title: An investigation of stakeholders and organisational capacity for elite athlete development in Australian surfing
Creators: name: Thrush, Andrew D
Publisher: name: Griffith University
Year: 2021
Subjects: subject: sport development
subject: sports clubs
subject: lifestyle sports
subject: Elite Athlete Development
subject: Australian
subject: Surfing

description: International sporting success produces many benefits for countries including nationalistic pride, promotion of health through sport participation and more tangible benefits such economic impacts from tourism promotion. Consequently, many countries’ governments are continually seeking to adopt successfully proven elite sport developmental policies and practices that provide clear, efficient and effective pathways to success for their elite athletes. In recent developments, the rapid rise in popularity of, and participation in, lifestyle sports like surfing resulted in being included at the Olympics and set to make its Olympic debut in July 2021 in Japan. Research suggests that lifestyle sports may deviate from the sport development pathways of traditional sports (Kellett &amp; Russell, 2009). Once just a lifestyle sport, surfing is now required to also offer pathways and opportunities to talented surfers to reach a level where they can qualify and compete at the Olympic Games. Given the unique predicament that surfing is faced with, the purpose of this two phase thesis was to examine the role of various stakeholders involved with sport development and their contribution to supporting elite surfer development processes. Using the attraction, retention/transition and nurturing (ARTN) framework of sport development processes (Sotiriadou et al., 2008), the first phase of this thesis adopted an organisational perspective to explain how sport organisations and stakeholders within these organisations develop, deliver or support surfing programs and strategies at different development stages. Data from 26 in-depth interviews with personnel of key stakeholder organisations such as Surfing Australia (NSO), State Sporting Organisations (SSOs) of surfing as well as surfboard riding clubs were thematically analysed to explore stakeholder involvement and how their interactions and strategies shape elite surfer pathways in Australia. The findings revealed that Surfing Australia, the SSOs, and third party organisations (TPOs) are involved in the elite surfer pathway. However, board riding clubs are the predominant stakeholders, particularly during the attraction process, with some involvement in the retention/transition process. The first phase of this thesis concluded that all stakeholders need to collaborate with each other during the sport development processes to achieve optimum outcomes for pre-elite and elite athletes (Sotiriadou et al., 2017). The second phase of this thesis was to firstly, examine the organisational capacity of a non-profit community sport club to achieve its goals, and secondly, to assess the sport club’s capacity to contribute to the foundation processes of elite surfer development. Using Hall et al.’s (2003) organisational capacity framework, data were collected from 14 in-depth interviews with representatives from Australian surfboard riding clubs. The findings revealed several strengths and weaknesses within the dimensions of human resources, financial, relationships and networks, infrastructure and process, and planning and development capacity. A key finding from the first part of the second phase of this thesis was that human resources capacity is central to the other capacity dimensions in that the level of human resource capacity can have a critical impact on the other dimensions. The second part of the second phase revealed that during the process of attraction, most board riding clubs possess strengths in all dimensions of organisational capacity to contribute to the sport development of surfers. However, during the sport development process of retention/transition, only some clubs have strengths in human resources, financial, and relationships and networking capacities, and they face challenges with infrastructure and process, as well as planning and development capacity. The second phase of the thesis concluded that if clubs are to continue being the predominant stakeholder in the elite surfer pathway, then there is need for consultation between the key organisations such as the NSO, SSOs and other relevant stakeholders regarding the level of support that clubs require to fill the gaps of the elite surfer pathway. This thesis proposes a model that combines sport development and organisational capacity and adds understanding to existing knowledge of elite sport development and the capacity building of the stakeholders or sports clubs involved with that process. The model assesses the strengths and challenges that board riding clubs face with regards to their organisational capacity to offer the foundations for elite surfer development. The subsequent identification of specific deficiencies will allow for capacity building strategies to be developed to be specifically implemented for successful elite sport development. The model was developed in the context of a lifestyle community sports club, however it is intended for wider application to be tested in different contexts, or on a sport-by-sport basis.