Trevor Slack

Sport sponsorship as distinctive competence

Presents the results of an analysis of 28 national and multi-national Canadian firms that had been involved in sport sponsorships at the national or international levels. Detailed interviews were conducted with senior marketing personnel in each company to determine how sponsorships were created and managed. Suggests that those firms which were successful had, either knowingly or fortuitously, developed their sponsorship into a distinctive competence and made it an intrinsic part of the overall marketing and communications mix. By contrast, those that were unsuccessful entered into sponsorship agreements on a more piecemeal basis with little thought of building a coherent marketing image. Sport sponsorship involves the allocation of scarce resources with the intent of achieving certain organisational objectives (Slack and Bentz, 1996). Consequently, it has frequently been described in the marketing literature as a strategic activity (Carter, 1996; Gilbert, 1988; Otker, 1988). The use of recent developments in the strategic management literature to provide insights that will further our understanding of sport sponsorship, as has been the case in the wider marketing field, therefore appears logical and germane. Unfortunately, this is an avenue of research that has been largely neglected. Although the linkages with strategic management have long been recognised in marketing research (e.g. Biggadike, 1981), similar connections are conspicuously absent in the sponsorship literature. In this paper, we attempt to address this void by extending our previous arguments that sponsorship agreements should be considered as strategic investments (cf. Amis et al., 1997). Specifically, we contend that any firm entering into a sponsorship agreement should treat its sponsorship as a resource which, either singly or in combination with other resources, can be developed into an area of distinctive competence which in turn can assist the firm to a position of sustainable competitive advantage. To this end, the remainder of the paper is divided into six sections. In the first of these we argue that sport sponsorship should be considered a resource which can be the basis of competitive advantage. In the next section we present arguments to suggest that for this advantage to be sustainable, the sponsorship The authors would like to acknowledge the assistance of Sport Canada for funding the research upon which this study is based.

INTEGRATING SOCIAL ACTION AND STRUCTURAL CONSTRAINTS Towards a More Holistic Explanation of Organizational Change

A number of researchers have examined structural and systemic change within Canadas national sport organizations. The predominant approach within these studies has been to identify environmental factors, primarily the state, as the cause of change. We argue that there has been an overemphasis on the role of the environment in directing the change process and suggest that a more integrated view is needed. Consequently, our paper focuses on understanding change by integrating institutional theory, a deterministic approach to explaining organizational transformations, and the more voluntaristic notion of strategic choice. A case-study approach is used to examine the organizational changes that occurred within a Canadian amateur ice hockey organization. Our results show the importance of institutional pressures, strategic choice and the interconnectedness of both these factors in the change process. Three specific issues are raised: the temporal dimension to the scope of strategic choice; the manner in which structures that are initially constraining can become resources; and the impact of conditions of uncertainty on determinism and voluntarism.

Deinstitutionalising the Amateur Ethic: An Empirical Examination of Change in a Rugby Union Football Club

In 1996/97, the first season of openly professional rugby union was played in England. For many of the clubs which opted to become involved in the professional game, this was the end of an era. In some cases, over 100 years of institutionalised amateur practice was brought to an end, and professionalism became the dominant mode of operation in these organisations. In order for those clubs which chose to professionalise to operate effectively, the values and related organisational structures which were the very essence of amateurism, had to be deinstitutionalised. Deinstitutionalisation is the erosion or discontinuity of organisational activities and practices, which through the force of habit, tradition, or history, have come to be accepted as legitimate. This paper provides a case study analysis of the process of deinstitutionalisation as it occurred in one Premiership rugby union club. Using data collected through a series of semi-structured interviews conducted with both the adherents of amateurism and the proponents of the new professional organisational structure, this paper identifies some of the forces that contribute to deinstitutionalisation. Following Olivers (1992) theoretical lead, we empirically show how political, functional, and social pressures contributed to the process of deinstitutionalisation, and how these are mediated by inertial and entropic organisational forces. We also extend Olivers analysis by showing the way in which the manipulation of organisational symbols can play a role in the dynamics of deinstitutionalisation.

A Framework for the Analysis of Strategic Approaches Employed by Non-profit Sport Organisations in Seeking Corporate Sponsorship

Despite a continually growing body of literature that investigates the nature of corporate sponsorship of sport from the perspective of the donor, it is suggested that very little is known about how sport organisations are positioning themselves in their efforts to attract sponsors. Additionally, we argue that there has been limited effort in relating the sponsorship endeavours of sport organisations to the broader strategic management literature. This paper develops a framework that highlights the primary factors that underpin the ability of non-profit sport organisations to generate funding from the corporate sector. The analysis is based on data obtained from semi-structured interviews with marketing personnel in thirty-four Canadian national sport organisations (NSOs). Analysis of the data reveals two key environmental factors that appear to contribute to the ability of NSOs to raise sponsorship funds: media exposure and participation rates. The framework classifies sport organisations as belonging to one of five categorisations, based on their relative levels of these two factors. The discussion of the results provides an assessment of the ability of NSOs to influence these primary sponsorship success determinants. We suggest ways in which the framework developed here could be used in the future to further our understanding of the strategic nature of sponsorship acquisition.

Industry Factors and the Changing Dynamics of the Player-Agent Relationship in Professional Ice Hockey

Player agents are now long-established and influential stakeholders in the business of professional ice hockey in North America. With the help of agents, average National Hockey League (NHL) player salaries have grown from US

Appropriate Opportunism or Bad Business Practice? Stakeholder Theory, Ethics, and the Franchise Relocation Issue

24,000 in 1972 to an average of US

Strategic responses to institutional pressures for commercialisation: A case study of an English rugby union club.

1.49 million annually in the 2000/2001 season. Since the arrival of agents in the mid-1960s, the professional hockey industry has experienced significant and turbulent growth. This paper identifies and reviews the industry changes that have taken place in hockey in recent decades and the manner in which these factors have affected the relationship between player and agent. Principal-agent theory is used to facilitate an analysis of the contracts and relationships between professional hockey players and sports agents and to understand the effects of changing environmental pressures upon these relationships.