Deakin University Critical Analysis of a Sport Organization

MMS716     Trimester 1, 2020 

Critical Analysis of a Sport Organization

Assessment 1: Situational Analysis of Case Organization and its Environment

Executive Summary

Introduction

An organization is a group of people who come together to achieve particular aim and objective. And a sports organization is such an entity which is concerned about sports. It has clear goals and a well-structured system. The sports organization’s aim is to promote sports and games. Sports is considered as a cultural entity and at the same time, it’s a business entity too. Sports do persist in commercialized and non-profit arrangements such as theater, art, music, healthcare, and education. Considering many researches, sports is a distinctive cultural institution that runs in a business atmosphere. Even though its commercialization and corporatization, it apparently keeps some distinct and special feature which makes it a distinct organization. Although these differences have been distorted over time because of the corporatization of sports and the rise of supports management as an intellectual discipline. The sports organization’s distinctive characteristics affect how ideas, values, and tactics are implemented. These unique features also influence the relationship between sports and government forces, legislative authority, strategy, corporate framework, management of human capital, corporate philosophy, and administration. While discussing the sports organization we usually discuss several differences between organizational theory and organizational behavior. The former mostly focuses on the macro view while the later mostly focusses on the micro perspective. In addition, organizational theory’s foundation is based on sociology while organizational behavior’s foundation is based on social psychology.

The AOC is dedicated to improving, empowering, and promoting the Australian athletes through athlete training and financing programs to do their best in sporting events.  The main responsibilities are to recruit, train, and finance Australian teams to the Olympic Games, Youth Olympic Games, and other regional games in summer and winter. The AOC has established a well-defined aim to establish, support, and secure Australia's Ophism and Olympic Movement values, sports and sport growth, and the selection and sponsorship of Australian teams to the Olympic Games.  Furthermore, AOC educates and encourages the public about the benefits of sports in health, longevity, skill, fitness, social life, wellbeing, social interaction, and about other countless benefits for every citizen of Australia. Goals are very important for any organization because when goals contain some sort of reward at the end of the tunnel is always helpful in keeping everyone motivated and energetic. Furthermore, it helps an employee to take ownership and pride in their work. It makes them feel delighted and good inside.

When we discuss organization, then the next thought comes into our mind is finance. This is no second opinion over the limited resources since nothing in this world is infinite, the only idea is to use the available resources efficiently. The same is the case with the resources available for any organization and the AOC is not exception. To utilize the scares resources of any organization every organization has to adopt a strategy.  Australian Olympic Committee’s fourteen objectives clearly depict that in a very competitive environment it must adopt both types of strategies i.e. Cooperate Level Strategy and Business Level Strategy. To run the daily business of an organization we need some sort of strategy. There should be someone to lead and a hierarchy to run the organization successfully. if there was no hierarchical order, then there would be chaos in the organization. Every person in the organization will prefer to listen to his voice, this ultimately will collapse the organization. So, in order to be in the competitive market, some people with enhanced experience, knowledge, and skills need to lead others to achieve its objectives collectively. As the structure becomes more and more complex, then it must evolve too. Besides a good strategy, aims and objectives an organization can consider to enter into alliances with an organization with similar aims and goals. The benefits of such alliances innumerable i.e. it creates a synergistic effect of shared knowledge and expertise, sharing risks and expenses, market penetration, financial help, and many more.

Every successful organization tends to bring changes to keep up with the competition or to adjust to new technologies. This results in a merger, restructuring, process enhancements, technological improvements, and changing customers’ demands. It’s all about modifying structures usually management structure or business process.

The indirect and implicit coercive, mimetic, and normative factors usually affect the organizations around the globe.

Module 1: Organizational Theory and Research

1.1       Is your organization a ‘sport organization’? Why/why not? 

1.      Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) is a sport organization that is collectively responsible for promotion and development of youth and Olympic Movement nationwide. Its sole responsibility is to represent and prepare the Australia at Summer, Winter and Youth Olympics Games and any games supported and organized by International Olympic Committee (IOC).

1.2         Using Smith and Stewart’s (2010) article, what is unique about the sport industry and how does this affect your organization?

According to Smith and Stewart (2010), sport industry is unique because its management has been divided between two opposing approaches. On one hand, sports is regarded as sole cultural entity with multitude of special attributes which erodes the rich history and emotional connection, ethnic relations and social significance when standard business practices are applied. Alternatively, sports is considered another business enterprise with the application of government rules, market pressure and customer demands and it is assumed that it is better handled by implementing the typical business strategies that help with policy making, finance and accounting, human resource allocation and marketing. With a trust in the intrinsic social importance of sports rather than on the mere basis of its financial interest, the administration of sports differed from the general management. Various governance models and corporate structures impact the organization and its management practices in many ways (Roger, 2003).

1.3       Using examples from your organization, explain the distinction between organizational theory and organizational behavior. 

2           The basis for the study in an organizational theory are the organization or its subunits, while individuals and small group of people provide the base for the organizational behavior. Furthermore, the areas of study in organization theory are strategic planning, design considerations, contextual factors, social influences, and ability to takes decisions (Jones, 2013). In contrast, fields of research in organizational behavior are satisfaction with the job, teamwork, team building, interpersonal skills, leadership qualities etc. (Miner, 2005).

2.1       What are the aspects of critical thinking? How may interdisciplinary approaches help you critically analyze a problem? 

 The Fundamental aspects of critical thinking

Although, there are contrasting views regarding the major aspects of critical thinking, but most school of thoughts agree on the following aspects of a critical thinker (Ennis, 1962):

Major Skills:

·         Examining the evidences, arguments, or claims.

·         Making evidence-based judgement.

·         Using inductive/deductive logic to draw inferences

·         Decision making s and problem solving via rational thinking.

Characteristics:

The critical thinking must involve the following characteristics:

·         broad-mindedness

·         truth-seeking

·         curiosity/inquisitiveness

·         fairness and impartiality in one’s and other’s work

2.2       How may interdisciplinary approaches help you critically analyze a problem?
 

The interdisciplinary approaches are very helpful for us to critically analyze a problem as it helps to analyze, study, and view a problem from different perspectives, angles or point of views. Furthermore, the interdisciplinary collaboration technique aims to analyze the issue from various perspectives, to work together to plan the question, to evaluate the methods for analyzing it, to examine the data and to deduce the conclusions. 

Module 2: Goals, Effectiveness and Structure

 

5. Clearly define the goals of your organization.
 a. Why are these goals important to the organization?

 

The AOC's prime goal is to establish, uphold and defend Australia's Olympic and Olympic community values in keeping with the laws and standards laid down in the Olympic Charter.

Goals for Youth:

The AOC is dedicated to educating Australia's young people and runs various initiatives at different levels of school. Some of which are as follows:

·         Annual Pierre de Coubertin Awards,

·         School resource kits

·         The Chat with a Champ program

Importance of Goals for the Organization:

It is very important for any organization to have written and well-defined goals and plan because they help the organization in terms of growth appraise the performance of groups or individuals, reduces uncertainty, motivates, establishes legitimacy, reputation productivity and profitability (Zheng et al., 2010). Following are the most important reasons of having goals for our organization:

i)        Goals provide focus and reduces uncertainty

AOC’s core goals help the organization to stay focused and channelizing their activities and energy towards attaining specific objectives. In other words, these goals set the course of action to individual and group which will help the organization to complete its tasks for which it was established.

ii)      Goals Keep Everyone Motivated helps appraise performance of groups or individuals

These goals help everyone in our organization to stay motivated and energetic because we humans feel exhausted after some hard work. Human are not machines which work 24 hours a day continuously without being tired or bore. The goals of our organization are clear, and it involved nationalism too therefore these factors help the employees in our organization motivated. Because one aspect of our organization to select best team and send it to Olympic Games and win medals and prizes that make Australians proud of their achievement in International event.

 

iii)    Goals Increase the Morale

The goals of our organization help to boost the morale of the employee, athletes, and nation in general. This is the reason that Australian team stood on 10^th position out of 207 nations and states.

iv)    Goals Help achieve Success

Australia is one of the successful countries in Olympics in many ways whether that is Summer Olympics, Winter Olympics, Youth Olympic Games, or any international game. But there is another big achievement, as Australia stand on 7^thhealthiest countries in the world. So, the organizational goals of AOC are to archive success in every aspect of Youth in sports.

Given scarce resources, how does the organization resolve competing goals?

6.       First thing to resolve competing goals in an organization is to acknowledge and identify that the conflict exists which most managers fail to recognize and identify. Once identified, the next stage is to bifurcate the goals in terms of its outcome, this means whether the achievable goals have equal importance for organization’s success or not? Based on this assessment, resources are invested on those goals which have a maximum chance and greater turn-over in terms of medals (Yuchtman & Seashore, 1967). As for AOC is concerned, if resources are scarce then it should invest its energy and human capital in those sports which are comparatively competitive and have a chance to win more medals in Olympic games. For instance, instead of putting lots of efforts and finance for training and development of a single cricket or hockey team that needs huge resources and a colossal budget to get a single medal, it’s better to invest on athletes (e.g. running, swimming, short-, long-jump etc.) who need less resources and have a greater chance to win multiple medals.  By utilizing scarce resources effectively and efficiently, AOC is only able to compete with rest of the world teams.

·         Discuss the differences in effectiveness and efficiency in your organization.

 

      Ostroff & Schmitt, (1993) explained few major differences between effectiveness and efficiency, some of them are as follows:

·         Efficiency means work is done in a correct manner while doing accurate work is effectiveness.

·         In efficiency, we put stress on inputs and outputs whereas means and ends are focused on effectiveness.

·         Efficiency is assessed on short-term basis whereas, effectiveness is measured on log-term basis.

·         Effectiveness is about operation, while efficiency is all about strategies.

• Describe two ways to measure of (1) organizational efficiency, and (2) organizational effectiveness in your organization.

 

Shilbury & Moore (2006) describes two different approaches to evaluate the organizational efficiency and effectiveness which are given as

I)        Effectiveness:

Effectiveness is measure of the organization’s capacity to accomplish its goals. How much youth is involved in sports via different sports events? How much medals were won in an Olympic Games by the sports organization?

ii)   Efficiency

Efficiency measures the amount of services utilized to the outcomes an organization obtains, without bearing in mind end users(stockholders) satisfaction. How much funds are utilized to achieve the desired results? How much human resource is utilized or capitalized? All these are considered in measuring the efficiency of our organization.

. Provide an analysis of the level of complexity in your organizations structure.
 

7.      I would consider AOC’s organizational setup, as “Vertical Spatial Complex” since it consists of a central office (i.e. headquarter) where the top management sits, headed by the President/Chair. This is further represented by the State Olympic Councils in each state all over Australia with office bearers having respective portfolios. This employs a deliberate organizational structure where the decisions are made by the top management, and the authority is being exercised/executed via top-down approach by the frontline staff in all states.

Since the decisions are made by the top management at the headquarter and are being implemented by the frontline staff in top-down hierarchy so, centralization is the best way to compensate this organizational complexity.

In the centralization or top-down hierarchy, the organization requires an autocratic model of decision making to thrive and serve its mission. In such scenario, planning and strategy are initially formulated by the top officials of the organization and then pass it down to their subordinates for its execution (Skille, 2008). Although, many people criticize the top officials for dictating their subordinates however, the real purpose is to delegate the authority so that the organizational objectives could be achieved in an efficient way.

 

On the other hand, there is a trade-off between higher authorities’ policies and lower staff interests. Since most of the decisions in centralization are taken by the top portfolios who might not aware of the on-ground realities. In such scenario, lower staff might know more what need to be done in order to achieve better results. This may create differences, disappointment, and sense of being ignored among lower employees, and they are no more honest with the organization policies. They feel inferior since their opinions have no worth, thus leading to trust deficit between bosses and the lower employees.

The AOC is one of the largest sports organizations in the country that has a well-developed organizational structure where the authority rests at the top of the Pyramid. The top leadership has the absolute control in the decision making, divisions and the project teams to conduct policies in compliance with directives from the upper management. So, the “divisionalized form” best describes the organizational structure. All parts of the organization in closed coordination with each other from strategic apex to the operating core, everyone is putting his efforts to meet the desired goals and objectives.

 

Module 3: Strategy & Strategic Alliances

Briefly describe what level and type(s) of strategy your organization utilizes given its competitive environment? Why do you think you case organization has selected this approach?

8.      The AOC employs the Cooperate Level Strategy because Its first goal or mission is to establish, support and defend Olympic and Olympic values in Australia in keeping with the Olympic Charter. Further, the adoption of this strategy is clear from AOC’s second objective which is to foster, increase recognition and inspire interest in sports for safety, wellness, education, abilities, success, social engagement, well-being and other activity benefits for all Australian citizens. And the forth objective of AOC is to support the growth of sports to all people in Australia for fitness, well-being and other purposes, and in promoting and facilitating such things, the progress of high-performance sports as a showcase of the advantages of sports participation. I think this is the reason that AOC has adopted the Cooperate Strategy.

However, AOC also implements the business level strategy as illustrated in one of the objectives that AOC has special jurisdiction for Australia to serve and compete in the Olympic, summer and winter Olympic, Youth Olympic, and National Games, and also do all associated matters, such as selecting and training of all team members representing Australia at those Events.

Using the Blue Ocean Strategy, what new (or existing) product and service would you develop? How would this provide your organization a competitive advantage?

 

9.      The Blue Ocean Strategy has many advantages as it creates uncontested market space with an ability to create and capture new demands (Kim, 2005). This can be implemented very successfully by our spots organization i.e. Australian Olympic Committee (AOC). The AOC is responsible for promoting, recruiting, sending, and supporting Australian youth and competing teams to the Olympic Games. The AOC can further introduce new sports activities which could be the modified forms of existing sports contested at Olympic games. These modified games (tweak games) could be motivating for ambitious youth, spot new talented athletes and attract the attention of common mass. These tweaking gams with new rules, a smaller number of players, and shorter play time could be more appealing and interesting since people have already less leisure time in today’s world. Options are uncountable if explored.

This could provide edge over the competitors in many ways such as, preparation for the main event in limited finance and scarce resources.

 

Select three potential strategic allies.

10.     The three potential strategic allies for AOC are as follows:

·         Australian Paralympic Committee (APC)

·         Sport Australia

·         Australian Commonwealth Games Association

·         List 5-10 considerations you would have to make as an organization before entering into an alliance with each organization.
·         Evaluate your considerations and provide a rationale for selecting, or not selecting, whether to enter into a strategic alliance.

 

Following are the top considerations for entering into an alliance with the chosen organizations:

·         Synergistic effects of shared knowledge and expertise.

A strategic partnership may help an organization acquire information and expertise. Additionally, there is a synergistic impact as partner organizations share expertise, information, and assets. The effect is a collection of more efficient capital than if the corporations had left them apart.

·         Sharing risks and expenses.

An important advantage of the corporate partnership is that the participating firms will have equal participation in expenditures and even the risks which is a very important consideration.

·         Market penetration

The prime aim of entering into alliance with other organization is to reach maximum people around the country because the three of the organizations are spread nationwide and work on the goals and objectives very much related to AOC.

·         Market Development:

This is yet another consideration to keep in mind. It helps us to expand the services in new region by expanding the geographic representation. The current organizational services may be upgraded and enhanced, and these services could be offered to the existing market.

·         Human and Financial Resources:

For nonprofit organizations like AOC, it is difficult to recruit a large number of human resources to execute its goals and objectives. Therefore, the strategic alliance will help to reduce the burden of hiring human resource and pressure on financial resources.

·         Diversification:

This is yet another consideration which is to diversify the services of our organization.

 

Module 4: Sport Organizations and Change

 

11. In the context of your case organization, explain change and isomorphism using DiMaggio and Powell’s (1983) coercive, normative and mimetic processes. Provide examples.
 

                    

11  According to DiMaggio & Powell (1983) Isomorphism is a phenomenon where organizations in the same field are forced to become more identical in terms of its organizational structure, functions, and practices. As a result of this process, the more efficient and successful plans and structures are imitated by the organizations that shape more related patterns of organization. Hence, by adopting this approach, the organizations have chances of being more successful and legitimate. Organizations compete not just for resources and customers but for political power and institutional legitimacy for social as well as economic fitness.

Coercive Isomorphism occurs when pressure from other similar institutions occurs as they work in the same domain as most of the organizations are homogenous. Furthermore, some government rules and financial constraints also cause coercive isomorphic changes. Actors of considerable significance in an organizational domain will raise the likelihood of an isomorphism. Since AOC comes under IOC which provides the charter for the Olympic committees in the world. It conducts the doping tests under the supervision of world anti-doping agency (WADA) for each player in Olympic games to make sure the true spirit of world Olympics. The AOC is compelled to cooperate and provide access to each player, this is an example of the coercive isomorphism.

Mimetic Processes are about the uncertainty which encourages imitation. This usually occurs because of this when one organization thinks that the other organization’s structure is better or more beneficial than theirs. This usually happens when an institution’s objectives are not clear.

This mimetic isomorphism is not the case with the Australian Olympic Committee (ACC) because this is a well-known organization with clear objectives defined and people working in it are abide by the organizational mandate.

Normative isomorphic change occurs when an organization or the institution faces pressure transported by profession. Usually, people with the same institutional backgrounds will face problems in the same manner. In order to improve the players performance, the AOC has hired not only ex-Olympians but also the sports specialists, and sports psychologists. Moreover, the state-of-the-art technology introduced in sports by the AOC is a success story which has been implemented by the counter-part organizations.

Critically reflect on the relationship between change and strategy in your organization.

A strategy is very important for any organization because a strategy is another name given for the organization’s objectives and goals. It decides which line of business the organization is in and who it serves or how it serves? An organizational strategy helps to take all managerial decisions. Thus, we can conclude that the organizational change and organization strategy are directly related to each other. For instance, the consecutive failure of the Australian Athletes over last four Olympic games has built pressure from the Government and People of Australia on AOC’s to bring organizational changes so that the organization’s objectives could be achieved. With this (normative isomorphic) change, the organization’s business strategy has changed such as the development of the athlete centered programs, and a greater use of technology in preparing the players for events. Moreover, this organizational change has demanded for new ways of strategic alliances for organizational success in the future events.

 

Use an example to explain how organizational change has influenced the structure of the organization in the past decade?
a. Describe the paradox of change and the influence this may have on the pace, sequence and linearity in which change occurs in the organization.
 
b. Using an example from Q11, explain how your organization has strategically responded to an institutional pressure and the tactics it has used to do so.                  

                    

 

12.    Since 2000, Australia has shown back-back poor performances in all four Olympic games which is alarming, and at the same time asks for the drastic changes in the organization so to avoid future failures. Olympics is not merely about the availability of resource; it is the way the talent and skills of the athletes are being utilized instead. So, back in September 2017, the new CEO of the AOC has decided to make drastic organizational changes so that Australian Athletes perform better in future Olympic games. The new CEO is determined to bring changes not with the people but with roles of the people, which mean best man for the best job. As first part of the organizational change he created two new positions which are the ‘Head of people and Culture’, and the ‘Head of Public Affairs and Communication’. Of the two people, the former will be responsible for initiating the Athlete oriented programs such as Athlete transition, whereas the latter is responsible for strategy development in order to influence public policy. Moreover, he has the duty to build and maintain the reputation of the AOC while closely working with the stockholders. Thus, change occurred because an organization’s structure was adapted in response to contextual pressures, and it is also true that organizational structure always changes (Kikulis et al., 1982).

 

A paradox of an organizational change is something where the organization is at its pinnacle in terms of its success, and it is the time to think, prepare and carry about major improvement. Many managers who lead the organization attempt to improve it drastically but unfortunately, they are not putting their best efforts to make it happen. Planning and organizational change is a linear process which means that it should be bifurcated in various stages or stepwise so that the targets could be easily achieved. While implementing this planning, it is highly unlike that it may execute linearly even efforts are taken to do so. The execution of such planning is extremely disordered and chaotic. Things may not happen precisely as expected; employees are doing in a certain manner, not necessarily as anticipated. Moreover, many people oppose or perhaps disrupt it, while others who are supposed to assist or reject the plan do the reverse. Hence, the linearity is affected in the implementation process of change in the organization. This further alters the pace and sequence and linearity of the change occurring in the organization, and thus change in the organization becomes ineffective and unsuccessful.

 

According to DiMaggio & Powell (1983) “… the engine of rationalization and bureaucratization has moved from the competitive marketplace to the state and the profession. Once a set of organizations emerges as a field, a paradox arises: rational actors make their organization increasingly similar as they try to change them”. There has been a change in the reasons of bureaucratization and rationalization, thus corporate bureaucratization and Government are accomplished. This resulted in the homogeneity of the organizations. In recent times, changes in the organizational structure are not commonly caused by the competition or efficiency rather it is driven by bureaucratization. As a result, organizations look similar without being efficient. State and professions being the prominent rationalizes has primarily affected this practice. Furthermore, it resulted in homogeneity in the structure of the organization. Since the organizations in the world are now being merged are sold increasingly, but unfortunately only 25% of the organizations are successful at this practice (Burke, 2017). It typically happens as organizations modify the system structure while ignoring the strategy that has become the foundation for making decisions.

Let’s take an example of the Australian Olympic Federation. In 1980, the Fraser Government requested the then Australian Olympic Federation to boycott the Moscow Olympics. This led to the AOC not accepting any direct funding from the Australian Government for the preparation of Olympics teams since 1992 (Blood, 2018).

Because of the consistent failures in the Olympic games by the Australian players, there is a change in government policy initiatives, and financial resource allocation that has caused system-wide structural changes in Australian Olympic Committee. As a result of this external pressure from the government institutions (Coercive Isomorphism), AOC is committed to bring more professionalization (Normative Isomorphism).Moreover, the AOC has constituted multiple departments who’s aim is to introduce Athlete centered programs which would directly benefit the Olympic players. Moreover, AOC has hired sports specialists and technical managers to improve the technical skills of the players. This strategy could be associated with the business level strategy, where the organization seeks the ways to improve the business issues. Conclusively, it can be said that the AOC has adopted those business strategies through which the AOC is committed to facilitate and improve the facilities for the athletes throughout Australia.

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