Ari de Wilde

The Culture of History in Sport Management's Foundation: The Intellectual Influence of Harvard Business School on Four Founding Sport Management Scholars

In this essay, the researchers explore the careers of four foundational figures in sport management, who received training as historians. Drawing on a wide range of primary and secondary sources, we illustrate how Earle Zeigler, Guy Lewis, Stephen Hardy, and Lawrence Fielding helped create the field of Sport Management with insights drawn from business historians, especially those at the Harvard Business School. Overall, we claim that sport business history can serve to help frame much of the field and is vitally relevant to the study of the sports industry. Furthermore, we advocate that the study of history be included as a prominent area within sport management curriculums. To support this assertion, we elucidate the importance of the historical case-study approach to sport management.