Sport management concepts and practices

Sport Management

Regardless of the field or industry involved, different management styles prevail across the nation. In sports however, the management style can mean the difference between a championship team and a team that becomes a constant joke among everyone except the fans.

One study examined the management style of college sports coaches and what they do and don't do to motivate their players.

The article begins by admitting that there is not much information available about how coaches use their management techniques to motivate their players, at least the teams through the National Collegiate Athletic Association (Morrison, 1999).

The article was founded in the desire to initiate and describe the motivational factors of the group of coaches and create a measurement for different management styles.

Coaching motives fell into five distinct categories: intrinsic, extrinsic, social motives, growth and education, and professional relations. Using the intrinsic and extrinsic motives four motivational coaching styles were created. These four coaching motivation styles were then related to autonomous, control and impersonal decision making styles of coaches and used to distinguish between personality characteristics of the coaches (Morrison, 1999)."

The end result of the study was that coaching management styles are significantly related to the decision making style of each coach.

The article discusses some of the studies that have been performed in the past with regard to female coaching/management styles and their use of motivational tools with their teams, but acknowledges that there has been little done by way of studying male coaches.

The article also discusses previous examinations that concluded motivational style is important in the management of sports teams.

When motivation is discussed, it is described as the fundamental force and direction of behavior (Morrison, 1999). It underlies other thoughts, emotions and behaviors in life (Morrison, 1999). There is no reason to believe that motivation for coaching follows a different pattern than earlier work with athletes (Morrison, 1999). Thus, motives and motivational styles in coaches should be related to other personality attributes coaches possess, as well as to how they go about behaving within the coaching environment (Morrison, 1999)."

Consistent with the results of earlier research relating motivation to personality and behavior in sport (Frederick & Ryan, 1993; Goudas, Biddle & Fox, 1994), the present study predicted that coaches with high intrinsic-low extrinsic motives would show a more autonomous decision-making style, as well as show higher scores on the positive personality characteristics of warmth, liveliness, and openness to change (Morrison, 1999). High extrinsic-low intrinsic coaches were predicted to have higher scores on controlling decision making style and negative personality characteristics associated with extrinsic motivation, such as higher dominance, rule-consciousness, vigilance, tension and apprehension (Morrison, 1999)."

Using 137 coach participants with an average age of 45 years the study asked the participants to self report on many aspects of coaching including general demographic information and specific motivation and management styles (Morrison, 1999).

Following the gathering of information the article reveals the findings that motivation is a fundamental factor in behaviors of athletes.

My feelings agree with everything the article discussed. A coach and a coaching management style are instrumental to the success of not only the team as a whole but also to the individual players.