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| Current Issues | No.65 October 2013 |

Women: Are they changing the Face of global Sport Management?
Darlene A. Kluka & Anneliese Goslin & Rosa Lopez de D’Amico & Gudrun Doll-Tepper

Introduction

The demands of international sport management in the 21st century will include more indepth knowledge of international law, communication and media relations (Kluka, Goslin & Steyn, 2012). The need for professionalisation of sport, its associated commercialisation and its globalisation will also continue to gain importance. The need for sport managers to resemble those who participate is also an area of importance as the world becomes more globally linked through technology, economies, languages and cultures. Of particular interest is the presence and influence of women as sport managers.

The status of women in societies has been at the centre of conversations for generations (Goslin & Kluka, 2007). Concepts of gender mainstreaming, gender equality, gender equity and women’s empowerment have been identified as key drivers for promoting women’s quality of life (Doll-Tepper, Pfister, Scoretz & Bilan, 2005; Malhotra, Schuler & Boender, 2002) and sustainable social change. Gender mainstreaming as an element of social change involves implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes that are central to achievement of gender equality (United Nations, 2000).

Despite global equal opportunity legislation and policies, there is little doubt that women continue to be substantially under-represented and marginalised in management positions, particularly on executive decision making levels (Ying, 2007; Hovden, 2006). Although there appears to be general agreement that women manage differently than men, there seems to be less agreement on how they manage, especially in the context of sport. As women increasingly enter and hold management positions in sport that traditionally have been held by males, the status and adequacy of female management styles have begun to show promise in changing the face of global sport management.

Throughout the world we are seeing and experiencing evidence of commercialisation and globalisation of sport. Globalisation continues to dissolve physical boundaries between countries and technological advances continue to enable sport managers to connect on virtual and real platforms unlike a decade or two ago. International sport councils such as ICSSPE (International Council of Sport Science and Physical Education), the envisaged formal establishment of the World Association for Sport Management (WASM) or international sport governing bodies are examples of global sport management groups that are expected to function effectively across national and cultural borders. The reality of cross-cultural sport management groups, councils or associations emphasises the need for globally responsible and sensible sport managers (male and female) skilled to manage effectively in global sport management contexts. This puts an immense premium on appropriate global sport management styles.

The complex and borderless world of global sport management often confronts members of international sport councils’ executive boards or members of committees responsible for organising international sport events with management challenges posed by diverse cultures, traditions, business and legal frameworks in geographical or virtual settings they are unfamiliar with. Female sport managers operating in a global sport context are often expected to meet global management challenges with local training and experience. Failure in such circumstances obviously reinforces stereotyping of female sport managers as ineffective. In a globally connected sport industry where mega sport events such as the Olympic Games often has the potential of greater positive economic, political and societal impact than governments can hope for, it is imperative for sport managers to demonstrate appropriate and effective management styles to impact the face of global sport.

If navigating the complex landscape of global sport management is not daunting enough on its own, adding the variable of gender equality multiplies the challenges even more. Despite an array of Declarations, Calls to Action, Protocols and Ways Forwards on gender equality, significant research on the position and status (or lack thereof) of women in management in general and sport management in particular, highlights the sober reality of continuous underrepresentation of females. Issues addressed in some of the research involved:

- What keeps female managers from reaching the top?

- Are male managers better than female managers?

- Do males and females have different management styles?

- Are female management styles more effective or better than male management styles?

Diverse explanations are suggested as to why females stay underrepresented in global management contexts. In general, proposed reasons are grouped into two categories:

- Systemic challenges (e.g. policies or human resource management structures) and

- Skill set/management intelligence of female sport managers.

We prefer to focus on the latter category (skill set/management intelligence) in an attempt to answer the leading question posed for this paper and explore the significance of female management styles in changing the face of global sport management.

Researchers clearly indicate that women do have the necessary skill sets to manage effectively in management positions (Eagly & Carli, 2006; Hovden, 2006). There are abundant examples of female sport managers who demonstrate extremely effective management styles in their respective mono-cultural local sport management contexts. Effective domestic sport management styles, however, do not guarantee efficacy in a global sport management context. A fundamental characteristic of effective global sport management is cross-cultural interaction between sport managers from diverse cultures. Female sport managers’ effectiveness in these cross-cultural environments depend on how intelligent they are in identifying, integrating and interpreting signals from management styles that differ from their local sport management style.

Three moderators are widely stressed to facilitate effective transition from local management styles to global sport management styles:

- Global mindset

- Cultural intelligence

- Emotional intelligence

Global mindset

The Global Mindset Project (GMP) driven by the authoritative Thunderbird School of Global Management concluded that a global mindset is multi-dimensional and consists of a blend of intellectual capital, social capital and psychological capital. Intellectual capital reflects a global female sport manager’s intellectual and cognitive capabilities and centres around knowledge of the global sport industry, understanding diverse value networks and organisations, understanding complex global issues in sport and possession of cultural intelligence. Social capital implies a female sport manager’s ability to establish networks, relationships, norms, trust and maintain goodwill in social relationships across cultures and national boundaries. Psychological capital signifies a positive psychological profile towards contact with diverse cultures, an affinity for learning and exploring other cultures as well as personality traits of resiliency, curiosity and a quest for adventure.

Cultural Intelligence

The ability to manage across cultures is claimed to be a fundamental global management skill in the 21st century. The ability or intelligence to read/analyse diverse cultural signals in global sport contexts and then adapt management behaviour (style) appropriately represents the inner core and unique hallmark of successful female sport managers. Local cultural frameworks define individual management styles while the multi-cultural environment of global sport contexts demands knowledge and insight of diverse cultural norms and values. An understanding of how different cultural norms and values influence management styles does not come intuitively; it requires focused effort from female sport managers to develop competency of cultural understanding. The seminal GLOBE (Global Leadership and Organisational Behaviour Effectiveness) study initiated by the Thunderbird School of Global Management is regarded as the pivotal and most ambitious contribution in understanding differences between cultures and how it influences management styles within cross-cultural organisations, including sport organisations. For this reason, it is critical for female sport managers operating across cultures to be mindful of the findings of the critical GLOBE project to optimise global sport management versatility. The GLOBE project identified nine cultural dimensions that manifest themselves differently across cultures:

- Performance orientation

- Assertiveness orientation

- Future orientation

- Humane orientation

- Institutional collectivism

- In-group collectivism

- Gender egalitarianism

- Power distance

- Uncertainty avoidance

Global cultures are divided into ten cultural clusters:

- Anglo cluster

- Latin America cluster

- Latin Europe cluster

- Sub-Saharan Africa cluster

- Nordic Europe cluster

- Middle East

- Germanic Europe cluster

- Southern Asia cluster

- Eastern Europe cluster

- Confucian Asia cluster

Culture influences the way sport managers behave, communicate, use power, avoid uncertainty, value time or performance or the position of women in sport contexts as it implies a set of norms, thought patterns, beliefs and emotional responses. Female sport managers cannot directly or blindly apply their local concepts in a global sport context. Sport managers from different cultural clusters value cultural dimensions differently. When sport managers from the Confucian Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Anglo, Nordic Europe or Latin America cultural clusters converge in global sport management contexts, there could be conflict of management styles as different emphasis is placed upon cultural dimensions.

For example:

A culturally intelligent female sport manager has the ability to construct an appropriate glocal sport management style because she is aware how different local cultures value management behaviours and adapt her global management style appropriately. Acquiring and developing cultural intelligence is a delicate art that requires more than mere reading facts of a country’s demographics and cultural norms. It requires first, self-awareness of one’s own cultural blind spots, the consequences of ethnocentrism and stereotype cultural assumptions and then developing appropriate skills and global mindset needed for cross-cultural interaction. Heightened levels of cultural awareness link to mindfulness, a concept originating from Buddhism and recently applied to cultural intelligence (CQ). Mindfulness (as opposed to mindlessness) serves as moderator between knowledge of different cultures and behaviour and translates into appropriate global sport management styles.

Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence is a second recently introduced marker of effective global management styles. Emotional intelligence is the multi-dimensional ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings, to discriminate amongst them, and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and management action and style in specific contexts. Perceiving emotions, as a dimension of emotional intelligence, requires female sport managers to not only detect and interpret emotions in pictures, voices, body language and cultural norms and values but also identify their own emotions. The ability to perceive emotions provides a gateway to interpreting subsequent emotions. Using emotions requires an emotionally intelligent female sport manager to harness different emotions to facilitate cognitive management skills such as problem solving, reasoning and decision making. Understanding emotions requires female sport managers to understand the finer nuances and manifestations of and between emotions as well as how emotions can change over time in meetings or discussions. Poor emotional intelligence in a complex and multi-cultural international sport business environment is likely to impact negatively on goal achievement.

Female sport managers who demonstrate some of the following behaviours in their global management styles appear to be successful in global contexts:

Pointers for female Sport Managers to impact the Face of global Sport Managers

Effective global sport management styles are learned behaviour. This implies that female sport managers aspiring to impact the face of global sport contexts can acquire appropriate management styles through developing global mindsets as well as high levels of cultural and emotional intelligence to supplement their fundamental intellectual management competencies. Distinctive management behaviours (global mindset, cultural and emotional intelligence) can be assessed through tools such as the Global Mindset Inventory, Cultural Intelligence Scale, Cross-Cultural Adaptability Inventory Test or the Emotional Quotient Inventory and then developed appropriately.

Researchers (Kluka, Goslin & Rosenberg, 2011; Goslin & Kluka, 2007) have shown that the most powerful activities and practices to develop effective global sport management behaviours or styles include:

- Mentoring

- Management coaching

- Action learning

- Face-to-face contact to appreciate cultural and management style differences

- Networking across cultures

- Dialoguing.

Likewise, the least powerful strategies to develop effective global sport management behaviour include:

- Academic classroom teaching

- Imposing generic management style models on all global management contexts.

In summary, female sport managers have the ability to impact the face of global sport management. Global sport management contexts differ substantially from local sport management contexts and effectiveness in local sport management contexts does not guarantee success in global sport management contexts. Gender does not influence effective global sport management potential. Global mindset, emotional and cultural intelligence are critical moderators to transform and develop effective local management behaviour into effective global management styles. There is no single ideal global sport management style for female sport managers. The critical moderators of global mindset, emotional and social intelligence can be learned and developed in female sport managers. A succession strategy for female sport managers who have the desire to develop from local sport management to global sport management could also assist in impacting the face of global sport management.

References

1. Doll-Tepper, G., Pfister, G., Scoretz, D., & Bilan, C. (2005). Sport, women & leadership congress proceedings. Berlin, Germany: Sport and Buch.

2. Eagly A.H., & Carli, L.L. (2003). The female leadership advantage: An evaluation of the evidence. The Leadership Quarterly, 14(6), 807-834.

3. Goslin, A.E., & Kluka, D.A. (2007). Management styles of women in decision-making positions in South African sport. Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, 78(1), Research Consortium Abstracts, A-111.

4. Goslin, A., & Kluka, D. (2007). Affirmative action as a dimension of diversity management: Perceptions of South African sport federations. Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspectives, 1(2), 14-17.

5. Hovden, J. (2006). The gender order as a policy issue in sport: A study of Norwegian sports organizations. Nordic Journal of Women’s Studies, 14(1), 41-53.

6. Kluka, D.A., Goslin, A.E., & Steyn, B. J. (2012). Brighton declaration on women and sport: Perceptions of management process quality. International Journal of Sport Management, 13, 241-262.

7. Kluka, D., Goslin, A., & Rosenberg, D. (2011). Developing intercultural competence through sport

8. leadership. IAHPERD Journal, 26, 21-25.

9. Malhotra, A., Schuler, S.R., & Boender, C. (2002). Measuring women’s empowerment as a variable in international development. Background paper prepared for the World Bank Workshop on Poverty and Gender: New Perspectives.

10. United Nations. (2000). Gender mainstreaming definition. Retrieved from http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/csw/GMS.pdf.

11. Ying, C. (2007). Striving and thriving: Women in Chinese national sport organizations. International Journal of the History of Sport, 24(3), 392-410.

Contact

Darlene A. Kluka, Barry University, USA

Anneliese Goslin, University of Pretoria, South Africa

Rosa Lopez de D’Amico, Universidad Pedagogica Experimental Libertador, Venezuela

Gudrun Doll-Tepper, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany

http://www.icsspe.org/