مقاله سال ۲۰۱۶

 مرور مدیریت ورزش – Sport Management Review

In her Earle F. Zeigler Award lecture in 2004, Frisby (2005) noted that sport management research is dominated by positivist approaches. These have undoubtedly proved useful in addressing many key issues within sport management. However, Frisby (2005) provides a compelling argument for drawing upon the critical social sciences to see and think differently about research to extend knowledge and understandings in the field. In the same year, Amis and Silk (2005) continue this debate in a special edition of the Journal of Sport Management, “Expanding Horizons: Promoting Critical and Innovative Approaches to the Study of Sport Management.” They argue that “sport management is a field blinkered by its disciplinarity” (Amis & Silk, 2005, p. 360) and note the progressive work in areas like sport sociology to call for innovative thinking and approaches in sport management research. They propose that these developments can contribute to the ways in which sport management research can impact upon and have meaning for the communities it serves.

Yet, one decade later Knoppers (2015), using the work of Love and Andrew (2012) in Sport Management Review, highlights how the disciplines of sport management and the sociology of sport remain distinct, infrequently drawing upon each other. Knoppers (2015) asserts that adopting a sociological lens and critically reflexive approach can enable sport management practitioners and scholars to begin to better understand how societal issues are inextricably embedded within the management, governance, marketing, and development of sport. Amis and Silk (2005) concur, adding that it is this kind of critically reflexive outlook that will encourage a questioning of established management practices, structures and taken for granted assumptions and how these contribute to social inequalities. In so doing, the possibilities open up for new ways of organising and managing sport, as well as researching and teaching in the area of sport management (Amis & Silk, 2005; Frisby, 2005; Knoppers, 2015).

In calling for an imaginative rethinking in the ways sport management research is approached, Amis and Silk (2005), and more recently Shaw and Hoeber (2016), critique the effectiveness of conventional research methods. For example, like Bonnett and Carrington (2000), we have found that traditional quantitative methods often conflate individual differences and diversity into a few tidy, simplistic, overarching categories that are subsequently reported neatly through numerical sets, pie charts, and graphs. Moreover, such data rarely portray the meanings, reasons, feelings, and emotions behind the findings reported. In recent years, it would appear that the field of sport management has begun to embrace the use of qualitative methods as a legitimate means of generating data (Shaw & Hoeber, 2016). However as Shaw and Hoeber (2016) highlight, this rarely extends beyond traditional semi-structured interviews, focus groups and case studies. Whilst these maybe viewed as somewhat alterative by some, for other disciplines interviews and focus groups have also been criticised. For example, failing to capture individualised stories that reflect the multiplicity, fragmentation and complexity of lived experience (Flintoff, Fitzgerald, & Scraton, 2008).