Understanding the Changing Nature of Sports Organisations in Transforming Societies

Vassil Girginov and Ivan Sandanski

Sport Management Review, 2008, vol. 11, issue 1, 21-50

Abstract: The paper examined the process of changing in three Bulgarian national sport organisations (NSO) in swimming, weightlifting and field hockey, as the country is undergoing fundamental political, economic and social transformations from state socialism (1945-1989) to democratisation (1990-present). Drawing on the contextualist approach to organisational change (Pettigrew, 1985) the study was concerned with understanding long-term processes in their context. Analysed were NSOs’ conceptual orientation, structures, resources, capabilities and outcomes. Changing was unveiled through the interplay between three levels of analysis - wider political and economic, sport sector, and organisation-specific. The history of changing unfolded over a 25 years period and followed three stages of crisis of governability (1980-1989), crisis displacement (1989-1997) and identity search (1998-2004). Changing was determined by tensions generated in the previous socialist sport system, the new forces in the NSOs’ context, and by managers’ interpretation of events, and was a discovery process. The three NSOs followed different change patterns of shrinking, insulation and expansion. Two key reasons were responsible for those differences - the institualisation of the broader political and sport sector contexts, and NSOs’ choice to pursue narrow elitism (specialism) or the broader aims of sports development (generalism). The contextualist approach allowed us to appreciate the historical, contextual and processual nature of changing and to discuss the role of managers and various forces in shaping its course and outcomes.

Date: 2008
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1016/S1441-3523(08)70102-5 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rsmrxx:v:11:y:2008:i:1:p:21-50

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rsmr20

DOI: 10.1016/S1441-3523(08)70102-5

Access Statistics for this article

Sport Management Review is currently edited by Sheranne Fairley

More articles in Sport Management Review from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().