Embedded Multi-Level Leadership in Elite Sport

Svein S. Andersen, Per Øystein Hansen, Barrie Houlihan, Svein S. Andersen, Per Øystein Hansen, Barrie Houlihan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367552770
• eBook ISBN: 9781000451924
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Negocios y empresa
• Subtopic: Ciencias del deporte y del ejercicio

This book represents an alternative perspective on international elite sport systems. It focusses on the embedded multi-level nature of leadership, and the scope that this might give for degrees of leadership autonomy and discretion.

The chapters show how mechanisms of leadership on different levels interact. The nature and mix of leadership mechanisms reflect values and expectations related to specific political, normative and commercial sport contexts. Three introductory chapters outline key elements of these dimensions of elite sport contexts. Seven empirical cases illustrate how national contexts facilitate and constrain leadership practices, related to specific sports across Russia, China, Ghana, Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway and the US. The final chapter discusses embedded multi-level leadership from a comparative perspective. Based on the countries covered, the book distinguishes between three groups: state-dominated systems, state-elite sport partnership and countries with a passive state, with no state intervention.

This book is important reading for researchers and students with an interest in sport management, sport development, sport policy and sport governance, as well as for policy-makers, performance directors and managers working in elite sport.

Chapter 1

Embedded multi-level leadership in diverse elite sport systems

Svein S. Andersen, Per Øystein Hansen and Barrie Houlihan

DOI: 10.4324/9781003092728-1

Diversity of elite sport systems

In recent years, there has been a sharp increase in interest from national sports federations and governments in the development of effective elite sport development systems. Many countries, in all parts of the world, now have in place publicly funded elite sports strategies which provide specialist facilities and support staff and often also provide direct financial support for athletes. A major exception is the US, which has a heterogeneous elite sport system driven by schools, universities and commercial interests. The overall picture is that the organisational and institutional infrastructure of sport has become more elaborate, complex and arguably more constraining, in part due to commercialisation and also due to an intensification of the political significance of sport and the increased involvement of governments in regulating and funding elite sport, especially Olympic sport (Green and Oakley 2001, Digel, Burk and Fahrner 2006, Houlihan and Green 2008, Andersen, Ronglan and Houlihan 2015, Reiche 2016).

Previous research on national elite sport systems paid little attention to how elite sport systems are influenced by diversity of the political, social and commercial contexts. The dominating SPLISS model emphasises a set of key pillars – or elements/functions – necessary to support the development of elite athletes and teams (De Bosscher et al. 2008, 2015). This model is rather generic giving greater emphasis to individual elements than to organisational culture, structures and processes. Complementing the emphasis on identifying key elements of elite success, several studies highlight that elite sport success is dependent upon certain types of leadership and management (e.g. Burton and Welty Peachy 2009, Arnold, Fletcher and Molyneux 2012, Fletcher and Arnold 2011, 2015, Sotiriadou 2012, Wagstaff, Fletcher and Hanton 2012, Molan et al. 2019).

In contrast to these approaches, Böhlke and Robinson (2009), Andersen and Ronglan (2012), Andersen, Ronglan and Houlihan (2015), Reiche (2016) emphasise that a variety of national contexts as well as sport-specific requirements are sources of diverse organisational solutions that influence how leadership is pursued. Even within the same elite sport system, there may be great variations given the different sport organisations’ internal and external environments. Internal environment refers to sport-specific requirements such as decision-making processes, embedded culture and organisational history. External environment is about a sport’s status and attraction from a political, social and commercial perspective. With a few exceptions (e.g. Sotiriadou and Shilbury 2009, Andersen and Ronglan 2012, Andersen, Ronglan and Houlihan 2015, Johnson et al. 2012), few have studied leadership in elite sports at the organisation level. This is somewhat surprising, since such efforts are essential in attracting talents and mobilising resources for world-class training efforts.

There are important differences across countries with respect to the role of the state and the structure of elite sport systems. For instance, in China (Hong 2008, Peng 2019) and Russia (Riordan 1992) elite sport systems are, to a large extent, interwoven with political institutions and strategies. France has a state-dominated system, but it is increasingly dependent upon cooperation with more autonomous regional and local public and private organisations (Mignon 2005). The elite sport systems in the UK, Australia and New Zealand are state-led but in close partnership with national sport federations, universities and sport institutes (Sam 2015, Houlihan and Chapman 2015).

In the Nordic countries elite sport, and indeed all sport, is the prerogative of relatively autonomous voluntary sport federations which dominate policymaking and the organisation of the elite sport system. The state is a provider of resources, particularly finance, but keeps an arm’s-length distance from strategic and day-to-day decision-making (Bergsgaard et al. 2007). In the US, neither the federal state nor the individual states have a major role in developing the elite sport system. Schools, universities and community and private clubs are a network of only loosely coordinated special sport associations (Smolianov et al. 2014).

Few studies attempt to demonstrate how such systems actually work (exceptions being Bøhlke and Neuenschwander 2015, Andersen, Houlihan and Ronglan 2015, Johnson et al. 2012). Even fewer studies explore the role of culture and values in informing functions and permeating structures within systems despite the argument that, as Giva-May (2002, p. 245) notes, ‘Culture is part of a given social context and implies negotiation, consequences, and cause’. Dynamics arise from the initiative and interaction in different parts of the system by actors engaged in the development and exploitation of resources made available to develop athletes and teams. Moreover, ‘systems appear to have “self-organising capacities”, making them difficult to control’ (Cairney 2012, Teisman and Klijn 2008) – a view which resonates strongly with the bottom-up approach to understanding the interaction between leadership on different levels.

This book identifies and illustrates some of the many variations between – and within – modern elite sport systems. The striving for success emphasises efficiency and means-end rationality. The purpose is not to extract characteristics of ‘one best way’ to success but to identify that which is considered to be a rational and effective reflection of historical trajectories as well as present-day contingencies. Contributions represent macro-level accounts of national systems but with a view on how such systems serve as a context for specific sports and the exercise of leadership within those sports. The role of the state versus societal and commercial actors constitutes different settings for multi-level leadership. At the same time, sport-specific requirements and traditions of national sports are sources of variation within such systems.

Embedded multi-level leadership – beyond implementation

One of the continuing debates in the study of organisations is the relative significance of agency and structure. While few would defend the determinism of structural Marxism or endorse the scepticism towards human agency of Fernand Braudel (1975 [1949]), there is still a concern that too great an emphasis is given to the capacity of agency to overcome long-established cultural and organisational structures. As Alvesson (2020, p. 2) observes,

[L]eadership may appear as an ideological – more than a practical – solution. It offers identity, status, and legitimation support through promises of moral goodness and grandiose action, mediated by ideas such as transformational, servant, empowering, authentic, and other ‘feel good’ leadership, presented as recipes for creating a wide range of positive outcomes.

Focusing on the potential of the leader might be a way of avoiding an examination of the deficiencies of the structure of the organisation or the weaknesses of the culture of management.

Questions of leadership have often been discussed in terms of implementation with the assumption that the leader is able to bend (transform) the organisation to his or her will. In this classical model, implementation is viewed as a sequential top-down process, where rules made at the top of an organisation directed activities on the lower level (Sabatier 1986, Bogason 2006). Consequently, leadership of elite sport systems is about making sure that preferences and priorities are guiding activities on all levels. More realistically, lower-level leadership systems may treat top-level decisions as guidelines for operative goals pursued in light of local requirements, resources and relationships. This is in line with Lipsky’s (1971) classical study of street-level bureaucracy. Going one step further, Jordan and colleagues (2009) suggested that the implementation of policies and rules is more realistically captured by the idea that they serve as frames for, sometimes unexpected, conversations among actors involved in collective sense-making and learning at all levels.

Leadership may be defined as actions with a purpose (Bass 1990). In recent years, there has been a significant increase in interest in understanding and theorising sport leadership (see e.g. Welty Peachy et al. 2015, Ferkins, Skinner and Swanson 2018). One reason is the need to widen the perspective from a narrow range of relationships such as that between the coach and the athlete. The latter also means that leadership studies have a bias towards on-the-field activities rather than off-the-field activities relevant for the leadership of multi-level elite sport systems. In this book, we are interested in how resources and capacities developed by the wider elite sport systems, off the field, can be linked to the requirements and needs on the field. This directs attention to the literature on multi-level leadership, a perspective that challenges the fundamental assumptions of the various versions of the implementation model.

Elite sport organisations may vary considerably with respect to structural arrangements. The role of leaders on different levels is not simply to implement the objectives and priorities set at the top level. The multi-level model views leadership as shared leadership, a collective process where leaders on different levels, as well as coaches and athletes, interact across different governance structures (Chrislip and Larson 1994, Lemay 2009, Ferkins, Skinner and Swanson 2018), and where a culture is created ‘in which followers become leaders and leaders know when to follow mutuality and synergy predominate over isolationism and individualism’ (Johnson et al. 2012, p. 55). However, in this book we add one level to the multi-level model. Elite sport systems are embedded within different political, normative and commercial contexts. Introducing a perspective of embedded multi-level leadership is a major contribution of the book. Given the lack of existing research on multi-level leadership, we find it prudent to keep an open mind in pursuing these issues empirically.

The literature on elite sport systems has paid limited attention to the impact of the wider political and social expectations and how they impact national elite sport systems. Similarly, there is limited research on how strategies and objectives of elite sport systems are translated into support for the identification and development of coaches, athletes and teams. This involves active leadership on all levels and affects what kind of resources are prioritised, developed, mobilised and used to realise organisational objectives. It involves a variety of tools, such as planning, budgeting, auditing, coordination, negotiations, contracting and control (Martin 2005, Henry et al. 2020).

In contrast to business and public sector organisations, internal stakeholders in elite sport organisations such as coaches and athletes have a unique influence on the processes of leadership in the wider organisation. Their ‘celebrity could accentuate power legitimacy, and urgency that may influence decision-making strategies of sport leaders’ (Welty Peachy et al. 2015, p. 581). This is a source of dynamic relationships between leaders on different levels.

The multi-level perspective is open to a number of different interpretations. One example could be how leadership at different levels allows for autonomy, space for discretion and scale of decision-making authority. Another could be how leaders in particular roles operationalise their formal responsibility across levels. This focus on multi-level leadership supplements the literature that has largely focused on particular relationships (especially coach–athlete) and relatively neglected particular levels of leadership (especially strategic leadership) and the interaction between leadership across levels.

Most leadership studies in elite sport focus on the psychological traits of successful leaders (e.g. Slater et al. 2015, Cruickshank 2016). The dominant sport psychology perspective is based on a quantitative methodology, trying to discover general and context-independent correlations. In this book we identify how leadership on different levels of elite sport system interacts and reflects values and expectations related to specific political, societal and commercial sport contexts. This collective process involves sport directors, high-performance directors and national team head coaches. It is a special type of institutional leadership that explicitly challenges the top-down unitary view of complex organisations.

Extending the concept of institutional leadership

Leadership has elements of management oriented towards formal rules, objectives, control and rewards. However, leadership is also about values, priorities and the relationship with, and development of, employees – and athletes. While objectives are important, values are considered necessary to achieve objectives in ways acceptable to the wider society. In line with key arguments within institutional leadership (Selznick 1957, Washington, Boal and Davis 2008), the leadership of and in organisations is embedded in societal values and expectations. Hence, elite sport systems are expected to be institutional organisations in the sense originally defined by Selznick (1957), that is guided by its ideology or mission and where organisational actions and practices are deeply affected by the external context of the organisation. Institutional organisations embrace values beyond rational or technical requirements necessary to achieve organisational goals. For elite sport organisations, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Note on contributors
• 1 Embedded multi-level leadership in diverse elite sport systems
• 2 Leadership in elite sport: normative tensions and ethical decision-making
• 3 The political and governance contexts
• 4 The commercial context
• 5 Multi-level leadership in Russian elite sport
• 6 A multi-level analysis of the transformational leadership during the 2015 Chinese football reform
• 7 Leading and organising German elite biathlon
• 8 Multi-level leadership within the Swiss elite sport system: the involvement of Alpine skiing elite athletes in national-level policymaking
• 9 Leading for success in Danish and Norwegian national team handball
• 10 Investigating shared leadership in elite sport: a social network study of USA Rugby 7s
• 11 USA and leadership in elite ice hockey
• 12 Football leadership and public value in Ghana
• 13 Embedded multi-level leadership in a diverse world
• Index