An organisational analysis of the national governing bodies of sport in Britain : organisational structures and contexts, management processes and concepts and perceptions of effectiveness

Sports organisations in public, commercial and voluntary sectors in the mid 1990s are faced with an increasingly volatile environment. It has been claimed that there has been a move away from traditional, large-scale, bureaucratic, organisational structures in the commercial sector (which has predominantly led organisational and management fashions in the public, quasi-public and voluntary sectors), and this research project investigates whether such a shift away from traditionalist organisational forms is evidenced among Britain's national governing bodies of sport (NGBs). In addition, there has been a stimulus for NGBs to move away from reliance on public sector financial support for sporting bodies, and to seek a stronger commercial footing. This raises the question of how organisations are responding to the changing economic environment and whether for example more flexible, entrepreneurial approaches are evident among NGBs. It is with this context as background that the study seeks to embark on an organisational analysis of NGBs in Britain. The research project was founded on configurationalist approaches to organisational analysis which argue for a holistic investigation of organisations and the investigation is structured in three parts. The first involves identifying the nature and range of organisational structures which exist in NGBs of sport. This gives an account, on the basis of cluster analysis, of a taxonomy of governing bodies consisting of six clusters. The relationships between the organisational types are also examined in the first stage of the research as well as the potential transition processes from one organisational type to another. The aims of the second element of the study are to identifY the nature of management processes and organisational change, to explore ways in which structural features are affected by individual agency, and evaluate whether processes identified are consonant with the structural and contextual variables from the derived taxonomy. The third part of the research is a study of organisational actors' perceptions of effectiveness in NGBs drawn from the identified clusters. This 'multiple constituency' approach to understanding effectiveness evaluates both the different concepts of effectiveness, as well as the differential evaluations of effectiveness, which were held by internal constituencies and external assessors. The research findings provide evidence of a number of predominantly simple organisational structures in a variety of contexts. Management processes are identified for each type of the derived taxonomy and organisational phenomena of professionalisation, bureaucratisation and resource dependence are evaluated. The review of the changing British structural context within which NGBs operate identifies pressures exerted on NGBs to professionalise and bureaucratise their structures and commercialise their operations. However, the review of management processes and organisational change does not reveal a 'unidirectional drift' towards professionalised and bureaucratised structures. In addition, effectiveness levels as perceived by multiple constituents were not significantly higher for any of the 'post-Fordist', flexible organisational types in the NGB sample.