scholarly journals ‘Integrity, Sportsmanship, Character’: Baseball’s Moral Entrepreneurs and the Production and Reproduction of Institutional Autonomy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seth Abrutyn

Sociologists have long argued that institutions like religion or economy can become relatively distinct spheres that facilitate and constrain action, goal setting, and decision-making. But, few empirical studies have looked closely at how institutions become relatively distinct cultural and structural domains. This paper examines how institutional entrepreneurs—in this case, Major League Baseball (MLB) sportswriters—build and sustain institutional boundaries by considering how they create a distinct cultural discourse that infuses baseball places, times, and events with culturally distinct meanings. Drawing from sportswriters’ columns, documentaries, and monographs written on baseball, we show that MLB entrepreneurs have developed and disseminated a discourse oriented around the generalized medium of sport exchange, interaction, and communication: competitiveness. Using these data, the paper below examines how this medium becomes quantified and embodied in tangible and intangible forms. Additionally, the paper draws on sports columns that illustrate how MLB entrepreneurs protect the autonomy of a sacred core (the Hall of Fame) from internal threats (gambling and performance-enhancement drugs) and external corruption (the influence of money). The paper ends with a discussion of implications for the applicability of the findings to other sports and institutional domains.

1993 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 351-379 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane M. Berry ◽  
Robin L. West

This article is an integrative review of empirical studies of cognitive self-efficacy from childhood through old age. Issues of definition and measurement are addressed and the relation of self-efficacy to personal mastery is evaluated. Research on academic achievement in children and adolescents, complex decision-making in young adults, and memory and intellectual functioning in older adults supports a variety of theoretically driven hypotheses regarding the sources and effects of self-efficacy. Percepts of self-efficacy are based on a variety of sources of information, including personal mastery and perceived control beliefs. Self-efficacy has predictable effects on a variety of task engagement variables (e.g. persistence, effort, goal setting, strategy usage, chioce) that mediate the relationship between self-efficacy and performance. Generalisations regarding the applicability of self-efficacy to understanding cognitive development across the life span are discussed in terms of age-relevant domains and it is argued that a life span treatment of self-efficacy development is particularly compelling because both life span theory and self-efficacy theory emphasise domain specificity.


2009 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joachim Stoeber ◽  
Mark A. Uphill ◽  
Sarah Hotham

The question of how perfectionism affects performance is highly debated. Because empirical studies examining perfectionism and competitive sport performance are missing, the present research investigated how perfectionism affected race performance and what role athletes’ goals played in this relationship in two prospective studies with competitive triathletes (Study 1: N = 112; Study 2: N = 321). Regression analyses showed that perfectionistic personal standards, high performance-approach goals, low performance-avoidance goals, and high personal goals predicted race performance beyond athletes’ performance level. Moreover, the contrast between performance-avoidance and performance-approach goals mediated the relationship between perfectionistic personal standards and performance, whereas personal goal setting mediated the relationship between performance-approach goals and performance. The findings indicate that perfectionistic personal standards do not undermine competitive performance, but are associated with goals that help athletes achieve their best possible performance.


2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (6) ◽  
pp. 765-778 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kim Forsblom ◽  
Niilo Konttinen ◽  
Robert Weinberg ◽  
Pertti Matilainen ◽  
Taru Lintunen

Goal setting is an effective and frequently used tool for performance enhancement in sports. However, in the previous studies, the focus has been on goal effectiveness among individual male athletes and at one point in time. Therefore, the purpose of this longitudinal study was to examine goal setting practices in women’s sport teams across a competitive season from players’ individual and team perspectives. A total of 146 female players representing 24 teams in ice hockey, ringette, or floorball completed three online surveys. Surveys focused on setting outcome, process, and performance goals, as well as evaluating the follow-through of setting goals and actually reaching these goals across the season. The results indicated that teams set collective outcome goals, and several process, and performance goals at the outset of the season. One-third of the participants reported that these goals were recorded. Furthermore, results revealed that after the season, the achievement of the outcome goal was evaluated, whereas the attainment of process and performance goals was evaluated only occasionally. It is argued that the lack of follow-through in evaluating process and performance goals may be attributed to setting too many goals and not writing them down. It appeared that one-third of the teams did consistently follow the goal setting principles, and although this resulted in increased goal evaluation, it did not result in increased goal attainment. A number of future directions for research are offered and it is recommended that coaches should be made more aware of these guidelines and the importance of following them to achieve maximum benefits of a goal setting program.


2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vinod Dumblekar ◽  
Upinder Dhar

Abstract Self-efficacy is an individual's confidence in the personal ability to complete a task under specified conditions. Game self-efficacy is the belief of game players that they would win in a business simulation game competition. To understand the composites of such belief, an instrument of 30 statements was developed and statistically tested on 227 undergraduate students at the end of a business simulation game competition. The factor analysis produced eight factors of perceived game self-efficacy, namely, innovation, experimentation, conviction, openness, focus, proactivity, conceptualisation and determination. These factors have significant research implications for goal-oriented behaviour, goal setting and performance enhancement at work and in games and competitions, and in developing simulation games.


2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 97-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nina Keith

Abstract. The positive effects of goal setting on motivation and performance are among the most established findings of industrial–organizational psychology. Accordingly, goal setting is a common management technique. Lately, however, potential negative effects of goal-setting, for example, on unethical behavior, are increasingly being discussed. This research replicates and extends a laboratory experiment conducted in the United States. In one of three goal conditions (do-your-best goals, consistently high goals, increasingly high goals), 101 participants worked on a search task in five rounds. Half of them (transparency yes/no) were informed at the outset about goal development. We did not find the expected effects on unethical behavior but medium-to-large effects on subjective variables: Perceived fairness of goals and goal commitment were least favorable in the increasing-goal condition, particularly in later goal rounds. Results indicate that when designing goal-setting interventions, organizations may consider potential undesirable long-term effects.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document