Communication challenges for partner organisations

Many people not directly involved in developing, maintaining and evaluating business–community partnerships tend to assume that such partnerships are one of two types: an add-on to an organisation’s core business or a fundraiser for an NGO. There are lots of examples of these two categories of “partnership” around the world, but there are considerably fewer of a third type – where the partnership is part of “core business” and as such is deeply embedded in the more forward-looking companies and community organisations that implement them, and also achieves significant internal impact. This situation raises some interesting communication
challenges.

Defining the domain of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in tourism organisations : a preliminary view from stakeholders in Thailand's accommodation sector

This paper aims to define the domain of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) for hotel and accommodation organizations in Thailand. It seeks to integrate the diverse components of CSR as defined within the general business/management, tourism and stakeholder literatures. A review of existing literature, codes of practice and standards, identify three broad CSR components – economic issues, social/ethical issues and environmental – although each of the standards varied in terms of the definition and emphasis applied. The components were ‘aggregated’ within each of the broad management and tourism literature, these two sets of groupings were then aggregated into one overarching set of CSR issues. Semi-structured interviews were then undertaken with 38 key informants from hotel and resort businesses in Thailand to identify their views toward the applicability of these over-arching components to hotel and accommodation organisations.

The results of the aggregation of standards suggest that CRS approaches within general business tend to be more socially/ethically orientated whereas within the tourism area approaches tend to be more environmentally orientated. Key respondents’ views were generally consistent with the three broad issues of the integrated CSR domain, although some issues were identified as more salient to hotel and accommodation organisations than others. The paper suggests that there is a need to develop CSR measures and indicators applicable and reflective of the different environmental, legal, cultural and local setting.

Board involvement in strategy : advancing the governance of sport organizations

This study investigated how boards of national sport organizations might enhance their strategic capability. Utilizing an action research method and focusing on the case of New Zealand Football (soccer), findings established that greater board involvement in strategy advanced the board's ability to perform its strategic function. Further findings determined the importance of shared leadership between the board and the CEO, the complex interplay in balancing this relationship and the need to integrate strategy into board processes.

Australian elite athlete development : an organisational perpective

The purpose of this paper is to examine and map the process of Australian elite athlete development from an organisational perspective, that of 35 national sporting organisations (NSOs). Research on elite development has focused on the significance of economic and cultural factors (macro-level studies) and the role of sport science and athletes’ close environment (micro-level studies) in fostering success. In an effort to depict elite athlete development processes in a more inclusive way, this paper offers an evaluation of the ways elite athletes are nurtured from an Australian NSOs perspective adopting a meso-level approach (e.g., programs). The study is based on a document analysis examining 74 annual reports from 35 NSOs over a period of four years, before and after the Sydney Olympic Games and offers a generic framework of the Australian elite athlete development process. The resulting framework shows that various interested groups are involved with nurturing elite athletes through either initiating or implementing specially designed programs or other strategies that cultivate success, and helps broaden the definition of elite development. The implications of successful elite athlete development include increased finances and public profile for sports as well as the creation of pathways to increase interest in sport.

Managing sport in drought-new stakeholders and new governance issues : a case study

Globally, almost every nation is facing some form of water crisis (World Commission on Water 2000). In Australia, the sport and recreation industry is one of the highest consumers of water. Other high water consuming industries (such as agriculture and farming) have been forced to adhere to strict managerial and governance reform due to the water crisis, yet in the sport and recreation industry, such changes are yet to be implemented and fully realised across the sector.

This research examines the impacts of drought and sustainable water management for sport and recreation. Specifically, it provides a case study of sport and recreation provision in a municipality that has already undergone considerable reform due to long-term drought. Sport and recreation use water for purposes such as irrigation of playing fields/pitches, filling swimming pools, stadium amenities and facilities, kitchens, maintenance and cleaning, and clubhouse amenities.

For sports that are heavy users of water for the maintenance of playing fields (such as soccer, Australian Rules football, rugby league, rugby union, grass and clay tennis courts to name a few) the impacts of drought and water restrictions have been severe. Some sports have reported an increase in the risk of injury to participants because of the condition of un-watered playing fields (Sport and Recreation Victoria 2007). Others have been forced to delay or shorten their seasons (Sleeman 2007), or worse still, cancel training and organised competition completely (Connolly and Bell 2007). While the impact of water restrictions has been profound on most sports, there are some sports that are not heavy water users and the impact of drought and water restrictions has been minimal. This problem creates issues and apparent inequities raising the need to further examine water consumption in sport and recreation. The potential outcome that arises is that the future of those sports that cannot conduct their competitions may be disadvantaged, while other sports that do not have such problems may be able to flourish.

Water, and those who control the supply of it, then defines which sports are able to flourish and sustain sport development pathways, compared to those whose survival may be in jeopardy. This research explores the stakeholder management and governance issues that have resulted for sport and recreation in the City of Greater Geelong (CoGG) located in Victoria, Australia--a region in long-term water crisis. The supply of sport and recreation facilities in the CoGG (like most municipalities in Australia) is largely the responsibility of the municipal council. The corporation responsible for the supply of water to the municipality is Barwon Water.

Although other sport and recreation facilities exist in the CoGG, the municipal council of CoGG owns and maintains over 120 sporting ovals (including the stadium used by its professional Australian Football League (AFL) team, the Cats), six swimming pools, and three golf courses. The CoGG host their professional AFL team, a range of local, national and international sport events, and provide a wide range of sport and recreation facilities for the community residents.

Eight interviews were conducted in total. Interviews were conducted with representatives from CoGG municipal council (who are responsible for the delivery of sport and recreation services and facilities in Geelong), and representatives from Barwon Water (who are responsible for the ongoing provision and maintenance of sport and recreation services and facilities) through the provision of water. Results show that the ten highest users of water in the municipality are sport and recreation facilitieswhich between them use almost one-third of the city's total water consumption (City of Greater Geelong 2006).

The municipal council is under considerable pressure to find ways to continue to provide sport and recreation opportunities for community members, as well as professional athletes and teams who use these facilities despite water restrictions. After all, these facilities provide benefit to spectators and participants, as well as businesses that rely on visitors to Geelong for sport and recreation events.

Due to such pressures, from 2007, the CoGG and Barwon Water agreed to provide the sport and recreation sector with water allocations rather than to be denied of all water under the water restriction regimes in place in the municipality. During 2007 summer sport season, this allowed the CoGG to keep 16 of its 120 sporting ovals open for participation through allocating all available water to these fields in order to keep them safe and playable. However, CoGG and Barwon Water were required to devise a rating scale to determine which sports (and sport facilities) were to share the allocated water, and which were not. These decisions also had knock on effects through sports. In order to ensure the safety of the playing surfaces, the CoGG and Barwon Water also restricted use of fields to competition only, therefore sport participants were forced to train on local beaches and other parkland areas-transferring issues of safety and public liability to other locations and facilities in the community. Further, it was reported that scheduling of competition seasons and individual matches; as well as the allocation of "home ground" gate receipts and concessions profits were required to be governed by the CoGG and Barwon Water as the competing sports were unable to agree. Perhaps more importantly, the rating scale developed for water allocation also resulted in some sports being rated as ineligible for water and as a result were unable to stage their entire competitions.

Clearly, the water allocation rating scale, and approach taken in this municipality to the continued delivery of sport and recreation has provided a workable solution. However, this study also signals that new stakeholders have entered the arena for the governance of sport. Governance structures in sport and recreation are being impacted as a result of the water crisis.

Those making decisions about which sport and recreation activities and/or facilities will be assisted with water resources are being made by local councils and water corporations. Sport managers are being required to understand existing areas of knowledge (such as turf management) in different ways, to gain knowledge in new areas (such as sustainable water management), and to lobby new stakeholder groups (such as water corporations) in order to secure their futures. The continued existence of some sports is no longer in the hands of governing bodies, but in the hands of local councils, and water corporations.

Clearly, any of the solutions implemented as discussed above, require multiple stakeholders to interact, and to reach agreement in order to assist in sustainable management of water in sport and recreation. In this sense, the management of water in sport (and all other industries) is more than a rational decision about policy, legislation, restrictions and resource allocations. It is a social and political process requiring scholarly attention for practical solutions.

The attraction, retention/transition and nurturing process of sport development : some Australian evidence

The purpose of this study was to explore and map the sport development processes in Australia. A grounded theory approach identified sport development processes by examining 74 annual reports from 35 national sporting organizations (NSOs) over a period of 4 years, before and after the Sydney Olympic Games. The 3 frameworks presented in this article representing the attraction, retention/ transition, and nurturing process illustrate the generic processes and strategies described by NSOs. The results show that each sport development process requires human and financial input from various stakeholders. These stakeholders initiate or implement sport development strategies for each process and each process has different sport development outputs. These results contribute to the extant literature of sport development by demonstrating that sport development is more complex and encompassing than previously described. It is proposed that the generic frameworks derived from this study be subject to more specific testing using other sport systems, as context and case studies could lead to tailoring the frameworks to represent specific sport development processes and systems.

Social policy for sport events : leveraging (relationships with) teams from other nations for community benefit

Recent work on sport events has argued that host governments should do more to leverage events in order to obtain and spread the benefits. This study uses ethnographic methods to compare two cities' implementation of a programme designed to leverage the presence of visiting teams training for the 2006 Commonwealth Games. Whereas one city formulated and implemented a detailed strategic plan to obtain benefits from its relationship with its adopted visiting team (Papua New Guinea), the other made no effort to benefit from adopting a visiting team (Wales). The city that leveraged its visiting team obtained new relationships, cultural insights, and improved organisational networks, whereas the city that did not leverage obtained no comparable benefits. The difference was due to the disparity in strategic vision by the two city governments and the vague mandate of the state programme which had caused each city to adopt its chosen team. Future work should explore factors that foster and that inhibit effective leverage before and during sport events.

Sport development, systems, policies and pathways : an introduction to the special issue

Fundamentally sport development is about participation and promoting the opportunities and benefits of participation. Participation in sport and physical activity spans a wide range of contexts including the wholesomeness associated with the freedom of children’s play to the modification of sport to allow children to be children a little longer. The cycle of participation continues to junior and youth sport, where the rules, regulations and traditions of a sport become the foundation to protecting the “institution” of sport, to participation in senior competitions and ultimately, to elite and professional sport. Sport development research and practice therefore is concerned with all these manifestations of the sport experience. It logically follows that the purview of sport development is quite large and potentially complex. Moreover, it is possible to identify at least five themes that could be used to categorise sport development research. These themes include; policy, development through sport, development of sport, future patterns of sport delivery and marketing in terms of the relationship between professional sport and participation.

A qualitative investigation of the safety culture of two organisations

A qualitative investigation of the safety culture of two contrasting organisations was undertaken. The research sought to identify categories and themes in the data that highlighted similarities and differences in salient safety issues for employees from the two organisations. The participants were 131 employees attending safety training sessions in a large national retail organisation and a heavy manufacturing organisation. Unobtrusive observation was used to collect data during the safety training sessions. Thematic analysis was used to identify emergent categories and themes from the data. Ten broad categories with relevant themes were identified and provided some insight into the safety culture of the two organisations, with both similarities and differences being evident. Participants from both organisations mentioned management issues in relation to safety, discussed the impact of employee risk- taking behaviour on safety, made reference to a blame culture, and raised integrity issues regarding safety. For the manufacturing organisation, a number of themes focused on contractor issues, while in the retail organisation, several themes highlighted differences in safety attitudes between head office and store-level employees.