Teamwork makes the net-work: participant-governed networks and athletics sustainability collaboration

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Barrett ◽  
Gareth J. Jones ◽  
Kyle S. Bunds ◽  
Jonathan M. Casper ◽  
Michael B. Edwards

Purpose Athletic departments play an important role in sustainability-based collaborative processes due to their boundary spanning connections with both internal and external university stakeholders. As a result, athletic department representatives have become prominent members of university participant-governed network structures. The purpose of this study is to examine the role of dedicated “athletics green teams” as a unique form of control and coordination by considering how green team interactions support and augment the collaborative network of actors who are responsible for executing athletics sustainability practices on university campuses. Design/methodology/approach A sociocentric analysis is used to explore the network of a green team at a large American university. The analysis focuses on examining the size, composition and structure of relations involving green team members that facilitated various forms of information transmission and strategic action(s). Findings The results highlight how the presence of the athletic department in the green team provides heterophilous and multiplex relations across the collaborative network and how the green team itself provides a unique forum for planning and coordination, which is critical for providing more sophisticated, advanced structures for sustainability. Practical implications The findings of this study should reassure practitioners involved in convening green teams that such shared governance structures add value to athletics sustainability collaborative processes. In addition, subtle changes to the network governance structures has the potential to streamline the contribution of athletic departments to university sustainability initiatives and help project a more cohesive “Athletics” sustainability message that transmits across the collaborative network. Originality/value The outcomes of dedicated athletics green teams have been explored from a largely qualitative perspective. However, this study applies a novel relational approach to understand the shared governance value-added within a largely intra-organizational collaborative network.

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 597-616
Author(s):  
Geumchan Hwang ◽  
Lisa A. Kihl ◽  
Yuhei Inoue

PurposeThis study examined how a US college athletic department’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives influenced fans’ online donation intentions.Design/methodology/approachData were collected from 490 fans of a Division I intercollegiate athletic program and analyzed using structural equation modeling.FindingsResults indicated that the quality of CSR information positively affected e-satisfaction with CSR initiatives, which, in turn, predicted fans’ online donation intentions, university attachment, and fan–athletic department identification. Moreover, the relationship between e-satisfaction with CSR initiatives and online donation intentions was mediated by fan–athletic department identification.Research limitations/implicationsThis study has a limitation in terms of generalizability. The current focus on a single athletic department does not apply the results to athletic programs at other US universities and colleges. Future research should confirm the generalizability of the study’s findings by collecting data from fans of other athletic departments.Originality/valueIt is important to understand the impact of CSR activities on online donor intentions because marketing these activities could serve as an effective fundraising tool for athletic departments. The findings from this study inform athletic administrators of factors they might consider when promoting CSR initiatives through online media to encourage fans’ donations.


2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 558-568 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taina Hannele Kanninen ◽  
Arja Häggman-Laitila ◽  
Tarja Tervo-Heikkinen ◽  
Tarja Kvist

Purpose The purpose of this study is to describe council structure, its benefits, supportive and obstructive factors and developmental needs as a part of shared governance in a university hospital. Design/methodology/approach This is a descriptive study, where semi-structured interviews with 12 nurses was conducted in 2014 and documents from 75 council meetings from 2009 to 2014 were gathered and analyzed. Qualitative content analysis method was used on the data. Findings The study hospital has been developing nursing shared governance with unique structure and processes of councils. Professors and university researchers act as chair and members are voluntary nursing staff. The factors supporting the councils are nurse managers’ support, enthusiastic personnel and neighboring university. The factors obstructing the councils are lack of time, understanding and skills. The work of the councils benefits the organization by improving patient care, harmonizing nursing practices and informing decision-making. The council’s developmental needs were more visibility, concentration into everyday problems and interprofessionality. Research limitations/implications Applying nursing shared governance structures into an organization improves the professional practice environment of nursing personnel. Practical implications The study hospital has its own, unique council structure. It did not cover the whole hospital or all of the nursing personnel, but it is already producing promising results. It should be given an official status and more support from nurse managers, and it should be developed into an inter-professional discussion. The results presented here indicate that shared governance, even, in its early stage, contributes positively to the quality of care, harmonizes nursing practices and informs decision-making. Applying shared governance structures into an organization improves the professional practice environment of nursing personnel. The study showed concrete supporting and obstructing factors that should be notified in nursing leadership. Originality/value Despite the extensive empirical studies on nursing shared governance, there is very little research on councils in the Scandinavian countries.


2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 92-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Hansson ◽  
Frode Longva

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how accountability is expressed in contractual arrangements found in network governance structures that provide public transport services and to raise discussion of how to understand contracting accountability in network governance contexts. Design/methodology/approach – The paper is rooted in two research traditions: contracting studies and studies of accountability in government/governance contexts. Content analysis is used in examining contracts from two cases. These contracts are of five types: contracts between public organizations, contracts within a public organization, contracts between public organizations and private firms, and contracts between political parties within a municipality and contracts within a network. Various contracting approaches are identified within these types. Findings – The paper concludes that the contracts' functions differ between the cases. The first case did not have an overall contract that defined the network, relying on different two-party contracts instead. In the other case, an incentive-based contract was used to link the organizations. From an accountability perspective, the latter contracting structure clarifies the roles and responsibilities of the actors and increases the possibility of accountability to citizens. Originality/value – The paper brings new insights to the field of contracting and accountability by focusing on the role of contracts in network governance structures, taking account of various accountability relationships. It also contributes new theoretical categories usable when analysing contracting accountability in a network context.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Matt R. Huml ◽  
Alicia M. Cintron

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to examine how athletic fundraising managers perceive status and seek to use status to identify, prioritize and manage stakeholders within college athletics.Design/methodology/approachTo test this purpose, the researchers use the Gioia methodology to interview 19 college athletic department fundraising officers within National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) institutions. Following interviews, the data were analyzed by the researchers and structured within a first-order and second-order concept designation.FindingsInterviews show that status is an effective concept for explaining how athletic fundraisers identify and prioritize donors. Officers relied on economic (capacity) and social (passion and interest) factors to rank order donors. The results also show that athletic departments use status to manage stakeholders by rewarding their giving and escalating their commitment. Status is used in four strategies to manage the donor hierarchy: benefits, recognition, membership and access. Each strategy highlighted exclusivity and rank order.Originality/valueThere is a need to empirically test the application of status within the stakeholder theory context. These findings also contribute to the evolution of stakeholder management beyond the use of social identity theory or stakeholder salience. It helps our understanding of the evolving relationship between fundraiser and donor by recognizing the importance of capacity, passion and interests when identifying and prioritizing donors. Further, status-markers such as exclusive benefits, recognition, membership and access can be used to manage donors toward the organization's goals.


2015 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 551-580 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eksa Kilfoyle ◽  
Alan J. Richardson

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to adopt “whole network” perspective and analyzes the governance and control mechanisms in the Universal Postal Union (UPU), one of the oldest and largest inter-governmental networks, through the lens of institutional entrepreneurship theory. The purpose is to introduce a typology of network governance forms to the accounting literature and to analyze the governance and management control mechanisms within the UPU, a “participatory federation” (Provan, 1983) type of network that has managed the challenges of collective collaboration since 1875. Design/methodology/approach – The study benefits from unlimited access to all archival materials of the UPU such as minutes of Congress and committee meetings since 1875 as well as secondary documents and market studies related to the postal sector. The data reported in this study are derived from the archives of the UPU in Berne, Switzerland and interviews conducted with senior officials. Findings – Drawing on the work of Provan (1983) and Provan and Kenis (2008) the authors identify five “ideal type” network governance forms based on such variables as differences in the relative power of network participants and whether these networks have arisen spontaneously or due to external coercion, the authors classify the UPU as a “participatory federation.” Within the theoretical boundaries of this typology the authors identify the multi level governance structures and the use of management control mechanisms by each level of governance. The authors introduce a distinction between the “network constitutional organization” that focusses on the socialization of network members and strategy-level orchestration of the overall network and the “network administrative organization” (NAO) that mobilizes management accounting and control mechanisms to monitor, encourage and facilitate member collaboration. The authors propose that control within a participatory federation is enacted through collective entrepreneurship by governance bodies using management accounting and control mechanisms as institutional carriers. Research limitations/implications – The paper is focussed on the current state of the UPU’s network structure and processes and did not explore the dynamics around the emergence of the different network governance and control mechanisms. An exploration of the collective construction by network participants of the need for these mechanisms would provide insights into how they emerge and might lead to a better understanding of the role of NAOs in networks. Practical implications – The paper highlights the challenges faced by collaborative networks and identifies enabling characteristics of a participatory federation’s governance bodies. The empirical observations within the context of the UPU contribute to the theoretical understanding of the desirable characteristics of participatory federations that might be applicable to similar public and private collaborative networks Originality/value – This study expands the knowledge of management accounting and control systems in networks. It bridges a gap in the accounting literature by adopting a “whole network” perspective and by differentiating types of network governance structures that use management accounting and control systems. This contributes to the understanding of accounting and control across the full range of organizational forms.


2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (5) ◽  
pp. 599-617
Author(s):  
Fernando Bermejo ◽  
Eladio Febrero ◽  
Andre Fernandes Tomon Avelino

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to provide broader understanding of the significant role that the pension system has in the Spanish economy by estimating the sectoral production, employment and income sustained by pensioners' consumption.Design/methodology/approachBased on input–output tables by the World Input–Output Database and consumption data from the Household Budget Survey by the Spanish Statistical Office, a demoeconomic model is applied to quantify the direct impacts, indirect impacts from interindustry links and induced impacts from income–consumption connections over a nine-year period (2006–2014). Then, the factors driving the evolution of total output, employment and value added during such period have been examined by using structural decomposition analysis.FindingsThe growing participation of consumption by pensioner households in final demand had proven crucial during the 2008 crisis to alleviate the negative trend in production and employment derived from the collapse in consumption suffered by the rest of households.Practical implicationsDetermining the underlying factors driving changes in both employment and income during the 2008 crisis can be of interest in political decision-making on the sustainability of the Spanish pension system.Social implicationsThe results of estimating both the employment and income supported by pensioners' consumption reveal the significant stabilizing effect of the public spending on pensions, particularly during the 2008 crisis.Originality/valueThe current Spanish approach of attaining the pension system sustainability by merely reducing social protection costs ignores the adverse consequences of a lower pensioners' demand. This paper addresses an alternative view in which pension spending is not considered a burden on economic growth but rather a means of improving the level of production and employment.Peer reviewThe peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-01-2019-0047


2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 250-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chulatep Senivongse ◽  
Alex Bennet ◽  
Stefania Mariano

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the value of using a systematic literature review to develop an integrated framework for information and knowledge management systems. Design/methodology/approach First, the systematic literature review method is introduced, differentiating it from traditional literature reviews in terms of value-added and limitations. Second, this methodology is used in a research application focused on absorptive capacity internal capabilities with regard to the processes of acquisition, assimilation, transformation and exploitation. Third, an integrated framework for information and knowledge management systems is developed from this application. Findings The systematic literature review approach provides a rigor that can assist in reducing researcher bias while simultaneously enabling the definition of a precise scope of review, with a clear explanation of selection criteria with the objective to find and review all the studies that are relevant to the search definitions. As a research method, it effectively supports a qualitative, quantitative or mixed methodology. Research limitations/implications This methodology was applied to one specific area of research. Specific limitations include the availability of articles in subscribed databases and the analytical capabilities of the tools used for text mining and analytics. Originality/value This paper demonstrates the usefulness of the systematic literature review methodology in developing an integrated framework for analysis.


2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 200-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Darwin

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to discuss the challenges and obstacles encountered in the implementation of a mentoring program for Master of Business Administration (MBA) students at the University of South Australia (UniSA) Business School. The paper starts with an exploration into the need for a mentoring program, the trial and subsequent four years of implementation. The paper also explores the network model of mentoring and the reasons why this, rather than a more traditional model, was chosen for the program’s implementation. Design/methodology/approach – This exploratory case study uses data from over 600 students and their alumni mentors over a five-year period to evaluate and improve the program as well as cultivating a critical community of adult learners. Findings – Feedback from students indicates that the mentoring program is regarded by most as a value-added feature of their early learning as it offers support, if and when it is required, from those who have been there before. Research limitations/implications – Results are limited to one institution. However, as research into mentoring for higher education students is thin on the ground, this study contributes to our understanding of the positive impacts of mentoring on student success. Practical implications – This paper emphasizes the importance of business leaders giving back to their alma mater through mentoring current MBA students. It shows how mentoring can support learning and management development. Originality/value – This is an original study which explores ways to increase the learning of higher education students for positive social outcomes.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-150
Author(s):  
Guy Major ◽  
Jonathan Preminger

Purpose Both the academic literature and practitioners have long noted the need for an equity investment mechanism for worker-controlled firms that alleviates investor anxieties without undermining internal workplace democracy. The purpose of this paper is to outline one such possible mechanism. Design/methodology/approach The proposal locks together the interests of workers and external investors, via non-voting shares with dividends set by a pre-agreed value-added sharing formula. Each worker is paid a base wage, with the average across the firm being a pre-defined multiple of the national minimum wage. Any additional surplus is split into a number of equal “slices”, with each share receiving one slice as its dividend, and the average worker receiving a pre-agreed number of slices as a bonus. Findings Workers have an incentive to maximise their own incomes, and in so doing, will also automatically maximise the dividends received by investors, obviating the need for the shares to have normal voting rights. Working on this principle of aligned interests, the authors also discuss reinvestment, worker ownership of non-voting shares and possibilities for a secondary share market. The authors show how this proposal will be a significant step in aligning the interests of investors with owner-workers in a democratic, negotiated way that shares both risk and returns, thus making worker-controlled firms more attractive to equity investment. Originality/value In light of the recognised problem of underinvestment in worker-controlled firms and the risk of their degeneration, this paper will interest both academics and practitioners in employee ownership, co-operatives and various forms of workplace democracy.


2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-236 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rick Iedema ◽  
Raj Verma ◽  
Sonia Wutzke ◽  
Nigel Lyons ◽  
Brian McCaughan

Purpose To further our insight into the role of networks in health system reform, the purpose of this paper is to investigate how one agency, the NSW Agency for Clinical Innovation (ACI), and the multiple networks and enabling resources that it encompasses, govern, manage and extend the potential of networks for healthcare practice improvement. Design/methodology/approach This is a case study investigation which took place over ten months through the first author’s participation in network activities and discussions with the agency’s staff about their main objectives, challenges and achievements, and with selected services around the state of New South Wales to understand the agency’s implementation and large system transformation activities. Findings The paper demonstrates that ACI accommodates multiple networks whose oversight structures, self-organisation and systems change approaches combined in dynamic ways, effectively yield a diversity of network governances. Further, ACI bears out a paradox of “centralised decentralisation”, co-locating agents of innovation with networks of implementation and evaluation expertise. This arrangement strengthens and legitimates the role of the strategic hybrid – the healthcare professional in pursuit of change and improvement, and enhances their influence and impact on the wider system. Research limitations/implications While focussing the case study on one agency only, this study is unique as it highlights inter-network connections. Contributing to the literature on network governance, this paper identifies ACI as a “network of networks” through which resources, expectations and stakeholder dynamics are dynamically and flexibly mediated and enhanced. Practical implications The co-location of and dynamic interaction among clinical networks may create synergies among networks, nurture “strategic hybrids”, and enhance the impact of network activities on health system reform. Social implications Network governance requires more from network members than participation in a single network, as it involves health service professionals and consumers in a multi-network dynamic. This dynamic requires deliberations and collaborations to be flexible, and it increasingly positions members as “strategic hybrids” – people who have moved on from singular taken-as-given stances and identities, towards hybrid positionings and flexible perspectives. Originality/value This paper is novel in that it identifies a critical feature of health service reform and large system transformation: network governance is empowered through the dynamic co-location of and collaboration among healthcare networks, particularly when complemented with “enabler” teams of people specialising in programme implementation and evaluation.


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