Globalized Sport Management in Diverse Cultural Contexts

James J. Zhang, Brenda G. Pitts, James J. Zhang, Brenda G. Pitts

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367730727
• eBook ISBN: 9780429559372
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Sport & Exercise Science
• Index: Business

Cross-cultural management is an important facet of the globalized sport industry. Sport managers must be skilled at working with individuals from diverse cultures and aware of the key issues affecting sport on a global level. This book brings together cutting-edge research from leading sport scholars from around the world, to illuminate some of those important issues and to demonstrate what cross-cultural management looks like in a sporting context.

Presenting case studies from countries as diverse as the US, Brazil, Poland and Venezuela, and across a range of sports from football to basketball, the book presents new empirical material derived from a range of inquiry protocols, including both qualitative and quantitative methods. It offers critical analyses of cross-cultural and managerial issues in key areas such as group cohesiveness, group communications, and misperception and misinterpretation.

Making an important contribution to our understanding of both theory and practice in sport management, this book is fascinating reading for any student, researcher or practitioner with an interest in global and international sport.

Chapter 1

Globalized sport management in diverse cultural contexts

An introduction

Lauren M. Johnson, Kyu Ha Choi, Euisoo Kim, Brenda G. Pitts and James J. Zhang

Introduction

It is often stated that we are living in the era of globalization and that the economic integration of international society significantly contributes to the notion of a global village. Yet, it is ironic that the promotion of international free trade is derived from the protectionism of the Great Depression. Throughout the global economic recession in the 1930s, many countries gave up free trade and began to impose high rates of tariffs for imported goods to protect and boost their domestic economy. The negative impacts of protectionism led to the global economic recession being unexpectedly prolonged; as a consequence, international society had turned toward trade liberalization by the late 1930s (Dür, 2010). Ever since, global society has tried to promote international trade by reducing trade barriers through such trade organizations as the General Agreement on Tariff and Trade (GATT) and World Trade Organization (WTO). In recent years, many countries have pursued the signing of bilateral or regional trade agreements that provide exclusive benefits among members involved in national coalitions (Zhang, Pitts, & Kim, 2017).

Due to the promotion of freer trade, business sectors have become increasingly more internationalized as exchange of goods, services and labor forces are much more convenient and accessible than ever before. It is not surprising to find that many corporations have been actively seeking cross-border business opportunities and becoming multinational. The trend is being accelerated even more due to the rapid development of transportation, communication and information technology (IT) that enables corporate global operations to be more effective, cheaper and easier. For example, advanced shipbuilding technologies have allowed vessels to carry much larger volumes of goods per voyage, which has significantly contributed to the reduction of global transportation costs. Cheaper transportation costs have contributed to a large number of corporations building factories in emerging economies, e.g., China and Vietnam, in pursuit of competitive labor and production costs. Consequently, it is more difficult to find domestically produced consumer goods in many developed economies such as the United States and Western European nations (Pitts & Zhang, 2016; Zhang, Chen, & Kim, 2014; Zhang, Huang, & Wang, 2017).

A company can even be so global that the price of specific products provides a reference for the economic indexes of a certain country. The Economist, one of the most prominent economics magazines, each year announces its “Big Mac Index”: Big Mac is a representative hamburger of McDonald’s and the variation of Big Mac price across countries provides a meaningful reference that enables economists to compare such economic indicators as cost, pricing, affordability and lifestyle. For example, findings of numerous studies indicate that the price index of a Big Mac is highly correlated with the wage level (Ashenfelter & Jurajda, 2001), real exchange rate (Parsley & Wei, 2007) and purchasing power parity (Ong, 2003; Pakko & Pollard, 2003). These phenomena provide a snapshot of how much the world economy and contemporary corporations are globalized today.

Consistent with mainstream business, the sport industry has developed rapidly under the global trend and benefited in various respects. The sport industry as a whole has entered the global marketplace because of the competitive nature of leagues and organizations that employ players, coaches and administrators from various parts of the world in order to have the best talents they can find. The Olympic Games and World Cup represent worldwide sporting events that bring together multiple countries that all play and enjoy the same sport in their respective regions. The first modern Olympic Games, held in Athens, Greece in 1896, drew 311 athletes from over 13 nations. This global meeting of the world’s best athletes was the very start of the sport industry expanding across borders (Crosset & Hums, 2015). Without the globalizing forces, the popularity of many professional sports such as soccer and basketball would be limited to their country of origin and they could not gain such global attention as they enjoy now. About a century ago, baseball and basketball were played and consumed mostly in the United States while the popularity of soccer, which is perceived as the most globalized sport, was limited among international Spanish nations (Ramaswamy, 2009). However, today, each match of the world’s most famous soccer league, the English Premier League (EPL), is watched by an average of 12 million people. EPL matches were broadcast by 80 stations in 212 territories globally in 2016, generating over $5 billion in international TV deals for EPL besides its $8 billion domestic TV deals for the 2016–2019 seasons (Curley & Roeder, 2016). These figures provide a reference to the degree to which the professional sport industry is currently internationalized in contemporary society.

The international growth of many amateur and professional sports has helped create an enormous demand for sporting goods from both professional athletes and recreationalists. It is not surprising to find a large number of sporting goods manufacturers growing rapidly and operating factories across the globe to serve consumer needs (Smart, 2007). For example, Nike, which was incorporated in 1967, operates international branch offices and subsidiaries in 51 countries; $5.8 billion out of its $6.2 billion of cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments were held by foreign subsidiaries as of May 31, 2017 (Nike, 2017). Mega sport events such as the FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) World Cup and the Olympic Games have contributed considerably to the globalization of sports and gained enormous attention from international society. During the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Summer Olympic Games, 206 National Olympic Committees with 11,237 athletes participated in the event (Willis, 2016). Similarly, 209 countries participated in the qualifying rounds to make the final list and only 32 teams were invited to the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia (Fédération Internationale de Football Association [FIFA], 2018). With these large numbers of participants from around the globe, historical TV viewership for both events has grown rapidly. For instance, via various platforms such as TV and streaming on digital devices, 356,924 hours of coverage of the Rio de Janeiro Games were reported and half the global population watched the games on television, which was an increase of 96.7 percent compared to the previous Summer Olympic Games (International Olympic Committee [IOC], 2016).

Sport labor migration is another sign of the internationalization of sports. In most professional sport clubs and leagues in both advanced and developing economies, it is not difficult to find foreign athletes on the roster. Not only do these athletes play pivotal roles in bringing competitiveness and high quality to games, but they also attract foreign media and fans, which often results in better financial performance for sport organizations (Thibault, 2009; Zhang, Kim, Mastromartino, Qian, & Nauright, 2018). Maguire (1996) investigated the role of international athlete migration and found that professional ice hockey players from Canada made a significant contribution to the development of European ice hockey leagues. When Chan-ho Park, the first Korean baseball player in Major League Baseball (MLB), began to perform extremely well as a starting pitcher in the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1997, MLB became one of the most watched sports in Korea and his performance even contributed to the sport media company formed jointly between ESPN and MBC in 2001 to broadcast MLB in Korea (Cho, 2009). Yet, it was not until the late 1980s and early 1990s that the cross-border movement of athletes began to occur in professional sports such as soccer, basketball and ice hockey (Butler & Dzikus, 2015). It appears that without globalization, the international movement of talented athletes would have been limited and the benefits many professional teams are enjoying by recruiting them would have been marginal.

While the sport industry has enjoyed the expanded opportunities and increased benefits of globalization, critical and complex issues have also arisen in managing sport teams, leagues and organizations. In this chapter, critical analyses are conducted of both advantageous and challenging perspectives of cross-cultural and managerial issues in the global sport industry. In a preliminary effort to address the challenges, discussions on emerging trends and managerial practices are made; certainly, empirical studies are suggested to further analyze related concepts and variables and seek viable solutions.

Globalization and cross-cultural context

Due to globalization, cultural diversity has increased tremendously in organizations from multiple sectors so it is no longer a novel phenomenon in many areas. Diversity appears in various forms and characteristics, such as age, gender, physical condition, ethnicity, race, nationality and culture (Mai-Dalton, 1993; Wright, Ferris, Hiller, & Kroll, 1995). This is particularly true in the context of sport management studies, in which studies of cross-cultural diversity have encompassed such perspectives as race, ethnicity and age diversity (e.g., Cunningham, Bruening, & Straub, 2006; Cunningham & Fink, 2006), gender diversity (e.g., Cunningham, 2008; Fink, 2008) and physical ability (e.g., Hums, Moorman, & Wolff, 2003; Tregaskis, 2003). When studies focus on team performance, diversity of athletes or coaching staff is usually the main concern (e.g., Timmerman, 2000). When studies take a view on managerial performance, diversity of organizational managers and staff is mainly dealt with (e.g., Doherty & Chelladurai, 1999; Siciliano, 1996).

Among a number of factors, globalization has an important role in increasing this trend of diversity, especially within organizations. The term globalization carries an extensive meaning, but in general it is defined as a process in which people, businesses, organizations and nations of different backgrounds are becoming more interconnected across the world (Ali, 2000). Globalization has enabled great fluidity of not only goods, but also people, ideas, information and many cultural elements across the world, which is driven primarily by such factors as reduced transportation and logistics costs, lowered barriers to trade, active communication and information exchanges via advanced technologies and widened business opportunities for firms and employment opportunities for individuals (Wood & Wilberger, 2015). For instance, June 11, 2016 was a special moment for Korean baseball fans as two MLB players, Oh and Kang, were matched up in a pitcher–batter battle. This was the first time in history that two former Korean Baseball Organization (KBO) players played against each other in the MLB. This instance involved several aspects and results of globalization in a sport organization: (a) these two South Koreans had played baseball (an American sport) in Korea, (b) MLB teams had scouted these KBO players and eventually signed them and (c) this match was broadcast in South Korea so that the MLB fans in South Korea could watch live.

In mainstream business studies, the primary focus of scholarly discourse on globalization has been on its economic impact (Banerjee & Linstead, 2001). Even so, the most significant underlying key source of social change in the international system under globalization is the expansion of communications (Greig, 2002). Many technologies, including, but not limited to, telephones, mobile smartphones, air travel, television and the internet, have enabled people to communicate, travel and immigrate transnationally and transcontinentally. The cultural dimensions of globalization have followed the immense increase of worldwide communication as Berger (1997) argued. Other scholars have also concurred with the idea that broadened communications have functioned to increase interconnectedness between or among cultures, along with important consequences for local cultures (Foster; 1991; Hannerz, 1990). Such accumulation of interconnected cultures eventually forms a cross-cultural diversity within organizations and societies. Although globalization may not be solely responsible for cross-cultural diversity, it is practically impossible to note the concept of cross-cultural diversity without the impact of globalization.

As the world has become more globalized, especially in a business and management setting, a demand for managers who clearly understand multi-faceted perspectives of global management and are skilled at working with individuals from various backgrounds has rapidly arisen (Schneider & Barsoux, 2003). Adler and Gundersen (2007) stated that cross-cultural management “describes organizational behavior within countries and cultures; compares organizational behavior across countries and cultures; and seeks to understand and improve the interaction of coworkers, managers, executives, clients, suppliers, and alliance partners from countries and cultures around the world” (p. 13). Thus, cross-cultural management explicates people’s behavior in organizations in a global setting, shows how employees and clients from diverse cultures work in organizations and expands the scope of management from domestic to international and multicultural management dynamics (Adler & Gundersen, 2007; Pucik, 1992).

Role of cross-cultural comparison

Managing a single domestic culture is now recognized as a bounded subset of management as work behavior varies among and across cultures (Adler & Gundersen, 2007). Groups with different cultural backgrounds may reflect varying preferences (Norenzayan, Smith, Kim, & Nisbett, 2002). Kaplan and Langdon (2012) scrutinized the behavior of Chinese sport fans and established that they follow their favorite professional sport because of a certain athlete within the sport, significantly more so than Americans. This explains why the most popular U.S. professional sport league in China is the National Basketball Association (NBA). The Chinese basketball star Yao Ming’s remarkable achievements have significantly boosted the popularity of the NBA in China. Americans, on the other hand, follow professional sports because of a certain professional team (Kaplan & Langdon, 2012). This is a small example that demonstrates the need for cross-cultural comparison where the preferences of varying or diverse groups are concerned.

Culture is considered one of the independent variables influencing one’s attitudes and behavior, and it includes wide-ranging aspects and values in which two or more cultures can closely share a similar set of aspects while being quite dissimilar in other dimensions (Christie, Kwon, Stoeberl, & Baumhart, 2003). For example, in Hofstede and Hofstede’s (2005) study, India and the U.S. were very similar in terms of the uncertainty avoidance index, but extremely dissimilar in the individualism index. Cross-cultural comparison has an important role in identifying such dissimilarities and answering complex problems across a wide domain (Ilesanmi, 2009). Ilesanmi (2009) indicated the importance of conducting a cultural examination that “focuses on systematic comparison that compares culture to culture and explicitly aims to answer questions about the incidence, distributions and causes of cultural variations and complex problems across worldwide” (p. 82). As culture is comprised of various mixtures of shared values, meaning and interpretations of human behaviors, it is practically impossible to adequately understand human activities by simply observing some samples of individuals. Cross-cultural comparison would be an important process by which to generate more adequate solutions for problems that arise due to dissimilar cultures.

Advantages and opportunities

Despite the rapid increase in the recognition of cross-cultural diversity, there are still ongoing arguments as to whether or not diversity brings opportunities and advantages to an organization and its management (Cox, 1994). There...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of contributors
• 1 Globalized sport management in diverse cultural contexts: an introduction
• PART I: Uniqueness and comparisons
• PART II: Social issues and opportunities
• Index