Building the Sport Management Discipline

Abstract

As an academic field of study, sport management has come a very long way since the turn of the century. The field’s rapid growth and multidisciplinary character have fostered substantial debate about the field’s appropriate directions and foci. Several key elements are recommended to advance sport management scholarship over the next quarter century. To begin, sport management research must more thoroughly examine sport’s intersections and interactions with other social and economic activities. Doing so requires recognition that values and effects from sport depend on how sport is managed. Only the facts of competition and mediation of the body are intrinsic to sport. Management variations and effects need to be examined with explicit reference to the rewards, sanctions, and prompts rendered through sport organizations and systems. Thus, there is no one best sport system; rather, system variations need to be explored and understood. So doing requires multiple manifestations of sport to be studied, which mandates that we remain free from taxonomic constraints and universalist presuppositions. We will bridge levels and instances by building models of strategic processes. Sport management will therefore be both transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary.