Sport Management Cultures by Girginov, Vassil;

Short description:

This is the first book to address sport management from a cultural perspective. It offers a comprehensive review of the conceptualisations of culture and its relation with sport management.

This book was published as a special issue of European Sport Management Quarterly.

Long description:

This is the first book to address the link between culture and sport management. The aim is to demonstrate that culture profoundly affects how we research, teach and practice sport management. The book engages with the concept of culture both as an abstract analytical category and specific beliefs and practices. It recognizes that a single best way of managing does not exist; that the applicability of management theories may stop at national boundaries; and that fundamental cultural values act as a strong determinant to managerial ideology and practice. Culture makes the study of sport management interesting because it challenges many taken-for-granted assumptions about management, yet it reinforces our belief in the existence of common management problems.

The book offers a comprehensive review of the conceptualisations of culture and its relation with sport management by examining a range of issues: the emergence of multiculturalism as a policy issue; the impact of commonly shared cultural values within the fitness industry on managers and organisations behaviour; building cultural bridges in community sport organisations; cultural meanings attached to the consumption of Olympic merchandise, and culturally-informed interpretation through a reflective analysis of sport management texts.

This book was published as a special issue of European Sport Management Quarterly.

Table of Contents:

1. Culture and the study of sport management  Vassil Girginov  2. Sport, Muslim Identities and Cultures in the UK, an Emerging Policy Issue: Case Studies of Leicester and Birmingham  Mahfoud Amara and Ian P. Henry  3. Cross-Sector Variation in Organizational Culture in the Fitness Industry  Eric W. MacIntosh, Alison Doherty and Matt Walker  4. A Culture of Trust: Engaging Muslim Women in Community Sport Organizations  Hazel Maxwell and Tracy Taylor  5. Meanings and functions in Olympic consumption: A study of the Athens 2004 Olympic licensed products  Artemisia Apostolopoulou, Dimitra Papadimitriou and Vasia Damtsiou  6. Embracing Cultural Contexts and Critical Reflexivity: (Re)presenting the Global Sports Industry in Research and Practice  Steven W. Pope  7. Epilogue: Sport management research as a culture of knowledge and ignorance creation  Vassil Girginov