At the in­au­gur­al In­di­an Sport Man­age­ment As­so­ci­a­tion (IN­S­MA) con­fer­ence at the K J In­sti­tute of Man­age­ment in Mum­bai, In­dia, on De­cem­ber 16, Man­age­ment and Gov­er­nance (with fo­cus on Sport), UN­ESCO Chairhold­er Chris­tos Anag­nos­topou­los ad­dressed the top­ic “Gov­ern­ing Sport 2.0: Ad­dress­ing Chal­lenges and Un­lock­ing Op­por­tu­ni­ties.”

Draw­ing on a sports gov­er­nance re­search project in­volv­ing Eu­ro­pean coun­tries and In­dia, he high­light­ed three sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges fac­ing na­tion­al sports fed­er­a­tions:

• The in­creased com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of sports has re­sult­ed in more com­plex de­ci­sions as fed­er­a­tions must sat­is­fy mul­ti­ple stake­hold­ers, such as in­ter­na­tion­al gov­ern­ing bod­ies, spon­sors, na­tion­al leg­is­la­tions, in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards of good gov­er­nance, ac­count­abil­i­ty, trans­paren­cy, and so­cial jus­tice.

• In­creased in­sti­tu­tion­al­i­sa­tions such as pos­sess­ing a web­site, pro­vid­ing de­tails of the or­gan­i­sa­tion struc­ture, strate­gic plan, in­for­ma­tion on the ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers, in­ter­nal reg­u­la­tions and poli­cies, etc.

• The avail­abil­i­ty of re­sources to meet the grow­ing de­mands. Some fed­er­a­tions may not have the fi­nan­cial and hu­man re­source ca­pac­i­ty to match their work­load and sat­is­fy all re­port­ing re­quire­ments. In some cas­es, the ex­ist­ing mem­bers may not know what is ex­pect­ed of them.

Anag­nos­topou­los em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of a gov­er­nance sys­tem pred­i­cat­ed up­on four key pil­lars: Trans­paren­cy, de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process, In­ter­nal ac­count­ing and con­trol, and So­cial Re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. With­in each cat­e­go­ry, sev­er­al prin­ci­ples must be checked off to de­ter­mine the over­all lev­el of gov­er­nance.

A traf­fic light sys­tem in­forms the gov­er­nance po­si­tion. Red in­di­cates ter­ri­ble gov­er­nance, as many of the prin­ci­ples for the four gov­er­nance cat­e­gories have not been met; or­ange sig­ni­fies an in-be­tween gov­er­nance po­si­tion, and green in­di­cates good gov­er­nance.

What is re­quired to at­tain the green light of good gov­er­nance?

Com­pli­ance mech­a­nisms must be im­ple­ment­ed by es­tab­lish­ing a na­tion­al Cod­i­fi­ca­tion of Good Gov­er­nance (CGG). The CGG will in­volve the fol­low­ing:

• Mon­i­tor­ing the per­for­mance of all na­tion­al fed­er­a­tions.

• Im­ple­men­ta­tion of sanc­tions—Sanc­tions must hurt, for ex­am­ple, cut­backs in fund­ing.

• Per­sua­sion—Per­suade ad­min­is­tra­tors to ad­here to the over­all sound gov­er­nance sys­tem.

• Rule in­ter­pre­ta­tion—En­sur­ing ad­min­is­tra­tors know all the var­i­ous rules and reg­u­la­tions.

• Ca­pac­i­ty build­ing—Pro­vi­sion of fi­nan­cial tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance.

• So­cial learn­ing—Shar­ing of ideas and in­for­ma­tion among mem­bers.

Such a gov­er­nance sys­tem is nec­es­sary as many or­gan­i­sa­tions are gov­erned by per­sons on a vol­un­teer ba­sis and may not have all the tech­ni­cal skills nec­es­sary to meet the grow­ing spread of the wings of what con­sti­tutes good gov­er­nance. So, it may not be a case of not want­i­ng to im­ple­ment but not nec­es­sar­i­ly know­ing what is to be done and how it is to be done.

As such, a key les­son from Anag­nos­topou­los’ keynote ad­dress is that the Min­istry of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment and the Sports Com­pa­ny of T&T (SporTT) must en­sure that there is a na­tion­al Cod­i­fi­ca­tion of Good Gov­er­nance and that all na­tion­al fed­er­a­tions and their af­fil­i­ates are aware of the CGG and what is re­quired of them. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, it will be in­cum­bent up­on both or­gan­i­sa­tions to height­en their sup­port sys­tems to na­tion­al fed­er­a­tions.

Once the above is im­ple­ment­ed, na­tion­al re­port­ing on each fed­er­a­tion’s gov­er­nance per­for­mance us­ing the traf­fic light sys­tem should be made pub­lic for trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty.