparent artifacts such as the environment, architecture, technology, and audible behavior, to the deep psychological manifestations of culture espoused by Schein. Some researchers have displayed a tendency to choose their particular element of culture. They describe the remainder as insignificant, or existing only as a symptom of the ‘deeper’ phenomenon. Beyer and Trice (1993), for example, argued that organizational rites depict the richest and deepest sources of cultural understanding. All other culture sources

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remain superficial. Drucker (1992) would disagree, advocating that an analysis of organizational habits presents a better route to assessment. Beyer and Trice acknowledged the difficulties in exposing the culture of organizations (which often resides beneath the surface of its daily operations), and tried to partially remedy the situation by exploring natural, observable examples of culture. They argued that by analyzing places where cultural understandings are revealed, managers can gain valuable and practical insights into how their organizations function. Organizational culture as defined by Beyer and Trice includes not simply the shared understandings, but also the communication of these understandings to employees in a tangible medium. Beyer and Trice emphasized the explanatory power of organizational rites. In performing rites, employees utilize other forms of culture to communicate, such as language, gestures, ritualized behavior, ceremonies and artifacts. The shared understandings occurring in rites also manifest through myths, sagas, legends, or other stories. Accordingly, rites offer a richer source of cultural understanding than any other single culture source. Rites are especially valuable because they are tangible, visible and accessible. Rites communicate and bolster the shared understandings of an organization’s culture, and importantly also provide an entry point for its management and change. As cultural indicators, rituals could not be more important. We dedicate chapter seven to their thorough exposition.

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ORGANIZATIONAL IDENTITY The notion of organizational identity was pioneered by Albert and Whetten (1985) in an attempt to interpret how individuals make sense of their working experiences. As a recent concept, thinking about identity remains vibrant and lively including a myriad of different approaches (Ravasi & Rekom, 2003). In practical terms this means that no one yet agrees on a single definition. To us, organizational identity may be seen as a social understanding formed at the intersection of internal and external perceptions (Albert & Whetten, 1985; Dutton & Dukerich, 1991; Hatch & Schultz, 2002). Like all social concepts, it allocates meaning and reality to something intangible. Identity’s origins, like culture, have arisen through multidisciplinary commentaries including anthropology, sociology and psychology. From a social perspective, identity describes an individual’s understanding of who they are combined with the perceptions of others (Jenkins, 1996; Mead, 1934). Because identity stands as a form of representation for an individual, it also has to be durable, providing a long-term, stable, distinctive and enduring perception (Albert & Whetten, 1985). In other words, as social scientists have claimed, identity declares an individual’s sense of ‘sameness’ over time (Ravasi & Rekom, 2003). Like culture, identity reveals an organizational contradiction. Change is necessary in order for an organization to survive a competitive environment, but at the same time, identity has to endure long enough to maintain a sense of continuity. Corley (2004) suggested that the contradiction does not present a problem when identity fluidly accommodates contextual pressures. Our view holds that the contradiction plays a central role at the heart of culture management. Appropriate cultures change while strong cultures endure. Cultural management exists at the confluence of appropriateness and strength. For example, we strive to create strong cultures unafraid of change.

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As social entities, organizations exhibit identities established by the adoption, reinforcement and rejection of particular characteristics created by its members over time. The process operates as an extension of personal identity where individuals adopt or reinforce characteristics they perceive advantageous while discarding the negative. For example, an organization might adopt team-based work practices if its members perceive collaboration to be an asset. An organization establishes its identity through the collective self-perceptions of insiders. In turn, identity affects how an organization performs, the way it expresses itself, and its image to outsiders. However, an organization might perceive itself in a manner incompatible with outside perceptions. Change to bring the two into alignment is difficult as organizational identity reflects long-term, stable perceptions about an organization’s idiosyncratic characteristics. Such perceptions determine not only an organization’s understanding of itself, but also how such statements are received and accepted (or rejected) by stakeholders (Bechhofer et al., 1999). Since organizational identity helps individuals and outsiders make sense of an organization, some further comments on self-perception and outsider-perception of identity seem warranted. Both insiders and outsiders establish identity through comparisons with, and reflection against, other organizations. The power of identity lies with distinction. What makes one organization different from another? Organizational identity forms through a process of inter-organizational comparisons. Over time comparisons compel an organization’s members to reflect, drawing distinctions and similarities with their competitors (Albert & Whetten, 1985; Hatch & Schultz, 2002). Naturally, those distinctive aspects of an organization’s character represent potential competitive advantages to be cultivated and protected. Equally, organizations also exhibit patterns of behavior that signal belonging to a specific industry. But, perhaps more important than anything else, culture and identity interact dynamically.

ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE AND IDENTITY Culture reflects the way ‘we do things’ while identity captures how we perceive or are perceived. Furthermore, activities are performed in a particular way due to culture, but also to reinforce or change perceptions. In this respect, organizational culture and identity work together in a reciprocal and dynamic manner. One model by Hatch and Schultz (2002) that demonstrates the relationship is known as the ‘Organizational Identity Dynamics Model’. It advocates that while culture and identity may be distinguished as concepts, in practice they function inseparably like different sides of the same coin (Hatch & Schultz, 2002). Culture occupies the more contextual, tacit and emergent side, whereas identity assumes the more textual, explicit and instrumental side. Another way of looking at it expresses identity as a manifestation and artifact of culture.

Organizational Identity Dynamics Culture helps individuals make sense of their organizations through a sense of identity (Schein, 1992). The Organizational Identity Dynamics model extends this way of thinking by

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presenting the relationship as inseparable (Hatch & Schultz, 2002). In fact, organizational identity, image and culture correspond to the beliefs and core ideology held by an individual (Mead, 1934). Organizational beliefs and core ideology emanate from an organization’s staff and become expressed through espoused values. As a consequence, organizations forge their identities in response to cultural characteristics. In fact, the very strategies organizations identify with derive from group values initially established due to past success. Hatch and Schultz (2002) developed their model of organizational identity in order to demonstrate how the relationship between culture and identity works. It reminds us to reflect on an observer’s perspective. Through reflection, an organization can establish, reaffirm, modify or change its image by changing its identity. But changes to identity demand a substitution of the core beliefs and values that constitute culture. Hence, the reflective process embeds identity within culture. Such a process operates fluidly through ongoing, continuous, reflection stimulating an organization to continually re-examine its values, beliefs and attitudes. Ultimately, the process delivers new strategies and levels of performance.

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ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE, IDENTITY AND STRATEGY The relationship between organizational culture and identity holds critical importance to strategy in a world of continual change and competitive challenges (Brown, 1998). Sport organizations face pressures to perform at a corporate level as well as on the playing field. A strong and appropriate cultural identity offers a safeguard ensuring an organization’s ability to adapt and respond to change. Naturally, organizations adopt new strategies to accommodate new challenges as they appear. However, implementing new strategies requiring staff to adopt different values, assumptions and/or ways of doing things becomes too much of a stretch if dislocated from current values and assumptions. Hence, organizational culture and identity operate as fundamental elements of strategy implementation. They either assist or impede change. For example, research undertaken by Hinings et al. (1996) concluded that although often hidden or tacit, culture and values directly influence the success of structure and strategy. The influence of organizational culture and identity upon strategy formulation and implementation was explained by Brown (1998), who proposed the following propositions: 1. The culture and identity of an organization influences how the organization perceives its environment and the data it gains from it, such as any threats and opportunities as well as its own strengths and weaknesses. 2. The values and assumptions of an organization acts as filters, focusing attention in particular areas and away from others, thereby biasing the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats an organization focuses upon. 3. Organizations interpret information gained from its environment in a particular way that suits its own organizational culture and identity. 4. Once an organization interprets data from its environment, it decides how it should respond to that data. This involves moral and ethical issues and how an organization responded to such issues in the past.

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Aaron C. T. Smith, Bob Stewart, and Gervase Haimes 5. An organization’s response to certain situations is closely aligned with its past successes. The strategy adopted reflects previous success from a similar strategy. Equally, other strategies may be ignored because they have failed in the past. 6. Subcultures influence the choice of strategy. Often organizations and their subcultures agree on a response to a situation, but each subculture offers a different means of resolution.

Given that culture and identity significantly influence strategy implementation and organizational performance, we need to address which building blocks of culture we can manipulate.

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CULTURE, IDENTITY AND PERFORMANCE In early but telling research, Collins and Porras (1998) conducted a study of eighteen ‘visionary’ companies. They discovered that successful businesses developed cultures and identities fitting their environments, which in turn, reinforced their core ideologies and sustained their adaptability to change. The results also demonstrated that the highest levels of performance responsiveness to change corresponded to the strongest cultures. Not only does culture and identity have a direct impact on behavior, a stronger culture and identity will have a greater impact upon an organization’s strategy and performance. However, a strong organizational culture must also be appropriate to the environment in order to produce a superior performance. A useful case example can be seen in the development of HewlettPackard’s culture and identity, or what its founders considered the ‘The HP Way’. Hewlett-Packard during the 1980s and 1990s was universally acknowledged as a visionary organization that endured and prospered as the result of a strong, appropriate and almost cult-like culture (Brown, 1998). Its cultural strength came about through several common approaches we have already noted, including recounting stories about the organization to new and existing members so often that they became folklore, the presence of traditional practices such as coffee breaks, worker sponsored plays, and the removal of hierarchical trappings to create an egalitarian workplace. As a method for maintaining the strength of their culture, Hewlett-Packard developed a comprehensive induction program through which new members were introduced to ‘The HP Way’ as well as company policies and operations. Hewlett-Packard’s goals, objectives and shared values were reinforced, but employees were left to determine the best way these could be accomplished within their divisional groups. In consequence, the divisions became responsible for achieving their own targets while employees responsible for product delivery offered input into decision-making. In contrast to strong cultures like Hewlett-Packard displayed in the 1990s, organizations with weaker cultures do not actively promote and reinforce their sense of identity. The key is a fervent belief in the organization’s ideology, indoctrination into a specific way of doing things, and a close, personal identification between a culture and its members. These characteristics produce a sense of collective elitism. But culture can change. HP is today a company with a different set of cultural values and identity priorities. It is one thing to map culture and examine its impact on organizational behavior, but it is another thing to understand how it came to be. We have touched on at least six macro

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determinants of culture so far in this book. As management variables these determinants shape cultural expression. History and ownership represents the first cultural ‘building block’, and is particularly evident in sporting organizations, where traditions, myths and ritualized behavior are embraced, past memories cherished and frequently relived, and change feared and avoided. The length of time an organization has existed affects its historical emphasis, as older organizations tend to have more entrenched cultural characteristics. In addition, the ownership structure and the type of organization hold significance. For example, ownership of clubs can affect their culture, whether in the form of a private franchise or a public membership. Of course, privately owned leisure and recreation facilities and sport product manufacturers do not seek the direct input of their customers in decision-making, instead encouraging their organizational culture to preference autonomy and rapid decision-making. Second, resources, both human and financial as well as their source, can also affect culture. For example, the composition of externally generated resources, either from government grants or commercial sponsorship, can affect policy decisions and subsequently cultural values and beliefs. Thus, an organization plagued with financial woes may undertake decision-making with considerably more hesitation and anxiety than one with sufficient reserves. As a result, culture may reflect an unadventurous and cautious outlook in contrast to a bold, risk-taking philosophy. Third, we have emphasized the significance that employees and organizational members play in creating, maintaining and changing an organization’s culture. In sport, two categories of employees need to be considered: administrative employees, who deal with customers and fans and are judged according to their competence and personality, and players who represent an organization in contests, and are judged according to their skills, abilities and win/loss records. While administrative employees influence the office culture, it is not always clear how players change culture and identity. Nevertheless, players can demonstrate a club’s character in one action that can be viewed by hundreds or thousands of spectators who then take it upon themselves to translate that single action into a stereotype for the team. As a result, the team’s character can be imposed upon the whole organization. We noted how this identification process also works on a national scale. Thus, player skill and the performance of administrative employees hold central in the culture management process. In addition, cultural traits driven by customer and fan expectations or the general public can be influenced by the style or type of products and services created. Fourth, culture can be influenced by the products and services an organization delivers. For example, one difference concerns whether an organization is spectator or participation based. The primary service delivery component of a spectator-based organization is the quality of the match or game played, whereas the actual match quality of a participationbased organization is incidental. Participation based organizations emphasize the services provided for the competition so that players can determine their own quality. Naturally, sport product manufacturers will also emphasize different cultural priorities. For the most part, they focus on how their brand commands attention, and the sense of identity a consumer experiences with the product’s use. In addition, it may be possible that the sport or activity itself can affect an organization’s culture. For example, is it possible that aggressive sports such as boxing or mixed martial arts are more likely to have aggressive managers implementing aggressive administrative policies? Furthermore, if true, is it because the organization has former players employed in an administrative capacity, or because the sport

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itself attracts more assertive managers? No doubt a chess club and a boxing club each have different underpinning assumptions and values. However, while some research suggests that certain sports promote common beliefs and practices such as aggression and masculinity, it has also demonstrated that any two contrasted organizations, even of the same sport, will have significantly different cultures. Fifth, the context in which an organization operates affects culture management. Factors may include: the government, in particular their policies concerning the subsidization of sport and the relative importance of elite success and participation rates; the labor market, namely industrial relations and employee law; the needs and demands of consumers; the economy, specifically the effect on consumer disposable income for leisure and entertainment; and the weather, or immediate playing environment. The final common factor acting upon culture is an organization’s objectives. Those seeking elite success may inherently possess different cultural characteristics compared to those pursuing ‘grass-roots’ participation, or those seeking increased profit margins. A profit seeking enterprise may be more rationalist in contrast to a socially grounded participation or promotion based local recreational club.

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Cultural Mapping Cultural understanding stems from successfully translating information into meaning. Every aspect of a sporting club contains a symbolic representation of its culture. All information is not equal, however. Yet, all possible data must be analyzed in order to establish a holistic representation of the existing culture. Organizational culture may be classically defined as shared values and beliefs. But culture possesses far more complexity than this. In order for a culture to be created and bolstered, shared values and beliefs must in some way be reinforced and transferred to organizational members. While the range and diversity of information available for cultural analysis is profound, many cultural studies ignore all but the most apparent and accessible data. An overarching cultural analysis will utilize every available piece of information, with the more obvious elements becoming vehicles for the transmission of less tangible, more subjective facets of culture. The difficulty in any cultural investigation lies with translating the data obtained into useful and meaningful categories, patterns and themes. Traditional organizational culture typologies, which we will address later in this chapter, distinguish between a handful of specified and separate cultural categories. Nearly all organizations can be neatly slotted into one of these groupings. Nevertheless, the approach makes for an extraordinarily narrow description of sporting cultures. Cultures in sporting organizations cannot be classified into just a few categories. There are as many cultures as there are sporting organizations, and they cannot be generically categorized into one of a fixed number of groups. Nor can they adequately be described by investigating only the external observable characteristics of an organization. Sporting clubs are immersed in tradition, history, values, and myths, and should be identified by these symbolic cultural indicators in addition to readily observable organizational characteristics. To accurately assess the culture of a sporting organization we must comprehend the depth and breadth in which a culture can be manifested. Because culture assumes a largely unconscious presence, hidden from view, a cultural map of sport must address organizational

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culture on varying levels of depth and accessibility. A cultural map summarizes the predominant features of a sporting organization’s culture. In short, a map provides a means through which raw observational data can be interpreted into measurable criteria. Like all aspects of management, the starting point demands an investment in measurement.

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Dimensions of Culture The beliefs of organizational members may be noticeable through visible artifacts such as symbols, heroes and rituals, while the more covert aspects of culture such as values and assumptions manifest through behavioral patterns. These patterns collectively distinguish each organization; all organizations possess unique cultures at least to some extent. However, some researchers believe that to examine culture in a rigorous way, a standardized approach must be applied. The development of cultural dimensions was borne out of this need for standardization. After all, does every manager need to reinvent the wheel in order to understand the cultures of their organizations? Any effective system for examining culture must have at its basis a common measurement scale. At first glance there appears little consensus as to a uniform set of cultural dimensions. For example, Allen and Dyer (1980), Bettinger (1989), Denison (1990) and Gordon (1988) all proposed differently labeled dimensions. However, Van der Post and de Coning (1997), who identified 114 inter-dependent and independent dimensions from a literature survey, and managed to conflate them to a representative 15, discovered that many commonalties exist in the dimensions suggested. For example, the six dimensions established through statistical correlation of hundreds of survey responses by Hofstede, Neuijen, Ohayv and Sanders (1990) can essentially be encapsulated into the 15 dimensions constructed by Van der Post and de Coning. Similarly, the nine cultural value dimensions identified by Howard (1998) based on Quinn and Rohrbaugh’s (1983) competing values model is also subsumed. A cursory examination of this mass of dimensions can be confusing. Despite the fact that, as we have observed, the dimensions contain common themes, they can be difficult to locate given the variable and often creative labels placed upon them. For example, Gordon’s (1988) dimension, ‘Clarity of Direction’ uses the same criteria as Bettinger’s (1989), ‘A Sense of Pride in the Mission and Objectives of the Organization’, despite the different terminology. Both dimensions emphasize the importance of clarity in relation to an organization’s strategic focus and direction. An analysis by Smith and Shilbury (2004) of dimensions prevalent in the literature revealed six repeating themes, as summarized in Table 5.1. These themes could be considered the core, stable characteristics of organizational culture. Each comprises certain values and attitudes, which in turn appear through more superficial and observable behaviors or symbols such as rites and heroes. Taking a step further through a detailed study of a wide variety of sporting cultures, Smith and Shilbury (2004) concluded that 12 cultural dimensions apply to sport: Change, Competitors, Customers, Decisions, Goals, Heroes, History and Tradition, Risk, Rituals, Symbols, Values and Size.

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Aaron C. T. Smith, Bob Stewart, and Gervase Haimes Table 5.1. Common Dimensions of Culture.

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Dimension Characteristics Stability/changeability Disposition toward change: Degree to which organization encourages alternative ‘ways of doing things’ or existing ways. Cooperation/conflict Disposition toward problem resolution: Degree to which organization encourages cooperation or conflict. Goal focus/orientation Clarity and nature of objectives and performance expectations. Reward/motivation Nature of reward orientation of organizational members: Degree to which organization encourages seniority or performance. Control/authority Nature and degree of responsibility, freedom and independence of organizational members. Time/planning Disposition toward long-term planning: Degree to which organization encourages short-term or long-term thinking.

One of the key issues surrounding the use of cultural dimensions is what exactly they represent. For example, values dimensions are typically measured by asking questions about symbols, rituals, heroes, history, attitudes and behavior. Is it reasonable to assume that these criteria provide suitable proxies for covert, underpinning values? Thus, different assumptions and terminologies make the conceptualization of organizational culture dimensions more difficult. As a result, cultural dimensions can be seen as either homogeneous—all reflect an equal unit of cultural depth like values, but have to be described and evidenced in terms of other characteristics, or heterogeneous—where dimensions represent different hierarchical layers of the cultural ‘onion’—like values, attitudes, rituals and symbols. The unique features of sport organizational culture seem to be expressed in the key points of difference poorly covered by dimensions derived from non-sport studies. Just as with personality in individuals, organizational culture in sport seems to be disproportionately affected by idiosyncratic behavior. Cultural mapping needs to account for these idiosyncrasies. Generic cultural dimensions fail to capture the nuances of sport’s cultural experience. Schein (1997) would perhaps argue that the memorabilia contained in a sporting organization contains implicit cultural meaning. Generic questionnaires will not yield these meanings. In fact, only an in-depth analysis that reflects the subtleties of a sporting organization would provide insight into why customers are sometimes not really customers, why it is detrimental for some competitors to go ‘out of business’ within a sporting competition, and why board members can end up working at the ‘coal face’. Schein would perhaps go even further and argue that each organization warrants its own unique sub-dimensions. It would be dangerous to assume that common labels on dimensions mean that the contents of culture can be as easily exposed. In addition, weightings towards certain dimensions might better reveal core assumptions about sport, leadership, and competition. These, as Schein might agree, could be determined on a case-by-case basis. But, perhaps some general guidelines would be helpful, as long as they leave scope for customized interpretations.

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Core Mapping Criteria It is one thing to collect data on the culture of an organization and another thing to make sense of it. A system of mapping can help navigate this complex process. A mapping technique serves as both a strategy and process, bringing order, structure, and meaning to a mass of accumulated observations. Given the impractical nature of wielding the 12 dimensions noted above, and the generic nature of the six common dimensions, we propose three sport-specific dimensions relating to underlying assumptions, beliefs, values and customs. These dimensions represent core values within a sport organization. 1. Systems of performance evaluation 2. Systems of discipline 3. Systems of support In addition to these three core dimensions, three peripheral dimensions may be employed as supplements. 1. Systems of needs gratification 2. Systems of gender roles 3. Systems of tolerance for the unfamiliar

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We shall explain each of these six criteria next.

Systems of Performance Evaluation Systems of performance evaluation revolve around an organization’s disposition toward its competitive ethic. It can be summarized by the degree to which the organization’s primary function is winning, in contrast to the importance of its other operations, including profitmaking. Systems of performance evaluation can vary between the extremes of focusing on competitive success, to a substantial interest in the profit-making situation, or even an attachment to community service. It must be remembered, however, that a sport organization differs from a traditional business in its products and services. Many sport organizations depend upon an independent, unfixed and uncertain variable: team performance. In simple terms, the quality of a sporting organization’s operation emerges from the team’s ability to win competitive matches. As a result, a fundamental cultural value appears in attitudes towards the performance of the game itself. A further complication of the performance evaluation system stems from the importance of professionalization. A sport organization’s purpose may fall within three extremes: participation, winning sporting competitions, and profit-seeking. An organization based around professionalization may view winning matches as the only acceptable outcome of sporting endeavors, whilst an organization imbued with the ideals of amateurism may view participation and maximum effort as the most important considerations in a sporting contest. However, it does not follow that organizations which are not fully professional will be ambivalent toward winning. Some sporting franchises and manufacturers simply consider sport a vehicle for delivering a lucrative product or service.

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A further insight into performance evaluation can be obtained by analyzing the traits of employees, and their respective behaviors. This is particularly important with a sporting club, because of the ‘character’ emphasis often placed upon the players. A club could, for example, portray an image where employees are valued for their individual toughness and commitment to winning. Alternatively, employees can be judged by their management skills in improving the performance of the club. In simple terms, employees may, at one extreme, be hired specifically for their skills, or at the other, simply because they fit the club’s cultural ‘mold’. This could explain why so many ex-players find careers in sports administration, at the expense of readily trained managers who may immediately improve the club’s organizational capacity. In summary, a competitive focus remains integral to the success of sporting organizations.

Systems of Discipline The second core cultural dimension refers to the system of discipline that dominates the organization. Understanding this cultural indicator involves both an analysis of the fundamental structures—through which the organization operates—and the underlying values, beliefs and assumptions that surround these structures. Structure indicates the allocation of responsibilities and decision-making processes, revealing those people responsible for administering discipline. Centralization, for example, occurs when the coordination of resources (including the power to discipline) is wielded by a select few leaders. In contrast, a decentralized structure allows for delegation and flexibility, and therefore dissipates disciplinary power and regulates the behavior of others. Power and its sources represent an important part of the disciplinary cultural system. Linked strongly with the other organizational characteristics, the issue of who holds power provides enormous insight. Control of the organization may span from complete power and control held by the centralized figures, to a consultative decision-making process wherein those with knowledge and expertise contribute to decision-making. This description includes both the administration and team structures as well as the organization as a complete entity. At the heart of a sporting organization’s disciplinary system lie its policies and rules on rewards and punishments. Again this includes the team processes in addition to the administrative structure. The club may embrace a method of rewarding excellence, punishing failure, or a combination of both. Behavioral extremes may extend from mischievous rulebreakers to consummate rule-followers. Behavior reinforced by culture possesses a powerful anchor, and can only be altered by a modification or transformation in the culture itself. Systems of Support The final core cultural dimension concerns the theme of support systems. This represents the central perception of employees (and players) regarding the degree of collectivism inherent in their organization. That is, the amount of unity present. Sporting organizations place a unique emphasis on the importance of teamwork. However, the practices of many sporting organizations fail to bolster this notion, since they often single out superstars and market the individual character of players, administrators and members. In contrast, some organizations discourage an emphasis on just a few star players, and rather focus on performance as a whole. Systems of support therefore encapsulate the degree of unity and loyalty associated with belonging to a particular sporting organization.

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Peripheral Mapping Criteria

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System of Needs Gratification The first peripheral cultural dimension represents the system of needs gratification in place. In simple terms the dimension refers to a willingness to sacrifice something now in order to obtain a future benefit. In this case an immediate gratification of needs in contrast to a delayed gratification of needs. The planning approach offers a starting point. Planning may range from a concentration on long-term planning (i.e. delayed gratification) to a focus on ad hoc decision-making (i.e. immediate gratification). In a more fundamental sense it describes the difference between design and action. Understanding the planning orientation makes it easier to determine an organization’s current situation, its future direction, and the extent to which one dominates over the other. In addition to the trajectory of the planning process, decision-making systems illustrate a particular disposition toward needs gratification. For example, an organization dominated by immediate needs gratification will pursue established players with the bait of more money, while a planning oriented organization may spend more time nurturing young players. Systems of Gender Roles The second peripheral cultural dimension illustrates the presuppositions and behavior associated with gender roles. Sport generally displays rigid gender-role behavior, often personified by a widespread, fundamental belief that males and females should behave with specific and stereotypical conduct. Images such as rugged, tough, strong, and courageous exemplify traditional, stereotypical masculinity. Femininity, in comparison, has in the past been associated with symbols of submissiveness, obedience, nurturing or sex. How employees are expected to behave within gender boundaries has enormous cultural significance. The dimension portrays the role that gender stereotypes play in a sport organization’s behavior. One extreme, of course, is for gender stereotype images to be emphasized, while the other extreme discourages perceptions of rigid, gender-aligned behavior. Related to the importance of gender images is the notion that sport builds character. Often this value appears through the belief that sport turns boys into men. Thus, gender roles can reflect opinions about whether sport delivers character-building outcomes and develops moral integrity. Sport practices can have varying underlying significances beyond their apparent meaning and nature. A culture that supports a character-building assumption would expect players to act within the confines of certain stereotypical gender boundaries that may not be reinforced via other means. For example, male players should not reveal pain or discomfort. Failure to behave within specified gender boundaries may create dissonance within the organization, and undermine the sanctioned ideology. Systems of Tolerance for the Unfamiliar This final peripheral cultural dimension refers to the system and degree of tolerance for the unfamiliar. It reflects the degree to which change is embraced or the status-quo is maintained. By extension it includes the amount of risk-taking that the organization undertakes. Despite sport’s association with risk-taking, many sport organizations exhibit

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risk-aversion. To some extent the disinclination towards off-field risk-taking can be explained by commitments to long-standing traditions and intractable ways of doing things.

Organizational Cultural Typologies

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If organizations should pursue strong cultures appropriate to their environments, how do they work out what characterizes their current culture, and then identify the features of a more desirable culture? One answer can be found in cultural typologies designed to indicate cultural types suitable for specific kinds of organizations and environmental conditions (Andersen, 2003; Breu, 2001; Deal & Kennedy, 2000; Hebden, 1986; Hofstede, 1980). Fixed typologies emerged from a functionalist approach to culture, while more interpretive approaches suggest that we should devise typologies or assessments on a case-by-case basis (Andersen, 2003). We provided a compromise in the previous section in the form of general assessment dimensions. However, some managers find fully specified typologies useful because their organizations can be quickly diagnosed. It is not our aim here to assess every system and classification of oganizational culture ever formulated. Instead we select the most influential historically in order to understand more clearly the common threads that bind these typologies. Because each classification system defines culture by its own presupposed assumptions, we need to develop some common ground upon which to base an analysis. Most classification systems reflect on particular organizational characteristics as an aid to categorizing cultures. For the purposes of this analysis, in order to facilitate comparisons of culture, nine organizational characteristics have been chosen to summarize the effects of different cultural beliefs and practices. These characteristics are: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Organizational structure Decision making Types of risks assumed Adaptability to change Major orientation Roles of rules and procedures Perception of heroes Weaknesses of the culture Strengths of the culture

Typologies: An Examination Organizational culture may be explained in both a descriptive and a prescriptive manner with the earliest typologies emerging in the 1970s. However, culture’s popularity reached a new level when Peters and Waterman (1982) wrote a best-selling book on American companies focusing on culture as its chief explanatory variable. Deal and Kennedy (1982), Cusumano (1985), Kanter (1984) and numerous others have written in the same vein. Laying the foundations for cultural assessment, these authors showed that the culture existing within a company has an impact on employee satisfaction and performance. While many of these

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authors do not place their anecdotal evidence within a specific theoretical framework, they do describe the culture of organizations in general ways and against overarching laws. Even authors like Maccoby (1979), while looking only at individual behavior, implicitly construct their own models of culture. In the next section, we introduce some famous typologies that form the basis for thinking about cultural classification today. Perhaps more importantly, the typologies offer a useful way of thinking about culture and its most critical features and expressions.

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Typology 1: Harrison (1972) /Handy (1976) Roger Harrison authored a pioneering paper on types of culture aimed at defining the type of organizations to which individuals perceived they belonged. Harrison’s survey sought to identify values and styles of behavior found within organizations. He also tried to identify individual values and beliefs. Harrison found that within each organization a combination of four major ideologies or cultures presided: power, role, task, or person. While one predominates, elements of all four may exist, and frequently, the differentiation and integration of all four cultures are left to be handled by the middle-manager, rather than by the senior executives. Harrison belonged to what has been termed the school of ‘contingency theory’, which advocates that no one best way exists to manage an organization. Many contingency theorists tend to concentrate on the task and role cultures, frequently re-naming them organic and mechanistic respectively. Although Harrison classified the four cultures, Charles Handy developed them into workable models. Charles Handy took as his starting point Harrison’s four culture types, and used them to develop a detailed analysis of organizational structure and behavior. According to Handy, each type of culture produces specific organizational outcomes. Table 5.2 provides a summary of the ways in which each type of culture impacts upon the nine dimensions of organizational behavior we specified. Table 5.2. Summary - Harrison (1972) / Handy (1978) Organizational Dimension Organizational Structure Decision Making Type of Risks Assumed Adaptability to Change Central Orientation

Power

Role

Task

Person

Select Few

Hierarchical

Matrix

Centralized

Fast High

Slow Low

Fast High

Slow Low

High

Low

High

Low

Results /Ends Few

Job Efficiency

Job/Project

Employees

Flexible

Flexible

Type of Rigid, Orderly Rule/Procedures Perception of Heroes Tough, Inspired No Heroes Strengths of Culture Competitive Stable Weaknesses of Culture

Difficult to Cope Inflexible, with Size Vulnerable to Change

Groups, Teams Patriarchal Innovative, Democratic Cohesive Complex, Control Consensus Difficult Difficult

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The power culture originates from a central source, much like a spider’s web, and provides excitement and exhilaration for some, and discomfort and intimidation for others. Within a power culture, organizational structure centers around a select few, relying on strong leadership and a figurehead to manipulate and orchestrate all activity. In many cases, the power figurehead is surrounded by technical specialists who provide significant advice and guidance, further enhancing the leader’s omnipotent image. Power centered organizations depend heavily upon the quality of individuals in the central roles. Decision making resides with a select few whose power base lies with resources rather than expertise. As a result, decision making is rapid, facilitating a competitive, risk-taking environment, capable of undertaking considerable change quickly, and concentrating on results irrespective of means. In power cultures, few written rules and procedures operate, with control being exercised centrally. Inevitably, heroes will involve larger than life, inspirational, entrepreneurial leaders who lead from the front. The strengths of such an organization include its speed of reaction to environmental change, its ability to adapt to focus shifts, and its willingness to capitalize on high risk opportunities. Its weaknesses include a difficulty in accommodating growth and an over-reliance upon the abilities of a select few individuals. A power culture frequently appears in small entrepreneurial organizations, occasionally in trade unions, and in some sporting organizations. Power cultures put a great deal of faith in the individual and judge by results rather than means. Unfortunately, the loss of a leader might cause strong reverberations that can partially undermine performance. The role ideology is, in contrast, highly bureaucratic, typified by functional specialization; control and coordination through formal rules and procedures based on principles of hierarchy. Senior management focuses on coordination and direction rather than adventurous decision making. Decisions rely upon lengthy formal procedures, culminating in predictable low-risk strategies. Concomitantly, managers in role cultures avoid change to accommodate environmental variables. Priority goes with the job to be filled rather than the individual to fill it. The allocation of work and responsibility determines the efficiency of culture instead of individual ability. As a consequence, heroes remain absent in role cultures, its strengths being a stable, secure and predictable outlook, and its weaknesses being its inflexibility and protracted change processes. The role organization needs a stable environment in which to function. The public service, automobile, oil, life insurance and banking industries tend to encourage role cultures. Task cultures are job or project oriented, usually with a matrix organizational structure. Because the emphasis lies with task achievement, decision-making tends to be undertaken by specialists and experts rather than those in power positions. Decisions are implemented rapidly with little aversion to opportunistic risks. The predominant style of the task culture involves working in team settings, which encourages a flexible attitude toward projects. Formal roles have little meaning in task groups and procedures tend to be adaptable and pliant. Task cultures are cohesive, innovative, and competitive, with the ability to conform to novel situations. Group dynamics may be complex, and difficult to control. Heroes in task cultures rarely appear because the focus lies with group and team accomplishments. Task cultures need adequate time and resources in order to perform most successfully. Hence, small organizations set up for specific tasks or periods, such as in wartime, are effective. However, when speed is critical, and resources become difficult to acquire, management begins to feel the need to control methods as well as results. As a result, task cultures can readily change to a role or power culture. Task cultures predominate in most sporting

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organizations and reflect many of the features of a robust culture management. Because influence is widely dispersed, effectiveness must rely on overall team strength. The outcome or result must depend upon the team subsuming the individual, particularly in terms of status and power for the common good. A person oriented culture exists to serve organizational members. In consequence, the organizational structures, rules, procedures and roles evolve according to the requirements of the individual members. Decision making occurs mainly with the collective agreement of all members, and can therefore be tentative. Similarly, high risk activities fail to receive endorsement from all members, leading to change resistance and resolute stability. While person orientated cultures aim to be cooperative, they also allow individual members to be elevated to hero status by their peers, admired for their individual accomplishments. The strength of person cultures resides in its solidarity, uniting members under a common banner. Advertising agencies, some religious groups, welfare agencies and even families often have a person orientation. If this type of culture exists in sporting organizations, then it appears in amateur clubs, and those individuals who gather together to play their sport in their own way. They lack the formality to undertake serious training, and indeed, such sporting clubs rarely have a paid manager or any formal structure. On the other hand, sociability and conviviality appear prominent and highly valued. After game drinks and social functions exemplify the person centered sporting organization. Handy did not argue that his culture types are right or wrong, or good or bad; simply that their existence depends upon circumstances. That is, they operate as a function of organizational context. While Handy’s four culture types summarize most organizational cultures quite well, they lack precision. But, while descriptive and impressionistic, they do remind us that culture is as much about perception as definition. Identity cannot be escaped. Handy, as with most theorists, described and identified cultures according to the organizational characteristics they manifest. As a result, the construct fails to frame culture as layers of organizational characteristics distilled over time, varying in depth, accessibility and malleability. A uni-dimensional typology ignores the accumulation of multiple elements of culture, and instead represents all facets of culture through the description of one. This ideology maintains that culture represents something an organization has, or possesses, rather than being its very identity. A four-category system of classification of culture is not necessarily a four-dimensional viewpoint, and one of the weaknesses of Handy’s approach was his failure to dig below the surface of organizational behavior. Culture has many elements, layered along a continuum of subjectivity and accessibility. Rousseau (1985), on the other hand, argued that within a multidimensional framework, objective elements such as those Handy utilized, become vehicles for the description of more covert elements of culture. He suggested that material artifacts become physical representations of covert cultural elements, whilst fundamental assumptions and unconscious beliefs manifest via other organizational characteristics. Within the continuum from readily observable cultural features to entirely unconscious processes, it becomes difficult to construct a typology that functions accurately on every level of culture. If only observable features receive analysis then Handy’s typology provides a useful synopsis of variable organizational cultures. This, however, presupposes that further and deeper levels of culture appear through those readily apparent characteristics. Handy argued that culture arises from historical circumstances, the environment, technology and the needs of the people within the organization. Employees may not even be aware that it exists (Handy, 1978). If

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employees operate unaware of their own organization’s culture, the question remains as to how a typology that only scrutinizes obvious characteristics can holistically describe such an elusive concept. Despite the shortcomings, Handy’s typology makes some useful generalizations. For example, central or personal/ownership will tend towards a power culture with direct control of the resources. This may be seen, particularly in the U.S. sporting arena, where ownership of a baseball team or football club has greater importance for the ethics of the club and the style of play, than any input that the coach/manager can have. A similar generalization is that large organizations tend to be more formalized, and develop specialized groups which need systematic coordination. Thus, increasing size pushes the organization towards a role culture.

Typology 2: Deal and Kennedy (1982) Deal and Kennedy also identify four distinct types of culture which they label driving, outgoing, specialist and control. The driving culture correlates almost exactly to the power culture described by Handy. Its organizational structure is highly centralized with decisionmaking undertaken responsively by a select few. Their heroes take a tough, individualistic attitude and can tolerate all or nothing risks. Driving cultures embrace change and focus primarily on the ends rather than the means. Organizations attributed with a driving culture have the ability to accomplish tasks expeditiously, although their lack of procedures and rules contributes to their failure to learn from past errors. Furthermore, the driving culture espouses the virtues of individual performance and reward, and subsequently suffers from a lack of teamwork. The outgoing culture largely approximates Handy’s task culture. Although organizations with outgoing cultures shun high-risk responsibilities, they remain resolute and instantaneous decision-makers. Organizational structures emphasize decentralization, oriented around group-leadership and teamwork. This allows for responsive and adaptive change under certain circumstances. Heroes in an outgoing culture hold friendly attitudes, and prevail upon cooperation in order to solve problems. They produce a high volume of work rapidly, but possess a short-term time perspective driven more by action than problem solving. The specialist culture appears to be synonymous with Handy’s role culture. A specialist culture possesses a structured hierarchy, with decision-making decelerated by bureaucratic processes. In contrast to role cultures, organizations exhibiting specialist characteristics show an aptitude for high-risk activities. Heroes within specialist cultures demonstrate obstinate endurance and a tolerance for long-term ambiguity. They tend to recalculate their decisions repeatedly, and display loyalty and respect for authority. Specialist cultures deliver high levels of innovation and make significant breakthroughs. Unfortunately, however, they can be slow converting plans into action. The control culture has similarities with the specialist culture, but has no resemblance to the final Handy category, person cultures. Similar to a specialist culture, the control culture wields a hierarchical organizational structure. In contrast, however, the control culture takes a process-orientation, opting for controlled, low-risk endeavors in preference to more speculative undertakings. Control organizations exude caution, always protective of their members. They tend to be orderly and punctual, attending to the last detail via established procedures, bringing order and system to the workplace. Initiative is discouraged, however, with bureaucratic red-tape prevailing. These aspects of Deal and Kennedy’s culture typology are summarized in table 5.3.

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Table 5.3. Summary - Deal and Kennedy (1982) Organizational Driving Dimension Decision Making Centralized Type of Risks Fast Assumed Adaptability to Change High Central Orientation High Type of Goal Rule/Procedures Achievement Perception of Heroes Few Strengths of Culture IndividualGamblers Weaknesses of Culture Speed, Efficiency Organizational Short-Term Structure Orientation

Outgoing

Specialist

Control

Matrix Fast

Hierarchal Slow

Hierarchical Slow

Low Fast Objective

High Low Technical Procedure Strict, Rigid Thorough, Consistent Competent, Respect Slow, Vulnerable

Low Low Process

Flexible Friendly, Teamwork High Workload Action over Planning

Bureaucratic Cautious, Attend To Detail Order/System Approach Slow, Red-Tape

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Like Handy, Deal and Kennedy address organizational culture on an apparently superficial level. Culture, as they describe it, can be determined and classified according to readily observable organizational characteristics. Again, this method presupposes that any deeper, less obvious elements of culture manifest through commonly accessible organizational characteristics. Deal and Kennedy pointed out that accessing culture can be difficult to assess due to its elusive, covert nature, a view supported by Schein, who described culture in Jungian terms as analogous to an individual’s personality, not all of which is publicly displayed. To continue the analogy, Deal and Kennedy’s typology means assessing an individual’s personality by their appearance, voice and mannerisms.

Typology 3. Hrebiniak and Joyce (1985), Johnson (1987), and Mondy (1990) Hrebiniak and Joyce (1985) identified four organizational culture types they named defender, analyzer, prospector and reactor. The defender culture is described identically to the culture of the same name, classified by Johnson (1987), and labeled as closed/autocratic by Mondy (1990). The defender culture features a hierarchical organizational structure, which facilitates centralized decision-making. Not surprisingly, organizations displaying defender culture phenomenon avoid high-risk strategies. Rules regulate the flow of information between organizational members to ensure a high level of formal integration. Members’ roles are tightly prescribed by formal job descriptions making change and job interdependence and coordination tedious. The conservative approach of defender organizations can be advantageous when high-risk situations are inappropriate or unnecessarily dangerous. Despite their slow and steady approach, the defender culture encourages fastidious efficiency and economy. In direct comparison to the defender culture, Hrebiniak and Joyce described the prospector culture. Johnson again uses the same term, while Mondy categorizes it as open/participative. The prospector culture neatly correlates to the opposite of the defender culture. It therefore exemplifies decentralization, risk-taking, rapid change, informality and effectiveness. Where heroes in a defender culture are staunch, resolute individuals, prospector

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heroes are flexible, flamboyant and charismatic characters. The various types of culture and their behavioral outcomes are identified in table 5.4. Mondy’s and Johnson’s typologies include only two categories where both represent extremes in organizational culture classification. Hrebiniak and Joyce include two additional culture types, which cover the middle ground between defender and prospector. Their analyzer culture is a modification of the defender classification, the only discernible difference being a less extreme orientation. It can best be detailed as a moderate version of the defender culture. Similarly, the reactor culture constitutes a hybrid version of the prospector category. Although generally based on the prospector culture, it is depicted vaguely, delineated by terms such as variable and diffuse.

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Table 5.4. Summary - Hrebiniak, Joyce (1985) / Mondy (1990) / Johnson (1987) Organizational Dimension Decision Making

Defender/ Autocratic Hierarchical

Analyzer

Prospector / Participative Matrix

Reactor

Type of Risks Assumed Adaptability to Change Central Orientation Type of Rule/Procedures Perception of Heroes Strengths of Culture Weaknesses of Culture Organizational Structure

Slow

ModerateHierarchical Medium

Fast

Varied

Low

Differentiated

High

Incremental

Low Conservatism

High End Result

Diffuse Variable

Formal

Medium Efficient, Effective Flexible

Lean and Mean

Variable

Changeable, Unpredictable Hybrid

Security, Stability Slow to Change

Diversity

Few, Informal Charismatic, Honest Adaptable Opportunist Difficult to Control

Lack of Direction

Hierarchical

Flexibility Lack of Direction

Typology 4: Kabanoff (1992) (The Distributive System Model) Kabanoff (1992) contended that an organization’s distributive system—the way it spreads its income, technology, status and rewards—holds the key to determining its culture. From this perspective he splits from all previous viewpoints, and subsequently his classification system cannot be analyzed using the nine common organizational characteristics previously utilized. According to Kabanoff, an organization’s distributive system reflects not just what resources are spread across the organization, but also when and where they are spread. He terms this distributive fairness. In attempting to achieve distributive fairness, organizations select consistent norms congruent with the central characteristics of their culture. Consequently, organizations may be categorized according to their ‘allocative’ conduct; the processes through which money, status and technology are distributed through the organization. Within this framework, two imperatives arise. The first imperative represents a concern for equity, or reward based on performance, while the second imperative shows a concern for equality, or reward based on participation. These factors are presented in figure 5.3.

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Figure 5.3. A Typology of Distributive Cultures Based Upon Structure-Process Dimensions.

According to Kabanoff, the distributive system an organization employs and its allocative conduct are subject to power structures and administrative processes. In the event of a centralized power structure, an inequitable allocation of resources and rewards occurs. In contrast, decentralized power structures promote an egalitarian distributive orientation. While power structures contribute substantially to an organization’s distributive nature, the administrative and behavioral processes sustain a particular system of rewards. Kabanoff suggested that the distribution of power need not positively correlate with rewards, and as a result, a number of possibilities emerge. Four predominant types of distributive cultures emerge. They are represented by a two-dimensional typology based upon the distributive imperatives present in an organization’s structure and process, as seen in figure 5.3. Kabanoff identified four types of culture: collegial, meritocratic, elite, and leadership. Collegial cultures allocate resources and rewards based on holistic, organizational excellence, while de-emphasizing individual performance. They encourage teamwork while power and rewards are shared. Meritocratic cultures, however, while having an egalitarian power structure, base the allocation of resources upon performance. They encourage output and productivity. Power is shared but rewards are not. On the other hand, elite cultures stress inequality on all levels, emphasizing rewards and authority but limiting cohesion. They encourage individual self-interest where neither power nor rewards are shared. Finally, leadership cultures are task and control oriented, operating within a framework of collective

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action. They encourage group-centered, goal-directed behavior, but do it within an authoritarian framework. Rewards are shared, but power is not. While Kabanoff's typology cannot be directly related to those previously discussed due to a fundamental definitional variance, a few parallels are worth considering. The leadership culture, which encourages teamwork, is similar to Handy’s task culture or Deal and Kennedy’s outgoing culture. Furthermore, the elite culture features a results orientation which resembles Handy’s power culture and Deal and Kennedy’s driving culture. As far as sporting organizations are concerned, some aspects of Kabanoff’s typology are easier to apply than others. For example, the collegial model of distributive culture bases the allocation of power and rewards on team performance. While the distribution of rewards amongst successful teams is common in sport, equality of power is rare. Meritocratic cultures similarly apportion power uniformly, but rewards are not equivalently divided. The United States basketball team that participated in the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games may illustrate this meritocratic distributive culture. Colloquially known as the (original) ‘dream-team’, they included what most observers considered to be the most skilled players in the world. Reportedly, decisionmaking was unusually evenly distributed, due to the experience and skill levels of the players. However, while all received the ostensible reward of a gold-medal, several players were allowed to violate the U.S. team sponsorship agreement, and wear alternative brand shoes, for which they were substantially rewarded by the sporting shoe companies concerned. Elite cultures, wherein neither power nor rewards are shared, describe resource allocation in many sporting organizations. Historically, this lack of power and resources is typical of pre-professional sporting clubs. Equally, leadership, Kabanoff’s final distributive culture, can be readily described in a sporting context. Indeed, it reflects a common distributive reality in certain professional sporting leagues such as the American National Football League (NFL). In a leadership culture, and operating within a rigid, dictatorial structure, rewards are shared but power is not.

Final Word on Typologies It does not take much searching to locate additional typologies of organizational culture. Most combine two bi-directional dimensions in order to form a four category quadrant. For example, Cameron and Quinn (1999) proposed that the dimensions employed should reflect competing values. At one end of their first dimension they placed flexibility, discretion, and dynamism, while at other end of the scale they positioned stability, order, and control. Their second dimension used internal orientation, integration, and unity at one end of the scale, with external orientation, differentiation, and rivalry at the other. Essentially, the dimensions represent change versus stability and an internal perspective versus and external perspective. When organized as a typology, four categories of culture emerge: collaborate (clan), create (adhocracy), control (hierarchy), and compete (market). Of course, it is immediately clear that these four culture types overlap significantly with their more renowned precursors. In fact, culture typologies have changed little since Harrison’s model in 1972. Any approach to interpreting an organizational culture faces obstacles. A quantitative or mechanistic approach provides information difficult to obtain using qualitative methods. Similarly, qualitative or humanistic research will not yield results easily translatable into quantitative measurement. For example, any quantitative approach may take cultural

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phenomena out of context and thus ignore deeper, symbolic cultural manifestations. Conversely, any analysis which captures the complexity of organizational culture may find great difficulty in separating the interwoven strands of organizational history and personal relationships. As a result, concrete conclusions may be difficult to establish. Both approaches have unavoidable weaknesses and irreplaceable strengths. As a consequence, typologies will always prove to some extent unfulfilling. But, while superficial, they remain necessarily simplistic in providing a technique for general classification. Unfortunately, the typologies we just described take little advantage of the symbolism created by myth, ritual and ceremony, making it impossible to gain a complete understanding of the full range of human behavior within a complex organization. This is a particularly significant omission when applying the typologies to sporting organizations, since most sport is bound by its traditions, folklore, mythologies, dramas, and successes and traumas of the past. Nevertheless, the combination of different cultural types does add to our fundamental knowledge of the topic, and provides a foundation upon which to build a more complex cultural experience, particularly in the field of sport and leisure. Typologies also fail to address the presence of multiple types of cultures as well as sub-cultures that simultaneously exist in organizations.

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SUBCULTURES AND MULTIPLE IDENTITIES Subcultures arise when groups possessing similar task dependencies, objectives, personal interactions and/or a physical closeness come to form a unique bond of identification. According to Van Maanen and Barley (1985, p. 38), subcultures represent a “subset of an organization’s members who interact regularly with one another, identify themselves as a distinct group within an organization, share a set of problems commonly defined to be the problems of all and routinely take action on the basis of collective understandings unique to the group.” Implicit in the idea of subcultures is an acceptance that culture can be fragmented at the same time as being uniform. In other words, every organizational member can hold some common, ubiquitous cultural values, while also possessing some additional values specific to a particular group to which they belong. Subcultural values can be connected to membership of a certain department or function within an organization. Equally, other subcultures emerge more organically where identity derives from another form of belonging. Subcultures tend to evolve as a result of personal interactions. Usually this demands a physical closeness amongst people who perceive each other as similar (Hatch 1993), although subcultures can develop remotely through virtual communities or other online connections. When physical proximity provides the driver, closeness comes from staff with similar reporting relationships and shared facilities or task interdependencies. A single staff member may be identified as a member of several subcultures based on tasks to be executed, reporting relationship or social groupings. From an identity viewpoint, although one identity might prevail in an organization, multiple sub-identities can also be located. According to Schein (1996), subcultural groups tend to splinter chiefly around three different kinds of functions, or what he called the ‘three cultures of management’: Operators, Engineers and Executives. Each has a role in either reinforcing or changing basic underlying assumptions in an organization. As a result, managing subcultures becomes critical to

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effecting change. Hofstede (1998a, 1998b) emphasized the importance of identifying and separating the subcultures so that management decisions avoid internal conflict. Similarly, Schein’s hierarchical subcultures, as with Corley’s (2004) notion of multiple identities, work at the same hierarchical levels, operating silently within organizations. Inbuilt conflict between subcultures must be resolved before an organization can become capable of change. Moreover, Corley (2004) found that the hierarchical subculture levels provide the means through which hierarchical identities are expressed and differentiated. For example, a junior management subculture of ‘operators’ sees identity as a cultural expression, while the senior management subculture of ‘executives’ sees identity as a strategic tool. The middle management ‘engineers’ subculture acts as a bridge, ensuring communication between the senior and junior levels. Operators deliver the product or service that fulfills an organization’s fundamental business. This group determines the general interdependencies of organizational parts as well as how they function. For the most part, operators provide the targets of change and improvement plans. ‘Good’ managers tend to be identified by their ability to manage operators. Many commentators like Schein place a strong emphasis on the subservient role of operators. Their lack of power helps explain organizational problems with change. For example, a large amount of potential innovations and ideas fail to be disseminated to the more senior engineers and executives because of limited interaction. In sporting organizations, the operators are the players and administrative staff. Engineers design and manage the core technologies of an organization, from IT support to technical product development. Engineers share an occupational culture, which revolves around problem solving. They design mechanistic systems, routines and rules. According to Schein, engineers often thwart upward diffusion of ideas and innovation from operators by placing technical obstacles in their way. In sporting organizations, engineers comprise the coaching and technical staff. The executive subculture is characterized by accountability to shareholders and other stakeholders. They identify themselves on the basis of an ability to make difficult decisions, even when relying on imperfect information. Executives rely on systems, rules and procedures to manage people, which sometimes require them to abandon innovations and problem solving thinking emanating from operators and engineers. In sporting organizations, executives include Boards of Directors, Boards of Management, the CEO and senior management staff.

CONCLUSION Organizational identity, like culture, can be used to make sense of how organizations work. The application of individual identity theory in an organizational context is a recent approach to improving our understanding of how organizations operate. Through a personal sense of identity we enable a cultural expression of ourselves; that is, we perceive ourselves in a certain way because of the values we hold and the way we do things. Similarly, in an organization, identity provides a powerful mechanism for modifying culture. We argued that understanding the interaction between organizational culture and identity can emerge from a psychological perspective. Thinking of culture as analogous to personality

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reveals the issue of cultural levels. In order to diagnose culture, a deep interpretation is required. We pointed out that the same observable cultural features can be interpreted in different ways depending on the analytical depth. For this reason, while cultural typologies offer excellent conceptual representations of idealized cultural categories, they fail to address the deeper, more unique and nuanced aspects of organizational culture and identity. Moreover, most organizations possess multiple identities or subcultures, determined mainly through function and physical (or virtual) connections. Our lessons from this chapter rest with the notions that (1) cultural change works through identity, (2) cultural change begins with an accurate diagnosis, and (3) cultural diagnosis requires deep analysis. From here, we ask the question as to whether humans possess specific, largely predetermined characteristics upon which cultural values must operate. Put another way, what is the cognitive landscape upon which culture finds traction?

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Howard, L. (1998). Validating the competing values model as a representation of organizational cultures. International Journal of Organizational Analysis, 6, 231-251. Hrebiniak, L.G., & Joyce, W.F. (1985). Organizational adaptation: Strategic choice and environmental determinism. Administrative Science Quarterly, 30, 336-349. Hunt, J. (1992). Managing people at work. London: McGraw-Hill Book Co. Jenkins, R. (1996). Social identity. London: Routledge. Johnson, C. (1987). Strategic change and the management process. London: Basil Blackwell. Jung, C. G. (1968). Analytical psychology. New York: Random House Kabanoff, B. (1992). Identifying organisational distributive culture using content analysis. University of New South Wales Working Paper Series. Australian Graduate School of Management, the University of New South Wales. Kanter, R.M. (1984). The change masters: Corporate entrepreneurs at work. London: Allen and Unwin. Maccoby, M. (1979). The gamesman. New York: Simon and Schuster. Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self and society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Mondy, W.R. (1990). Management and organizational behavior. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Ouchi, W.G. (1981). Theory Z. Boston: Addison-Wesley. Peters, T., & Waterman, R. (1982). In Search of Excellence. New York: Harper and Row. (pp. 74-79, 318-321). Quinn, R., & Rohrbaugh, J. (1983). A spatial model of effectiveness criteria: Towards a competing values approach to organizational analysis. Management Science, 29, 363-377. Ravasi, D., & Rekom, J. V. (2003). Key issues in organizational identity and identification theory. Corporate Reputation Review, 6(2),118-132. Rousseau, D. (1990). Assessing organizational culture: The case for multiple methods. In B. Schneider (ed.) Organizational climate and culture. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Schein, E. (1984). Coming to a new awareness of organizational culture. San-Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Schein, E. H. (1992). Organizational culture and leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Schein, E. H. (1996). Culture: The missing concept in organization studies. Administrative Science Quarterly, 41, 229-240. Schein, E. (1997). Organizational culture and leadership (3rd ed.). San Francisco: JosseyBass. Scott, S. G., & Lane, V. R. (2000). A stakeholder approach to organizational identity. Academy of Management Review, 25(1), 43-62. Smith, A., & Shilbury, D. (2004). Mapping cultural dimensions in Australian sporting organizations. Sport Management Review, 7(2): 133-165. Van der Post, W., & De Coning, T. (1997). An instrument to measure organizational culture. South African Journal of Business Management, 28(4), 147-169. Van Maanen, J., & Barley, S. (1985). Cultural organization: Fragments of a theory. In P. Frost, L. Moore, M. Louis, C. Lundberg & J. Martin (Eds.), Organizational culture (pp. 31-54). Beverly Hills: Sage Whetten, D. A., & Godfrey, P. C. Eds. (1998). Identity in organizations: Building theory through conversations. Foundations for organizational science. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Wilkins, A. L. & Ouchi, W. G. (1983). Efficient cultures: Exploring the relationship between culture and organisation performance. Administrative Science Quarterly, 28, 468-481.

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Chapter 6

HARDWIRING SPORT CULTURE

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INTRODUCTION Evolutionary psychologists view the human mind as a product of evolution, and therefore recognize that certain psychological mechanisms have been shaped by evolutionary pressures. However, the veracity of evolutionary explanations as catalysts for behavior remains under hot debate. In this chapter we consider how evolutionary psychology can be employed to better understand organizational and sport culture. We review the position and research of evolutionary psychology, explain its potential as a cultural perspective, examine its criticisms, and reveal its utility to management practitioners. We conclude that the cognitive architecture of the mind is of direct relevance to cultural behavior and warrants the attention of performance-focused managers. In short, cultural concepts do not operate in a vacuum or get written onto a mental blank slate. Instead, culture interacts with cognition. Some cultural concepts fall upon fertile mental soil and as a result are more easily acquired, maintained and transmitted. Into our conceptual escalator of sport culture we introduce some biological variables and debate where they intersect with the propagation of cultural concepts. Figure 6.1 presents a model of sport culture accounting for biological variables.

EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY: NEW PERSPECTIVES ON SPORT CULTURE? Management practitioners have at their disposal a range of academic disciplines from which to draw theoretical concepts, metaphors and inspiration. For example, developments in psychology, anthropology, sociology and economics have all proven useful. Although not without controversy, since the publication of Wilson’s (1975) book on sociobiology, Darwinian interpretations of human behavior have gained momentum, most recently under the generic banner of ‘evolutionary psychology’ (EP). Saad and Gill (2000) demonstrated the exponential increase in social science journals citations of the term evolutionary psychology and its complementary branches. In many ways, the popularity of EP and its appearance in the social sciences reflects one of the greatest scientific steps of the last half-century: the discovery of DNA and the Human Genome Project. Here, we consider the lessons emerging

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from this branch of psychology, and most specifically, the implications it suggests for cultural management. Despite its growing general popularity, EP has only limited application as an analytical tool, mainly in the field of marketing and consumer behavior. Two notable attempts have come from Lynn, Kampschroeder and Pereira (1999) who linked inherent preferences for certain neonatal features to the design of toys and other commodities for children, and Saad and Gill (2000), who provided a comprehensive overview of the relevance of EP to marketing. Although Smith and Westerbeek (2004) touch upon the utility of EP to sport culture in their commentary on fan tribalism, its application to organizational culture has never been considered.

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Sport Organizational Culture

Hardwired Inclinations

Sport Culture

Contextual Influences

Biological Factors

Psychological & Cognitive Characteristics

Socio-cultural Environment Factors

Evolutionary Selection Pressures

Cultural Learning

Figure 6.1. Biological Variables in Sport Organizational Culture.

While broad in research basis, the term EP has come to be associated with the interpretations of Tooby and Cosmides (1992) and the popular writings of Pinker (1997; 2002). Tooby and Cosmides emphasized the features of psychological operations, or ‘modules’, in terms of their relationship with the environment and evolutionary pressures that were placed upon them. Like all evolutionary sciences, EP is a ‘fit among facts’ approach, using natural selection to explain behavior (Caporael, 2001). Nicholson (1998a) wrote: “…evolutionary psychology holds that although human beings today inhabit a thoroughly modern world of space exploration and virtual realities, they do so with the ingrained mentality of Stone Age hunter-gatherers” (p. 135). This is a situation he refers to as being ‘hardwired’. As Nicholson wryly observed, “You can take the person out of the Stone Age, evolutionary psychologists contend, but you can’t take the Stone Age out of the person” (1998a, p. 135). EP seeks to describe the psychological mechanisms underpinning observed human behavior as features selected to solve adaptive problems in our evolutionary past (Smith,

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Mulder & Hill, 2000). For example, EP researchers seek a better understanding of reciprocity and trust, with a particular interest in the human inclination towards cooperation, and punishment to those who do not respond in kind, even when the punishment is costly to everyone (Pinker, 2002). A better appreciation of such ostensibly irrational human behaviors may shed light on organizational culture and identity. This chapter aims to first, review EP and its application to human behavior, second, analyze the criticisms of EP, third, inventory the applications of EP research to sport and organizational culture, and finally, evaluate the utility of EP in cultural management. In short, although it remains an underdeveloped area, we think that understanding the mind’s relationship to cultural concepts represents an important step on the cultural escalator.

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EVOLUTION AND COGNITION Evolution describes the genetic churn of individuals within populations over successive generations (Mayr, 2002). Darwin’s evolution through natural selection explains that those individuals best adapted within a population have the greatest probability of survival and reproduction. Given that many individual attributes are predetermined by genes, those inheriting advantages slowly make an over-representative contribution to a population’s genetic pool. The scientific consensus maintains that all life on earth descended from chemically formed, self-replicating molecules that evolved between 3.5-3.8 billion years ago. All subsequent life emerged through an evolutionary process. Darwinian theory actually consists of five different principles of which evolution constitutes the first, most fundamental premise (Mayr, 2002). Second is the concept of branching evolution, where all organisms can be traced to common ancestors. Third is the notion of gradualness or the incremental nature of evolution. Fourth is the origin of diversity, which comes about through the multiplication of species. Finally is natural selection. These five aspects of evolution, while substantially refined since Darwin, have been accepted and embraced in biological science. However, it has only been in the last 50 years that the actual mechanism of inheritance—DNA as the unit of genetic storage—has been known (Mayr, 2002). In practice, all of this means that life is connected by a divergent genealogy, which reveals that humans are most closely related to chimpanzees and gorillas by virtue of a common ancestor around seven million years ago. In turn, mammals can be traced to a common species around 300 million years ago and all vertebrates to common ancestry around 500 million years ago. A fundamental tenet in the evolutionary perspective on culture contends that the mind’s structure and operation results from biological evolution. When environments change, organisms experience selection pressures to change as well. As we just noted, this operates by conferring certain individuals or groups with advantages in the new environment, which allows them to survive and procreate leading to a relative over-contribution to the gene pool of a species. Following to its conclusion, environmental selection pressures shape species, forcing them to either adapt or be extinguished. Adaptation’s measure arrives in the form of reproduction or ‘fitness’. Evolutionary psychologists and cognitive scientists do not assume that concepts travel fluidly and intact from one mind to another. Instead, they believe that the cultural

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communication of concepts requires inferential processes, where individuals become mindful of the cues offered by others’ behavior, infer their communicative intentions, and subsequently build representations and concepts about those inferred intentions as a precursor to behavior (Sperber, 1996). Rather than the simple duplication of concepts, the cultural transmission of concepts involves individuals constantly inferring variants of others’ representations. Concepts both common and stable in a group reflect a preferential selection in the transmission process wherein a range of other variants are unsuccessful. That is, cultural information can be transmitted throughout organizations in ways other than direct communication. For example, a worker makes inferences about a manager’s expectations. As we have all experienced, sometimes the most powerful communications go completely unspoken. The process of preferential selection is pivotal to cognitive scientists’ perceptions of cultural concept transmission. Their interests rest with selection factors that are universal rather than those associated with local circumstances. In practice this means that the salient selection factors relate to specific ways in which minds acquire and store information. For us, the implication is that not every cultural concept has an equal likelihood of catching on. In fact, evolutionary psychologists believe that despite the innumerable options, cultural content is restricted to a narrow field of potentially successful concepts. To some extent this helps explain why most organizations hold some common cultural characteristics. EP assumes the presence of specific selection pressures relative to each major aspect of the mind’s functionality. One assumed selection pressure gave rise to the minds’ intuitive repertoire of ontological expectations about the contents of the world. In other words, our intuitive understanding of the world around us comes about because our minds are programed with certain expectations. In general, we anticipate and predict the behavior of the world’s contents around us quite well. Survival depended on rapid assessments and hasty actions. Another form of selection relates to processes of social cognition where information about cooperation plays a pivotal role. In EP, specific cognitive adaptations evolved for the purpose of resolving strategic social problems. As a result, EP assumes that the mind possesses specialized mechanisms or modules that help manage particular social circumstances. Modules also play a role in culture because they connect organizational concepts with other common social representations such as identity, group behavior and morality.

EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY AND HUMAN BEHAVIOR Conflating Nicholson’s (1998a; 1998b) and Smith, Mulder and Hill’s (2000) overviews of EP, six streams of research can be seen to have played a role in its development. First, anthropologists have identified ‘human universals’, or behaviors and activities that occur in every culture implying some underpinning predisposition. Second, behavioral geneticists have discovered genes that confer specific behaviors. Third, comparative ethologists studying the activities of other primates have noted a range of common behaviors with human parallels. Fourth, neuropsychologists have explained some experiences and behaviors through the complex chemical interplay of the brain. Fifth, paleontologists have unearthed artifacts and fossils that help to explain how humans lived in past cultures and environments. Finally,

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social psychologists have tested theories of EP and in some cases have suggested the presence of universal patterns of human behavior. At the heart of EP and many of its associated disciplines are assumptions about the role of natural selection. Understanding natural selection underpins arguments concerning the veracity of EP. Natural selection may be understood as “the differential survival and reproduction of different genetic forms”, which means that it offers an essential law guiding the evolution of all organisms (Wilson, 1998, p. 51). Natural selection prioritizes necessity, rewarding those organisms possessing genetic characteristics consistent with greater reproductive success within their specific ecological niche. Natural selection is not forward thinking, nor does it accommodate for non-genetic behaviors. Nor is it ‘survival of the fittest’, which can really only be related to an individual’s survival, not an entire species. Thus, as biologists generally concur that adaptations gave rise to the functional organs of the human body, so too do evolutionary psychologists propose that cognitive processes have been the subject of selection pressures, and like other adaptations, facilitate reproduction. Natural selection has no aim. It is a process where the few random mutations beneficial to a species return improved reproduction rates. Over time, this process delivers a species better adapted to its environment. Notwithstanding the hitherto unsubstantiated suppositions of complexity theorists (Kauffman, 1995), most biologists believe that natural selection is not forward thinking, which leads us to the mystery of why it has provided us with the minds we have (Dawkins, 2003). Capable of many tasks that would not, at least overtly, seem to be associated with survival and reproductive success, the mind appears to be over-engineered. Natural selection does not comfortably explain why we have great art, literature, music, or indeed, sport. As Edward O. Wilson put it, the great mystery of human evolution is accounting for calculus and Mozart (Wilson, 1998). Another great mystery remains how we can account for the passion and enormous emotional energy invested in such an ephemeral institution as sport. Pinker (2002) begins to offer an answer when he argues for a ‘hardwired’ human nature. This comes about through the brain’s circuitry that provides appropriate responses to certain environmental cues. Most of the processing goes on unnoticed to us. However, much of it remains fundamental to survival, even though other hardwired mental processes might be seen as quite dysfunctional or at least inconvenient in a modern society. Examples range from the use of language to communicate, and the rituals and etiquette that govern social attraction, to lengthy ‘mating’ rituals, the haranguing of referees and umpires at sport events, and the neo-tribal warfare that seems to underpin football hooliganism. Few evolutionary psychologists take the position that evolutionary logic represents the exclusive, or even predominant, explanation for cultural behavior. In fact, evolutionary psychologists do not argue that all people are alike underneath (Nicholson, 1998b). However, they do insist that socio-cultural variables do not operate independently from a set of inherent psychological conditions. For example, the presence of human cultural universals indicates some underpinning hardwiring that encourages certain modes of behavior, irrespective of their expression in varying cultural circumstances. In this sense, EP advocates repudiate the view that the mind presents a ‘blank slate’ prior to experience and learning (Freese, 2002). For our purposes, we begin with the premise that organizational culture can be better understood by granting consideration to ‘hardwired’ psychological predispositions that arose in our ancestors as a consequence of selection pressures. If our evolutionary past has shaped human minds, then it may be appropriate to use this proposition to further explore the context

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and content of organizational culture. Thus, EP might be useful for managers engaging with the sport culture escalator because it provides a framework for understanding how humans behave in certain organizational settings and circumstances. As Lynn, Kampschroeder and Pereira (1999) observed, EP can provide insights into the perceptual, cognitive and motivational mechanisms underlying human behavior, from sport culture to organizational identity. However, before venturing into these potential insights, a cautionary review of the criticisms of EP is warranted.

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CRITICISMS OF EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY Evolutionary explanations of human behavior face strong skepticism from some social scientists for being dismissive of social variables, and for over-simplifying the origins of social behavior and cultural characteristics. Worst is the charge that EP legitimizes distinctions between social groups, and therefore creates a superior-inferior divide. For example, the battle still rages as to race differences between athletes. Entine (2000), for example, argues that the pre-eminence of African-American athletes in athletics and professional US sport, is evidential of a genetic physiological advantage. Although Entine can draw upon exercise physiology studies that highlight functional differences in physique, metabolic efficiency, hormone levels and muscle-fiber type, it remains contentious to propose that the differences cannot be explained by measurement bias or social and environmental conditions. Keep in mind that population geneticists have demonstrated that, on average, differences between any two given races is less than differences between any two given individuals (Olsen, 2002). While Entine (2000) makes suppositions about the physiological legacies of inheritance, EP assumes that some human behavior has been brought to bear through the process of natural selection operating upon the development of the brain, and consequently its psychological mechanisms. One of the limitations of this argument lies with the difficulty in pinning down the environment in which the key adaptations took place. Critics of EP assert that it overemphasizes the degree to which cultural universals can be attributable to genetically stored information. Anthropologists, Ehrlich and Feldman (2003), represent two such critics. They argue that EP too readily invents evolutionary stories to explain an observable behavior, like the fear of snakes or spiders. For example, if evolution has bestowed males and females with different mating strategies (short-term versus long-term investment, or multiple inseminations versus gestation) then following from this should be divergent mating decisions and behaviors. Males should be more indiscriminate about their sexual partners while females should be more discerning. This approach to the way hypotheses are generated has been labeled by critics as ‘post-hoc storytelling’. The same kind of evolutionary logic can be applied to organizations. For example, biological factors can be used to explain why males dominate senior management positions while females dominate support roles. Suggestions of this nature are obviously controversial, particularly when good social explanations can also be found. For our purposes, however, a more nuanced look at organizational culture from an EP viewpoint might offer explanations for some of the productive and counter-productive behavior that occurs within organizations. Consider, for example, how gossip might be directly associated with selection pressures that

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advantaged social groups capable of transmitting information rapidly for survival and tribal identification. Our minds are disposed to think in narratives and stories. EP also provides theories about the importance we place on organizational hierarchies and social dissention. In their book Alas, Poor Darwin, Rose and Rose (2000) compiled a collection of essays undermining EP from a number of theoretical perspectives. Egerton (2001) summarizes the book’s principle objection to EP: “Specifically, the gurus of this movement claim that human culture can be explained by cognitive patterns laid down in the hunter-gather societies of prehistory, patterns (or modules) that are written in our genes” (p. 318), an assumption the contributing authors to Alas Poor Darwin consider incorrect. Rose and Rose insist that EP researchers believe that genes are responsible and identifiable for all behavior. But few evolutionary psychologists claim that genes deliver the primary determinant of human behavior, although the matter can become complex because of the few who do. For example, behavioral geneticists Hamer and Copeland (1998) wrote that “…genes are the single most important factor that distinguishes one person from another. We come in large part readymade from the factory” (p. 11). For most evolutionary psychologists, evidence of design rather than genes remains most important (Hagen, 2003). There is therefore no reason to assume that learned and hardwired behaviors deliver mutually exclusive behaviors. For example, the fear of snakes may be something easily learned because of the innate tendencies held in the brain’s neuro-circuitry. Research by Ohman and Mineka (2001) revealed that lab-raised monkeys can be easily taught to fear rubber snakes, but not fake rabbits. Equally, hierarchy and social ascendancy might be hardwired into humans for good survival reasons, amplified by social structures that reward power and status. Evolutionary psychologists agree that every aspect of human behavior is affected by culture and learning, but these forces do not act in a vacuum; they act upon the innate machinery designed to do the learning. Accusations of genetic determinism are probably exaggerated. For example, Rose and Rose (2000) wrote that “evolutionary psychologists believe that biology is destiny” (p. 149). However, even the most strident evolutionary psychologists reject genetic determinism outright: “… every feature of every phenotype is fully and equally codetermined by the interaction of the organism’s genes… and its ontogenetic environments…” (Tooby & Cosmides, 1992, p. 83). Another common criticism is that EP prioritizes politics rather than science. While biological explanations have been appropriated by writers with political agendas, evolutionary psychologists tend to be cautious in spelling out the difference between science and policy implications (Pinker, 2002). On balance, we take the view that while EP provides valuable insights into human behavior, it must be tempered by regular consideration of socio-cultural perspectives. There is little point in nature or nurture taking turns as the dominant paradigm. As Ridley (2003) commented, “The genome is not a blueprint for constructing a body; it is a recipe for baking a body” (p. 34). EP has utility in that it helps to shed light on those aspects of behavior which are universal (Nicholson, 1998a). In practical terms this means that some familiar patterns of behavior in organizations can be re-interpreted in light of innate tendencies, and used to illuminate cultural tendencies.

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LESSONS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR SPORT AND ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE The preliminary section established the background and assumptions of EP, along with an awareness of the potential for both overzealous genetic determinism and exaggerated criticism. It also advocated that EP interpretations deserve consideration, and offer practical implications for the management of organizational culture and sport. We now turn to aspects of EP which might provide some useful and specific guidance, albeit based on the limited evidence available.

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Neonatal Features Lynn, Kampschroeder and Pereira (1999) noted that neonatal features comprise, at least in part, an adaptation designed to increase nurturance and decrease aggression toward infants. Specifically, the composition of the neonatal body-type including a large head-to-body ratio, large eyes and bulging cheeks are inherently attractive to humans. In other words, we do not necessarily learn to find babies ‘cute’, we just cannot help ourselves. From a cultural viewpoint, this acknowledgement is relevant because it can help managers determine the ideal body shapes for everything from dolls to logos. For example, sport marketers have increasingly taken advantage of consumers’ attractions toward certain idealized images of humans or animals on mascots, symbols and logos. ‘Cute’ and ‘cuddly’ bears, kangaroos, tigers, gorillas and penguins have all been employed as brand representations for sporting events and teams, and have generated significant quantities of merchandise. While the merchandising opportunities cannot be overlooked, understanding inherently attractive imagery and symbols holds tremendous importance for culture and identity management. Logos are not only important because they influence consumers. How organizational members identify with an organization goes to the heart of cultural strength. Logos, as well as other prominent symbols, affect employee perceptions through both subtle and direct means. For example, some corporate logos feature aggressive symbols including fierce animals, while others depict powerful, iconic images such as lightening. EP recommends that managers become aware of the influence symbols can have on organizational members because responses may be at least partly intuitive and unconscious. Changing imagery and symbols in the organizational environment might therefore stimulate automatic reactions, which in turn affects cultural norms.

Color Preferences Saad and Gill (2000) cite the unpublished research of Chattopadhyay, Gorn & Darke (1998), which investigated color preferences across cultures. They discovered that blue was the most popular, while yellow was the least popular, across all cultures. Although most organizations are not able to change their branding colors and logo at whim, there may still be lessons to be learned through an awareness of innate preferences, particularly for internal communications and office design.

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Habitat Preferences Lynn, Kampschroeder and Pereira (1999) also discussed habitat preferences, noting research suggesting that consumers enjoy settings and views that are savanna-like and in close proximity to bodies of water. As these very landscapes were the locations of the earliest hominid evolution, it has been suggested that the disposition is hardwired. Although the supposition that humans prefer savanna-like environments near water might seem somewhat obvious, the more important implication comes with the assumption that the preference is hardwired as a result of selection pressures. For example, what does evolutionary logic (admittedly a post-hoc story) suggest about the environmental conditions associated with organizations? It seems obvious that the work environment has a direct influence on employee experience and satisfaction. We know, for example, that teams work better in offices with fewer walls and more open spaces. At the same time, our hardwired fixation upon status, hierarchy and tribalism reinforces the office tendency towards fiefdoms, including territorial disputes and the acquisition of large offices and parking spaces. An organization seeking to infuse more fluidity and responsiveness into its cultural identity needs to physically change the work environment. Equally, cultural change needs to be sensitive to the powerful inherent drive in people to feel comfortable and protected in their environments. The key lies with balancing the aspects of behavior worthy of resource investment to encourage change, and those unlikely to overcome innate tendencies.

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Gender Differences The most conflict that has arisen from EP’s rising status has emerged from its commentary on gender. More specifically, evolutionary psychologists confer different innate psychological processing to males and females, which has caused substantial enmity amongst feminist scholars (Stewart-Van Leeuwen, 2002). Although evolutionary psychologists tend to argue that in psychological terms far more commonalities exist between the sexes than differences, it is not unusual for substantial parts of texts to focus on gender divergence (Buss, 1998). In part, this preoccupation with gender differences emanates from the convenience of comparative data. However, it also leads to charges of a male-centered view of evolutionary history and a strategic disregard for social structures that might be the real cause. Nevertheless, if males are more status-driven, aggressive and sex-dominated by virtue of their Paleolithic inheritance, managers are likely to find that at its worst, male behavior reflects needless aggressiveness, petulant over-confidence, and the careless use of sexuallycharged commentary. While socialization can help to explain the possible restraint demonstrated by females, evolutionary psychologists point out that while men might be trained to appreciate sexual innuendo, it is less easy to explain with social learning theory the physiological arousal that accompanies this appreciation. EP provides an alternative paradigm for socialization as the pre-eminent explanation for gender differences in social behavior, and can account for the consistency in gender socialization patterns across cultures. EP might therefore help to explain gender differences in office behaviors. Of course, claiming an innate tendency for a dysfunctional behavior offers no excuse in an organizational environment. Perhaps the lesson from an identity viewpoint lies with vigilant education and induction in the workplace?

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Status The study of low status behavior has yielded some relevant results. Daly and Wilson (1999) found that low status males undertake riskier behavior as part of a need to stand out. Betz, O’Connell and Shepard (1989) showed that men will more likely engage in unethical behaviors in order to acquire resources and status, while women tend towards risk aversion (Powel & Ansic, 1997). An increased propensity for risk-taking might help to explain why males hold more positions in high risk sectors such as banking and finance as well as in entrepreneurial ventures. Men may also be more attuned to communications that emphasize high risk behavior and the potential to stand out from the crowd through ‘heroic’ performances. Status in group situations is often achieved in public rituals undertaken by groups, which might be supported and encouraged by organizations. Evolutionary-based models of human behavior also suggest that men are more likely than women to employ their job status as an overt display of wealth and resources (Saad & Gill, 2000). The desire to obtain status in organizations could be a hardwired drive, so the opportunity for organizational culture and identity to offer positions featuring inflated titles may be highly appealing to men. In addition, Saad and Gill (2000) have noted that men tend to view gift-giving as an economic or social exchange, whereas women see it more as an expression of affection. If this is a throwback from Paleolithic times, we might also wonder how shared experiences like the office environment reinforce collective identity and a clan mentality, and how the exchange of gifts and other favors reinforce loyalty and reciprocal behavior. Access to information has always been important, however reliable or unreliable. Advantages go to those capable of anticipating shifts in power and resources, which explains the appeal of gossip. Organizational leaders should not be afraid to use word of mouth and ‘viral’ marketing to spread rumors and stimulate gossip. Furthermore, the inclination to acquire information through gossip and the anticipation of others’ responses are pivotal to building relationships. Culturally-savvy managers can use this to their advantage by emphasizing aspects of office experiences, encouraging empathy and vicarious identification.

Emotional States and Judgment Tooby and Cosmides (1990) proposed an evolutionary perspective of emotions which might prove relevant. This is an area of tremendous potential for affecting organizational culture, although like many aspects of EP it appears underdeveloped and controversial. According to this view, emotions represent responses to the environment in order to prepare an individual for an appropriate action, be it fear, anger or affection. In particular, negative emotions interfere with complacency in order to alert individuals to circumstances that might threaten personal safety or position. Given the capacity for work to elicit emotional responses amongst organizational members, the area holds great promise. For example, the inclination to aggregate as a tribal group may be encouraged. However, the machinations governing positive emotional responses to work experiences seem poorly understood from an evolutionary viewpoint. In fact, an evolutionary account of office behavior would emphasize aggression and confrontation (Daly & Wilson, 1994). The forces that stimulate collective and vicarious identity also encourage differentiation between groups and ultimately, altercations.

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Emotions or primal instincts cannot be divorced from decision-making. Appealing to the emotions of organizational members by emphasizing power, status, the opportunity to stand out, tribal affiliation, loyalty, aggression and sex—principally to men—will yield the most rewards. There will therefore be times when communications will best avoid appeals to logic and rationality, but instead highlight the strong primal need for position and dominance. For example, we may be hardwired to avoid loss when comfortable and defend what we perceive as ours viciously when threatened. Humans are naturally risk averse. Culture managers can emphasize the potential loss of failing to attend important office events, or the significance of preventing a competitor from winning a greater market share. Loss aversion also reinforces the importance of territoriality and the fear employees hold of ‘losing face’. In order to stimulate the strongest reaction, it may be advantageous to remind employees that their organization’s loss is also their own. The complexities of managing a constantly changing environment mean that we have developed the capacity for fast classification and judgment. We classify people and situations quickly; our brains are pattern-matching machines looking for familiar cues. Managers can employ this pattern-matching by utilizing non-threatening and familiar images to reinforce a sense of connection and identity with the organization. For example, decisions about common internal communications are made rapidly, relying upon quick classification to determine relevance and opportunity. Familiar images can offer a pattern-match to elicit specific outcomes.

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CONCLUSION As Ehrlich and Feldman (2003) noted, “… we have no idea about how the complex interactions between genes, regulation of genes, protein structures, protein concentrations, and environments would be manifest in a measurable trait or behavior. As a result, scientists often don’t know what model to use to compute the degree of ‘genetic causation’” (p. 90). However, there can be little doubt that a portion of human behavior has been programmed into the brain and its neurochemistry through environmental factors, ranging from the internal temperature of the fetus to the cultural environment in which one is raised. Exactly which kinds of office factors and variables meet strong primal needs is worth further investigation. Thus, it remains of fundamental importance, as Blasi and Bjorklund (2003) counseled, to collect data from multiple sources and to design “evolutionary experiments” (p. 259) to aid in clarifying the role of behavior associated with evolutionary baggage. Despite the criticisms, of which some are valid, evolutionary psychology has a place in cultural management and identity thinking. While we need to be vigilant about distinguishing the “Paleolithic puffery” (Freese, 2002, p. 49) from the evidence, managers may benefit from obtaining a superior grasp of the mind’s machinations. Such a goal will be bolstered by a better appreciation of the purpose for which the mind evolved. It will also be served by understanding the activities which operate as vehicles for delivering cultural and identity outcomes. For this reason, we turn in the next chapter to organizational rituals as carriers for the practice of culture.

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REFERENCES Betz, M., O’Connell, L. & Shepard, J. (1989). Gender differences in proclivity for unethical behavior. Journal of Business Ethics, 8, 321-324. Blasi, C.H., & Bjorklund, D. (2003). Evolutionary development psychology: A new tool for better understanding human ontogeny. Human Development, 46(5), 259-281. Buss, D. (1998). Evolutionary psychology: The new science of the mind. Boston: Allen & Bacon. Caporael, L. (2001). Evolutionary psychology: Toward a unifying theory and a hybrid science. Annual Review of Psychology, 52, 607-628. Daly, M., & Wilson, M. (1994). Evolutionary psychology of male violence. In J. Archer (Ed.), Male violence (pp. 253-388). London: Routledge. Daly, M., & Wilson, M. (1999). Human evolutionary psychology and animal behaviour. Animal Behaviour, 57, 509-519. Dawkins, R. (2003). A devil’s chaplain. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson. Egerton, M. (2001). Evolutionary psychology undermined? The Lancet, 357(9252), 318-319. Ehrlich, P., & Feldman, M. (2003). Genes and cultures: What creates our behavioral phenome? Current Anthropology, 44(1), 87-107. Entine, J. (2000). Taboo: Why black athletes dominate sports and why we are afraid to talk about it. New York: PublicAffairs. Freese, J. (2002). Evolutionary psychology: New science or the same old storytelling? Contexts, 1(3), 44-49. Hagen, E. (2003). Response to Ehrlich, P. & Feldman, M. Genes and cultures: What creates our behavioral phenome? Current Anthropology, 44(1): 87-107. Hamer, D., & Copeland, P. (1998). Living with our genes: Why they matter more than you think. New York: Doubleday. Kauffman, S. (1995). At home in the universe: The search for the laws of self-organization. New York: Oxford University Press. Lynn, M., Kampschroeder, K., & Pereira, A. (1999). Evolutionary perspectives on consumer behavior: An introduction. Advances in Consumer Research, 26, 226-230. Mayr, E. (2002). What evolution is. New York: Basic Books. Nicholson, N. (1998a, July-August). How hardwired is human behavior. Harvard Business Review, 135-147. Nicholson, N. (1998b). Seven deadly syndromes of management and organization: The view from evolutionary psychology. Managerial and Decision Economics, 19(7/8), 411-426. Ohman, A., & Mineka, S. (2001). Fears, phobias and preparedness: Toward an evolved model of fear and fear-learning. Psychological Review, 108, 483-522. Olson, S. (2002). Mapping human history: Unravelling the mystery of Adam and Eve. London: Bloomsbury. Pinker, S. (1997). How the mind works. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. Pinker, S. (2002). The blank slate. London: Penguin Books. Powel, M., & Ansic, D. (1997). Gender differences in risk behavior in financial decisionmaking: An experimental analysis. Journal of Economic Psychology, 18, 605-628. Ridley, M. (2003). Nature via nurture: Genes, experience and what makes us human. New York: Fourth Estate.

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Rose, H., & Rose, S. (2000). Alas, poor Darwin: Arguments against evolutionary psychology. London: Jonathan Cape. Saad, G., & Gill, T. (2000). Applications of evolutionary psychology in marketing. Psychology and Marketing, 17(912), 1005-1034. Smith, A., & Westerbeek, H. (2004). The sport business future. London: Palgrave MacMillan. Smith, E.A., Mulder, M.B., & Hill, K. (2000). Evolutionary analyses of human behaviour: A commentary on Daly & Wilson. Animal Behaviour, 60, F21-F26. Sperber, D. (1996). Explaining culture: A naturalistic approach. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Stewart-Van Leeuwen, M. (2002). Of hoggamus and hogwash: Evolutionary psychology and gender-relations. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 30(2), 101-111. Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (1990). The past explains the present: Emotional adaptations and the structure of ancestral environments. Ethology and Sociobiology, 11, 375-424. Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (1992). The psychological foundation of culture. In J.H. Barkow, L. Cosmides & J. Tooby (Eds.), The adapted mind (pp.19-136). New York: Oxford University Press. Wilson, E.O. (1975). Sociobiology: The new synthesis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wilson, E.O. (1998). Consilience: The unity of knowledge. London: Little, Brown and Company.

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Chapter 7

PRACTICING SPORT CULTURE

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INTRODUCTION Talking about culture in organizations and practicing new cultural behaviors are the keys to success. Organizational leaders need to find ways of changing culture and cultivating the values and beliefs that will deliver powerful outcomes. Our next two chapters explain how to introduce change by focusing on cultural ‘carriers’. While we explain why organizational talk in the form of stories is so important in chapter eight, here we examine culture’s most pivotal tool, the organizational ritual. In this chapter, we identify the defining features of rituals and their functions in organizations, culminating in two key claims. First, rituals can be described on a spectrum based on the fullness and degree of their expression. Complete or ‘full’ organizational rituals possess a greater number and intensity of ritual features than ‘ritual-like’ activities. The efficacy of an activity corresponds to its alignment with the features of full rituals. Ritual-like activities are therefore less powerful and more frequent organizational events than full rituals. Second, we theorize that rituals work through three mutually reinforcing mechanisms: cognitive capture, emotional anchoring, and behavioral prescription. We propose that rituals work by channeling (1) cognitive content, (2) affective responses and (3) behavioral activity toward the cultural expectations of organizations and their members. With this in mind, it becomes essential to understand how rituals deliver cultural change. Organizational rituals may be characterized as standardized, rule-bound, predictable and repetitive behaviors undertaken in conditions demanding explicit performance expectations. Rituals are physically enacted to conform to a specified and invariable sequence, invested with added significance through a combination of formality and symbolism. We specify nine inter-dependent functions of rituals, which are to: (1) provide meaning; (2) manage anxiety; (3) exemplify and reinforce the social order; (4) communicate important values; (5) enhance group solidarity; (6) include and exclude others; (7) signal commitment; (8) manage work structure; and (9) prescribe and reinforce significant events. These functions underline the role rituals play as communication and learning systems, drawing attention to what is important and helping to funnel the thoughts, feelings and behaviors of organizational members. Organizational rituals are particularly important because they not only illuminate organizational behavior, but also entrench or challenge existing cultural values. In short,

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rituals are the vehicles of cultural change. However, they can also institutionalize inertia and long-standing ways of doing things. Rituals represent an integral part of everyday life, and range from repetitive behaviors associated with obsessive-compulsive disorders, to the mimicking of adults practiced by children during play (Boyer & Lienard, 2006). The labels attached to these activities vary considerably. Goffman (1967) considered rituals to be patterned behavior in the context of social enhancement or diminishment, while Durkheim (1961) viewed rituals as social instruments used to establish collective representations and community identity. It is commonly assumed that while rituals often exaggerate reality, they also contain purposive behavior towards an outcome. Rituals possess multi-functional aspects in that they can be used to resolve conflict (Turner, 1969), transmit knowledge, connect action with cosmology (Tambiah, 1996), and anchor cognitive content through powerful emotions. While rituals may seem, at first glance, to be both time-wasting and irrational, they also give coherence to social events. Rituals effectively transmit values and beliefs, which explains why their study has been dominated by anthropologists examining religion. Given that religious contexts offer sites of the utmost solemnity, it might seem odd to use rituals as a conceptual lens to examine the heavily goal-oriented and hyper-rational world of industrial workplaces. However, workplaces—especially those connected to sport—might be seen as temples of material ambition through which discipline, routine and a Protestant-style work ethic are invoked towards the achievement of strategy, objectives and trophies. Moreover, the language of religious rituals remains concordant with the working context. If, as Dennett (2006) suggested, rituals deliver culturally constructed systems of symbolic communication underpinned by a performative dimension, ritual context comes in as many varieties as there are social organizations. But not all rituals or activities containing rituals perform equally. We suggest that rituals operate on a spectrum from ‘full’, or complete rituals, to ‘ritual-like’ activities. The spectrum implies a relationship between completeness, frequency and effect. Full rituals are infrequent but powerful, while ritual-like activities are common but less effectual. We explore these relationships in more detail later in the chapter. Anthropologists view rituals as pivotal contributors to social organization, cohesion and solidarity. In the workplace setting, ritualized behavior can be best understood as both an input and output of organizational culture, channeling social interaction and behavioral custom (Anand & Watson, 2004; Beyer & Trice, 1993; Deal & Kennedy, 1982; Pedersen & Sorensen, 1989; Pettigrew, 1979; Schein, 1985). That the beliefs entrenched in rituals impact upon the behavior of organizational members is beyond dispute (Beyer & Trice, 1984; Beyer & Trice, 1993; Denison, 1996; Hatch, 1993; Schein, 1985; 1988; Trice & Beyer, 1984; Yanow, 2000). For example, induced beliefs through rituals such as those concerning a manager’s view about the controllability of organizations as well as their own efficacy can have a significant impact on their choice of strategy (Daft & Weick, 1984). In this chapter, we explain ritual’s features, functions and mechanisms of deployment. We begin by distilling the central features of rituals into a set of descriptors, differentiating them from other organizational activities. With a set of distinguishing criteria at hand, we examine the roles rituals play in organizations along with their corresponding effects. Finally, we theorize as to how and why rituals work by proposing ritual mechanisms. Collectively, our chapter provides a model for understanding the power of rituals in molding organizational

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culture, and offers practical guidance for introducing change. A model covering rituals features, functions and mechanisms appears in Figure 7.1.

RITUAL FEATURES Invariability Formality Symbology Performance Expectations

RITUAL MECHANISMS Cognitive capture Affective anchoring and conditioning Behavioral prescription

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RITUAL FUNCTIONS Rituals provide meaning Rituals manage anxiety Rituals exemplify and reinforce the social order Rituals communicate important values Rituals enhance group solidarity Rituals include and exclude Rituals signal commitment Rituals manage work structure Rituals prescribe and reinforce significant events

Figure 7.1. Conceptual Schematic of Organizational Rituals: Features, Functions, Mechanisms.

THE FEATURES OF ORGANIZATIONAL RITUALS In the organizational domain, Trice and Beyer’s (1984) seminal account of corporate conduct and ritualistic behaviors centered on rites and ceremonies, which they defined as discrete enactments with clear boundaries that symbolically express a culture’s values and beliefs. The term rite refers to a singular and specific instance of a ritual (Grimes, 1990), while a ceremony provides the context in which rites or rituals are undertaken (Trice & Beyer, 1984). Turner (1969) claimed that rituals contain a powerful transformative element in that they bring about changed social conditions. On the other hand, ceremonies operate in a confirmatory way, bolstering rather than changing existing social circumstances. Such a neat

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dichotomy might be misleading, however, as ceremonies can employ rituals validating social structures while transforming the roles of participating individuals. Rites of passage provide a good example where dominant social roles become anchored at the same time as role identity changes. Islam and Zyphur’s (2009) review concluded that rituals possess idiosyncratic structures that promote both stability and change. Ironically, rituals facilitate transitions between roles as well as maintain organizational homeostasis. Some evidence even shows that important non-ritualized activities can be routinized into meaninglessness. For example, Pettersen (2008) claimed that some conventional management activities, such as budgeting, can be seen as ceremonial rituals rather than strategic processes. For the purposes of this chapter we shall consider organizational rituals to be symbolic practices and communal rites together with their ceremonial enactment. Anthropological research on rituals has developed a rich tradition of examining their meaning, structure and function (Dulaney & Fiske, 1994). Under the anthropological conception, rituals represent communicative actions with multi-layered meanings relative to a foundation culture, and according to Dulaney and Fiske (1994), sharply illustrate both distinctive and universal modes of human action. Given such heterogeneity, how can we differentiate organizational rituals from the plethora of other organizational activities, particularly those ongoing within the routinized world of sport practice? Rappaport (1979; 1999) and Boyer and Lienard (2006) suggested that rituals comprise intuitively recognizable, stereotyped, rigid, and repetitive behavior characterized by an absence of rational motivation. In our view, rituals possess several essential features. First, action in ritual is separated from normal behavioral outcomes, such as when an activity is performed, or an object used, unnecessarily and without any apparent goal. An embedded symbolic process encodes cultural meanings to participants. As, Boyer and Lienard noted, typical features of rituals include standardized and formulaic speech, repetition and redundancy, and a gamut of seemingly pointless, resource-intensive actions that strengthen a ritual’s communicative power. Second, rituals are mandatory in certain situations, despite the lack of explanation as to their impact. For example, even though particular ceremonies might be used to introduce new employees into the workplace, it may not be clear how these carefully scripted actions contribute to successful induction. At the same time, any deviation tends to be viewed as noncompliance, and therefore risky or inappropriate. Third, rituals invoke exposure to novel, but controlled environments and ordered behavior different to those associated with everyday work. Just as non-ritualized behavior involves unpredictable patterns of interaction, ritualized behavior is strongly predictable. For example, a team meeting can assume additional significance if conducted in the more ostentatious and intimidating confines of a trophy-encased Board Room. Rituals enact special occurrences that confirm a specific set of attitudes and behaviors. At the same time, rituals can permeate all levels of organizations, occurring in macro and micro forms. Ren and Gray (2009), for example, described relationship restoration after conflict as a ritualistic process, influenced by culture, amongst other variables. While these criteria provide a solid descriptive start to the understanding of rituals, they also leave some important questions unanswered. We argue that any treatment of organizational rituals should include an account of (1) their propagation, (2) their success in securing compliance and achieving goals, and (3) how they channel emotions, thoughts and

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behaviors. Such an account will also better explain the seemingly contradictory presence of redundancy and efficacy in the sporting world. Rituals have been researched in organizations in the context of organizational culture. We have noted that culture is commonly defined as the collection of fundamental values and attitudes shared by members of a social group, and which sets the behavioral standards or norms for all members (Ogbonna & Harris, 2002; Pettigrew, 1979). Organizational culture research distinguishes between overt manifestations of culture, of which rituals present an exemplar, and the covert assumptions and values that drive these overt expressions (Denison, 1996). Thus, a typical empirical method of uncovering culture has been to identify superficial cultural artifacts such as symbols and rituals (Detert, Schroeder & Mauriel, 2000). From this perspective the deeper structures such as values and meanings can be inferred. As we saw in chapter five, Schein (1984), using a Jungian (1968) framework, suggested that rituals can reveal the tacit and elusive aspects of organizational life. The most easily perceived and visibly apparent artifacts include the environment, architecture, technology, and audible behavior, while the more inaccessible features reflect deep psychological meanings and symbols. We pointed out that Beyer and Trice (1993) claimed rites to be the richest and deepest sources of cultural understanding, containing the most symbolic impact. Like Schein, Beyer and Trice (1993) acknowledged the difficulties in exposing the culture of organizations. They argued that by analyzing sites where cultural understandings are revealed, managers can gain an insight into the functioning of their organizations. In addition, rites possess enormous behavioral and regulatory power because, in performing them, employees utilize other forms of culture, such as language, gestures, and ceremonies, with an occasional excursion into sagas, legends, or other mythical stories. Accordingly, Trice and Beyer (1984) specified that rites and rituals are distinguished from other organizational activities by the presence of relatively elaborate and planned sets of activities, social interaction, an audience, and predictable social consequences. Rituals are planned social dramas with welldefined and rehearsed roles for actors to play. According to Beyer and Trice, rituals not only communicate and bolster the shared understandings of culture, but they also provide a window for its management and change. Fox and Amichai-Hamburger (2001) noted, for example, that during change initiatives, managers focus on cognitive elements of persuasion like rational argument and logical appeals. However, the emotional dimension of persuasion is often more powerful, and can be underpinned by rituals and ceremonies reinforcing specific values or goals. For example, a forum introducing a change program, or a new season launch, might utilize decorations and adornments to reinforce the importance of the program and reward staff who supported the desired changes. Rituals may be used to symbolically acknowledge the past before it is discarded while signaling a new intention for the future. Rituals also commemorate significant losses, achievements and life transitions, such as weddings, birthdays, retirements and funerals. Here the past is celebrated, summarized, and used to foreshadow a new phase in the corporate life cycle. The capacity of rituals to stimulate innovation was noted by Jassawalla and Sashittal (2002) who found that an intensive schedule of formal meetings for sharing information, and managing conflicts became so common, valuable, and routine, that they became embedded rituals. The previous discussion may be understood within Dulaney and Fiske’s (1994) definition of rituals: “Rituals tend to involve precise spatial arrays and symmetrical patterns, stereotyped actions, repetitive sequences, rigidly scrupulous adherence to rules (and often the constant

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creation of new rules), and imperative measures to prevent harm and protect against immanent dangers” (p. 245). These features constitute necessary and sufficient conditions to classify organizational activities as rituals. All must be present otherwise they might become indistinguishable from any other commonly observed organizational activity. Rituals are characterized by: (1) invariability; (2) formality; (3) symbology; and (4) performance expectations. While these features provide an explanatory frame, they suggest that the practices we may otherwise have typed as rituals, are not ‘full-blown’ rituals, but rather should be seen as ‘ritual-like’ activities. We propose that ‘full’ organizational rituals are powerful but infrequent organizational events. At the same time, activities possessing elements of rituals are commonplace. While these ritual-like activities are more like ceremonial enactments, or clusters of ritual elements, they nevertheless command a greater impact than activities absent of all ritual elements. A corresponding hypothesis predicts a positive relationship between the presence and intensity of ritual features and the efficacy of the activity. We therefore suggest that the efficacy of rituals links to their composition; full rituals and clusters of ritual-like behaviors offer rich sources of cultural information. Given that ritual-like activities will also include and exclude, and facilitate and obstruct, leaders can benefit from understanding how these activities also prescribe participant behaviors.

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Invariability An organizational ritual is invariable in that it follows a standardized and largely inflexible pattern of performance. Each time a ritual is performed it adheres to common performance criteria. How much invariability must be present in order for an activity to qualify as an organizational ritual? Would a regular team or staff meeting satisfy the invariability requirement, or would the presence of novel content and irregular behavior preclude its classification? In principle, an activity must contain an unchanging macro structure restricting the performance of the ritual to rigid boundaries. Within these parameters the content of the ritual could be novel; if a staff meeting employs a prescribed structure enforcing a contained set of behaviors then it could qualify. Invariability can be reinforced by consistent sequencing, and as Sosis and Alcorta (2003) claimed, a prescribed temporal order provides rituals with structure. For example, serialization forms an essential component of ritualized communication in organizations.

Formality The employment of formal acts links with ritual performance. Rituals inflate formality (Sosis & Alcorta, 2003) in that they adhere to officially prescribed and recognized forms and conventions. As Rappaport (1999) specified, formality consists of an ‘adherence to form’ in that participants act consistently with prescribed expectations. While many organizations utilize formalized presentations of awards for staff achievements such as years-of-service, or for meeting sales and service delivery targets, this does not necessarily reflect formality. However, some conventional organizational activities can become more formal over time and with repetition. For example, Catasus and Johed (2007) studied company annual general

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meetings as rituals displaying idealized speeches. Wearing formal business attire might be seen as colloquially formal, but from a ritual viewpoint only qualifies if linked to a ritualized activity. To the extent that behavior is enacted in accordance with predetermined and formulaic actions and sequences, then formality exists. Formality may be amplified when rituals are undertaken in specific and prestigious locations such as corporate Board-rooms, hospital operating theatres, a War-room in government offices, or in an historic sporting arena. In these instances an expectation falls upon participants to enact their roles with greater fidelity to the specified form. In addition, early work on cyber-spaces speculates that employees and fans might even treat online environments and websites as sacred, ritualized spaces in which to retreat, intimately connect with others, and even assume an alternative identity (Jacobs, 2007). Formality in rituals reinforces a conditioned response to the environment (Boyer & Lienard, 2006; Rappaport, 1979; 1999).

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Symbology Sosis and Ruffle (2004) observed that symbolism differentiates ritual from empty routine. Symbols stand for something; a representation embedded with meaning beyond the overt and emerging from a shared convention. Turner (1968) viewed symbols as the smallest elements and ‘storage units’ of rituals, packed with meaning. Rituals reflect a symbiotic relationship with symbols, where ritual execution reinforces symbols at the same time imbuing them with significance during ritual performance (Geertz, 2000). The transference of unexpressed beliefs into comprehensible symbols presents a unique opportunity for both reinforcing current practices and making change. For example, Dandridge, Mitroff, and Joyce (1980) suggested that organizational members respond to culture through stories and myths, ceremonies and rituals, imagery and signs, and anecdotes and jokes. We explore some of these in application to sporting cultures in the following chapter. Humans possess a unique capacity to invent and wield symbols in order to understand, represent, and action ideas (Geertz, 2000; McCauley & Lawson, 2002; Mithen, 1996; Pinker, 2002). Anthropologists established symbols as markers defining boundaries of cooperation and inclusion (Alvard, 2003; Atran, 2002a; Boyer, 2001; McElreath, Boyd & Richerson, 2003; Sosis, 2004; Sosis & Ruffle, 2003). They showed how symbols are underpinned by shared ideologies and reinforced through communal rituals emphasizing shared commitment. For example, marking communicates territory held by, or shared between, organizational members. In this instance rituals can be linked to taken-for-granted symbols like labels, nameplates, pictures, and desk-designs (Brown, Lawrence & Robinson, 2005) where their presence reduces ambiguous interpretations, confirms status positions, and elicits interpersonal responses (McCauley & Lawson, 2002).

Performance Expectations The expectations surrounding ritual performance play an instrumental role in defining their features (Boyer & Lienard, 2006; Rappaport, 1999). Sosis and Alcorta (2003) saw rituals as compulsory despite a lack of overt benefit. In some organizations, like the military or those associated with sport, ritual performances including marching chants, the singing of anthems

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or club songs, and close physical engagement, sustain morale, build unity, and celebrate success. Performance expectations can be linked with more prosaic activities like ringing an office bell when a sale has been achieved, or singing the club anthem following an on-field victory. Even though performance will not causally lead to organizational goals, modifications compromise the impact. Action in ritual is separated from typical behavioral goals. Rituals, or ritual-like activities, involve behaviors that do not logically connect with desired performance outcomes (Staal, 1990). To summarize, rituals involve the enactment of specified behaviors that are standardized, rule-bound, predictable, repetitive, and directed towards, but ambiguously associated, with specific goals. In addition, rituals must be physically enacted in a specified sequence, with little variation, receiving added significance through formality and embedded symbolism. The performance of ritualized behaviors may be compulsory, despite an absence of efficacy. Rituals appear in specific contexts or environments which facilitate or amplify their significance. In short, we define rituals as bounded, repetitive, serial activities that confer symbolic meaning when performed in specific, predetermined contexts with the ambition of achieving specific objectives. Understanding the character of activities making them more ritual-like is valuable for organizational theorists and leaders who want to diagnose culture and introduce change. We believe that organizational practices and activities can be placed on a continuum where one extreme represents singularly prosaic behaviors and the other fully developed rituals. The transition from the former to the latter relates to the number and intensity of ritual features that the activity adopts. In the next section, we show how these ritual features can be employed towards the achievement of functional organizational outcomes.

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THE FUNCTIONS OF SPORT ORGANIZATIONAL RITUALS In this section we argue that rituals, and their subordinate forms of ritual-like activities, constitute important organizational events serving numerous, valuable functions. For simplicity, we continue to use the term ‘rituals’ even though what we have labeled ‘rituallike’ activities occur most commonly in organizations. As a result, we will be using ritual-like activities to bolster our analysis of the following nine inter-dependent functions of full rituals: (1) rituals provide meaning; (2) rituals manage anxiety; (3) rituals exemplify and reinforce the social order; (4) rituals communicate important values; (5) rituals enhance group solidarity; (6) rituals include and exclude; (7) rituals signal commitment; (8) rituals manage work structure; and (9) rituals prescribe and reinforce significant events.

Rituals Provide Meaning Rituals play a pivotal role in instilling and amplifying the beliefs of their performers. Sosis and Ruffle (2004) observed: “Rituals are not empty routines; they are always embedded with symbolism and endorsed by cosmological explanations that provide significance, insight, and appreciation for the performers” (p. 111). Despite the appearance of mystery associated with rituals, their practice signals to the group an acceptance of the symbolized

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values (Rappaport, 1999). Sosis and Ruffle (2004) used the example of a wedding ceremony, which is not just a communication of coupling, but also a powerful acceptance of the marriage values of commitment, fidelity, and unconditional life-long support. Similarly, organizational events like retirement parties provide ritualized emblems reinforcing cultural statements about loyalty, the value of work, and life transitions. Moreover, rituals not only provide interpretation and meaning via action, they also become reciprocal forces, updating ‘cosmologies’ in turn used to rejuvenate rituals (Tambiah, 1996). Examples include indoctrination events for new players, morale building exercises for support-personnel, and the ritual-like ceremony of an opening coin toss. Rituals confirm the importance of the vocation, ordain it with meaning, and justify the time and space allocated. As we outlined in chapters two and three, sport, meaning and rituals collide in a unique and powerful way.

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Rituals Manage Anxiety Because of the underpinning meanings associated with rituals, they also alleviate anxiety about deeper uncertainties. A retirement party conveys an organizational member’s value for his or her commitment and loyalty, but at the same time declares the inevitability of change and transition. The most powerful rituals also ameliorate anxiety-provoking circumstances such as those associated with job interviews, performance-appraisals, and organizational failure, as well as those connected with pivotal end of season contests. At their simplest rituals reveal activities bound by rules containing symbolic meaning with the purpose of specifying attention or significance (Lukes, 1975). However, these criteria imply that rituals are one dimensional with clear meanings, rules and significance overtly on display. In fact, rituals and ritual-like activities may be multi-dimensional and obscure, operating on numerous layers of drama and meaning. Nevertheless, rituals may mediate contradiction, or at least, allow participants to work within ambiguity and uncertainty. Social and cultural contradictions commonly appear in the workplace: equality is embedded in hierarchy; individual performance is matched with team achievement; pockets of collegiality are laced with fierce competition; the demand for responsiveness is transmitted within a lumbering bureaucracy; the desire for predictability is pursued in an uncertain business environment; strategy and planning are privileged despite the sovereignty of reaction and improvisation; and the hope for autonomy perseveres despite the fear of freedom. Rituals and ritual-like behaviors provide valuable symbolic tools for managing ambiguity because they remove uncertainty and replace it with safe and accepted behaviors. Based on early theoretical work by Malinowski (1922), Meddin (1982) claimed that rituals serve as a mechanism for controlling the disruptive aspect of ‘symbol production’, which by expanding psychological fields, can lead to anxiety and uncertainty. Rituals, Meddin (1982) maintained, offer a structured form of symbolic expression enhancing certainty.

Rituals Exemplify and Reinforce the Social Order To an outside observer, the performance of rituals might appear irrational given the time and resource investment (Boyer & Lienard, 2006). However, rituals and ritual-like activities perform key social roles. Fiese et al. (2002), for example, concluded that rituals help organize

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family life, adding robustness and stability during stress or periods of radical change. Some evidence suggests that rituals may be employed for management control and to reinforce hierarchy. However, as Golding (2007) found, rituals can oscillate between sharp focus and ambiguity. For example, rituals can influence the perceptual experience of time, patterning it into a social process where it is defined by the events and the actors engaged in participation (Huy, 2001). Recurrent rituals help build shared meanings and generate solidarity, reinforcing both through social engagement. Rituals build intra-group cohesion and provide a useful tool for leaders to enhance social identification. For example, Shamir, Zakay, Breinin, and Popper (1998) found that when military leaders sought to boost collective identity, songs, slogans and rituals were often the tools of choice. Routine social events in organizations become ritualized for similar reasons where the celebration of employee birthdays, morning teas, farewell events, sports-league tipping contests, and Friday afternoon drinks, all work to bond employees and build morale, ultimately improving commitment and productivity. Rituals and ritual-like activities also reinforce social structures. Marxist views of ritual, for instance, emphasize its role in amplifying social stratification and power relationships, acting by marginalizing the socially powerless through an imposed regime of routine (Roth, 1995). Most sociological interpretations are sympathetic to the importance of meaningmaking through rituals (Bell, 1997), connecting with anthropological assumptions using symbolism to explain social class formation (Geertz, 2000). Jandreau’s (2002) interpretation of the annual ritual of ‘Secret Santa’ giving at the office Christmas party exemplifies the relationship between ritual and social order. In ‘Secret Santa’, each office worker is randomly assigned another worker for whom they must purchase a gift. All staff is included, and gift-giving is no longer seen to be an expensive and competitive popularity contest. However, since the gifts are typically handed out by a manager, Jandreau argued that the egalitarian foundations become supplanted by a kind of centralism where the workers are reminded that the privilege of gift exchange comes at the manager’s discretion.

Rituals Communicate Important Values Durkheim (1961[1915]) proposed that rituals not only serve a functionalist purpose in maintaining social order, but also develop cohesion and strong inter-personal relations. Sosis and Alcorta (2003) extended this claim by arguing that rituals serve a communicative purpose by “eliciting arousal, directing attention, enhancing memory, and improving associations” (p. 265). Rituals communicate encoded messages. However, some social theorists and psychologists contend that rituals go beyond encoded communication to encourage or enforce social solidarity (Durkheim, 1961[1915]; Turner, 1969). Rituals deliver powerful forces for the expression and affirmation of collective beliefs and values, the presence of which encourages group stability and harmony. In fact, the impact of rituals may add to the longevity of a group; an evolutionary perspective where groups work as adaptive units evolving through a process of cultural group selection (Wilson, 2002). From this perspective, some social groups and their ideas survive and prosper while others collapse. For example, organizations sometimes signal change through the lavish promotion of a new strategy or initiative, often accompanied by rejuvenated corporate branding and other aesthetic symbols.

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Sometimes the change can mark impending failure, where ceremonies can be used as a form of closure and farewell (Harris & Sutton, 1986). A conflict-based, socio-political view of the use of rituals as value communicators was proposed by Appadurai (1986), who observed that rituals can serve as a ‘tournaments of value’. Different value sets compete for status and legitimacy through ritual performance.

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Rituals Enhance Group Solidarity Rituals serve as emotional anchors for social solidarity (Islam & Zyphur, 2009) and belief (Adolphs, Tranel & Damasio, 1998; Morris, Ohman & Dolan, 1998) allowing the expression and affirmation of collective values and group stability (Durkheim, 1961[1915]; Turner, 1969). Singing an anthem or team song in a sport organization provides one example. Rituals enhance communications including the transmission of encoded messages by stimulating physiological arousal, enhancing memory, and reinforcing associations (Sosis & Alcorta, 2003). They also include and exclude, affecting status and social position (Anand & Watson, 2004). Kerr and Slocum (2005 [1987]) recorded how perquisites communicate the gravity of rank, tenure and commitment in organizational life through ritual. The same rituals stimulate feelings of belonging, ironically, even for those excluded. In part, this effect might be explained through what Harrison (1992) referred to as common ‘intellectual property’. Even for those not granted access to privileged information, the desire to be included reinforces group cohesion. Such willful collusion underpins hierarchical structures and the ritual-like activities that reinforce them. Anand and Watson (2004) highlighted a similar dynamic operating at the American music industry’s Grammy Awards. An award immediately grants influence to a recipient, delivering status as ‘dominant social actors’. At the same time, peripheral actors overlooked or sidelined from the process still covet inclusion because it represents institutional power. Anand and Watson identified the distinct symbolic structures embedded in the Grammy rituals. These differ substantially from typical activity in the field; the further from normal, the greater the symbolic consequence. From this viewpoint we might expect sporting rituals to hold a similarly powerful influence. Rituals and ritual-like activities associated with group solidarity also include conventions and professional meetings, which can be volatile, since they can cycle between periods of boredom and periods of excess and aberrant behavior (Trice & Beyer, 1984). In general, the opportunity to eat and drink—particularly alcohol—in a collective space provides an opportunity for ritualized behavior to transpire, whether around the water cooler, office coffee machine, outside in the smoker’s area, or in a communal lunch room. While these activities contain ritual-like behavior, they should not be seen as full rituals. However, seemingly innocuous coffee-based activities can be infused with ritual-like elements that transmit or reinforce cultural messages. In fact, of all the prosaic office rituals, the migration to acquire coffee is a potent sign of the ‘privileged march of capitalism’ over the last 50 years. Coffee’s popularity marks the launch of white collar workers, and their now dominant position in the workforce of western industrial nations (Stallybrass & White, 1986). Coffee’s role in rituals is impressive, from the prominence of the business-over-coffee meeting to the shared drink between managers and subordinates in overt, if superficial displays of equality. Veblen’s (1934) classic treatise on the rituals of conspicuous

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consumption revealed the ways in which food and drink both demarcate and unite. In fact, sporting events provide a long-standing cultural vehicle for social drinking and excessive consumption of food.

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Rituals Include and Exclude The study of ritualized behavior has been most prolific in the context of religion, owing to its overt and relatively stable performance nature. Dennett (2006) observed that much of the world’s population devotes time to religious ritual, and the study of religion helps to explain why rituals are practiced despite the costs involved in terms of time and resources. One popular anthropological explanation (Sosis, 2003; 2004; 2005; 2006) suggests that people participate in rituals because they believe in their efficacy, and the precepts and meaning they represent. However, Sosis also observed that this explanation assumes that belief precedes ritual performance; an assumption that fails to hold in organizations, since not only are new employees required to participate in rituals immediately, with inductions being the ideal example, but they are also required to subsequently absorb the related values, beliefs and behaviors. Sport probably involves a similar process. For example, children become indoctrinated to a sporting allegiance through their parents, often long before they can make a conscious decision for themselves. Sosis and Ruffle (2003) provided the example of Haredi Jews who ritually sway and sing under the desert sun while sporting thick beards, and wearing heavy black fabrics and dense fur hats. While their dress code seems inconsistent with the climate, there is no ambiguity about their signaling or the commitment it represents. Adherence to a set of deeply held convictions introduces an obligation to perform a suite of rituals and associated behavioral activities, even if illogical and socially incongruous. Despite the physical and psychological discomfort and their resource costs, rituals are performed because they resonate symbolically and culturally. Rituals operate as gatekeepers by excluding non-believers unprepared to engage in costly actions incommensurate with benefits. Practitioners demonstrate their commitment and sincerity, and can be trusted as beneficiaries of group membership. While nothing intrinsically sacred exists in the rituals that unite a group in collective practices, they remain heavily symbolic signals. There is nothing inherently sacred about Haredi robes, but they demonstrate commitment to the cause in the same way that uncomfortable and expensive suits and choking ties perform in commercial organizations (DiTomaso, 1987). The business suit reveals the uniform of the contemporary workplace, and being typically dark, conservative, and sober, it exemplifies a commitment to hierarchy, discipline, rules and conformity. In contrast, casual sports-wear signals the opposite. Symbolic dressing for professional women can be troublesome. While tailored suits and understated grooming symbolizes strong organizational loyalty, the excessive use of jewelry, heavy make-up, tight jeans—and at the opposite extreme—maternity wear, may not be seen as appropriate for a professional office environment. Furthermore, the simple addition of club colors, such as a scarf or cap, can immediately signal commitment and tribal belonging. Security rituals also reinforce social exclusion or inclusion by signaling status, social position, and corporate authority. For example, some security measures are thinly-veiled status symbols such as chauffeurs, limousines and five-star hotels. In addition, a surfeit of pin numbers, codes, surveillance and special entry passes demarcate organizational hierarchy as

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do invitations to team-building retreats, strategy weekends, and adventure-survival activities. Similarly, the bonding rituals that accompany obstacle course programs, hiking treks, and white-water rapids activities, are viewed as entry points into positions of authority. But perhaps nothing signals commitment as much as travelling with a large group of devoted fans to attend an away game, or getting the club logo or slogan embroidered on a prominent bodypart.

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Rituals Signal Commitment Signaling theory originates from work in evolutionary biology seeking to explain the presence of behavior that appears to be more work than it is worth. Evolutionary theorists, using animal observation data, have proposed that signals in the form of perceivable actions or structures, indicate qualities about the signaler’s environment. As a result, signaling theories incorporate ideas about costs (Guilford & Dawkins, 1995) and signal types (Maynard Smith & Harper, 2003). The most relevance here pertains to the suggestion that costs incorporated into signals are not wasteful, but rather serve to enhance communication reliability (Hauser, 1996). Social scientists have appropriated signaling theory to decode cooperative actions, social communication, and inter-personal trust (Palmer & Pomianek, 2007). Signaling theory, sometimes referred to as ‘commitment’ or ‘cost signaling’ theory, occupies a central anthropological perspective in the study of ritualized behavior (Dow, 2006). Cost signaling assumes that group cooperation increases when group members use costly signals to engender trust and mutual belief (Sosis, 2003). The theory maintains that costly signaling diminishes deception and enhances social cohesion (Dow, 2006). Moreover, the more costly the behaviors and commitments required by a ritual, the greater the degree of commitment and social cohesion elicited. As a result, costly ritual behaviors represent hardto-fake signs of commitment to a group (Irons, 2001) discouraging insincere members from joining. Only those outsiders who covet belonging would endure the costs of gaining group membership (Sosis, 2003). Values and beliefs are learned and maintained through performance where “rituals are a universal means of generating the advantages of increased group cohesiveness” (Sosis, 2003, p. 116). To put it colloquially, cost signaling separates committed members from the freeloaders; fanatics from followers. In general, anthropologists embraced signaling theory because it helps integrate an interactive theory of symbolic communication with more materialist theories of rational and strategic action (Bird & Smith, 2005). Signaling powerfully demonstrates commitment, resulting in trust and fellowship (Dow, 2006). Discarding self-interested logic to perform an action based on group belief systems enhances trust. However, the conditions for intra-group trust are not always met, particularly when isolated and closed with weak social interaction (Sosis, 2003). On the other hand, organizations possessing high levels of social interaction need fewer rituals to signal trust. But, where membership fluidly changes, rituals and rituallike activities help provide an identity badge that signals trustworthiness and loyalty. Costly rituals discourage freeloaders and help maintain the ideological purity and moral intensity of groups, which in turn reinforces group solidarity. In this context, the imperative for irrational demonstrations of commitment may be entirely rational (Iannaccone, 1992). For example, the desire to undertake regular overtime may not be motivated by rational goals

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such as getting more work finished, but by the drive for approval. Ironically, this may be rational after all because it cultivates trust and potentially leads to the benefits provided to those accepted as part of the inner circle. A further complication accompanies studies of religious ritual suggesting that cost signaling has more power when the beliefs and behaviors exhibited in some way take a counterintuitive or unverifiable form (Sosis & Ruffle, 2004). Such a relationship implies that stronger signals accompany extreme behaviors. Potentially, ritual-like activities that encourage both riskier physical and emotional behaviors deliver the greatest effects in signaling commitment and eliciting trust. We take up this possibility in the final section of this chapter.

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Rituals Manage Work Structure Rituals and ritual-like activities aid in the temporal structuring of work activities (Roy, 1959). Rituals structure time through both the inherent sequence of a ritual, as well as through their punctuation into daily activity (Ancona, Goodman, Lawrence & Tushman, 2001). Rituals can be habitually used by organizational members to facilitate psychological and physical engagement in a task. They work by helping to increase emotional arousal and perceptions of time passing (Mainemelis, 2001). Ritual content holds less relevance than its symbolic function and psychological impact. For example, in his seminal work, Roy (1959) recorded the importance of timing in routine and repetitive work practices. The target of his investigation, a group of factory machinists, described their days around a series of timespecific rituals experienced hourly and named for the activity performed, ranging from ‘coffee time’ to ‘banana time’. Contemporary workplace ritual-like activities include compulsions around checking email and mobile phone messages. The presence of an event timeline, precision pacing, and shared understandings of its value represent a socially constructed window into meaning (Ancona, Goodman, Lawrence & Tushman, 2001). The centrality of shared rituals may help to explain why certain stigmatized occupations often generate strong and unified cultural identity. Instead of challenging a group’s esteem, stigmatized work like grave-digging can lead to ideological reframing and a differential view of outsider’s judgments (Ashforth & Kreiner, 1999). When occupations become more ritual-like, they become core parts of this process.

Rituals Prescribe and Reinforce Significant Events Significant events within organizations can be both created and underscored by rituals. Trice and Beyer’s (1985) taxonomy showed the variety of functions rituals can perform in drawing attention to events and circumstances within organizations. Their six categories of organizational rites included rites of (1) passage (e.g. training and initiation), (2) degradation (e.g. reprimand or termination), (3) enhancement (e.g. commendation or promotion), (4) renewal (e.g. celebrations), (5) conflict reduction (e.g. collective bargaining), and (6) integration (e.g. annual dinner or President’s luncheon). As this list suggests, not only can rituals specify rites of passage, they can also codify and mark performance, or benchmark the fulfillment of group and organizational expectations. Some rituals transcend organizations by prescribing social or commercial conventions. Signing a contract under formal supervision is

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a case in point. There may also be a range of more prosaic ritual-like behaviors such as the daily commute to work, which might include the brief but regular coffee stop, the purchase of the same morning newspaper, listening to the same talk-back radio station, and voyaging along the same well-trodden pathway. This can be just the beginning of the daily work ritual, since when workers actually arrive at their workplaces, they are also likely to perform a rite of entrance. The traditional office entrance ritual demanded checking-in via a time clock, but in the contemporary office environments entrance rituals appear more subtly, and now include electronic surveillance, security encoded doors that register all staff movements, early morning meetings, and rigorous peer scrutiny (Gee, Hull & Lankshear, 1996). It has even been argued that Internet use constitutes a ‘coming of age’ ritual in children and young adults (McMullin, Comeau & Jovic, 2007). In most organizations, rituals demarcate events associated with status, success and failure. Trice and Beyer (1984) discussed rites of status degradation where symbolic dramas play out to depict individuals as incompetent or inappropriately positioned. Rites can also be used to demarcate an individual’s progression through an organization (Trice, 1985; Trice & Beyer, 1985). For example, Turner (1969) described the retirement rite of passage designed to formally disassociate a worker from their place of work, and hence the use of traditional departing gifts. The gold watch is not so much recognition for work well done, but rather of work completed, and a symbolic transition to ‘golden’ years. Not all organizational rituals deliver culture-supporting outcomes. Some workers regularly engage in inventive and subversive ritual-like behaviors involving inside jokes, satirical email, text messages, web logs, social networking and derisive cartoons. Such activities may serve varying functions from expressing deep feelings of marginalization to providing a healthy outlet for mischievous creativity. Davis’ (2001) ideological interpretation of the cartoon ‘Dilbert’ suggested that its propagation around offices reflects common disenchantment. Rituals incorporating gossip-sessions and lunch time commentaries allow organizational members to make sense out of decisions and policies they do not understand or do not agree with. Most organizational events become more significant with the introduction of ritual-like features, but intensely ritualized events can wield a transformative effect upon participants. Rambo (1993) observed that stable, resilient cultures contain few members receptive to transformative experiences whereas those in crisis will contain more. The duration and intensity of change in the environment will also affect the degree of receptivity in ritual participants. For example, McCadden (1997) described a series of rituals experienced by kindergarten student-teachers designed to transition them from home to university. In contrast, the increasingly ubiquitous strategic ‘retreat’ may not be so fruitful when incorporating careful structures to channel behavior towards specific preconceived views (Johnson, 2008). Some rituals enact the transformations with which they are concerned. Rappaport (1999) cited knighting ceremonies as an exemplar. Many examples can also be found of ‘factive’ (p. 115) rituals in organizations, which can involve a demonstrable change of affairs such as the announcement of a new CEO, or the employee of the month. Rappaport used Austin’s (1962) concept of ‘commissive’ rituals to indicate future commitments to performance, like those expressed at the outset of a change program. In this respect, Rappaport took a distinctly Durkheimian view of rituals as social contracts. He suggested that form and substance are inseparable; ritual form adds a dimension to the substance of rituals that embedded symbols cannot alone express. For scholars of the

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psychological tradition, the importance of narrative, identity, and psycho-dynamic variables help explain this performative character of rituals (Green, Strange & Brock, 2002; Jung, 1968). Our nine inter-dependent functions of full rituals demonstrate how the basic features of rituals are practically employed in organizational settings. Islam and Zyphur (2009) would remind us that the outcomes of rituals transpire with variable success depending upon the prevailing organizational social meanings, values and attitudes. Our functional exposition highlights the complexity of the ritual landscape, the implication of which remains a need to reconcile the symbolic and communicative ambiguity of ritualized performances with the functional impact that rituals command. At first glance rituals seem to clash with the organizational drive for rationality, effectiveness, efficiency and goal attainment. However, rituals, and ritual-like activities display numerous functions, including meaning-making, social coherence, solidarity, commitment, and transformation. But, the deeper and more important questions revolve around why rituals, with all their mixed messages, ambiguous symbolism, and often irrational behaviors, actually work. In the next section, we will develop three templates that assist in explaining the mechanisms through which rituals work. We argue that absorbing beliefs through exposure to rituals operates as a process of internalization augmented by their physical, public, formal, and repetitive features. Ritual performance amplifies belief. Moreover, rituals work by stimulating emotional anchors for social solidarity and common belief. When activated, they reveal the condition of adherents’ faith as a physiological response that is difficult to fabricate, thereby enhancing trust in the group.

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THE MECHANISMS OF ORGANIZATIONAL RITUALS In this section we propose three mechanisms through which sporting rituals bring about an impact upon participants. The first mechanism, cognitive capture, proposes a connection between ritual performance and the transmission of cognitive content. The second mechanism, affective anchoring and conditioning, proposes a relationship between ritual performance and emotional impact. The third mechanism, behavioral prescription, proposes a link between ritual performance and other, subsequent organizational activities. We suggest that these three mechanisms operate in mutually reinforcing and interdependent ways.

Cognitive Capture Culturally-driven interpretations of rituals explain participation in sequenced social activity. However, exclusively cultural models struggle to explain the presence and importance of scripted, goal-reduced and redundant action. After all, why would anyone undertake a ritual that does not lead to a practical outcome? But of course, sporting rituals do not necessarily deliver functional results. Something else is going on that has more to do with the mind than with cultural pressures. To that end, a model of organizational rituals also needs to encompass a cognitive dimension. For example, it appears unlikely that organizational members undertake rituals exclusively on the basis of imitation. In fact,

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anthropological evidence indicates that the cultural transmission of information actually involves little ‘mindless’ imitation (Sperber, 2000). On the other hand, information about ritualized behavior does get effectively transmitted. However, the transmission of ritual information does not necessarily involve the explanation or interpretation of rituals. All that is required is some behavior that activates one or several mental templates in the mind of an observer, which subsequently stimulates specific inferences about the purpose of the behavior (Boyer & Lienard, 2006). For this reason, studies of important professional practices such as accounting and nursing have investigated whether ritualization can undermine performance. For example, Holland (2008) and Biley and Wright (2007) have defended the use of rituals in health management and patient care, arguing that rigid structure does not necessarily lead to mindlessness. Equally Ahrens and Chapman (2007) interpreted accounting practices as management control systems operating as rituals both shaping and shaped by shared norms and cultural understandings. Perhaps sporting rituals play a similar role? Boyer and Lienard’s (2006) model suggests that ritualized actions enjoy cultural success because they activate cognitive systems associated with information-processing and motivation. Rituals lead to a kind of cognitive ‘capture’ where the performed activities fall upon fertile mental soil, which also helps to explain why rituals are both attention-demanding and compelling to practitioners. Cultural research demonstrates that the propagation of ideas and beliefs are heavily influenced by contextual factors and social variables, as exemplified by obvious differences in language, music and business practice between cultures. While contextual and social forces undoubtedly shape beliefs and ritual practice, certain beliefs are more easily transmitted than others. In this cognitive interpretation, the human mind holds a predisposition towards hosting particular kinds of concepts. While the environment contributes to the catchiness of ideas, more important is the match between their specific composition and the host potential of the mind. In sport organizations, some ideas never really get off the ground while others enjoy temporary success. A minority of successful ideas prove robust enough to become entrenched components in ritual, the permanent inhabitants in a group of minds. Theorists have likened the transmission of cultural knowledge to the virulence of a contagious disease. Infections spread not just because of exposure, but also because of the susceptibility of those exposed (Dawkins, 1982; Norenzayan & Atran, 2002; Sperber, 1996). The successful transmission of ideas, concepts and beliefs via organizational rituals may therefore be considered a function of both cultural exposure and cognitive receptivity. We use the term ‘cognitive’ here in reference to mental information processing including, for example, such elements as attention, perception, learning, memory and decision-making (Eysenck & Keane, 2005). A unit of cultural information easily acquired and represented by a mind during an organizational ritual may be considered ‘cognitively optimal’. If a match occurs between ritual content and cognitive receptivity, then the ritual will be more likely to lead to cognitive capture. Taking a cognitive perspective of organizational rituals brings with it the assumption that physical things, events, and people remain dependent on the minds that perceive them (D’Andrade, 1995). To Boyer (2000), cognitive functions initiate intuitive responses about the contents of the world. We create domains or categories of reality, each leading to expectations about the contents. Such presumptions are generated automatically and reflexively without conscious awareness. Intuitively-derived perceptions are important in rituals because they ensure immediate and categorical responses to specific contexts, like being called into the bosses’

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office for a performance review, or the reactions of colleagues during a retirement function. During organizational rituals some important assumptions about domains can be violated, as Boyer’s (1994; 2000) cognitive optimality hypothesis demonstrates. Certain patterns in concepts can have a dramatic impact on their memorability and transmission. Specifically, Boyer’s (1994, 2000) thesis hinges upon the importance of what he calls minimally counter-intuitive concepts. These concepts violate intuitive expectations about the world and its contents. The cognitive optimality hypothesis predicts that concepts containing a small component of ‘counter-intuitiveness’ inconsistent with normal expectations about a domain of reality, enhance memorability and concept transmission. Rituals that involve ordinary characters behaving in predictable and expected ways are faced with a transmission disadvantage compared to those that also contain a minimal amount of counter-intuitive content. Thus, minimal counter-intuitive content can assist the acquisition and transmission of beliefs, concepts and ideas through ritual because they enhance cognitive capture. The majority of work related to the cognitive optimality of beliefs has concerned religious concepts and popular culture (Atran & Norenzayan, 2004; Barrett & Nyhof, 2001; Boyer, 1994; Boyer & Ramble, 2001; Heath, Bell & Sternberg, 2001; Pyysiainen, 2002; Pyysiäinen, Lindeman & Honkela, 2003; Sperber, 1997). For example, many religious rituals have a minimal requirement for the violation of intuitive notions of the world (Norenzayan & Atran, (2002). The religious beliefs embedded in rituals are memorable because they contain counter-intuitive ideas about supernatural agents, violating natural expectations about the world and its contents. On the other hand, religious beliefs also invoke factual and common sense assumptions associated with human motivations, emotions, desires and needs. Thus, the key to the transmission of religious beliefs lies with their optimal combination of attentiongrabbing counter-intuitive ideas within the context of a majority of intuitive ideas. Rituals provide the vehicle for this combination. In Atran’s (2002a) words: “Their cognitive role is to mobilize a more or less fluid and open-textured network of ordinary commonsense beliefs to build factually impossible worlds that are nevertheless readily conceivable and memorable” (p. 268). In religion, a ghost may be able to pass through solid objects—a counter-intuitive notion—but they also satisfy the majority of intuitive domain expectations in terms of their personhood, motivations and other sensory systems (Boyer, 1994; Sperber, 1997). Sport organizations are not churches and their cultures are not religions. Nevertheless, the impact of minimally counter-intuitive concepts has also been established outside religious contexts such as in the propagation of urban legends (Heath, Bell & Sternberg, 2001). Whitehouse (2002) proposes that the composition of rituals determines cognitive optimality. Successful rituals take advantage of two particular aspects of memory in order to enhance recall and subsequent transmission: repetition and arousal (Whitehouse, 2004). The former is straightforward in that more exposure leads to better recall. It also delivers a ‘semantic’ memory, which is generic and context non-specific. The latter is important because the more emotionally stimulating a piece of information or event, the easier it will be to remember. Arousal produces ‘episodic’ memory, which is highly specific and contextdriven. Both forms of memory engage during the performance of sporting rituals. Rituals may be seen as a fundamental feature of ideological transmission because it draws in both semantic and episodic memory, although not necessarily together. For example, when rituals are used to reinforce relatively unchanging codified knowledge, a ‘doctrinal mode’ operates. In contrast to this top-down dissemination of concepts, when rituals stimulate arousal

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memory through distinctive, emotionally-charged episodic activity, then an ‘imagistic mode’ engages. In a similar vein, Tremlin (2006) suggested the presence of a ‘dual-process’ model of cognition at work in rituals. Explicit processing involves conscious, serial, and slow cognitive operations in order to create explicit, abstract, and unemotional representations. Implicit processing deals with automatic, effortless, parallel and fast operations, creating unconscious, practical and emotional representations. Tremlin’s theory predicts that implicit processing will trump explicit processing because it has greater utility, emotional engagement and relevance. Implicit processing demands a psychological priority, explaining why doctrinal leaders in organizations cannot prevent ritual participants from modifying their formulae. Ultimately, successful organizational rituals will gravitate toward a balance of explicit and implicit cognitive content. As we will explore next, a ritual participant’s emotional response can encourage a reinforcing cycle of belief and emotional anchoring.

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Affective Anchoring and Conditioning Organizational rituals evoke substantive emotional responses. Everyday experience reinforces that rituals associated with sport, health, work and relationships can be profoundly emotional, and engender a sense of community or connection amongst or between its practitioners. Sosis and Ruffle (2004) suggested that secular organizations can impregnate their ideological position with supernatural features and other unfalsifiable concepts. For example, governments, armies, corporations and sport organizations all employ ideological propositions to strengthen their dogma, often supported by unverifiable claims. In some cases, the implicit causal relationships between the content of rituals and their performance outcomes are unverifiable, such as those used to enhance luck in sport, or breaking a bottle of champagne over the bow of a newly commissioned ship. The use of unsubstantiated and unfalsifiable ideas may actually be a central condition for developing powerful communal belief, identity, and solidarity (Sosis & Ruffle, 2004), as well as providing an emotional anchor to amplify the effect of the beliefs embedded in rituals. High-arousal rituals may instigate deeper meaning attributions and command greater transformative power. For example, Richert, Whitehouse and Stewart (2005) showed that participants with stronger emotional reactions to rituals also experienced stronger levels of meaning reflection. Emotional attachments to unfalsifiable ideas are difficult to challenge because they withstand rational evidence (Rappaport, 1971; Sosis & Alcorta, 2003). Whilst sporting organizations possess a secular nature, they may still cultivate a culture strongly aligned to unfalsifiable, or at least difficult to substantiate, beliefs. Religion-based community organizations, charities and schools, for example, may require employees to possess ‘sympathy’ with their ‘ethos’. Religious ideas aside, employees may be required to subscribe to company ideals that cannot be proven to yield the benefits claimed. The idea that the maximization of profit is beneficial to the company, employee and community, provides one common example, just as the ‘win at all costs’ perspective provides another in sport organizations. To take the argument one step further, the affective power of an organizational ritual might be associated with the sanctification of unfalsifiable beliefs (Rappaport, 1971; Sosis & Alcorta, 2003). For example, performing a ritual that cannot be logically justified seems to

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evoke a substantive emotional reaction reinforced by the mere repetition of the ritual itself. Sosis and Alcorta (2003) observed: “The elicitation of these physiological states through ritual provides a means whereby specific stimuli can be emotionally valenced” (p. 268). In other words, rituals serve as emotional anchors for social solidarity and belief. Indeed, when activated, they reveal the honest condition of a practitioner’s ‘faith’, as physiological signals are difficult to fabricate, enhancing trust in the group (Adolphs et al., 1998; Morris et al., 1998). This is bolstered by the nature of the statements made explicitly or symbolically during rituals; those statements that transgress material verification are more useful because practitioners cannot appeal to logic or rational assessment in order to affirm the symbology inherent in the ritual (Rappaport, 1999). The only recourse for demonstrating solidarity with the practicing group is to attest through experience. Sensory pageantry accounts for the initial motivation to join in ritualistic activity, driven by an innate desire to belong and join in with others (McCauley & Lawson, 2002). Accordingly, the most successful organizational rituals stand apart because they demand a high level of intra-group cooperation and commitment in order to sustain the common absence of skepticism (Sosis & Bressler, 2003). Of course, organizational members may have little chance to decline participation. Irrespective of the initial stimulus, the cognitive and behavioral aspects of ritual performance create the opportunity for affective conditioning. In this respect, the disaggregation of the three ritual mechanisms presented here is a contrivance for the purposes of discussion. For example, Damasio’s (1999) somatic marker hypothesis indicates that emotion infuses cognitive processes such as decision-making. Associations are formed between performance actions and physiological reactions like anxiety, fear, sadness, happiness, satisfaction, anger or disgust. Somatic markers attach to ritual content, channeling attention toward an emotional connection. The practical consequence is that ritual performance leads to a ‘gut feeling’ about the concepts and beliefs implicit to its practice, even if this occurs at an unconscious level. Some early work in organizations suggests that the connections between social interaction, emotion and cognition hold pivotal consequences for management decision-making and even entrepreneurial behavior (Goss, 2008). Atran (2002a) suggested that repetitive rituals provide sources of sensory stimulation, instrumental in forging responses to the activities undertaken and their cognitive content. He noted neuroimaging evidence revealing that ritual activity causes an overload of the hippocampus, the brain structure responsible for mediating emotional expression and adding to them a conceptual label and significance. D’Aquili and Newberg (2000) also observed that the neuropsychological components of an experience may be influenced by the strength of an individual’s affective response and their inclination to attribute significance to the experience. The neuroscientific data demonstrate that rituals can promote feelings of connectivity, timelessness and meaning (D’Aquili & Newberg, 1998; 2000); emotional responses that are sometimes allied with mental flow states. Flow states refer to feelings of connection, energy and focus in an activity (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). The more that an individual can be actively drawn into a ritualized activity, the more likely that their engagement will lead to the intense feelings associated with flow states. For example, studies have shown that repetitive activities of this nature can create in the brain the conditions ripe for meaning-making (Newberg & Lee, 2005; Rogers & Kaplan, 2000). They can also be activated by repetitive activity involving music or sound, color, odor and light of the sort common in rituals (Austin, 1998; Burzik, 2004; Roll, 2002; Sosis & Alcorta, 2003; Twitchell, 2004). Almost any activity can be ritualized, and in so

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doing instigate a meditative or focused flow state (Austin, 1998). To speculate, work activities associated with strong symbolic rituals like meetings and public ceremonies, combined with the need to focus or concentrate on a singular task while the rest of the body remains relaxed, are relevant pre-conditions for potent affective conditioning (Atran, 2002b; Howell, 1997; MacLennan, 2002; Rausch-Albright, 2000; Spezio, 2001; Teske, 1996). Conceptual knowledge may be far more strongly connected with human embodiment than might be assumed. Barsalou et al. (2005) proposed that cognitive representations of concepts have a corresponding set of simulated unconscious experiences associated with human embodiment. The visual, tactile, auditory and kinesthetic senses all produce responses to conceptual representations in the same way that for some, the mere thought of a large, hairy spider, is enough to produce a range of powerful physiological reactions. This process can be enhanced through the practice of rituals that amplify the formation of conceptual knowledge as well as emotional salience. A further supposition is that symbols can provide visual stimuli connecting cognition with sensory and emotional response. Damasio (1999) and Fazio (2001) showed empirically that all decision-making contains an emotional dimension. From this premise, Thagard (2005) proposed that consistency between thought and action is not just about diminishing logical tensions between beliefs, but is also about constructing a system of intellectual commitments that lead to emotional coherence. For example, when employees apply reasoning to determine the best explanation for the existence and design of their organizations, they make selections that produce outcomes for them that are both positive and negative. The evaluation of positive and negative outcomes is not a detached cognitive calculation. Instead, there are inevitably strong emotional attitudes attached as well. Thus, emotional coherence reminds us that inferences about what beliefs to embrace, and which behaviors to enact, are not exclusively based on hypotheses and evidence, but also on the emotional values that are inextricably connected to ritualized actions. In some cases, sporting teams might occupy the role of the omniscient force and rituals transform common modes of thinking into meaningful experiences. This possibility is encouraged by research which has revealed the activity of the brain during spiritual experiences. These experiences are characterized by similar feelings to those reported by sport consumers, including periods of powerful affiliation with an identifiable group or with a universal force, as well as moments of mystical flow and unison with the environment. There is no paucity of religious metaphor invoked to offer commentary on the social context and psychological impact of sport. It is also well accepted that sport can stimulate a range of emotional reactions from goose bumps to tears or rapture.

Behavioral Prescription The affective experiences that accompany rituals do not occur in a vacuum. They transpire within a network of personal beliefs and contextual cultures that influence interpretation, which in turn, feed back into individuals’ belief systems. For example, Bulbulia (2004) proposed that rituals contain an intrinsic grammar similar to language that helps to label the objects of thought and place them in context. Rituals transplant already developed ways of thinking into new schemas that are consistent with pre-existing ideas. The

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social environment may therefore play an important role in organizational ritual as it provides a conditioning mechanism that slowly takes root in employees’ memories. Rituals may demand seemingly irrational action from its participants, or action where no direct link to a desired outcome can be verified (Bird & Smith, 2005; Dow, 2006). For example, in some organizations, meetings are the least effective method of forging a cohesive team, while indulging in too many drinks after work on a Friday night might be the best. In addition to a cognitive and affective burden, rituals require a facilitating belief system. Surprisingly, however, the evidence suggests that ritual participation is not necessarily the consequence of beliefs (McCauley & Lawson, 2002; Sosis, 2004). Ritual behavior is likely to come first while the formation of consistent beliefs about the content of rituals arrives later. Ritual performance amplifies belief for the simple reason that to avoid cognitive dissonance non-believers will either change their beliefs or stop engaging in the ritual; the latter an impractical undertaking if one’s livelihood relies upon it. Accordingly, the cultivation of belief is a factor of continued ritual performance, particularly when the beliefs embedded in the practices overlap in some way with those already held by the practitioner. Rituals, unlike habits, demand high control and an explicit emphasis on correct performance (Boyer & Lienard, 2006). Award presentations, for example, require a prioritized sequence of acknowledgement. Making a cup of coffee during a meal break, in contrast, is unlikely to be conducted in a ritualistic manner. To Boyer and Lienard (2006), ritualized action is actually the opposite of routinized behavior. Routinized action is automatic, involves low attentional demands, and limited emphasis on performance. So, while routine may play a role in ritualized action, the two should not be considered interchangeable. As a result, it is erroneous to conclude that belief can be influenced by ongoing participation in mindless routines like those found in factory work. On the other hand, the performance of mindful rituals is likely to occur prior to an acceptance of the ritual’s content. Signaling theory connects here in predicting that organizations imposing more stringent membership demands will be the beneficiaries of a commensurate commitment from their employees, (Sosis, 2003; 2006). For example, based on measures of attendance rates at religious services, Iannaccone (1992) established a correlation with distinctiveness, or the degree of differential from the (American) mainstream. There may well be a relationship between strictness and commitment; an observation that has been used to explain the shrinking congregations commanded by increasingly inclusive and lenient major denominations, such as the Catholic Church (Finke & Rodney, 1992; Iannaccone, 1994). This is a hypothesis that can be extended to the distinctiveness of organizations like Manchester United, the New York Yankees, as well as Google, Greenpeace, Apple, and Virgin as measured by the exclusivity and costs demanded by their rituals. Costly commitment may be required by employees in the form of unpaid overtime to attend special events. Employees may also endure costly social stigmas from working within a marginalized group such as an activist organization, or an organization operating on behalf of a minority ethnic group. ‘Costly’ organizations may include those associated with the military, humanitarian aid, door-to-door sales, multi-level marketing, and politics. Company executives or spokespeople may also be required to sacrifice personal comfort in order to represent an organization in a media interview, potentially risking personal vilification to defend the public face of a company. Similarly, politicians risk personal criticism in daily media rituals to promote the party line. At the most extreme, military personnel sometimes

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proceed into circumstances of open conflict or war where the idea of ‘victory’ cannot be logically or categorically defined, such as against hidden or ‘guerrilla’ adversaries. The key to linking cognition, behavior and context lies in differentiating implicit and explicit knowledge, the former concealed within rituals and the latter overtly expressed during rituals. While we noted earlier that rituals tend to be mindful activities, a cognitive interpretation suggests that there are times when more routinized activities will be successful in introducing doctrinal content. For example, some repeated activities are reproduced on ‘autopilot’, drawing on automatized habits, in the process obviating the need for critical interpretation. The cognitive paradox is that these habitual rituals are widely disseminated and interpreted. This might be because routinized, automatized rituals provide cognitively optimal conditions for the attribution of meaning from the outside, such as those provided by organizational leaders and authorities. The very automaticity of the rituals discourages internal critical interpretation, thereby safeguarding an externally imposed interpretation. The routinization provides an ideal learning pathway, delivering a stable product through a standardized formula. In more unusual circumstances involving climatic rituals, procedural knowledge is not implicit or automatic, but is a form of explicit knowledge organized primarily in episodic memory. The activation of explicit knowledge makes reflection almost inevitable.

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CONCLUSION In this chapter we made two novel claims. First, we proposed that organizational practices and activities can be conceptualized on a continuum where one side represents prosaic behaviors and the other complete rituals. Differentiating the former from the latter can be achieved by specifying the number and intensity of ritual features inherent in an activity. Thus, while identifying ritual features is useful, it can also be misleading because genuine full rituals occur infrequently. In reality, most organizational activities thought of as rituals are ritual-like in that they express one or several features in a relatively weak form or degree. As a result, ritual-like activities are significantly less influential on culture and behavior than full rituals. This conceptualization can also be employed to help diagnose culture and introduce new behaviors. Change agents should focus their efforts on full rituals, but remain aware that ritual-like activities express cultural norms in more accessible ways. Although less powerful than full rituals, ritual-like activities contribute decisively to culture through repetitive practice. Second, we contended that rituals work through three mutually reinforcing mechanisms entailing cognitive capture, emotional anchoring, and behavioral prescription. Emotional responses to organizational rituals connect with cognition and behavior as a result of the nature of the statements made explicitly or symbolically during rituals. Ritual content may transgress material verification. Participants cannot appeal to logic or rational assessment in order to affirm the symbology inherent in a ritual. Their only recourse for demonstrating solidarity with the practicing group is to attest through experience. The use of unsubstantiated and unfalsifiable claims may even contribute to communal belief, identity and solidarity. The absence of attempts to verify such concepts is part of the group’s process of collusion, a little like a collective version of the emperor’s new clothes. The whole process is strengthened

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through overt and embedded symbols. Symbols serve as anchors linking their conceptual representations to sensory memory. In this way, the mere thought of a symbol used in a ritual is enough to elicit a physiological outcome and a corresponding emotional experience. We have argued that full organizational rituals can be recognized through the expression of several essential features, their impact corresponding to the number and intensity of these features present. Rituals involve the enactment of specified behaviors, which are standardized, rule-bound, predictable, repetitive, and undertaken with specific performance expectations. They are physically enacted in a specified sequence, with little variation, and are imbued with significance through formality and embedded symbolism. The performance of ritualized behaviors may be so embedded in the culture of an organization that they effectively become compulsory, despite an absence of evidence about their efficacy. Rituals are also discharged in specific contexts or environments that facilitate or amplify their significance. In short, organizational rituals are bounded, repetitive, serial activities that confer symbolic meaning when performed in specific, predetermined contexts. In addition to specifying the features of rituals, we identified nine inter-dependent functions of rituals: (1) rituals provide meaning; (2) rituals manage anxiety; (3) rituals exemplify and reinforce the social order; (4) rituals communicate important values; (5) rituals enhance group solidarity; (6) rituals include and exclude; (7) rituals signal commitment; (8) rituals manage work structure; and (9) rituals prescribe and reinforce significant events. This list emphasizes that rituals act as communicative learning systems drawing attention to what is important and helping to canalize thoughts, feelings and behavior. Rituals are not always functionally useful to sporting organizations, or even culturesupporting. Rituals articulate a symbolic attenuation with the workplace, sometimes allowing ambiguity and tension to be managed. It should not be assumed that organizational leaders are in control of rituals. Rituals may be imposed, but they are just as likely to be emergent. Rituals are best understood as a rich engagement between an organization and its employees, sometimes reinforcing prevailing cultural values, and sometimes undermining them. In addition, the introduction of new rituals with the intention of modifying employee behavior is fraught with danger. Rituals can sometimes bolster disaffection and come to represent subversion or at least discontent. Under these conditions it would be prudent, and certainly less risky to support existing rituals that are functional, and then re-shape them to capture an additional preferred value, belief or behavior. Organizational rituals are also important because they satisfy individuals’ needs to confer symbolic meaning to intrinsically meaningless activities as a way of achieving just a little more control over working life. ‘Good’, or advantageous rituals, will allow participants to withdraw from normal time and space, to forge social connections, and build an appropriate social identity. Advantageous rituals will also organize and reduce uncertainty or anxiety, and allow employees to move through their worlds more comfortably. While the above conclusions suggest that rituals have significant social and organizational utility despite their often irrational ambiguity, little is known about how organizational members interpret rituals or their subsequent impact on organizational attributes (Harquail & Wilcox King, 2002). Despite this limitation, our general hypothesis is that rituals act as powerful moderators of cultural canalization, channeling cognitive content, affective response and behavioral activity toward cultural norms. From this viewpoint it is easy to see why full rituals and ritual-like behaviors are worthy of managers’ close attention. Organizational values are not static, and rituals offer a solid foundation for detailed corporate

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diagnosis. Rituals are a rich source of data because they have the potential to both entrench existing cultural values and transform them. Rituals may be tools of both enculturation and subversion. In the following chapter, we venture deeper into cultural transmission by explaining the importance of daily communications in the form of organizational stories.

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Chapter 8

TRANSMITTING SPORT CULTURE

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INTRODUCTION Cultural studies have persuasively demonstrated that the propagation of ideas and beliefs are heavily influenced by contextual factors and social variables. This is exemplified by obvious differences in language, music, sport and business practice between cultures. In an organizational context of course, the term culture refers to a collection of fundamental values and attitudes that are common to members of a social group, and which subsequently set the behavioral standards or norms for all members (Ogbonna & Harris, 2002; Pettigrew, 1979). Scientists who study how people think—‘cognitive scientists’—agree that contextual and social forces shape beliefs, but they also argue that certain beliefs are more easily transmitted because they fall on fertile mental soil. In this way of looking at the transmission of ideas and beliefs, the human mind is seen as predisposed to host particular kinds of concepts. It is not just the environment that contributes to the catchiness of ideas, but the match between their specific composition and the host potential of the mind. We examined this viewpoint in chapter six. We noted in the previous chapter that in sport organizations, some ideas never really get off the ground, while others enjoy temporary fashionability. To repeat, a minority of those ideas that have enjoyed some success prove robust enough to become entrenched components in organizational culture. Cognitive theorists sometimes liken the transmission of cultural knowledge to the virulence of a contagious disease. Infections spread not just because of exposure, but also because of the susceptibility of those exposed (Dawkins, 1982; Norenzayan & Atran, 2002; Sperber, 1996). The successful transmission of ideas, concepts and beliefs in organizations may therefore be considered a function of both cultural exposure and cognitive receptivity. In broad terms, it is a better understanding of the role of cognition in the transmission of cultural information in sport organizations that motivates this chapter. The unique perspective conferred through a cognitive interpretation is that it regards culture as not merely a material phenomenon, but also a cognitive representation of material phenomena (D’Andrade, 1995). This means that taking a cognitive perspective in an organization brings with it the assumption that physical things, events, and people are not independent of the minds that perceive them. We are therefore interested in the mental representations that organizational members create of the world in which they work. Mental representations are useful to study for at least two reasons. First, they literally stand for

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something, symbolizing the mental correlates of a domain or category of thought. Second, representations contain implicit content about the domain of interest. Understanding this content provides an insight into the way an individual perceives important aspects of the organizational world they operate within. As we mentioned in the previous chapter on rituals, Boyer (1994) argued that the mind is susceptible to hosting certain kinds of ideas and beliefs. Central to Boyer’s (1994) theory is the notion of counter-intuitive concepts. That is, ideas that are easily acquired and represented by a mind may be considered cognitively optimal. The cognitive optimality theory proposes that when a counter-intuitive concept is embedded within a group of intuitive concepts, the total conceptual unit holds a transmission advantage, subsequently enhancing their recurrence. In simple terms, ideas that are completely intuitive are not as memorable as those that have an element of counter-intuitivity as well. According to Boyer (1994; 2000) certain patterns in concepts can have a dramatic impact on their memorability and subsequent transmission. Moreover, the most culturally recurrent concepts are those aligning with the mind’s peculiar system of thought and memory. Specifically, Boyer’s (1994) thesis hinges upon the importance of what he called minimally counter-intuitive (MCI) concepts. These concepts violate intuitive expectations about the world and its contents. For example, most adults have developed an intuitive schema about the category or domain we might label ‘animals’. Within this domain there would likely be a set of representations about the concept ‘dog’. In practical terms we all have intuitive expectations about the behavior of a dog we might encounter, even though we may have never met it before. Boyer (2000) would argue that for a dog to violate the intuitive representations we have accumulated, it would have to do something counter-intuitive, like walk around on two legs. A dog walking on two legs would constitute a minor violation to an intuitive concept, or a minimally counter-intuitive concept. However, given that this is the only violation and the dog otherwise behaves according to our intuitive expectations, then Boyer (2000) would propose that the dog in question will be memorable. When the idea of this dog is passed along to others it will be more easily remembered and subsequently propagated. This stands in contrast to a maximally counter-intuitive concept which violates numerous aspects of a domain, like a dog that can walk, talk and fly. The cognitive optimality hypothesis predicts that when an idea involves the addition of a small component of counter-intuitiveness that is inconsistent with normal expectations about a domain, memorability and transmission are maximized. In an organizational context, stories that involve ordinary characters behaving in predictable and expected ways are faced with a transmission disadvantage compared to those also containing MCI concepts. Thus, minimal counter-intuitive content offers a slender window of possibility that can assist the acquisition and transmission of beliefs, concepts and ideas. The majority of work related to the cognitive optimality of beliefs has been undertaken by cognitive theorists with regard to religious concepts, and popular urban myths and legends (Atran & Norenzayan, 2004; Barrett & Nyhof, 2001; Boyer, 1994; Boyer & Ramble, 2001; Heath, Bell, & Sternberg, 2001; Pyysiainen, 2002; Pyysiäinen, Lindeman, & Honkela, 2003; Sperber, 1997). However, the cognitive optimality hypothesis has had little exposure in organizational settings. In this chapter, we are interested in the features of ideas and beliefs contained in stories told in organizations in order to explain why certain cultural beliefs catch on while others do not. We think that an exploratory account of the role of MCI concepts in sport organizational stories offers a platform upon which we can better understand culture and

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adapt it to our needs. Ultimately, understanding why certain kinds of information are easily transmitted is also relevant to theories describing the impact of cultural content. Our intention in this chapter is to explain why organizational stories are so powerful in understanding and shaping organizational culture and behavior. An impressive amount of material has been gathered to demonstrate that organizational stories are relevant portals to viewing organizational members’ social constructions of their institutional environments. However, surprisingly little is known about stories themselves and what it is about them that attaches to the minds of recipients, or subsequently encourages their transmission. A cognitive anthropology of stories rather than just a cultural inventory is therefore demanded. We begin next by introducing the concept of memorability in order to outline how ideas move from mind to mind. We use memorability to explain the success of some cultural material and the failure of others. Armed with a theory about why some cultural content has potency, we explore the significance of organizational stories as carriers of identity. A model illustrating the role of stories in sport organizational culture appears in Figure 8.1.

Sport Organizational Culture

Cultural Strength

Sport Culture Transmission

Cultural Rituals

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Organizational Stories

Cultural Units

Figure 8.1. Stories in Sport Organizational Culture.

MEMORABILITY AND TRANSMISSION OF IDEAS The empirical evidence supporting the importance of MCI concepts to memorability is limited but suggestive. Barrett and Nyhof (2001) asked their respondents to remember and repeat stories containing intuitive as well as MCI concepts, events and objects. Their subsequent content-analysis of the retold stories revealed that participants could recall 92 per cent of the MCI concept items and 71 per cent of the exclusively intuitive items. Adding a different twist to the hypothesis, Norenzayan and Atran (2002) found that under ordinary conditions, intuitive ideas enjoyed a better immediate recall than the MCI concepts. But on the other hand, recall of MCI concepts degraded at a lower rate after immediate recall.

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Norenzayan and Atran speculated that MCI concepts may have a survival advantage over exclusively intuitive ideas, or those with maximally counter-intuitive elements. Other free-recall experiments have supported Boyer’s (2001) prediction that MCI concept content is necessary for the cognitive optimality of concepts. Boyer and Ramble’s (2001) cross-cultural study showed that sensitivity to counter-intuitive content is universal and produces similar recall effects despite variations in belief commitment, transmission modes, and local variables. The study also revealed better recall when the intuitive violations contradicted expectations about whole categories of things, like animals rather than just dogs. Norenzayan, Atran, Faulkner and Schaller (2006) tested the salience of MCI concepts in the success of cultural narratives such as myths and folktales. In experiments, MCI concept sets produced a memory advantage after a week compared with both entirely intuitive and maximally counter-intuitive idea sets. In looking at the propagation of urban legends, Heath, Bell and Sternberg (2001), found that the more shocking and disgusting the counter-intuitive content, the more likely that their subjects reported a conviction to pass them on. Here, what Berger and Heath (2005) called a ‘habitat’, or set of environmental cues that encourage recall, may be important. Ideas with facilitating habitats may enjoy greater success, implying that stronger organizational cultures possess more relevant environmental cues. In addition, there is limited evidence to suggest that cognitive optimality may not only apply to single beliefs, but also to entire belief structures (Boyer, 2001; Norenzayan & Atran, 2002). The mainstay of work on MCI concepts and cognitive optimality has been regarding the transmission of religious concepts (Atran, 2002a,b; Atran & Norenzayan, 2004; Boyer, 2001; 2003; McCauley & Lawson, 2002; Pyysiainen, 2002; 2003; Whitehouse, 2004; 2005). This is because most core religious beliefs, according to Norenzayan and Atran (2002), demand a minimal requirement for the violation of conventional notions about the world. As a consequence, religion enables individuals to imagine ‘minimally impossible worlds’, which serve to release fears concerning mortality. From this viewpoint, religious beliefs are memorable because they contain ideas about supernatural agents that are inherently counterintuitive, violating natural expectations about the world and its contents. On the other hand, religious beliefs are intractably grounded in factual and common-sense assumptions associated with human motivations, emotions, desires and needs. Thus, the key to the transmission of religious beliefs is their optimal combination of attention-grabbing counterintuitive concepts within the context of largely intuitive idea sets. In religion, a ghost may be able to pass through solid objects—a counter-intuitive notion—but they also satisfy most intuitive expectations in terms of their personhood, motivations and other sensory systems (Boyer, 1994; Sperber, 1997). Sport organizations however, as we observed in the previous chapter, are not churches and their cultures are not religions. Nevertheless, that culture and its associated belief structures impact the behavior of organizational members is beyond dispute (Beyer & Trice, 1984; Beyer & Trice, 1993; Denison, 1996; Hatch, 1993; Schein, 1985; 1988; Trice & Beyer, 1984; Yanow, 2000). For example, beliefs such as those concerning a manager’s view about the controllability of organizations as well as their own efficacy can have a significant impact on their choice of strategy (Daft & Weick, 1984). Organizational positioning has been linked to managements’ beliefs about the environment (Swan, 1997), while the process of innovation in organizations can also be affected by managers’ beliefs and assumptions (Boyer & Ramble, 2001; Norenzayan & Atran, 2002; Norenzayan, Atran, Faulkner, & Schaller, 2006). Investigating the role of MCI concepts in the transmission of beliefs in organizations warrants

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further study because it has a demonstrated utility in other contexts such as religion, but is little understood in the organizational arena. Sport organizations appear, therefore, to provide a useful site to understand cognitive optimality for several reasons. Sport organizations are ready sources of stories (Smith & Shilbury, 2004), although that is not to suggest that there is evidence suggesting sporting contexts generate more stories than other forms of organization. In addition, sport organizations offer a site for the expression of counter-intuitive concepts. While again, no empirical evidence indicates that sport encourages more counter-intuitive concepts than other contexts, sociological studies (e.g. Womack, 1992), demonstrate that athletes’ rituals and superstitions, like wearing particular numbers on their uniforms or following certain procedures before a game, are overtly counter-intuitive. Sport organizations provide insightful cases for observing how MCI concepts work. As Sosis and Alcorta (2003) observed, the belief in a supernatural agent does not fully differentiate religion from commonplace perceptual experience or from other beliefs that do not command ritualistic and dogmatic practices. Pyysiainen (2003) proposed that the study of religion scientifically means explaining how certain counter-intuitive representations come to be selected as objects of serious belief. As Durkheim (1961[1915]) proposed, society holds shared beliefs that are celebrated in sacred rites which increase social cohesion and solidarity. Social institutions like sport organizations exemplify Durkheim’s point on a micro scale where organizational members share common beliefs and interpretations of their own experiences as well as external events. Berger and Luckmann’s (1967) phenomenological approach to the sociology of knowledge is particularly relevant to such a conception. They proposed that behavior in institutions comes about because certain actions are encouraged, reinforced and repeated until they are patterned and habitualized; ingrained in both the performers’ construction of the institution’s identity and the institution’s embodiment in the form of individual action. As a consequence, reality is legitimized through individuals’ ongoing role-playing, leading to a plausible and meaningful social reality. Of particular salience to this work on the composition of organizational stories is Berger and Luckmann’s (1967) suggestion that legitimization is pivotal to the process of transmitting already established institutional meaning to a new generation via systems of symbolic reference: “Language constructs immense edifices of symbolic representation that appear to tower over the reality of everyday life like gigantic presences from another world” (Berger & Luckmann, 1967, p. 55). Within this schema, organizational stories may be considered central to the “social distribution of knowledge” (Berger & Luckmann, 1967, p. 146). Stories are scripts organizational members’ learn in order to be apprenticed and habituated into their social reality. The premise that symbolic representations guiding meaning-making can canalize organizational behavior is consistent with the more contemporary view that social behavior in institutions responds to normative and regulative forces as well as the cognitive and cultural. Thus, to Scott (2001), the cognitive elements reflect the internal interpretive processes that individuals experience when exposed to the informal beliefs, values, and norms, as well as the formal legal, political and economic structures. An advantage of studying organizational stories is that they offer an insight into the effect of formal and informal structures as seen through the covert inner workings of individuals engaged in the process of constructing meaning. And, as we have argued throughout this book, meaning forms the foundations for identity and culture.

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ORGANIZATIONAL STORIES AS CULTURAL UNITS Stories take the form of an oral or written performance involving two or more people interpreting past or anticipated experience (Boje, 1991). Stories explain events, simplify behavioral expectations, provide conceptual accounts of organizational phenomena, place characters into context, and generally offer examples that serve as heuristics. It may also be argued that contrasting stories highlight points of contention and diverging cultural priorities or sub-cultures. From an organizational perspective, stories affect behavior by defining characters, sequencing plots, scripting events, and enacting responses to change (Boje, 2001). Their consideration demands attention because they provide insights into the complex social worlds in which management occurs. Contained in organizational stories are both implicit and explicit meanings that impact organizational reality. Browning (2000) observed that stories help individuals to enact their own script within a group. It is a “collective storytelling system in which the performance of stories is a key part of members’ sense-making and a means to allow them to supplement individual memories with institutional memory” (Boje, 1991, p. 106). Boje (2001), like Weick (1995) argued that stories play an essential sense-making function for organizational members attempting to find their way in complex environments full of ambiguity and uncertainty. Often for individuals, this sense-making occurs retrospectively through stories and their interpretation. Gabriel (2000; 2004) observed that organizational storytelling has conventionally been considered subservient to organizational history. He argued that while stories do not accurately reflect reality, they remain salient shapers of meaning. The view has been strongly influenced by postmodern accounts of storytelling that acknowledge the presence of multiple realities and potentially countless stories, many of which are fragile and susceptible to a myriad of interpretations (Boje, 2001; Czarniawska, 2004; Gabriel, 2004; Hardy, Lawrence & Grant, 2005). The stream of story analysis that Boje has pioneered takes the view that organizations cannot be registered as a single story, but rather as a plurality of stories and interpretations that compete in a struggle to represent the diverse, uncertain and sometimes chaotic organizational world. That is not to suggest that defining stories is a straightforward undertaking. Gabriel (2004), for example, considers Boje’s version of stories to be fragments of more important narratives that contain a clear plot and the causal resolution to problems. Czarniawska (2004) acknowledged the relevance of social context, story fragments, and forms of emergent storytelling in narratives. In the narrative conception, stories precede narratives; they exist in a kind of void between coherence and incoherence where there is a lack of a resolved personal significance that has been constructed within the social setting. Stories are accounts of incidents and events upon which narration may be layered. Swap et al. (2001) defined an organizational story as a detailed narrative of past management actions, employee interactions, or other intra- or extra-organizational events. They specified that such stories are typically communicated informally and contain a plot, characters and a resolution. Tyler (2006) observed that stories identify new realities, unexpected dilemmas and creative possibilities. Accordingly, they provide symbolic reference to activity and ideas that are troublesome to access or specify lucidly. A reasonable consensus may be found in the literature to support the view that stories are conduits for sense-making and competing perspectives. The degree to which organizations are

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stories, or are nothing more than their stories, is less certain. The extreme of this view holds that organizations only exist as stories in the sense that they are created through discourse (Czarniawska, 2004). Hopkinson (2003) has argued that narratives construct organizations through individual constructions of self. Notwithstanding the symbolic or literal nature of the relationship between organizations and their stories, it is reasonable to suggest that they do sequence cultural history in ways that facilitate future action (Boje, 1991; 2001; Gabriel, 1995; 2000; Gardner & Avolio, 1998; Weick, 1995). Furthermore, it has been suggested that stories stimulate vicarious experiences, reconcile the past with the present, pattern predictions for the future, encourage the projection of personal agency into organizational activity, provide interpretations of events, and channel meaning (Nair, 2002). Poulton (2005) advocated that understanding an organization should begin with its ‘genesis’ story as it represents the central metaphor framing employees’ perceptions of the organization. For Nair (2002), stories allow common thoughts and messages to be repeated in novel ways bypassing conversation and encouraging listeners to infer a general truth rather than pronouncing it baldly. From this perspective, stories may be seen to share norms and values, cultivate trust, share tacit information, and stimulate an emotional connection (Denning, 2000; 2002; Gargiulo, 2005; 2006). Gabriel (2000) wrote: “Stories are narratives with plots and characters, generating emotion in narrator and audience, through a poetic elaboration of symbolic material” (p. 239). Thus legitimate stories: 1) involve characters in a predicament; 2) occur in a sequence which subsequently reflects the plot and the salient features of the characters; 3) employ symbolism; 4) utilize poetic embellishment and embroidery; 5) have a discernable beginning, middle and end; and 6) communicate enduring truths beyond mere facts. Some assumptions can be drawn from the preceding discussion. First, there is evidence to suggest that organizational stories are units of culture that contain important information about organizations and the behavior of their members. Second, while the content of stories may vary, most generic definitions of stories such as Gabriel’s (2000; 2004), assume that they can exist in any context and will possess the same basic definitional properties. Third, interpretation is essential to understanding the contextual importance and meaning of organizational stories. Finally, less is known about how stories propagate and why some stories are memorable and recurrent and others are not. Thus, Boyer’s (1994; 2000) cognitive optimality offers a useful proposition to explore in the context of organizational stories.

DIAGNOSING SPORT ORGANIZATIONAL STORIES Boyer’s (1994; 2000) cognitive optimality hypothesis predicts that the presence of MCI concepts is pivotal to the success of concept transmission. Stories containing the right balance of counter-intuitive features will be remembered more accurately and retold more frequently than those with exclusively intuitive features. However, Boyer’s (2000) hypothesis and his operationalized template for identifying cognitive optimality (Boyer & Ramble, 2001), do not provide an a priori structure in which the composition of stories can be analyzed. After all, stories are socially constructed and subject to diverse interpretations by organizational members as well as researchers (Deetz, 1996). Thus, socially constructed stories contain social meanings that cannot be identified objectively (Schwartzman, 1993). Stories should be

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treated as symbols of a socially constructed culture rather than as its objective properties. Nevertheless, a template for identifying cognitively optimal stories can be helpful too. We can start with Sperber’s (1996) memorability test, in which memorability as demonstrated by unprompted transmission is a necessary pre-condition for the success of an idea. As a result, we should be most interested in those stories recounted by organizational members without prompting. In addition, in order to qualify as a story, Gabriel’s (2000; 2004) six story constituents might help us focus on the most insightful stories: 1) involves characters in a predicament; 2) occurs in a sequence which subsequently reflects the plot and the salient features of the characters; 3) employs symbolism; 4) utilizes poetic embellishment and embroidery; 5) has a discernable beginning, middle and end; and 6) communicates enduring truths beyond mere facts. In the organizational setting, counter-intuitive refers to circumstances, events or behaviors that are described contrary to intuitive presumptions about domains of reality. For organizational members a domain of reality is seen as a cognitive construct where boundaries of behavior are well-defined and understood, leading individuals to make robust predictions about the behavior of others and the causality associated with events. In the organizational context, counter-intuitive is concerned with occurrences that depart significantly from intuitive expectations about reality and its contents. Stories should be taken seriously when they fit with Boyer and Ramble’s (2001) domain-breaking template. Thus, stories represent salient cultural artifacts when they meet the following criteria: 1) a pointer to a particular domain or category concept; 2) an explicit representation of a violation of intuitive expectations, either, i. a breach of relevant expectations for the category, or ii. a transfer of expectations associated with another category; 3) a link to (non-violated) default expectations for the category; 4) a slot for additional cultural information; and 5) a lexical label (Boyer & Ramble, 2001). An example is instructive in explaining how a template like this can be wielded. A domain pointer refers to a category describing the general class to which something belongs. A sporting uniform such as a jersey belongs to the category of clothing, which in turn is associated with a set of intuitive expectations about what clothes are and what can be expected from them. Second, a violation of intuitive expectations can come about as a result of two possibilities: an unexpected feature of the item compared to what would intuitively be expected from something fitting that category, such as a sport jersey that gives its wearer additional skill or luck; or when the expectations of the item are transferred from another category, such as a hockey stick that is given a name and addressed as if it were a sentient being. Third, a link to the default or non-violated expectations refers to the performance of the item in accordance with normal expectations for its category. In the case of the sport jersey this criterion is fulfilled if it behaves in all other ways as a normal item of clothing. Fourth, the potential for additional cultural information is met when the specific new information can be attached to the item. For a sport jersey, this additional cultural information might come in the form of a particular style, color, logo and number reflective of a team and player affiliation. Fifth, the lexical label is fulfilled by the specific name given to an item, like Kobe Bryant’s jersey, even though it is owned and worn by a sport fan. In summary, stories with MCI concepts contain content describing the behavior of something or someone that defies intuitive expectations in a clear way but otherwise behaves in a way consistent with what might be expected of any example from that category. Some examples appear in table 8.1.

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Table 8.1. Story Template Examples

Story Template Features Domain/ Category Domain Violation (counterintuitive property)

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Nonviolation (intuitive property)

Category Agency

Membership

Ritual

Unclassified

Clothing

Individual best-interests

Singing

Player recognition

Computer A player receives magic skill conferred by number

Organizational success The rewards of belonging go to the individual who sacrificed the most for the team but actually lost out personally A computer fails A change is resisted by ‘deliberately’ at an organizational members important moment even though it is well accepted that change is essential for success Shirt still worn The individual acts with with normal self-interest in most properties other contexts

Computer operates Most organizational normally almost all members demonstrate a the time personal ability to change Cultural Context

History for previous wearers

The team is considered more important than family or an individual

Label ..

Normal expectation Organizational leaders of computer use have been attempting change for some time with limited success; failure is expected Magic Commitment Animation Change

Groups Rules A failure to sing the No domain-break club song after the last victory has led to defeat in the next match A meeting designed to create efficiency actually causes more hierarchy On other occasions the club song has no performancerelated power

The player who wins the award for best in the club is universally acknowledged as the best player and the award is considered appropriate recognition Groups work A player caught together without using banned causing more substances is groups to need to be suspended and formed publicly named Tradition of singing The award is an the club song after historical marker victory since its of the best ever inception players for the club Meetings are The rules of the required to conduct game and league normal business are sovereign Superstition Meetings

Awards Punishment

TELLING A GOOD STORY In some stories, particularly those associated with the product context—sport—it seems unlikely that story-tellers accept the counter-intuitive, domain-breaking features of their experience. For example, notwithstanding the psychological aspects of performance

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preparation, when an athlete believes that the number they wear affects their skill through an unnamed power, or that the sequence in which they tie their shoelaces will influence their success, then a counter-intuitive concept can be seen to be present within a wider context that is predominantly intuitive. But in many stories, it might be suspected that story-tellers contrive a MCI concept, possibly in order to provide the story with greater impact. After all, a good story needs a good hook. For example, consider a story about the plight of an unlucky employee whose imminently due, quarterly financial report was deleted when the computer he was using inexplicably re-booted and did not contain any recent files when restarted. That this employee would consider the failure a personal misfortune beyond normal chance and was the victim of a conspiracy orchestrated by his own personal computer, may ostensibly reflect a domain-breaking registration of agency to an inanimate object. However, it is unlikely that the individual in question or the narrator of the story would actually believe that the computer had a mind of its own and took satisfaction in erasing its own hard disk shortly before its owner completed an important report. But since it may seem that way sometimes to minds that seek agency as a matter of normal cognitive functioning, the inclusion of MCI concepts in stories can add a distinctive flavor. Exaggeration is a colloquially-accepted property of an entertaining story, and Boyer’s (1994; 2000) cognitive optimality hypothesis places this lay assumption within a theoretical structure. What Boyer (1994; 2000) and others who have worked with the theory thus far have not considered is the extent to which a MCI concept can be knowingly self-generated and contrived to add distinctiveness and consequently memorability to a story. Many stories in sport organizations revolve around specific aspects of the product context, or the nature of the sports themselves. In addition, it is also common to hear stories focusing on the organizational setting, independent of the product nature. In some instances the former has implications for the latter. For example, imagine that some regular season supporters insist on sitting in particular locations in the home venue because they believe that certain positions are lucky and would therefore have an effect on the outcome of the game. Some sport consumers can be notoriously difficult to please because their conception of what is lucky can be fluid. There are numerous other examples of MCI concepts appearing in organizational stories. Examples include the perception of athletes and players as super-human, such as the player who ‘never’ misses, the boss who can read the mind of guilty employees, leaders viewed in both sub- and super-human terms, and forms of gambling and decision-making where luck is determined by personal variables and it is just a matter of time before success is realized. These examples do not necessarily constitute MCI concepts until they get placed into a story where they can be manipulated in order to become domain-breaking. Many stories describing organizational events incorporate contrived MCI concepts. A good example is a meeting that was supposed to devise a more streamlined management structure, but actually recommended more hierarchy. Imagine a story explaining this meeting becoming so exaggerated that it might be considered domain-breaking despite the likelihood that story-tellers would not actually believe that their own story was literally true. On the surface, exaggeration invokes a form of domain-break in order to enhance the story’s entertainment value. In an organizational context, however, it is also relevant to consider how a pejorative domain-break reinforces a cultural agenda. Using a story to portray a serious meeting designed to improve organizational performance as one resembling a ‘Dilbert’ cartoon reflects a deliberate subversion of the truth. We think that employing MCI concepts in organizational stories may

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be indicative of deep cultural values and discontinuities. Their composition and their specific use in sport organizations may highlight their role as revealing cultural markers. Some noteworthy aspects of stories mirror the organizational psychology inherent in rituals. For example, agency is consistent with Leslie’s (1994; 1996) notion of Theory of Mind, and Dennett’s (1987; 2006) presentation of intentionality, where it is assumed that minds treat objects and phenomena in the world as agents with specific motivations and sufficient logic to systematically pursue their goals. To Bering and Johnson (2005), agency mechanisms provide humans with the ability to generate inferences about the behavior of other people. They suspect that the capacity to generate theory of mind has led humans to attribute meaning to random luck or circumstance. This cognitive capacity may help to explain the occurrence of agency in stories containing MCI concepts, given that it encourages the layering of explanation and intention over other individuals, and meaning over events. In order to recount an effective and satisfying story, it is essential to include details about the intentions of protagonists and attribute meaning to their actions. Sacrifice also appears commonly in effective cultural stories. It has overlaps with the anthropological concepts of commitment and signaling theory (Sosis, 2003). Cost-signaling assumes that group cooperation is increased when costly signals are required for group members to engender trust and mutual belief. The theory maintains that costly signaling diminishes deception and enhances social cohesion. The more costly the behaviors and commitments required, the greater the degree of commitment and social cohesion that will be observed by organizational members (Irons, 2001; Sosis & Alcorta, 2003). The theory of cost-signaling provides an explanation as to why humans engage in organizational behaviors that cost them in time, energy, resources, as well as physical and emotional trauma. Sosis argued that the costs an outsider would have to endure in order to gain the rewards of membership to a group are too high unless they are accompanied by genuine belief. Moreover, in order for such counter-intuitive behavior to be accepted and propagated in an organization, it would have to become entrenched in its cultural repertoire, of which stories play a pivotal role.

RITUAL CONNECTIONS With rituals in mind, Whitehouse (2004) proposed that memorable ideas and recurrent concepts in stories take advantage of two particular aspects of memory in order to enhance recall and subsequent transmission: repetition and arousal. The former is straightforward in the sense that more exposure leads to better recall. The latter is important because the more emotionally stimulating a piece of information or event, the easier it is to remember. Ritual performance amplifies belief for the simple reason that to avoid cognitive dissonance nonbelievers will either change their beliefs or stop engaging in the ritual. Absorbing beliefs through repeated exposure to rituals is a process of internalization that provides signals of commitment to a group. In this sense, the presence of rituals in stories is an effective mechanism for their communication to those who do not necessarily practice them, and for those who do in order to reaffirm their importance. We have previously noted that identifying overt cultural artifacts such as symbols and rituals works because they can be used to extrapolate the deeper meanings they represent

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(Detert, Schroeder, & Mauriel, 2000). From this perspective the deeper structures such as values and meanings are prioritized over their more superficial ‘artifacts’ such as rituals. This view can be traced to Schein (1984) who in turn operated within a Jungian (Jung, 1968) framework. In this case, organizational stories use the description of rituals as a vehicle for the expression of MCI concepts, thus reinforcing the view that rituals act as a useful mechanism to convey deeper values. For example, telling stories about rituals may increase their memorability because it provides an easy vehicle for fabricating or amplifying potential MCI concepts. Being exposed to a great story about an exciting ritual might be more memorable than actually being involved in a banal ritual personally. Everyday experience illustrates that secular rituals associated with sport, health, work and relationships can be profoundly emotional, and do engender a sense of community amongst practitioners. There are numerous examples of secular organizations that impregnate their ideological positions with supernatural features and other unfalsifiable concepts. Governments and armies have employed supernatural propositions to strengthen their dogma, often supported by unverifiable claims of brotherhood, freedom and certain victory. To this list we may add sporting organizations. The use of unsubstantiated and unfalsifiable ideas may be a central condition for developing powerful communal belief, identity and solidarity (Sosis & Ruffle, 2004). Finally, one of the key challenges associated with the use of MCI concepts is the determination of what is domain-breaking and what is intuitively expected. To some extent, we all would predict, or at least be unsurprised, by some counter-intuitive behavior simply on the basis that we expect humans to be unpredictable and irrational at times. Sport is a good exemplification of this ambiguity. For most people it is counter-intuitive to spontaneously decide to get a permanent and obvious tattoo of a sport team that they follow. On the other hand, most people have also encountered serious sport fans and perhaps would not be surprised to hear about the strength of their allegiance. Similarly, it is counter-intuitive to drink until alcohol poisoning makes one physically ill, but it is a common enough feature in society. It may be worth remembering that these very behaviors are well known because they are spoken about through stories, which are easily remembered and passed on. Context is also relevant as what might be considered counter-intuitive in a commercial business, may not be in a sporting organization. Alternatively, what constitutes a MCI concept within an organizational story could be directly relevant to the strength or ‘thickness’ of a sport organization’s culture.

CULTURAL THICKNESS Strength of culture refers to its intensity or pervasiveness (Schein, 1997). From the earliest studies of organizational culture (e.g. Pettigrew, 1979) it was argued that thick cultures more readily command outcomes such as unity, commitment and co-ordination, culminating in improved performance (Detert, Schroeder, & Mauriel, 2000). Although there is little reason to conclude that sport organizations possess qualitatively distinctive cultures (Smith & Shilbury, 2004), there is some evidence that sport organizations tend to generate thick cultures (Colyer, 2000; Lee, 1989; Scott, 1997; Smart & Wolfe, 2000; Smith & Stewart, 1995). Just as Wallace, Hunt and Richards’ (1999) study showed that membership to certain

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organizations with thick cultures like the police can override prevailing cultural forces in the wider environment, belonging to a sport organization might encourage the use of MCI concept stories in greater proportions than similar non-sport organizations. The relationship between the sporting context, cultural strength and density of MCI concept stories is worth exploring. If cognitive optimality holds, stronger cultures encourage (and conversely are bolstered by) more memorable stories, which implies that MCI concepts will be found in greater density in sport organizations in general, and thicker sport cultures, in particular. A salient artifact emerging from cultural studies of sporting organizations is that they may be mapped using the cultural characteristics and features that have been employed with non-sporting organizations. The commonality of cultural dimensions implies perhaps precipitously that sport organizations are culturally undifferentiated from non-sport organizations. While the jury is still out on this pivotal question, the available evidence (Colyer, 2000; Lee, 1989; Scott, 1997; Smart & Wolfe, 2000; Smith & Shilbury, 2004; Smith & Stewart, 1995) suggests that although the overarching dimensions of organizational culture may be ubiquitous, generalities are likely to exist in the expression and weighting of the dimensions in sport organizations. For example, Smith and Shilbury (2004) reported that it was at the sub-dimensional level where the unique aspects of sporting culture became manifest. The key theoretical potential of cognitive optimality lies in its treatment of the cultural transmission of information. Sport organizations are socially constructed, contrived realities that encourage members toward systematically collusive beliefs and behaviors. However, the mechanisms that operate upon individuals are enigmatic, often in organizational analyses falling under the mysterious label of culture. Cognitive optimality provides a theory that assists in understanding the mechanism through which the cultural transmission of information actually occurs. It begins with the assumption derived from cognitive psychology that minds find some information easier to acquire and hold than others. Thus, it operationalizes the mechanism of cultural transmission as a memorability test. Memorability places restrictions on the cultural transmission of concepts. All else being equal, a more memorable concept enjoys a transmission advantage over a less memorable concept. Cognitive optimality hypothesizes that the composition of cultural concepts affects memorability, and specifically predicts that the presence of a counter-intuitive concept within a cultural unit of information that is otherwise intuitive will have a transmission advantage. Cultural information becomes privileged when it is mostly common-sense, but with a slice of non-sense thrown in as well. The use of cognitive optimality as a theoretical device in cultural stories offers great scope for yielding relevant data about the way sport organizations are shaped by their rich traditions and the sometimes irrational attachments and beliefs they stimulate. If sport organizations are to be differentiated from other institutions with the aim of identifying their specialized management needs, it is necessary for both scholars and practitioners to be able to accurately diagnose their cultural idiosyncrasies. Given that there if sufficient evidence to believe that stories are pivotal cultural transmitters in sport organizations, cognitive optimality provides a theoretical approach that is particularly relevant to sport management practitioners. Cognitive optimality predicts a higher presence of MCI concepts in the cultural information of organizations with stronger cultures and more stories. To extend this speculation, we would expect that sporting organizations, in general, possess a greater density of MCI concepts than non-sporting organizations and that the relationship between

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counterintuitive and intuitive is influenced by a greater number of MCI concept stories. In other words, MCI concepts might provide an important piece of the cultural puzzle regarding sport organizations and the conundrum that they appear to possess few if any indigenous cultural markers and yet generate qualitatively different allegiances.

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CONCLUSION The impact of a domain-breaking or MCI concept may be linked to memorability because it provides an anchor around which a story may be told. It also helps connect a story with drama and emotion. Atran (2002) proposed that counter-intuitive concepts are salient because they lead to strong beliefs that are easy to remember and pass along. As Dennett (2006) so bluntly put it, “Some nonsense is more attention-grabbing that other nonsense” (p. 119). To speculate, the most contagious beliefs may be those linked to highly visible intentional agents, such as senior managers, the immediate boss, or elite athletes. In addition, effective stories are reinforced by descriptions of extreme ritualized behavior. Here, beliefs are rehearsed and reproduced by proxy. Also, certain MCI concepts providing clear groupmembership markers of commitment are optimally suited to repetition because they offer scope for social advancement. MCI concepts embedded in stories from sport organizations might provide an accessible cultural surrogate. Moreover, the deliberate manipulation of domains to create breaks may reflect strategic expressions about, and reactions to, dominant cultural values. The use of MCI concepts in stories could help organizational researchers in sport to locate pivotal cultural markers, while sport managers would benefit from understanding how organizational members wield and transmit stories to emphasize their own cultural interpretations. Cognitive optimality, as elucidated here through stories, leads cultural managers to a series of important propositions: 1) There is a cognitive component to the cultural transmission of concepts; 2) The presence of minimally counter-intuitive content may be connected to memorability and therefore the successful transmission of cultural information; 3) The use of MCI concepts in stories may serve as a portal for understanding storytellers’ interpretations of culture and therefore the construction of their organizational realities; 4) The application of MCI concepts in stories may serve as a surrogate for behavioral prescription thereby providing organizational members with the opportunity to learn cultural norms through a non-threatening and efficient mechanism rather than through personal experience; 5) The memorability of any story can be amplified through the deliberate insertion of MCI concepts; and 6) MCI concepts could provide a mechanism for strengthening cultural values by offering belonging and solidarity through communal acceptance of unsubstantiated but unfalsifiable beliefs. Stories can be used in numerous ways to provide practical insights about organizational culture and how dominant values and beliefs might be influenced. Stories represent indicative cultural markers. Several possibilities can be explored. First, a sport organization might be subject to an assessment of organizational culture through a well-established mechanism like a prominent instrument or a suite of qualitative approaches. These results would make an interesting comparison with an assessment of dominant cultural values that arise from organizational stories. In particular, the cognitive optimality theory predicts that there should

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be a correspondence between common content in MCI concepts and dominant cultural priorities. An example can be found in religion where the most common domain-breaks are associated with supernatural agents. Second, the cultural content of MCI concept stories could be compared with the cultural content of non-MCI concept stories. It would also be interesting to note the life-span of nonMCI concept and MCI concept stories. If MCI concepts do play a role in story longevity and transmission, then it would ultimately be salient to observe whether the sporting context is an influential factor. In short, are sport organizational stories more susceptible to MCI concepts than those stories from other organizational settings? The relevance of the sport context may be helpful in differentiating the management of sport organizations from other types of organization. MCI concepts are salient to understanding the interaction between cognitive activity and the cultural transmission of information. As Sperber (2006, p. 52) declared, “Culture is the precipitate of cognition and communication in a human population.” Of particular interest is that the recall of cultural concepts is a constructive process where both prosaic and exotic material is reframed in terms of familiar ‘schemata’. In terms of work in cognitive psychology, this is not a new observation (see for example, Bergman & Roediger, 1999). However, the presence of MCI concepts—where elements of a story contradict intuitive and conceptual expectations—should undermine script structures. In the case of stories from sport organizations, MCI concepts are neither peripheral nor disruptive. We suggest that MCI concepts provide a focal point for stories and may even act as a mechanism of cultural canalization.

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Poulton, M. S. (2005). Organizational storytelling, ethics and morality: How stories frame limits of behavior in organizations. Electronic Journal of Business Ethics and Organization Studies, 10(2), 4-9. Pyysiainen, I. (2002). Religion and the counter-intuitive. In I. Pyysiainen & V. Anttonen (Eds.), Current approaches in the cognitive science of religion (pp. 110-132). London: Continuum. Pyysiainen, I. (2003). How religion works: Towards a new cognitive science of religion. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill. Pyysiäinen, I., Lindeman, M., & Honkela, T. (2003). Counterintuitiveness as the hallmark of religiosity. Religion, 33(4), 341-355. Schein, E. (1984). Coming to a new awareness of organizational culture. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Schein, E. (1985). How culture forms, develops and changes. In R.H. Kilman, M.J. Saxton, R. Serpa & Associates (Eds.), Gaining control of the corporate culture (pp. 17-43). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Schein, E. (1988). Organizational psychology (3rd ed.). NJ: Prentice Hall: Englewood Cliffs. Schein, E. (1997). Organizational culture and leadership (3rd ed.). San Francisco: JosseyBass. Schwartzman, H. B. (1993). Ethnography in organizations. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Scott, D. (1997). Managing organizational culture in intercollegiate athletic organizations. Quest, 49, 403-415. Scott, R.W. (2001). Institutions and organizations (2nd edn). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Smart, D., & Wolfe, R. (2000). Examining sustainable competitive advantage in intercollegiate athletics: A resource based view. Journal of Sport Management, 14, 133153. Smith, A., & Shilbury, D. (2004). Mapping cultural dimensions in Australian sporting organizations. Sport Management Review, 7(2), 133-165. Smith, A., & Stewart, R. (1995, December). Sporting club cultures: An exploratory case study. Australian Leisure, pp. 31-37. Sosis, R. (2003). Why aren’t we all Hutterites? Costly signaling theory and religious behavior. Human Relations, 14(2), 91-127. Sosis, R., & Alcorta, C. S. (2003). Signaling, solidarity and the sacred: The evolution of religious behavior. Evolutionary Anthropology, 12, 264-274. Sosis, R., & Ruffle, B. (2004). Evolution of cooperation: Field experiments on Israeli kibbutzim. Socioeconomic Aspects of Human Behavioral Ecology: Research in Economic Anthropology, 23, 89-117. Sperber, D. (1996). Explaining culture: A naturalistic approach. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Sperber, D. (1997). Intuitive and reflective beliefs. Mind and Language, 12, 67-83. Sperber, D. (2006). The epidemiology of beliefs: A naturalistic approach. In D.J. Slone (Ed), Religion and cognition (pp. 36-53). London: Equinox Publishing Ltd. Swan, J. (1997). Using cognitive mapping in management research: Decisions about technical innovation. British Journal of Management 8(2), 183-198. Swap, W., Leonard, D., Shields, M., & Abrams, L. (2001). Using mentoring and storytelling to transfer knowledge in the workplace. Journal of Management Information Systems, 18(1), 95-114.

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Trice, H. M., & Beyer, J. M. (1984). Studying organizational cultures through rites and ceremonials. Academy of Management Review, 9(4), 653-669. Tyler, J. A. (2006). Storytelling and organizations: Introduction to the special issue. Storytelling, Self, Society, 2(2), 1- 4. Wallace, J., Hunt, J., & Richards, C. (1999). The relationship between organisational culture, organisational climate, and managerial values. International Journal of Public Sector Management, 12, 548-564. Weick, K. E. (1995). Sensemaking in organizations. London: Sage. Whitehouse, H. (2004). Modes of religiosity: A cognitive theory of religious transmission. Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira Press. Whitehouse, H. (2005). The cognitive foundations of religiosity. In H. Whitehouse & R. N. McCauley (Eds.), Mind and religion: The psychological and cognitive foundations of religion (pp. 207-232). Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. Womack, M. (1992). Why athletes need ritual: A study of magic among professional athletes. In S. J. Hoffman (Ed.), Sport and religion (pp. 191-202). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics Books. Yanow, D. (2000). Seeing organizational learning: A ‘cultural’ view. Organization, 7(2), 247-268.

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Chapter 9

CULTIVATING SPORT CULTURE

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INTRODUCTION Let us take a moment to come full circle with our position on organizational culture and its development through the escalator. Many contemporary theories on organizational change have been influenced in some way by Kurt Lewin’s seminal three-phase model, which still enjoys some exposure despite being proposed over 60 years ago. Lewin (1947) argued that in order for change to occur, the current situation must be deconstructed (unfreeze), the new way of things introduced (move or change), and the situation reconstructed (refreeze). Implicit in this model is the acceptance that change will be resisted and that resistance must be overcome. Accordingly, Lewin prescribed three, escalating levels of management activity to introduce an organizational change. First, managers can replace their employees, and in so doing assume that more productive skills, values, attitudes, and eventually behavior, will accompany the newly recruited. Second, managers can modify organizational structures and systems, reward systems, reporting relationships, and work designs. Finally, the deepest level of change occurs when organizational culture, climate and the interpersonal transform, including how often employees work together, how conflict is managed, and how decisions are made. Although we agree with Levin’s timeless observations, we argued that the priorities should be reversed. Culture represents the foundation of an organization’s performance and the identity it forges impacts upon systems and structures as well as employees. In fact, we have argued that unless culture occupies the central focus of leaders’ minds, changes to any other part of the organization will ultimately prove futile. On the other hand, the right identity—one that holds strong and fits appropriately—will shape all other aspects of an organization in its image. In this chapter, we re-connect some of the concepts introduced earlier, and highlight important variables in the establishment of a functional identity. Our approach in this book has been based on the concept of the ‘culture escalator’. We argued that it offers a useful method for thinking about what knowledge we need in order to cultivate a strong and appropriate culture in sport organizations. Our premise holds that organizational culture represents such a vast and complex area of management that it demands a sophisticated response. Moreover, managers seeking to influence culture must draw from a deep reservoir of knowledge. We think that the best way of developing this essential knowledge lies with an escalating approach, where new concepts provide modular building blocks upon solid foundations.

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We laid the most basic foundation in Chapter one, Exploring Sport Culture. Here we outlined the nature of sport organizational culture and explained why it should command our attention. As part of this argument, we introduced the relationships between organizational culture and identity, and organizational structure, strategy, behavior and performance. Environment, including the national and industrial context, resides at the epicenter of these relationships. In fact, a strong fit between culture and context delivers a functional culture. But that does not mean that an identity enabling a competitive edge in one fiercely competitive environment will deliver the same results elsewhere. Finally, we used the notion of cultural literacy to emphasize how the right cultural knowledge will directly affect organizational performance. Building on the fundamental information from the initial chapter, Chapter two, Understanding Sport Culture, provided a macro analysis of sporting culture. Our purpose was to introduce the first level of sport-specific knowledge required in order to manage culture successfully. The chapter reviews sport’s cultural features making it both commercially special and culturally unique. Although we suspect that sport’s cultural features have been overstated, novel features including a combination of sport’s relentless corporatization and its cultural importance remain essential aspects of any sport manager’s knowledge base. We noted that sport leagues, competitions and clubs possess idiosyncratic cultures. For the best cultural outcomes, sometimes counterintuitive management responses need to be implemented. In Chapter three, Contextualizing Sport Culture, we described the micro dimension of sport’s distinctive industrial context. We focused on the different relationships that fans construct with their favorite sports, teams, and events. These relationship preferences shift and flex as moderating factors and contextual variables exert an influence. For example, psychological, social, cultural and economic factors influence sport fans’ behaviors. We showed how consumer needs and expectations shape culture, while at the same time, organizational culture affects consumers’ behaviors. By Chapter four, Conceptualizing Sport Culture, we were ready to provide some heavier theoretical material. In this chapter, we dissected the literature on organizational theory, culture, and identity, especially in application to sport organizations. Our lesson from the mass of studies investigating culture from various angles was the inescapable conclusion that developing sport culture should constitute a priority for any performance-driven manager. In Chapter five, Identifying Sport Culture, we offered a priority position to the role of organizational identity. As part of this approach, we emphasized the importance of cultural mapping in order to diagnose the beliefs and values of organizational members. Mapping pays attention to visible artifacts such as symbols, heroes and rituals. At the same time, it seeks to reveal the more covert aspects of culture, such as values and assumptions. Our sport cultural mapping explained how to chart any organizational identity while specifying which areas require attention for change. We claimed that organizational identity represents the social glue binding the interactions of organizational members to a common psychological experience. Identity creates shared meaning and purpose in organizational life, offering an interpretive framework from which we can explain how organizational members make sense out of their experiences. Chapter five also tackled how culture and identity affect organizational structures, strategies, and behaviors, and how they might be changed. Organizations must combine a strong culture and identity matching the environmental

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context. Finally, we explained numerous generic cultural typologies as well as a sport-specific mapping diagnostic. Culture does not operate in a vacuum. In response, Chapter six, Hardwiring Sport Culture, explored how the mind’s natural properties reveal why certain elements of sport culture have gained traction. We used evolutionary psychology to examine how human behavior has been programmed into the brain, feeding both personal and organizational identity. Sport meets some primal needs, and culture management needs to reflect these deep impulses. Chapter seven, Practicing Sport Culture, explained the power of organizational rituals for shaping culture. We illustrate how managers can wield rituals to affect major cultural shifts. Rituals hold both a symbolic and functional role in organizations. We detailed how rituals constitute a rich engagement between an organization and its employees, simultaneously reinforcing prevailing cultural values, but also sometimes undermining them. Organizational rituals also add symbolic meaning to work. We hypothesized that rituals canalize culture by channeling ideas, emotions and behaviors in line with cultural norms. Nothing in the sport manager’s arsenal is more important that understanding how to use rituals to either entrench existing cultural values or transform them. Cultural understanding stems from successfully translating information into 9. Cultivating meaning by utilizing the essential cultural knowledge outlined in the sport Sport Culture culture escalator Stories and narratives offer portals for viewing organizational members’ 8. Transmitting Sport social constructions of their environments, and may be manipulated to Culture enhance specific cultural values Rituals hold both a symbolic and functional role in sport 7. Practicing Sport Culture organizations and possess an unparalleled power to either entrench existing cultural values or transform them Sport meets some primal needs, and culture 6. Hardwiring Sport Culture management needs to reflect these deep impulses Identity creates shared meaning and purpose 5. Identifying Sport Culture in organizational life, representing the outward display of cultural values Sport culture is revealed through 4. Conceptualizing Sport Culture artifacts, symbols, heroes, rituals, values and assumptions Sport consumers and 3. Contextualizing Sport Culture markets affect cultural decisions Sport cultures 2. Understanding Sport Culture are unique Culture 1. Exploring Sport Culture drives success Figure 9.1. Using the Sport Culture Escalator.

Taking rituals a step further, in Chapter eight, Transmitting Sport Culture, we described how and why organizational stories help to understand and transmit organizational culture. We explored how organizational stories offer portals for viewing organizational members’

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social constructions of their environments. Our contribution included tools for better understanding sport organizations, their cultures and the behaviors communicated in stories. At the same time, we outlined the most effective method of constructing memorable, easily transmitted stories for influencing culture. Figure 9.1 summarizes this book’s chief lessons in the form of the Sport Culture Escalator.

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THE PROCESSES OF CULTURAL CHANGE Researchers disagree, often vehemently, about what culture means, how it operates, what phenomena should be studied, how they should be studied, and what to do in order to stimulate cultural change. Our approach places a heavy emphasis upon understanding context and making accurate cultural diagnoses. Armed with a strong concept of current identity, we have argued that rituals and stories present the most powerful intervention sites for change. Leaders can pontificate about change and values, structure can be modified, and new employees can be hired. But despite such actions, identity can remain steadfast and resistant to influence. Our resolution lies with an understanding of the deeper meanings that accompany ritualized activities in an organization, and the stories that propagate and reinforce them. Even simple changes to rituals can have a profound effect on an organization’s identity. In order to appreciate why our approach is effective, consider Meyerson and Martin’s (1994) instructive cultural framework. They suggest that culture can be interpreted on the basis of three major perspectives: integration, differentiation and fragmentation. The integration perspective focuses attention on consistency and congruence of policies and practices within an organization as members are confronted with problems to solve. The problem solving approaches commonly adopted by members offer a window through which values can be interpreted. In contrast, the differentiation perspective assumes that the most revealing cultural elements within an organization are actually the ambiguities and inconsistencies in behavior. These anomalies often represent the difference between espoused values and actual values. The fragmentation perspective takes a slightly different approach in that it concentrates on the ambiguities that permeate organizational settings, such as the presence of reserved parking for executives and an explicitly stated egalitarian ethos, but does not assume that these require change. Fragmentation assumes that cultural manifestations can be interpreted in multiple ways, and change over time and location. The impact of ambiguity may have diverse and inconsistent effects on organizational members. In summary, culture can be changed by: 1) enforcing standardized decision-making approaches to ensure that all members wield the desired values while operating on behalf of the organization; 2) locating inconsistent or ‘inappropriate’ cultural behaviors and weeding them out; or 3) coming to terms with multiple sub-cultures and working with them all to flux and change over time to become more productive. Our approach stands in contrast to these three conventional interpretations. To us cultural success is enabled. It is not enforced through rigid decision-making policies. While we accept that anomalies helpfully define cultural characteristics, their removal only forces dissention and disenfranchised feelings into deeper levels of covert resistance. Also while we accept the presence of multiple sub-cultures that warp and wane over time and circumstance, it is rarely advantageous to tacitly endorse different and competing identities. Instead, we view cultural

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management as a process of organizational ‘individuation’. Once used by Carl Jung and other analytical psychologists in reference to the process through which a person becomes his or her ‘true self’, individuation implies that a fragmented and immature psyche can develop into a well-functioning whole. Individuation in psychology describes how a personality stabilizes. More recently, the term has been used within the media industry to specify how new digital and online methods have permitted the content of media to become increasingly ‘mass customized’. That is, tailored to the individual needs of consumers, but on a mass scale. In a similar vein, we perceive the cultivation of culture as a process of organizational individuation. Under this process, an organization seeks to stabilize its identity by deconstructing the barriers interfering with employee performance. At the heart of organizational cultural theory resides the premise that cultural values, beliefs, assumptions and norms significantly impact organizational performance. As a result, the most effective path to performance demands cultural change. Our view is that the most successful sport cultures liberate employees to contribute creatively, to belong, to feel meaningfully engaged, and to be acknowledged. In so doing, successful cultures disassemble psychological structures separating individuals’ identities from the collective identity. Individuation therefore is the process through which employees’ identities stabilize against an organization’s identity. The catch is, the process of stabilization cannot be enforced or demanded. Performance is empowered where leaders remove dysfunctional assumptions that have become deeply embedded through ritualized enactments, and transmitted through compelling stories and narratives. Instead of directly mandating a change to performancereducing behaviors, leaders should focus on modifying or replacing ritualized behaviors that lead to the deeply held beliefs that support under-performance. As we outlined in chapter seven, the cognitive, behavioral and emotional mechanisms driving rituals command enormous power. Ritual stabilization leads to both a strong and appropriate culture, which in turn carves out organizational identity.

STABILIZATION AND RESISTANCE TO CULTURAL CHANGE Power and resistance to change represent key concepts in understanding the human response to change. With the cultural change process almost always encountering resistance of some form, many leaders employ forms of power to direct change, in so doing creating an artificial tension. The underlying source of the power-resistance struggle tends to be, as with most hurdles in the change process, people-based rather than system- or structure-based. Naturally, employees become fearful or anxious in times of change. Fear almost always leads to negative performance consequences, the most common of which is resistance. The term ‘resistance to change’ tends to be interpreted in two ways. First, resistance to change can be seen as a psychological concept, implying that individuals by nature challenge any type of change. Second, resistance to change can be understood as a systems concept, reflecting organizational members’ discomfort with modifications to existing processes which are likely to disadvantage them. The main distinction between the two schools of thought can best be illustrated in their respective assumptions concerning the causes of resistance. Psychological model advocates specify a range of causes stimulating resistance to change. Typical causes include uncertainty, lack of tolerance, differences of opinion

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concerning the need for change, and threatened self-importance. The general themes are fear and anxiety; organizational members fear cultural change because they automatically associate it with some form of personal trauma. Psychological model experts recommend a number of methods for overcoming this negative but in-built human reaction, including participation, education, facilitation, negotiation, manipulation and coercion. For example, Lee (1995, p. 69) tells us, “For the most part, people not organizations resist change”. He likens the change maker to a foreign material in an organism, subject to combat with a natural self-healing system that constantly seeks to return to homeostasis. Individuals are analogous to antibodies fighting an unwelcome change virus. In contrast, the systems model viewpoint rejects the notion that people resist change. In fact, people do not resist change, but instead resist losing something they like, such as status, money or comfort. The problem is, when decision-makers assume that all change will be resisted, it complicates the change process, forcing them to assume that the obstacles are created by individual anxiety rather than by the systems they work within and the resources they control. According to the systems view, individuals seldom sabotage the cultural change process intentionally, but rather are forced by the existing performance appraisal system to choose between the new vision and their own self-interest. By implication, change can be successfully instituted so long as the correct information about any given system is available. As with most aspects of the cultural management process, the ‘human element’ hinges upon whether people can adjust to change, even in the form of ostensibly minor rituals. The personal adjustments or ‘transitions’ required from organizational members to make change constitute a challenge no matter what form a change presents. Counterpoint to the ‘hard’ intervention analysts who tend strongly toward strategic, systemic, structural and cultural change programs, are the social or organizational psychologists. These analysts advocate the study and application of softer techniques that consider how managers and employees respond to change, and consequently advise about how to handle the stress, conflicts and emotional trauma that accompanies change. The biggest difference can be found in their assumptions about change and its impact. Those more comfortable with systemic change—who have a hard-core change approach—tend towards a macro view of its impact. The organization as a whole is their ‘unit of analyses’. Organizational psychologists take a micro view. Their concern is with the most fundamental building blocks of the organization: its people. The literature about responses to change recommends minimizing personal trauma. Typically, this means involving employees in organizational decisions about cultural change, allowing them to have a say in the impact of change on their personal futures. Employee involvement can enable a critical mass of employees to participate and understand the need for change and the requirements for meeting a future vision. During the change process, it is more important than normal to focus on communication and employee feedback. The process associated with these activities can either promote or undermine the trust necessary to ensure success in navigating cultural change efforts. Employees can become quite cynical about empowerment and involvement. If involvement and communication are perceived as just techniques for overcoming resistance, employees will resist even more. As a result, organizational psychologists caution that managers and decision makers have to be prepared to act on the feedback and recommendations of employees. The line between consultation and democracy is blurred. Organizations cannot function as democracies, yet if the consultation process is only a vehicle for the communication of an imminent and inexorable change,

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employees will recognize it as such, and many will not cooperate. Even those who accept the change will tend to feel disenfranchised and powerless. The key issues tend to be associated with a loss of turf, attachment, meaning, future, competency-based identity, and/or control. Conventional organizational culture change practices can act as an anchor on attempts at cultural change. This anchoring effect can reinforce the barriers that obstruct change ventures. One of the keys to successful change involves the process of systematically deconstructing these troublesome barriers, an approach sometimes described as de-institutionalization. The danger remains that unresolved issues from previously unsuccessful attempts to change will add glue to already institutionalized beliefs. Brooks (1990) argued that fundamental cultural change takes three generations of management to be fully implemented. The challenge for senior management lies with finding ways of accelerating this process without stimulating resistance.

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LEADERSHIP FOR CULTIVATING CULTURE While cultural change is fraught with potential pitfalls, effective change leaders appear to utilize some common strategies. Creating and enabling supporters for change throughout the organization places high on the list, as does the clear communication of goals in order to diminish anxiety. Equally, personally demonstrating an involvement and commitment to change goes a long way to ensuring the successful implementation of a renewed culture. It seems clear that leadership is one of the key variables affecting the success of cultural change initiatives. This has been proven by numerous studies which have identified leadership and the support of top management as the single greatest contributor to the successful initiation of a change program. It has also been noted that effective leadership should not be restricted to top management. Rather, influence needs to be diffused throughout an organization at every management level. This helps to deal with resistance to change and general inertia. The relationship between power and leadership tends to be an uneasy one, where good leadership has more to do with persuasion and empowerment than coercion and direction. This is, of course, overly simplistic, as perceptions of leaders can be as influential as the mechanics of their decision-making. Leaders have the unenviable task of bringing about cultural change when it is needed for organizational prosperity rather than when it is convenient. They must battle cynicism, distrust and even sabotage. Leadership timing and style have been linked to cultural change success. For example, Goleman (2000) revealed that the most important aspect of a leader’s success during change was their ability to apply different styles of leadership to different circumstances, even when it meant switching quite radically in short periods of time. He noted that different leadership styles such as being coercive, authoritative, democratic, pacesetting and coaching, can create different reactions in employees and subsequently in organizational culture. Differing reactions leading to flexibility, responsibility, performance standards, rewards, clarity and commitment, can bring about successful planned change. In general, leaders who involve employees in decisions about key issues, generate a sense of urgency and importance around cultural change, and encourage and reward productive behaviors, enjoy the most cultural change success. These leadership focal points further reinforce our claim that rituals offer a uniquely effective vehicle for cultural modification.

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Rituals revolve around key organizational functions, instill commitment and belonging, depict successful behaviors, and deliver acknowledgement and attention to those who excel at them. We recommend several leadership approaches to tackling pivotal organizational values through rituals and their accompanying narratives, symbols, assumptions and beliefs. First, leaders can rely on the charismatic power of their personalities to inspire change. The concept of personality appealed to early leadership theorists who sought to explain why some people were better leaders than others. Personality models have developed from the outcomes of detailed psychological inventory questionnaires tested on prospective and active leaders. Leaders tend to be extroverts, innovators, adventurous, versatile, and progressive, for example. Personality theorists regard leadership as a one-way effect. That is, leaders possess qualities that make them different to their followers. This fails to recognize an interaction between leaders and followers, as well as the situational differences in the leader-follower exchange. We must recognize that the personal quality of a would-be leader determines his or her esteem in the eyes of followers. However, it is impractical to swap leaders every time a different situation demands it. As a result, leaders armed with compelling personalities need to carefully target the activities they seek to personally influence. Second, leaders can showcase their competence and the capabilities they apply to a situation. It may be a specific aptitude, ability or knowledge that is relevant to the requirements of a specific setting, it may invoke more generalized intelligence, or it may concern a person’s ability to astutely recognize deeper cultural features. Research suggests that task competence influences leadership transactions; the greater the perceived leader competence, the more likely the follower will ‘transact’ with, or follow that leader through serious change. In addition, if a leader chooses to personally engage in modeling new ritualized behaviors, they require a high level of interpersonal competence. Such traits include influencing others, the capacity to comply, socialize and fit with a group, creating empathy, a heightened awareness of others, emotional insight, and an openness to discuss feelings. Third, the most common approach leaders take relies upon their interactive behavioral style. Individual preference for extremes ranging from task- to relations-orientation determines type of leadership style, such as tough minded, compromiser, laissez-faire, autocrat, deserter, missionary, bureaucrat, benevolent autocrat, developer and executive. Leaders have also been classified as mentors, directors, facilitators, producers, coordinators and innovators. Leaders’ behaviors deliver a cue to evoke subordinates task behaviors. The idea is that leaders do not directly cause behavior; they merely set the occasion or provide a stimulus that evokes it. Fourth, exchange or transactional approaches recognize leadership as a social exchange process. Exchange theories propose that group members make contributions at a cost to themselves and receive benefits at a cost to the group or other members. Interaction continues because members find the social exchange mutually rewarding. The key is to find the exchange that aligns organizational members’ needs with performance imperatives. Fifth, status, esteem and power approaches suggest that employees obey leaders because of the positions they occupy. Status structure and the differentiation of function are necessary for the coordination of efforts. Occupants of senior positions receive cues that make it easier for them to identify their own status, such as large or top floor offices, custom made desks, and personalized parking places. Power has also been connected to leadership style. For example, it has been suggested that power enables coercive leadership behaviors that tend to

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be employed to overwhelm resistance and enforce change irrespective of the objections of employees. Finally, much research has attempted to explain and understand the elements that effect leadership, such as the external and internal organizational environments. Organizational constraints, existing cultural features, leaders’ immediate groups, the tasks required of a leader as well as the physical and geographical location of the leader and his or her networks, are assumed to moderate leadership. The majority of current popular theory incorporates elements of these situational assumptions. Cultural change more easily comes about when leaders modify their styles to suit the circumstances.

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THE RISK OF CULTURAL FAILURE Risk is inherent in any organizational activity, but those associated with serious and substantial change typically have the least likelihood of success of any organizational ambitions, and therefore carry the burden of significant risk. Part of the difficulty associated with cultural change has been its perception as a nebulous process. Even if organizational leaders are sufficiently visionary to clearly articulate their long-term objectives and can specify the way they see their organizations behaving and performing after a change, it is unusual for these performances to be defined by objective criteria beyond those associated with financial or on-field objectives. Other goals such as efficiency, cost effectiveness, customer and employee satisfaction and responsiveness have often been omitted from the equation or considered implicit within financial indicators. Measuring and evaluating cultural change remains problematic. The complexities of cultural change demand measurement that is correspondingly flexible. In fact, the veracity of planned change has been questioned, with studies examining change management initiatives reporting that the majority fail and bring with that failure a heavy economic and human toll (Beer & Nohria, 2000). The chances of failure reinforce the importance of measurement, especially during the change process rather than at its conclusion. Early feedback helps cultural change managers to take corrective action. Organizations are often left with a serious dilemma. They recognize that change is necessary for ongoing prosperity or even survival, but remain aware of a high potential for failure. For example, Harvard Business School studied change efforts among Fortune 100 companies in the United States and revealed that every single company had introduced at least one change program between 1980 and 1995, but that only 30 percent produced an improvement in bottom-line results that exceeded the company’s cost of capital (Pascale et al. 1997). Correspondingly, in another major study, Beer and Nohria (2000) determined that about 70 percent of change initiatives fail. Why is the failure rate so high? There is no shortage of suggested answers to this conundrum. After all, successful cultural change is the ‘Holy Grail’ of organizational activity, particularly for large organizations. The key to achieving and sustaining significant cultural change lies with transitioning the basic values, beliefs and ways of thinking within the organization. Organizational members resist new truths with a great deal of emotion. It is analogous to convincing someone of changing his or her spiritual beliefs or religion.

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Cultural change requires coordinated leadership. This in itself poses both personal and organizational stresses and challenges, because each person can respond to different leadership styles and methods. One person’s charismatic leader is another’s dictator. Even the most skillful leaders can make matters worse when they confront their employees with the need for fundamental change. Matters can go from bad to worse if leadership is ‘weak’, disunited or unclear in its intentions. Even when leaders can decide what to do and when, they still have to work out how to make their objectives and activities sufficiently transparent to encourage employees to take some calculated risks, and to convince them that they know what they are doing. Most organizations are too impatient or do not realize that change must take place incrementally. Change needs to be implemented over the long term, with careful attention to its disruptive aspects, and consideration for when to consolidate. For example, periods of intense change tend to be best followed by periods of stability. In practical terms, organizations probably need to plan for ten years of effort to accomplish a major cultural transformation. Skipping essential steps in the change process creates only an illusion of speed and does not produce lasting outcomes. Critical mistakes in any of the phases can have a devastating impact, slowing momentum and compromising previous gains. Because of the need to maintain the ability to conduct successful operations during the change period, the importance of the existing structures and practices remain important. Rather than overcome this immense problem of system ‘rollout’ and exchange without losing customers, fans and credibility, most sport organizations implement cultural change around the existing systems, merely giving them a fresh coat of paint rather than changing them altogether. One result is a general agreement that it may be easier to create the necessary conditions in new organizations than in existing organizations. This shifts the onus toward the development of new company divisions that are structured the ‘right’ way from the beginning. Change is subsequently deferred or avoided.

CONCLUSION Culture and identity cannot be avoided by any member of an organization. Although a slippery concept, hard to conflate to the simple or tangible, culture shapes the collective conduct of all organizational members. It does this by inculcating bundles of values and beliefs into members’ minds. In turn, values and beliefs canalize and restrict ways of thinking. In short, culture shapes conduct and individual behavior. For example, cultural values and beliefs might have to do with how men should relate to women, why profit should override environmental sensitivity, or why winning and success are more important than participation. As a result, some cultures create socially valued outcomes, while others create dysfunctional cultures. Culture can be changed for the better, but it requires astute and sophisticated management. Perhaps more than anything else, it demands a deep understanding of how culture works. Our Sport Culture Escalator emphasizes building cultural understandings. Every aspect of a sporting organization is symbolically representative in some way of its culture. Cultivating a successful culture relies on shared values and beliefs that have been reinforced and transferred to organizational members through tangible means like rituals. Cultural change

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cannot be tackled without a clear, prior understanding of an organization’s chief cultural traits and how they manifest. Once an accurate diagnosis has been undertaken, elements of culture can be managed. Of course, sport managers cannot literally change peoples’ minds, but they can change peoples’ actions. For this reason, organizational rituals provide a mechanism through which entrenched values and beliefs can be influenced by new symbols, language, heroes, and stories. Keep in mind that cultivating a successful sport culture begins with the first step on the Sport Culture Escalator. Sport organizational culture management relies on translating information into meaning. And, meaning is the path to a powerful cultural identity.

REFERENCES

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Beer, M., & Nohria, N. (2000). Cracking the code of change. Harvard Business Review, 78(2 March-April), 136-137. Goleman, D. (2000). Leadership that gets results. Harvard Business Review, 78(2 MarchApril, 78-90. Lee, R. (1995). Appreciating resistances. In R. Ritvo, A. Litwin & L. Butler (eds.) Managing in the age of change, (pp. 67-73), Irwin Professional Publishing, Illinois. Lewin, K. (1947). Frontiers in group dynamics: I. Concept, method and reality in social sciences: Social equilibria and social change. Human Relations, 1: 5-41. Meyerson, D., & Martin, J. (1994) Cultural change: An integration of three different views in Tsoukas, H. (ed.) New Thinking in organizational behaviour: From social engineering to reflective action, (pp. 108-132), Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann, pp. 108-132. Pascale, R, Millemann, M., & Gioja, L. (1997). Changing the way we change. Harvard Business Review, 75(6 November-December), 126-139.

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INDEX

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A access, 61, 69, 149, 177 accessibility, 105, 113 accountability, 120 accounting, 125, 129, 155, 163 acquisition of knowledge, 54, 56 AD, 76 adaptability, 102 adaptation, 27, 83, 89, 122, 123, 132 adaptations, 128, 129, 130, 137, 164 adjustment, 77 administrators, 21, 108 adolescents, 17 adults, 140, 172 advancement, 83, 184 aesthetic, 30, 36, 48, 49, 50, 56, 59, 148, 164 aesthetics, 48, 56 affective experience, 159 African Americans, 50 African-American, 130 age, 25, 38, 55, 64, 65, 153, 201 agencies, 1, 78, 113 aggregation, 75 aggression, 49, 55, 104, 132, 134, 135 aggressiveness, 133 alcohol use, 15 amygdala, 163, 167 analogical thinking, 167 ancestors, 127, 129 anchoring, 139, 154, 157, 161, 197 anger, 134, 158 anthropologists, 128, 140, 151 anthropology, 3, 67, 80, 81, 82, 83, 99, 125, 164, 173 anxiety, 49, 103, 139, 146, 147, 158, 162, 195, 196, 197 appraisals, 147, 168 aptitude, 114, 198

arousal, 48, 49, 50, 60, 64, 148, 152, 156, 157, 167, 181 Asia, 22 assessment, 29, 83, 84, 98, 99, 110, 158, 161, 185 assets, 21, 35, 37 athletes, 21, 30, 33, 34, 37, 48, 50, 52, 53, 54, 60, 130, 136, 175, 180, 184, 189 atmosphere, 30 atoms, 78 attachment, 25, 26, 29, 45, 47, 48, 52, 53, 56, 58, 64, 65, 107, 197 attitudes, 1, 3, 4, 15, 26, 64, 68, 78, 86, 96, 98, 101, 105, 106, 107, 114, 142, 143, 154, 159, 168, 171, 191 attribution, 161 authenticity, 18, 40, 47, 67 authorities, 22, 161 authority, 77, 84, 90, 106, 114, 118, 150 automaticity, 161 autonomy, 103, 147 aversion, 110, 112, 135 awareness, 30, 123, 132, 168, 188, 198

B background information, 10 badminton, 35 baggage, 88, 135 balance sheet, 28, 35 banking, 89, 112, 134 banking industry, 89 bargaining, 35 barriers, 195, 197 base, 68, 110, 112, 117, 192 behavioral aspects, 8, 76, 158 behaviors, 2, 4, 5, 8, 13, 14, 26, 48, 49, 54, 56, 80, 83, 85, 86, 95, 96, 98, 108, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 133, 134, 139, 141, 142, 143, 144, 146, 147,

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Index

150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 159, 161, 162, 168, 178, 181, 182, 183, 192, 193, 194, 195, 197, 198 belief systems, 10, 151, 159 beneficiaries, 150, 160 benefits, 25, 32, 36, 54, 57, 88, 150, 152, 157, 198 beverages, 61 big game hunting, 163 blogs, 33 blueprint, 131 Bluetooth, 33 board members, 106 body shape, 132 bonding, 151 boredom, 149 boxing, 28, 35, 103 brain, 14, 49, 128, 129, 130, 131, 135, 158, 159, 163, 167, 168, 185, 186, 193 brain structure, 158 branching, 127 brand loyalty, 24 Brazil, 11 Britain, 62 building blocks, 102, 191, 196 bureaucracy, 90, 147 business environment, 147 business management, 21, 23 business model, 22, 27 business strategy, 42 businesses, 1, 20, 23, 37, 102 by-products, 186

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C calculus, 26, 58, 59, 129 campaigns, 61, 63 cannabis, 17 capitalism, 40, 53, 149, 165 cartel, 22, 31, 32, 35, 38, 42 cartoon, 153, 181 case studies, 47 case study, 17, 18, 66, 69, 167, 188 cash, 23 catalyst, 83, 96 category d, 178 Catholic Church, 160 cattle, 35 causal relationship, 157 causality, 40, 178 causation, 135 chain of command, 7 challenges, 1, 31, 32, 47, 86, 87, 98, 101, 182, 199 changing environment, 135 charities, 157 chemical, 49, 128

Chicago, 16, 68, 88, 89, 91, 122, 123, 169 children, 34, 126, 140, 150, 153 citizens, 34 citizenship, 52 City, 70, 165 clarity, 105, 197 classification, 110, 111, 113, 116, 119, 135, 144 climate, 7, 17, 18, 62, 78, 123, 150, 164, 186, 189, 191 climates, 90 closure, 149, 164 clothing, 84, 96, 178 clusters, 31, 144 coaches, 35, 54 coal, 53, 106 codes, 5, 33 codes XE "codes" of conduct, 5, 33 coercion, 196, 197 coffee, 102, 149, 152, 153, 160 cognition, 125, 157, 158, 159, 161, 171, 185, 187, 189 cognitive activity, 185 cognitive capacity, 181 cognitive dimension, 154 cognitive dissonance, 160, 181 cognitive function, 98, 155, 180 cognitive map, 189 cognitive perspective, 155, 171 cognitive process, 129, 158 cognitive psychology, 183, 185 cognitive representations, 159 cognitive science, 167, 188 cognitive system, 155 cognitive theory, 164, 169, 186, 189 coherence, 140, 154, 159, 169, 176 collaboration, 100, 187 collective bargaining, 34, 152 collectivism, 108 collusion, 22, 31, 32, 149, 161 color, 51, 132, 158, 178 commerce, 20, 33, 39 commercial, 8, 9, 11, 12, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 33, 36, 37, 38, 63, 64, 70, 103, 150, 152, 182 common sense, 156 communication, 9, 10, 11, 95, 99, 120, 128, 139, 140, 144, 147, 148, 151, 165, 182, 185, 186, 187, 196, 197 communicative intent, 128 communities, 16, 21, 70 community, 15, 25, 53, 58, 64, 107, 140, 157, 182 community service, 107 comparative analysis, 40, 68, 70

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Index compassion, 163, 185 competition, 20, 22, 24, 31, 34, 39, 49, 59, 60, 64, 69, 78, 87, 98, 103, 106, 147 competitive advantage, 1, 6, 18, 27, 84, 100, 188 competitive sport, 30, 39 competitiveness, 6, 87 competitors, 100, 106 compilation, 10 complement, 76, 88 complex interactions, 135 complexity, 9, 47, 85, 88, 104, 119, 129, 154 compliance, 142 composition, 22, 103, 132, 144, 155, 156, 171, 175, 178, 181, 183 compulsion, 46 computer, 179, 180 computer use, 179 conception, 83, 85, 86, 142, 175, 176, 180 conceptual model, 39, 66, 73 conceptualization, 7, 68, 81, 106, 161 conditioned response, 145 conditioning, 154, 158, 159, 160 conflict, 42, 84, 106, 120, 133, 140, 142, 149, 152, 161, 167, 191 conformity, 150 confrontation, 134 congruence, 194 connectivity, 158 conscious awareness, 155 consciousness, 98, 164 consensus, 79, 80, 105, 127, 177 Consensus, 111 conspiracy, 180 constituents, 78, 178 construction, 5, 31, 175, 184 consumer expenditure, 62 consumer goods, 25 consumers, 8, 12, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 36, 38, 45, 46, 47, 50, 51, 52, 56, 57, 63, 64, 65, 68, 104, 132, 133, 159, 180, 192, 193, 195 consumption, 9, 13, 25, 26, 38, 39, 41, 42, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 53, 56, 62, 64, 65, 67, 68, 70, 150 content analysis, 123 contingency, 111 contradiction, 99 controversial, 130, 134 convention, 80, 145 convergence, 51 conversations, 122, 124, 187 conviction, 174 cooperation, 4, 31, 95, 106, 114, 127, 128, 145, 168, 188

205

coordination, 4, 85, 108, 112, 114, 115, 198 core assumptions, 3, 82, 98, 106 corporate life, 122, 143 correlation, 35, 51, 55, 105, 160 corruption, 27 cosmetics, 25, 26 cost, 9, 62, 151, 152, 181, 198, 199 cost effectiveness, 199 covering, 10, 141 creativity, 4, 153 critical analysis, 9, 23, 67 criticism, 131, 132, 160, 165 cronyism, 27 crowds, 31, 33, 38, 50, 60, 61, 63, 64, 169 CT, 40, 41, 167, 168 cues, 128, 129, 135, 174, 185, 198 cultivation, 65, 160, 195 cultural affiliation, 48, 52, 53, 55, 56 cultural beliefs, 110, 172 cultural connections, 25, 52, 65 cultural differences, 20 cultural heritage, 52 cultural literacy, 10, 11, 12, 13, 16, 192 cultural norms, 9, 14, 132, 161, 162, 184, 193 cultural practices, 6 cultural tradition, 64 cultural transformation, 200 cultural values, 6, 14, 23, 82, 93, 98, 102, 103, 119, 121, 139, 162, 163, 181, 184, 185, 193, 195, 200 culture escalator, 2, 12, 13, 73, 130, 191, 193 customers, 13, 21, 22, 24, 38, 75, 103, 106, 200 cycles, 53, 84

D daily working life, 2 danger, 9, 60, 162, 197 decentralization, 7, 114, 115 decision makers, 196 decision-making process, 6, 81, 108 defence, 163 degradation, 152, 153 democracy, 196 demographic factors, 25, 56, 65 demonstrations, 151 depreciation, 35 depth, 54, 81, 86, 94, 104, 106, 113, 121 destiny, 131 determinism, 123, 131, 132 developing nations, 23 deviation, 142 diamonds, 15 dichotomy, 27, 32, 142

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Index

diffusion, 120 direct mail, 63 directors, 198 disappointment, 54, 60 discomfort, 109, 112, 150, 195 discrimination, 34 disgust, 158 disposable income, 104 disposition, 107, 109, 133 dissonance, 109 distribution, 29, 31, 33, 117, 118, 175 divergence, 133 diversity, 22, 104, 127 division of labor, 27 DNA, 125, 127 dogs, 29, 174 dominance, 135 dopamine, 49 doping, 22, 34 drawing, 64, 100, 139, 152, 161, 162 dream, 118 drug addict, 34 drugs, 9, 34 dynamism, 86, 118

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E economic theory, 76 economics, 23, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 55, 66, 67, 125 education, 19, 55, 78, 88, 133, 196 educators, 9 elaboration, 177 elasticity of demand, 25 elders, 54 electronic surveillance, 153 elucidation, 26 emotion, 8, 158, 164, 165, 177, 184, 199 emotional experience, 19, 162 emotional processes, 167, 187 emotional reactions, 70, 157, 159 emotional responses, 20, 71, 134, 157, 158 emotional state, 49 empathy, 134, 198 empirical studies, 7, 65 employees, 4, 5, 8, 11, 14, 20, 21, 86, 95, 97, 98, 99, 102, 103, 108, 109, 114, 135, 142, 143, 145, 148, 150, 157, 159, 160, 162, 177, 180, 191, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 200 employers, 81 employment, 144 empowerment, 54, 80, 196, 197 enculturation, 163 endurance, 114

energy, 45, 129, 158, 181 enforcement, 22 engineering, 77, 201 England, 41, 42, 62, 63, 163 English Language, 16 entertainers, 23 entrepreneurs, 123 entrepreneurship, 7, 15 environment, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 14, 20, 21, 22, 28, 31, 50, 59, 62, 77, 78, 80, 82, 84, 86, 98, 99, 101, 102, 104, 112, 113, 126, 127, 129, 130, 132, 133, 134, 135, 143, 145, 150, 151, 153, 155, 159, 171, 174, 183, 192 environmental change, 87, 112 environmental conditions, 110, 130, 133 environmental factors, 78, 135 environmental variables, 77, 112 environments, 14, 78, 79, 80, 102, 110, 127, 128, 131, 133, 135, 137, 142, 145, 146, 153, 162, 173, 176, 193, 199 epidemiology, 189 episodic memory, 156, 161 epistemology, 164, 186 equal opportunity, 34 equality, 15, 66, 80, 117, 118, 147, 149 equipment, 35 equity, 46, 116 ethical issues, 101 ethics, 41, 85, 114, 188 ethnicity, 39 ethnographic study, 166 etiquette, 129 Europe, 22, 39 European Commission, 22 European Community, 22 European Court of Justice, 22 European Union, 22 eustress, 48, 49, 55, 56, 59 everyday life, 49, 50, 140, 175 evidence, 29, 30, 31, 36, 37, 50, 55, 56, 65, 111, 131, 132, 135, 142, 148, 155, 157, 158, 159, 160, 162, 164, 173, 174, 175, 177, 183, 186 evolution, 17, 21, 75, 76, 95, 125, 127, 129, 130, 133, 136, 163, 165, 166, 167, 168, 186, 188 evolutionary psychologists, 126, 128, 129, 131, 133 exaggeration, 181 execution, 145 exercise, 1, 28, 130 expertise, 108, 112 explicit knowledge, 161, 169 exploitation, 27 exposure, 10, 21, 142, 154, 155, 156, 171, 172, 181, 191

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Index external environment, 78, 86

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F Facebook, 33 facilitators, 198 fairness, 116 faith, 46, 112, 154, 158 families, 51, 63, 113 family life, 148 fanaticism, 46 fashion industry, 26 fear, 130, 131, 134, 135, 136, 147, 158, 195 fears, 29, 174 feelings, 51, 54, 55, 139, 149, 153, 158, 159, 162, 194, 198 fetus, 135 fever, 40, 67 fiber, 130 fidelity, 145, 147 filters, 101 financial, 8, 18, 20, 27, 28, 32, 34, 39, 103, 136, 180, 199 financial performance, 18 financial regulation, 8 financial resources, 28 first dimension, 118 fitness, 57, 127 fixation, 133 flame, 52 flavor, 180 flex, 192 flexibility, 80, 108, 118, 197 fluid, 10, 156, 180 folklore, 10, 102, 119 food, 16, 61, 150, 167, 188 football, 11, 21, 22, 28, 32, 34, 35, 39, 40, 41, 42, 49, 50, 51, 53, 55, 57, 59, 60, 62, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 114, 129 Football, 6, 16, 17, 32, 34, 35, 39, 40, 42, 59, 61, 65, 67, 68, 70 force, 1, 7, 11, 63, 159 formation, 11, 47, 53, 65, 76, 85, 94, 148, 159, 160 formula, 161 fossils, 128 foundations, 2, 64, 73, 77, 80, 110, 148, 165, 167, 168, 169, 176, 187, 189, 191 fractures, 37 fragments, 176 framing, 10, 177 franchise, 27, 36, 68, 103 freedom, 22, 23, 80, 81, 106, 147, 182 functional approach, 79

207

functional organs, 129 fundamental needs, 25 funding, 21, 28

G gambling, 48, 55, 62, 68, 180 gender differences, 133 gender equity, 34 gender role, 63, 107, 109 gene pool, 127 generalizability, 23 genes, 127, 128, 131, 135, 136 genome, 131 gestation, 130 gestures, 97, 99, 143 globalization, 9, 27, 38, 43 glue, 5, 13, 46, 192, 197 goal attainment, 154 goal-directed behavior, 118 God, 164, 167, 168 goods and services, 20 goose, 159 governance, 21, 22, 32, 35, 36, 38, 39 governments, 157 grants, 103, 149 grass, 104 gravity, 149, 187 grounding, 73 group cooperation, 151, 158, 181 group identification, 53 group identity, 53, 69 group membership, 150, 151 growth, 37, 39, 77, 112 guidance, 112, 132, 141 guidelines, 34, 106 guilty, 180

H habitat, 133, 174 habitats, 174, 185 handbags, 71 happiness, 40, 158 harmony, 148 healing, 196 health, 19, 26, 34, 37, 57, 78, 155, 157, 182 health care, 19 height, 49 hermeneutics, 89 heterogeneity, 23, 142 high school, 59

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208

Index

hippocampus, 158 history, 6, 9, 10, 11, 18, 19, 33, 40, 54, 73, 79, 94, 97, 98, 104, 106, 119, 131, 133, 136, 176, 177 homeostasis, 142, 196 homogeneity, 27 Hong Kong, 15 hormone, 130 hormone levels, 130 hospitality, 7, 16, 26, 30, 167, 188 host, 19, 155, 171 hotels, 150 House, 88, 122, 123 human, 14, 19, 21, 23, 27, 29, 49, 65, 69, 76, 78, 79, 82, 84, 90, 94, 103, 119, 125, 126, 128, 129, 130, 131, 134, 135, 136, 137, 142, 155, 156, 159, 163, 167, 169, 171, 174, 180, 185, 193, 195, 196, 199 human activity, 65 human behavior, 14, 119, 125, 126, 129, 130, 131, 134, 135, 136, 193 human body, 78, 129 human capital, 27 human motivation, 156, 174 human nature, 129 Human Resource Management, 16, 167, 188 human resources, 23, 84, 90 human sciences, 169 humanistic perspective, 81 humanitarian aid, 160 hunter-gatherers, 126 hunting, 53 hybrid, 116, 136 hypothesis, 144, 156, 158, 160, 162, 172, 173, 177, 180

I icon, 9 ideal, 84, 132, 150, 161, 164 ideals, 6, 27, 107, 157 identification, 24, 25, 26, 36, 37, 39, 40, 43, 45, 51, 52, 53, 54, 56, 57, 58, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 84, 88, 90, 102, 103, 119, 121, 123, 131, 134, 148 ideology, 17, 20, 82, 85, 101, 102, 109, 112, 113 idiosyncratic, 9, 13, 23, 24, 37, 38, 100, 106, 142, 192 illicit drug use, 34 illusion, 200 image, 1, 66, 89, 100, 101, 108, 112, 122, 191 imagery, 132, 145 images, 5, 51, 52, 64, 109, 132, 135 imitation, 154 immediate gratification, 109 imperialism, 27, 40

improved performance, 2, 183 impulses, 14, 193 in transition, 16 income, 30, 31, 37, 55, 62, 116 incubator, 52 independence, 106 individual action, 2, 81, 175 individual character, 108 individualism, 28 individuals, 2, 4, 8, 9, 10, 12, 47, 52, 59, 64, 75, 79, 81, 85, 86, 88, 95, 96, 99, 100, 106, 111, 112, 113, 115, 127, 128, 130, 134, 142, 153, 159, 162, 174, 175, 176, 178, 181, 183, 195, 196 individuation, 194, 195 indoctrination, 102, 147 Indonesia, 163 induction, 85, 102, 133, 142, 150, 166 industrial relations, 104 industrialization, 76, 94 industries, 7, 31, 37, 112 industry, 5, 7, 13, 15, 16, 19, 28, 30, 37, 78, 100, 122, 167, 188, 195 inequality, 118 inertia, 80, 140, 197 inevitability, 147 infants, 132 inferences, 128, 155, 159, 181 information processing, 155 information technology, 167 inheritance, 127, 130, 133 initiation, 152, 197 injury, 30, 35 insertion, 184 institutions, 16, 27, 82, 169, 175, 183 integration, 78, 83, 111, 115, 118, 152, 194, 201 integrity, 29, 109 intellectual property, 149, 165 intelligence, 78, 198 intentionality, 181 interaction effect, 69 interaction effects, 69 intercollegiate athletics, 18, 188 interdependence, 115 internal processes, 78 internalization, 154, 182 International Olympic Committee, 34 Internet video-sharing sites, 11 interpersonal relations, 19 interpersonal relationships, 19 intervention, 36, 65, 83, 194, 196 intimidation, 112 intragroup cooperation, 70 inversion, 49

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Index investment, 36, 46, 47, 53, 56, 78, 105, 130, 133, 147 ions, 14, 128, 173, 193 Islam, 142, 149, 154, 166 isolation, 93 issues, 4, 9, 11, 16, 21, 27, 39, 45, 65, 76, 77, 83, 85, 90, 101, 106, 123, 197 Italy, 164

J Java, 89 Jews, 150 job performance, 4, 95 joint ventures, 41 Jordan, 40 Judo, 6

K kindergarten, 153 knowledge acquisition, 48

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L labor market, 78, 104 labour market, 39 landscape, 3, 29, 98, 121, 154, 163, 185 landscapes, 21, 133 laws, 20, 78, 111, 136 lawyers, 33, 36 layering, 181 lead, 4, 22, 25, 29, 30, 57, 75, 85, 87, 112, 146, 147, 152, 154, 155, 158, 159, 166, 184, 195 leadership, 6, 17, 90, 98, 106, 112, 114, 117, 118, 123, 168, 188, 197, 198, 199 leadership style, 6, 197, 198, 199 learning, 43, 54, 82, 88, 121, 129, 131, 136, 139, 155, 161, 162, 167, 187 legislation, 32 legs, 172 leisure, 21, 26, 36, 40, 43, 47, 58, 62, 63, 66, 68, 71, 90, 103, 104, 119, 169 leisure time, 21, 47 lens, 9, 82, 140, 163 lifelong learning, 16 light, 19, 47, 127, 131, 158, 165 linguistics, 15 literacy, 10, 11, 15, 16 local community, 87 longevity, 148, 168, 185 love, 20

209

loyalty, 20, 25, 26, 28, 37, 39, 47, 52, 53, 56, 58, 60, 62, 64, 66, 67, 68, 70, 108, 114, 134, 135, 147, 150, 151

M machinery, 35, 131 magnetic field, 168 Major League Baseball, 33, 35, 39, 40, 60, 61, 68 majority, 48, 81, 82, 156, 172, 199 mammals, 127 man, 81, 168 Mandarin, 71 manipulation, 184, 196 manufacturing, 76, 77 mapping, 13, 47, 106, 107, 192 marginalization, 1, 36, 83, 153 market share, 19, 37, 135 marketing, 8, 17, 18, 19, 22, 27, 28, 29, 31, 41, 47, 69, 126, 134, 137, 160, 169 marketplace, 27, 28, 29, 38, 41, 43, 69, 93, 95 marriage, 147 martial art, 103 Marx, 77 masculinity, 104, 109 mass, 20, 51, 105, 107, 192, 195, 196 material resources, 27 materials, 163, 185 matrix, 112 matter, 10, 26, 32, 131, 136, 180, 196 measurement, 105, 119, 130, 199 measurement bias, 130 media, 9, 11, 18, 21, 29, 33, 34, 53, 71, 160, 165, 195 medical, 54 medicine, 10 membership, 7, 22, 58, 103, 119, 151, 160, 181, 183, 184 memory, 10, 11, 36, 50, 148, 149, 155, 156, 163, 172, 174, 176, 181, 185 mental health, 49 mental model, 43 mental processes, 129 mental representation, 171 mentoring, 189 merchandise, 29, 30, 37, 45, 52, 56, 132 messages, 84, 148, 149, 152, 153, 154, 177 metaphor, 5, 16, 159, 177 middle class, 166 migration, 149 military, 94, 145, 148, 160, 168 mission, 82 missions, 5

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Index

MMS, 33 mobile communication, 33 mobile phone, 33, 59, 152 models, 9, 22, 32, 34, 35, 47, 48, 80, 81, 111, 134, 154, 198 moderating factors, 13, 45, 192 moderators, 162 modern society, 129 modifications, 87, 146, 195 modules, 126, 128, 131 mold, 108 molecules, 78, 127 momentum, 125, 200 mono-cultural thinking, 20 monopoly, 19, 36, 37, 42 monopoly power, 42 morale, 146, 147, 148 morality, 128, 188 mortality, 174 motivation, 20, 25, 38, 43, 45, 48, 54, 56, 60, 65, 68, 70, 71, 106, 142, 155, 158 multiplication, 127 music, 11, 19, 34, 129, 149, 155, 158, 164, 171 music industry, 149 mutations, 129 MySpace, 33

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N naming, 111 narratives, 12, 38, 131, 174, 176, 177, 186, 188, 193, 195, 198 national culture, 7, 18, 83 National Football League (NFL), 118 national identity, 5, 121 natural selection, 126, 127, 129, 130 negative consequences, 54, 58 negative emotions, 134 negative outcomes, 159 negotiation, 196 Netherlands, 188 neuroimaging, 158 neurophysiology, 164 neuropsychology, 164, 185 new media, 29 New South Wales, 123 New Zealand, 17, 22, 41 North America, 23, 32, 35, 38, 39 nostalgia, 52, 66, 67, 68 nursing, 155, 163, 166 nurturance, 132

O obedience, 109 obesity, 15, 26 objective criteria, 199 observable behavior, 3, 95, 105, 130 obsessive-compulsive disorder, 140, 165 obstacles, 97, 119, 120, 196 officials, 31, 34, 37, 54, 96 oil, 112 Olympic sports, 27 omission, 11, 34, 119 one dimension, 147 open spaces, 133 openness, 198 operations, 8, 99, 102, 107, 126, 157, 200 opportunities, 1, 31, 101, 112, 132 optimal performance, 35 optimism, 24, 25 organism, 131, 196 organizational behavior, 4, 81, 89, 94, 95, 102, 111, 113, 121, 123, 139, 175, 181 organizational learning, 169, 189 organizational stress, 199 organize, 75, 148, 162 organs, 78 outsourcing, 23 overlap, 10, 118, 160 oversight, 10, 35 overtime, 151, 160 ownership, 22, 95, 103, 114 ownership structure, 103

P Pacific, 166 pacing, 152 pain, 109 parallel, 157 parents, 150 parity, 30, 31, 36 participants, 11, 19, 20, 28, 29, 32, 54, 57, 142, 144, 147, 153, 154, 157, 160, 162, 173 pathways, 27 patient care, 155 payroll, 35, 40 PCT, 68 penalties, 34 performance appraisal, 196 performers, 30, 146, 175 personal identity, 25, 45, 53, 100 personal relations, 119, 148

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Index personal relationship, 119 personal values, 93 personality, 62, 64, 89, 97, 103, 106, 115, 121, 195, 198 personhood, 156, 174 persuasion, 143, 197 Perth, 34 Petroleum, 31 phenotype, 131, 164, 186 photographs, 98 physical activity, 9, 24 physical environment, 78, 84, 96 physiological arousal, 133, 149 physiology, 130 pitch, 40, 67 planned economies, 23 platform, 37, 84, 172 playing, 11, 32, 37, 51, 60, 84, 101, 104 pleasure, 25, 26, 48, 49, 50, 54, 56, 57, 58 police, 7, 183 policy, 11, 34, 68, 71, 81, 103, 131 political system, 32 politics, 9, 10, 15, 18, 131, 160, 163, 169 pools, 31 poor performance, 38, 54 population, 127, 130, 150, 185 Portugal, 35 positive relationship, 144 postmodernism, 80 power relations, 148 practical knowledge, 12 pragmatism, 24 predictability, 147 preparation, 51, 180 preparedness, 53, 136 preservation, 18, 64 president, 54 President, 152 primary function, 107 principles, 13, 14, 21, 23, 24, 38, 75, 77, 80, 112, 127 probability, 63, 127 problem behavior, 83 problem behaviors, 83 problem solving, 114, 120, 194 problem-solving, 84 procedural knowledge, 161 producers, 198 product market, 15, 78 professionalization, 33, 107 profit, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 27, 28, 29, 32, 36, 38, 76, 104, 107, 157, 200 profit margin, 104

211

profitability, 27, 36 programming, 4, 5 project, 89, 90, 112, 121 proliferation, 76 promoter, 35, 38 propagation, 125, 142, 153, 155, 156, 171, 174 proposition, 34, 129, 177 prosperity, 197, 199 protein structure, 135 psychological assessments, 98 psychologist, 96 psychology, 14, 42, 43, 71, 95, 99, 123, 125, 126, 135, 136, 137, 164, 165, 166, 168, 181, 187, 188, 193, 195 psychometric properties, 70 public interest, 28 public policy, 43 public service, 112 punishment, 70, 84, 127, 168 purity, 151

Q quality of life, 17 questioning, 93

R race, 55, 71, 130 racial differences, 56, 65 racing, 28, 59 radio, 45, 63, 153 rationality, 135, 154 reactions, 25, 132, 156, 158, 159, 184, 197 reading, 53, 164 reality, 2, 5, 20, 26, 27, 79, 83, 88, 98, 99, 118, 140, 155, 156, 161, 175, 176, 178, 186, 201 reality television, 26 reasoning, 159 recall, 156, 164, 173, 174, 181, 185, 186 reciprocity, 60, 127 recognition, 20, 36, 38, 64, 153, 179 recommendations, 196 recreation, 56, 103 recreational, 9, 104 recruiting, 34 recurrence, 172 recycling, 18 redundancy, 1, 142, 143 referees, 54, 129 reform, 82 regulations, 19, 22, 31, 78

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212

Index

rehearsing, 30 reinforcement, 100 rejection, 100 relevance, 9, 19, 24, 76, 121, 125, 126, 135, 151, 152, 157, 176, 185 reliability, 151 religion, 53, 70, 85, 89, 140, 150, 156, 163, 164, 165, 167, 168, 169, 174, 175, 185, 186, 188, 189, 199 religiosity, 167, 168, 169, 188, 189 religious beliefs, 156, 174 repackaging, 33 repetitive behavior, 139, 140, 142 reproduction, 127, 129, 186 reputation, 34, 70, 168 requirements, 113, 196, 198 researchers, 3, 4, 7, 20, 26, 84, 95, 96, 97, 98, 105, 127, 131, 178, 184 reserves, 103 resilience, 2 resistance, 113, 191, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198 resolution, 85, 102, 106, 176, 194 resource allocation, 89, 118 resource management, 19, 21 resource utilization, 40 resources, 14, 30, 31, 36, 45, 47, 56, 84, 103, 108, 112, 114, 116, 117, 118, 134, 150, 181, 196 response, 4, 46, 50, 58, 80, 85, 101, 102, 154, 157, 158, 159, 162, 191, 193, 195 responsiveness, 102, 133, 147, 199 restoration, 142, 167 restrictions, 22, 33, 66, 183 retirement, 147, 153, 156 revenue, 21, 27, 28, 30, 31, 32, 33, 35, 36, 65 rewards, 108, 116, 117, 118, 135, 179, 181, 197 rhetoric, 28 right hemisphere, 168 risk, 29, 58, 86, 103, 109, 112, 113, 114, 115, 134, 135, 136, 160, 199 risk aversion, 86, 134 risks, 29, 58, 110, 112, 114, 200 risk XE "risk" -taking, 103, 109, 112, 134 risk-taking, 115 role-playing, 175 root, 160 roots, 53, 104 routines, 95, 120, 146, 160, 165 rubber, 131 rugby, 36, 41, 49 rules, 5, 22, 28, 33, 84, 85, 87, 108, 110, 112, 113, 114, 120, 143, 147, 150, 179

S sabotage, 196, 197 sadness, 158 safety, 78, 134 sanctions, 33 schema, 172, 175 schemata, 185 school, 75, 76, 89, 111, 157, 195 science, 77, 124, 125, 127, 131, 136, 166, 167, 168, 185, 186 scope, 11, 29, 106, 183, 184 scripts, 175 security, 80, 85, 150, 153 self esteem, 66 self-actualization, 81 self-concept, 26, 52, 54, 57, 58, 64, 66 self-efficacy, 26 self-esteem, 26, 48, 53, 54, 55, 56, 59, 64 self-evaluations, 26 self-expression, 57, 58 self-identity, 47, 53, 57 self-image, 57 self-interest, 6, 118, 151, 179, 196 self-organization, 136 self-perceptions, 100 semiotics, 83 senses, 86, 159 sensitivity, 168, 174, 200 sensory memory, 162 sensory systems, 156, 174 sequencing, 144, 176 service organizations, 8 service quality, 30, 61, 69 services, 8, 18, 19, 23, 30, 33, 37, 75, 103, 107, 160 sex, 50, 109, 133, 135 sexual assaults, 34 shape, 1, 2, 4, 13, 14, 37, 82, 86, 87, 93, 103, 127, 155, 162, 171, 191, 192 shareholders, 28, 78, 120 shortage, 199 showing, 4 signalling, 168 signals, 12, 79, 146, 150, 151, 152, 158, 165, 166, 181, 182 signs, 54, 79, 97, 145, 151 SII, 39, 67 Singapore, 15 skills base, 78 SMS, 33 snakes, 130, 131 soccer, 32, 33, 39, 40, 41, 49, 50, 59, 63, 69 sociability, 69, 113

Organizational Culture and Identity: Sport, Symbols and Success : Sport, Symbols and Success, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2012.

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Index social behavior, 130, 133, 175 social benefits, 21, 38, 66 social change, 201 social class, 148 social cognition, 128 social consequences, 143 social construct, 14, 88, 173, 186, 193 social context, 159, 176 social contract, 153 social environment, 78, 160 social events, 140, 148 social exchange, 134, 198 social exclusion, 150 social group, 3, 85, 94, 119, 130, 131, 143, 148, 171 social identity, 26, 57, 162 social identity theory, 26 social integration, 166 social learning, 133 social learning theory, 133 social life, 57 social network, 33, 153 social norms, 81 social order, 79, 81, 139, 146, 148, 162 social organization, 82, 94, 140 social problems, 128 social psychology, 42, 70, 91, 121 social reality, 175 social relations, 51, 63 social relationships, 51, 63 social roles, 142, 147 social sciences, 125, 201 social status, 54 social structure, 77, 131, 133, 142, 148 social units, 64 socialization, 95, 122, 133 society, 9, 29, 41, 42, 52, 64, 78, 81, 82, 88, 91, 123, 169, 175, 182 sociology, 18, 82, 88, 91, 99, 125, 165, 169, 175, 186 solidarity, 55, 113, 139, 140, 146, 148, 149, 151, 154, 157, 158, 161, 162, 165, 168, 175, 182, 184, 188 solution, 37 South Africa, 22, 123 South Asia, 169 sovereignty, 147 spam, 33 span of control, 77 spatial array, 143 specialists, 34, 112 specialization, 112 species, 127, 129 specific knowledge, 192 speculation, 47, 184

213

speech, 142, 164 spelling, 131 spending, 35, 48 spiders, 130 spirituality, 166, 168, 185 spontaneity, 49 sport spectators, 62 Sporting club cultures, 18, 20, 188 sporting heroes, 33, 96 sports events, 64 stability, 16, 82, 86, 113, 118, 142, 148, 149, 200 stabilization, 195 stakeholders, 2, 8, 12, 22, 31, 37, 77, 87, 100, 120 standardization, 105 stars, 9, 18, 34 state, 51, 59, 64, 75, 98, 159 states, 5, 23, 49, 64, 158, 164 statistics, 29, 54 statutes, 78 stereotypes, 109 stigma, 66, 166 stigmatized, 152 stimulation, 25, 45, 49, 158 stimulus, 65, 158, 198 storage, 127, 145 storytelling, 88, 130, 136, 176, 186, 187, 188, 189 strategic management, 9 stratification, 148 stress, 48, 49, 50, 55, 56, 117, 148, 196 structuralism, 89 structure, 5, 6, 9, 12, 13, 16, 21, 22, 28, 31, 35, 37, 41, 75, 77, 94, 95, 101, 107, 108, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 117, 118, 122, 127, 137, 139, 142, 144, 146, 152, 155, 162, 163, 169, 178, 180, 186, 192, 194, 195, 198 structuring, 18, 152 style, 34, 50, 84, 103, 112, 114, 140, 178, 197, 198 subjectivity, 3, 95, 113, 187 substance use, 34 substitution, 101 supernatural, 156, 157, 174, 175, 182, 185, 186 supervision, 152 supervisors, 21 supplier, 31 suppliers, 32 support staff, 54 surface layer, 84 surplus, 28, 30, 87, 90 surveillance, 150 survival, 8, 77, 90, 127, 129, 131, 151, 174, 199 susceptibility, 155, 171 suspensions, 34 sustainability, 20

Organizational Culture and Identity: Sport, Symbols and Success : Sport, Symbols and Success, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2012.

214

Index

symbolic meanings, 82, 87 symbolism, 119, 139, 145, 146, 148, 154, 162, 164, 177, 178 sympathy, 157 symptoms, 50 synthesis, 47, 75, 137 systemic change, 196

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T tactics, 28, 66 talent, 28, 31, 32 target, 4, 83, 152, 198 taxonomy, 40, 67, 152 teachers, 153 team sports, 17, 23, 39, 40, 42, 53, 59, 62, 66, 69 teams, 13, 16, 25, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 35, 36, 45, 46, 47, 48, 53, 54, 55, 56, 58, 59, 60, 61, 65, 67, 69, 87, 118, 132, 133, 159, 187, 192 techniques, 166, 196 technological advancement, 94 technological advances, 59 technological change, 90 technologies, 33, 59, 120 technology, 4, 28, 29, 33, 81, 98, 113, 116, 143 tellers, 180 temperament, 98 temperature, 135 tension, 9, 11, 29, 30, 162, 195 tensions, 28, 159 tenure, 149 terraces, 40 territorial, 133 territory, 145 testing, 21, 168 texture, 9 theatre, 19 therapy, 167 thoughts, 96, 139, 142, 162, 177, 186 threats, 101 time pressure, 28 top-down, 156 tourism, 26, 40, 42, 43, 47, 51, 62, 63, 66, 67, 68, 69, 71 Toyota, 122 toys, 126 trade, 35, 78, 112 trade union, 78, 112 traditional practices, 102 traditional views, 3, 95 traditions, 1, 10, 11, 12, 20, 28, 37, 59, 64, 97, 98, 103, 110, 119, 183 trainees, 122

training, 78, 84, 85, 113, 152 traits, 47, 98, 103, 108, 198, 200 trajectory, 109 transactions, 198 transference, 145 transformation, 11, 12, 27, 29, 40, 85, 90, 108, 121, 154 transformations, 153 transgression, 169 translation, 86 transmission, 12, 59, 104, 128, 149, 154, 155, 156, 163, 167, 169, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 177, 178, 181, 183, 184, 185, 187, 189 transplant, 159 transport, 65 trauma, 181, 196 treatment, 9, 142, 183 triggers, 63 trustworthiness, 151 turbulence, 77 twist, 173

U UK, 16, 17, 23, 38, 41, 43, 163, 166, 167, 169, 185, 187, 188 uncertain outcomes, 30 uniform, 105, 119, 150, 178 unique features, 19, 23, 106 United, 7, 9, 11, 15, 23, 28, 34, 35, 41, 51, 54, 60, 62, 118, 160, 199 United Kingdom, 7 United Nations, 34, 41 United States, 11, 15, 23, 28, 35, 51, 54, 60, 62, 118, 199 universe, 136 updating, 147 urban, 156, 165, 172, 174, 187

V vacuum, 75, 125, 131, 159, 193 validation, 43, 70, 71, 85 variables, 7, 8, 20, 24, 25, 27, 38, 45, 47, 55, 56, 57, 59, 64, 65, 73, 80, 82, 93, 103, 125, 129, 130, 135, 142, 154, 155, 171, 174, 180, 191, 192, 197 variations, 23, 63, 174 varieties, 140, 166 vehicles, 25, 51, 104, 113, 135, 140 vein, 27, 82, 110, 157, 195 venue, 25, 32, 46, 50, 61, 65, 71, 180 vertebrates, 127

Organizational Culture and Identity: Sport, Symbols and Success : Sport, Symbols and Success, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2012.

Index vertical integration, 29, 42 video games, 68 Viking, 40, 42, 164, 186 violence, 34, 50, 136, 169 violent criminals, 11 virtual communities, 119 vision, 88, 196 visual stimuli, 159 vocabulary, 10 volleyball, 59 vouchers, 63

W

web sites, 45 websites, 33, 145 welfare, 113 well-being, 34 West Indies, 24 Western Australia, 6, 15, 70, 186 White Paper, 22, 39 wholesale, 37 windows, 81 work activities, 152, 159 work environment, 49, 133 work ethic, 140 workers, 22, 76, 77, 148, 149, 153, 167 workforce, 149 workplace, 5, 95, 102, 114, 133, 140, 142, 147, 150, 152, 162, 166, 189 World Anti-Doping Agency, 34 World Wide Web, 33 wrestling, 6, 30

Y Yale University, 167 yield, 97, 98, 106, 119, 135, 157 young adults, 153

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wages, 28 Wales, 123 walking, 172 war, 40, 77, 161 Washington, 43, 66, 69 water, 9, 62, 133, 149, 151 wealth, 134 weapons, 42 weapons of mass destruction, 42 wear, 23, 118, 150, 180 web, 11, 33, 45, 112, 153

215

Organizational Culture and Identity: Sport, Symbols and Success : Sport, Symbols and Success, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2012.