JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Wednesday, February 26, 2025

Stagnant NSOs must transform or perish

by

BRIAN LEWIS
2178 days ago
20190312

The book "Sports Gov­er­nance" by Rus­sell Hoye and Gra­ham Cuskel­ly gave in-depth fo­cus on the gov­er­nance of non-prof­it sports or­gan­i­sa­tions and the prac­tices em­ployed by the boards/com­mit­tees to car­ry out their gov­er­nance role.

They made the point that books on cor­po­rate gov­er­nance are usu­al­ly writ­ten from a le­gal, fi­nan­cial ac­count­ing or or­gan­i­sa­tion­al be­hav­iour per­spec­tive.

Their book fur­ther high­light­ed the idea that the gov­er­nance in non-prof­it sports or­gan­i­sa­tions tra­di­tion­al­ly gov­erned by a vol­un­teer board may be best ex­am­ined from the lens of or­gan­i­sa­tion­al be­hav­iour.

How are the is­sues of struc­ture, cul­ture, strat­e­gy, lead­er­ship, change and per­for­mance are con­sid­ered by vol­un­teer boards and their paid staff in gov­ern­ing sports or­gan­i­sa­tions?

The boards of vol­un­teer non-prof­it sports or­gan­i­sa­tions must deal with a myr­i­ad of chal­lenges in car­ry­ing out their gov­er­nance re­spon­si­bil­i­ties. Some of these chal­lenges in­clude the chang­ing reg­u­la­to­ry en­vi­ron­ment, the in­flu­ence of gov­ern­ment sports pol­i­cy, the im­pact of glob­al­i­sa­tion process­es and in­creased com­pe­ti­tion, the ex­pec­ta­tion of dif­fer­ent stake­hold­er groups.

Seek­ing ways to turn chal­lenges in­to op­por­tu­ni­ties re­quire the non-prof­its to re-ex­am­ine their gov­er­nance struc­tures and prac­tices in an ef­fort to meet in­creas­ing ex­pec­ta­tions and stan­dards of trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty and per­for­mance from a broad range of stake­hold­ers.

There is the view that na­tion­al sports or­gan­i­sa­tions (NSOs) aren't mov­ing with a sense of ur­gency in re­spect of the need for gov­er­nance and con­sti­tu­tion re­form.

What will it take to get na­tion­al sports or­gan­i­sa­tions to change? Who will take the nec­es­sary ac­tion? Whose re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is it to en­sure that change hap­pens? Who will in­sist that good sports gov­er­nance is un­der­stood? Who will be the cat­a­lyst for the change in val­ues that needs to oc­cur if there is to be im­proved sports gov­er­nance?

Good gov­er­nance is im­por­tant. Giv­en cur­rent trends, it is im­per­a­tive for the T&T sports sec­tor to de­vel­op strate­gies and tac­tics to not on­ly sur­vive but al­so thrive. The high qual­i­ty of sports gov­er­nance in this coun­try will en­sure that the sports sec­tor is re­silient de­spite the many chal­lenges.

Every so­ci­ety faces its own unique is­sues, in­clud­ing vi­o­lence, sex­u­al abuse, sex­ism, eco­nom­ic re­ces­sion, ho­mo­pho­bia, do­mes­tic abuse, bul­ly­ing and cor­rup­tion. These is­sues al­so ap­pear in all ar­eas of sport. Sport is a mir­ror, a mi­cro­cosm, or a re­flec­tion of so­ci­ety. So­ci­etal is­sues man­i­fest them­selves in a sport.

As the gov­er­nance of sport trans­forms from a hi­er­ar­chi­cal struc­ture to a more hor­i­zon­tal in­car­na­tion of stake­hold­er net­works, NSOs that aren't seek­ing to cre­ate their fu­ture now run the grave risk of ir­rel­e­vance.

It's ei­ther your sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion Trans­form or Per­ish.

Ed­i­tor's Note:

Bri­an Lewis is the Pres­i­dent of the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) and the views ex­pressed are not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of the or­gan­i­sa­tion.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored