Sport Sociology
Understanding what theory is and how it is used to ground the research on (sport) organizations and (sport) leadership is critical for a sport leader’s intentional construction/design of their organization (i.e., their local structure). For the theory review segment of this paper, you will provide a review of the broad psycho-social theory category of Leadership Theories.
1. Theory review (3-4 pages):
• Explain what leadership theory is (1 page)
• Select, explain, and contrast two variants of leadership theory that you might use as a sport leader (e.g., servant leadership vs transformational leadership) (2-3 pages)
We have covered how sport culture gets co-constructed through participants, fans, elite athletes, organizations, and media, … (agent/structure interactions in sport) – where the logics that constrain sport and its delivery get filtered through the lenses of the decision-makers. As a future sport leader (i.e., decision-maker), you will be responsible for incorporating information into your decision-making and sifting through sets of logics to analyze problems in your organization; you will be responsible for ensuring that you don’t base your decisions on a narrow set of logics or on a position based in the Great Sport Myth. The Anderson and White readings you have done (as well as several other module readings that presented examples or applications of a sociological issue in sport) highlighted the span of social issues in sport that might reflect a misalignment between theoretical purpose/intent and practice/delivery in sport. For the theoretical application segment of this paper, you will select a level of sport or space (e.g., youth, college, pro, journalism, any other space you can name) and use Leadership Theory to frame what an organizational leader’s (from that space) approach might be to affecting some purpose/delivery misalignment in their space (where the misalignment is some sociological issue in sport that is relevant to the space you chose).
2. Theory application (2 pages):
• Select a space in which you might operate as a leader in sport and a social issue in sport (in that space) that rings with you
• Apply a Leadership Theory frame to how you would address that social issue (of your choice) in your organization (i.e., as an agent with authoritative resources, use theory to support how you will intentionally position yourself in your structure to affect local logics)
*These bullets (prompt 2) will likely be integrated