Annick Willem

Ghent University | UGhent

The present study explored the multidimensionality of moral identity. In four studies (N = 1,159), we compiled a comprehensive list of moral traits, analyzed their factorial structure, and established relationships between the factorial dimensions and outcome variables. The resulting dimensions are Connectedness, Truthfulness, Care, and Righteousne...

In this editorial our team provides an overview of how to practically apply principles of trauma and violence informed care (TVIC) into research on interpersonal violence in sport. While trauma and violence informed care principles have generally been applied with a focus on supporting those with lived experience to engage in research practices, w...

Sport clubs traditionally focus on essential tasks such as organising local competitions, facilitating youth sport, and managing their volunteers. This primary focus can sometimes make it challenging to prioritise additional social initiatives such as developing more inclusive sports programs for disadvantaged communities. Despite the inherent diff...

In this study, we provide a nuanced perspective on a sub-type of match-fixing, called non-betting-related match-fixing (NBMF). Using a cross-sectional survey, we measured the prevalence and motives behind NBMF in Belgian amateur football and tennis. Additionally, we conducted a thorough study of the regulatory documents of the relevant (sports) org...

Overdue athletes’ salaries, i.e. late, partial or nonpayment of athletes’ salaries in professional sports, increases the risk for match-fixing as athletes are rendered more vulnerable to match-fixing approaches and for giving in to such proposals. Even though research and stakeholders recognize the aforementioned risk, the body of literature addres...

Athlete well-being and safety is of central importance to the field of sport management. Despite the growing attention of researchers, policy makers, and practitioners on interpersonal violence in sport, the issue remains prevalent. The most occurring form of interpersonal violence—coach-perpetrated psychological abuse of athletes—remains understud...

Despite the increasing academic interest in match-fixing, little is known about the behavioral determinants of this phenomenon. This study applies key theoretical concepts of situational action theory (SAT) to sportspersons’ decision-making process when confronted with sports-related match-fixing (SRMF) propositions. Using a factorial survey, amate...

Purpose Professionalization is an important issue in many all-volunteer nonprofit organizations (e.g. recreational sports clubs). Therefore, this study relied on the competing values framework and self-determination theory to investigate whether a newly developed intervention can effectively strengthen the management processes and leadership styles...

Many nonprofit and voluntary organizations rely primarily on volunteers to deliver their services. However, they often struggle to retain their volunteers. Leadership within these organizations plays a pivotal role in addressing this issue. Therefore, this study adopted self‐determination theory as a guiding framework to investigate the role of lea...

Research question Fraud is a major threat to the integrity of sports. Sport federations play a key role in safeguarding the integrity of their sport thus emphasizing the importance of internally strengthening their practices. However, a lack of research exists in understanding meso-level processes that contribute to organizations vulnerabilities to...

Background Sport-for-All emphasizes that every individual has the right to participate in sport. Despite all efforts to deliver Sport-for-All during the past decades, studies indicate that sport participation rates have been stagnating, whereas social inequalities in sport continue to exist. By applying an institutional theory lens, this study shed...

A considerable amount of research based on self-determination theory has provided evidence for the pivotal role of the coaches’ motivating style in predicting sports club members’ motivation to participate in organized sports. This study also investigated the importance of the sports club leaders’ motivating style for members’ motivation. Specifica...

Match-fixing has presented itself as a contested and widespread threat to the integrity of sport. Although sport corruption research, whereof match-fixing is one of the most compelling examples, has increased during the past decades, the research field is still under-theorized. Due to the multifaceted and complex nature of match-fixing, several sch...

This study provides a structured overview of the literature published between 2010 and 2020 on the causes and consequences of fraud in sport using a systematic search strategy. Our results show that the current literature on this phenomenon is mostly focused on football as a specific type of sport, and on competition manipulation as a specific type...

Gambling and sports are entangled in a close relationship. However, little remains known about gambling behaviors and perceptions in sports. Drawing on normalization theory, this study explores the prevalence and predictors of problem gambling as well as the normalization of gambling (including its availability and accessibility, prevalence, and so...

Background Sport-for-All emphasises that every individual has the right to participate in sport. Despite all efforts to deliver Sport-for-All during the past decades, studies indicate that sport participation rates stagnated, whereas social inequalities in sport continue to exist. Our study specifically explores how the dual mission of sport federa...

Extensive variable-centered research guided by Self-Determination Theory (SDT) has provided insights into volunteers’ motivations in nonprofit and voluntary sports clubs. However, volunteers may have multiple reasons for engaging in volunteer work. By adopting a person-centered approach, the present study aimed to identify volunteers’ motivational...

The impact of the COVID-19 crisis and its related measures on how people practice and experience leisure continues to be significant. In the current study, a survey measuring sport participation during the third week of the first lockdown, that started on the 18th of March 2020 and has been gradually loosened as of the 18th of April 2020, was carri...

Research questions Sport-for-All encompasses efforts to make organised sport accessible for all people. Although Sport-for-All is integrated in sport federations’ missions, many organisations struggle to attain their Sport-for-All goals. In particular, the Sport-for-All logic of sport federations is challenged by several institutional trends. By ap...

Aim and Research Questions The aim of this study is to map the challenges that sport clubs face in using good governance and ethical leadership principles. The research question can be summarised as: what are the challenges that sport clubs of different organisational capacity face in implementing good governance and ethical leadership principles a...

Match-fixing has already been studied in various sport disciplines. However, despite some well-known incidents in road cycling, match-fixing has barely been investigated in this unique sport discipline. Drawing on Ashforth and Anand’s theoretical model of normalization of corruption in organizations and on the perceptions of 15 active Belgian road...

Research question Due to government restrictions because of COVID-19, all participatory sport events (PSEs) were cancelled. As a result, knowledge is needed as to how and to what extent participants of PSEs modified their sport behaviour to fill the void of event cancellation. Therefore, this study aimed to (1) investigate to what extent event part...

Although professional sport teams increasingly engage in cause-related marketing (CRM), implementation often remains ad-hoc and superficial. CRM managers fall short of establishing the needed inter-organizational collaborations to attain mutually beneficial outcomes for the organization and society at large. Little is known about the structures and...

Despite the widespread growth of corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives in sport, the majority of professional sport teams still manage social engagement in an opportunistic manner. Tactical attempts toward CSR management can provide discrete and short-term benefits, but lack the ability to create lasting social and economic impacts. Thi...

Overal ter wereld implemente(e)r(d)en landen lockdowns om de covid-19-pandemie te bestrijden. Terwijl deze lockdowns de vrije bewegingsruimte van mensen sterk inperken, wijzen experten er tegelijkertijd op dat mensen op een veilige manier fysiek actief moeten blijven om andere gezondheidsproblemen te voorkomen. Op basis van een online bevraging ana...

This critical PhD review paper examines existing scholarship on ethical leadership in sport. Following a general trend in business ethics and related fields, ethical leadership has gained considerable research attention in sport over the last decades. Within this growing body of literature, ethical leadership is often presented as part of the desir...

Belgium hosted the Olympic Games only once, in 1920. From April to September, Antwerp was the ‘epicentre’ of the Seventh Olympiad of the modern era. Despite its great symbolic significance, the Antwerp Olympiad remains one of the most understudied editions of the modern Olympic Games. Antwerp was chosen to host the Olympics as a tribute to the brav...

All‐volunteer nonprofit organizations rely solely on the commitment of volunteers to support their operations. As such, it is important that leaders of these organizations, even though they are volunteers themselves, rely on professional skills in order to optimize their organization's volunteers capacity. In the present study, we investigated how...

Community Sport Development Programs (CSDPs) that use an intersectoral capacity building approach have shown potential in reaching individuals in disadvantaged situations. This study has investigated how the application of capacity building principles in disadvantaged communities results in higher sport participation rates in these communities. A m...

Postponing the Tokyo 2020 Olympics due to the global outbreak of COVID-19 marks a unique moment in the history of the Olympic Movement. For the first time since the cancelation of the Olympic Games during both World Wars, the Olympics will not take place as scheduled. This unprecedented postponement strongly impacts the Olympic Movement. Although o...

Countries all over the world implemented lockdowns to counteract COVID-19. These lockdowns heavily limited people's exercise possibilities. At the same time, experts advocated to remain physically active to prevent future health problems. Based on an online survey, this study examines adults' exercise levels and patterns during the COVID-19 lockdow...

Purpose First, the income elasticities are calculated for different levels of income, for both the decision to spend money on sports and the amount of money that is spent. Second, the study researches whether different operationalisations of income (i.e. family versus personal) result in different elasticity values. Third, the effect of sports-spec...

https://saso.research.vub.be/sporten-in-tijden-van-crisis-profiel-van-de-corona-sporter

Research question: Understanding corporate social responsibility (CSR) implementation requires identifying factors that contribute to the ability of a sport organisation to develop CSR. This paper examines the complex combination of organisational factors associated with CSR implementation in a sport federation (SF) setting. Thus, this study identi...

Against the background of declining volunteering rates in nonprofit and voluntary organizations, this study examined the relationship between the volunteer board members’ (de)motivating style and factors that influence volunteers’ motives to stay volunteer, i.e., volunteers’ motivation and group-task cohesion. To this end, we relied on Self-Determi...

Improving and maintaining high ethical standards among athletes is a major challenge in sports, which requires sufficient knowledge on athletes’ moral intentions. This study advances our knowledge on athletes’ moral intentions by examining the personal and contextual determinants (factors) that influence moral intentions of badminton players. In a...

Match-fixing is a major ethical issue in sports. Although research interest in match-fixing has increased in recent years, we remain largely in the dark regarding how both betting-and non-betting-related match-fixing relate to the moral decision-making of those involved. Drawing on Rest's theory of morality and on the perceptions of a large sample...

The aim of this good governance project is to help sport organisations and sport managers to deal with sport specific and non-sport specific threats by using good governance and ethical leadership principles. The main research question is whether a computer simulation game, named ‘the Sport Good Governance Game’ (GGG), can aid in the implementation...

As football (soccer) clubs are facing different ethical challenges, many clubs are turning to ethical codes to counteract unethical behaviour. However, both in- and outside the sport field, uncertainty remains about the effectiveness of these ethical codes. For the first time, a longitudinal study design was adopted to evaluate code effectiveness....

Ethical leadership is increasingly studied in the context of soccer clubs, as it is believed to represent an effective answer to soccer’s “dark side.” However, current academic understanding is limited to key internal stakeholders’ perspectives, such as coaches and players. A highly relevant stakeholder group that is still largely neglected is fans...

Recent scandals across the word of sport can be directly related to poor governance. This Research Handbook gathers the state-of-the-art research on sport governance by leading international scholars on various issues across various sports, offering a vital reference point for advancing research. Illustrating different approaches and perspectives...

Nonprofit organizations (NPOs) increasingly implement socially responsible programs to address their responsibilities toward society. Although collaborations are a valuable means to tackle complex social issues, NPOs also similarly collaborate with other NPOs for delivering socially responsible programs. However, the motivations driving NPOs to col...

Research Question: Research on cause related marketing (CRM) in sport has mostly focused on conceptualization rather than on implementation. The purpose of this paper is to add to that knowledge by exploring the specific CRM implementation decisions an organization attempts to make, and to what extent these are in line with the defined strategy. Re...

Nonprofit organizations (NPOs) increasingly implement socially responsible programs to address their responsibilities toward society. Although collaborations are a valuable means to tackle complex social issues, NPOs also similarly collaborate with other NPOs for delivering socially responsible programs. However, the motivations driving NPOs to col...

Research question: Although the implementation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) may require changes at the strategic, organisational, and operational levels, studies fall short of investigating the role of organisational learning (OL), which is key to grasp how CSR occurs in organisations. This study fills this gap by exploring the dynamic...

Delivering Sport-for-All is a major challenge for sport organizations and policy-makers worldwide. Sport-for-All is a practical activity and a knowledge intensive field, characterized by dispersed knowledge creation and sharing processes involving numerous agencies, professionals and volunteers; in other words, it is a community of practice. Commun...

Nonprofit soccer clubs are currently facing many ethical challenges, such as abuse, doping and match fixing. While research suggests that organizational (board) ethical leadership may be effective to tackle these ethical issues, empirical support in the context of sport remains limited. Drawing on the perceptions of a sample of nonprofit soccer pla...

This article reviewed, synthesized, and analyzed the research published on interorganizational relationships (IORs) in sport and sport-related contexts. In total, 162 articles were analyzed along the dimensions of publication rate and outlet, geographical scope, disciplinary domain, methods used, levels of analysis, setting, and theoretical framing...

Nonprofessional (amateur) soccer is continuously confronted with a wide range of ethical issues. As coaches are believed to be potentially effective in counteracting unethical behavior, this study analyzes the influence of coach ethical leadership on a sample of nonprofessional soccer players (n = 436). As ethical behavior contains two dimensions,...

Research question: The contemporary elite sport policy arena is highly complicated with a plethora of stakeholders relying on each other to reach their shared goal of international sporting success. Interactions among stakeholders have a large impact on outcomes. Therefore, these interactions are crucial to analyze when examining elite sport policy...

In Western countries, the popularity of running events has increased exponentially during the last three decades. However, little is known about the profile of non-participants. This knowledge is crucial to tailor promotional actions towards people who are currently not participating. Therefore, this study aimed: (1) to examine which socio-ecologic...

As professional sports organisations are increasingly engaging in Cause-Related Marketing (CRM), there is a growing interest in understanding to what extent Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) can deliver win-win outcomes for both the organisation and society at large. In this article, the authors provide a typology of CRM approaches adopted by p...

Purpose: This study used self-determination theory to examine the role of participants' autonomous and controlled motivation to exercise and to participate in a challenging mass cycling event and investigated whether the event enhanced intended and actual exercise behavior among the participants. Method: Two hundred and twenty-eight subjects, havin...

This closing chapter compares the sport systems in the 13 countries through an organisational capacity lens and gives an overview on how the organisational capacity of sport federations is influenced by the sport systems and governments in particular. One of the main conclusions is that only a few countries go beyond influencing the financial capac...

Since the origin of modern sport in the eighteenth to nineteenth century in Western countries, sport bodies such as federations and clubs have been acting almost entirely independent of governmental intrusion (Chappelet, 2010). In fact, the roots of modern sport refer to one of the basic ideas behind classic liberalism, i.e. the freedom of associat...

This chapter focuses on the relationship between governmental sport bodies and sport federations in Belgium. Because the competence with regard to sports is the responsibility of the communities, this chapter will focus on the example of Flanders, the Dutch-speaking northern part of Belgium. The relationship is studied from the theoretical perspect...

This book explores the organisation and structure of sport in and beyond Europe. Drawing upon up-to-date data, the collection’s main focus lies on the relationship between public sport policy structures and sport (con)federations. The authors present thirteen country-specific contexts wherein sport policy systems are embedded. This evidence provide...

Purpose Legitimizing health-care networks over time is crucial to the survival of the networks, but studies providing insight into the motivational paradigms used to legitimize networks and mergers are missing. This study aims to contribute by analyzing which motivational paradigms, namely, transaction costs economics, resource dependency, stakeho...

Although local governments attempt to promote sports among all layers of society, people with a lower socio-economic status are still under-represented in grassroots sports. Previous studies indicate that inter-sectoral networks and joint efforts can contribute to an increase in sport participation among these groups, but a systematic analysis of t...

Confronted with numerous scandals, sports organizations are turning to the adoption of ethical codes to attain more ethical behavior. However, the effectiveness of an ethical code as a means to increase ethical behavior remains debated; furthermore the particular characteristics of a sports context have not yet been taken into account. Neither have...

Background Recent research has illustrated the need for cross-sector partnerships to tackle multidimensional problems such as health inequalities and sport and physical activity promotion. Capacity building is based on partnerships and has demonstrated effectiveness in tackling these multidimensional problems. This study aims to explain how cross-s...

Research question: There is a paucity of knowledge about how national public sport agencies create and leverage information and knowledge to increase participation in sport. This paper addresses what is the role of public governing bodies (PSO) in creating new models for understanding participation in sport? how do they mediate knowledge on sport p...

Background: The Health through Sport conceptual model links sport participation with physical, social and psychological outcomes and stresses the need for more understanding between these outcomes. The present study aims to uncover how sport participation, physical activity, social capital and mental health are interrelated by examining these outc...

Collaborative public networks have become increasingly important as policy tools to address complex social and health problems. However, despite the broad literature on network effectiveness, there is still insufficient insight into the different determinants of whole network effectiveness, and particularly on how these determinants are related. Ba...

A lot of discussion in sports is taking place on whether certain behavior should be considered as Fair Play or not. This moral judgment on Fair Play is influenced by the conceptualization of the term Fair Play as either ‘respect for the rules’ or as ‘respect for the spirit of the game’, as well as by other determinants. To uncover the moral judgmen...

Sports organizations face various ethical challenges. To tackle these, ethical codes are becoming increasingly popular instruments. However, a lot of questions remain concerning their effectiveness. There is a particular lack of knowledge when it comes to their form and content, and on the influence of these features on the effectiveness of these c...

Achtergrond: Ondanks het feit dat fysieke activiteit aan heel wat fysieke en mentale gezondheidsvoordelen is gelinkt, blijkt dat slechts een minderheid van de Vlamingen voldoet aan de gezondheidsgerelateerde norm van dagelijks 30 minuten matig tot zwaar intense fysieke activiteit. Om mensen te kunnen motiveren om voldoende fysiek actief te zijn, is...

This research measures organizational capacity and organizational ambition in nonprofit and voluntary sports clubs. The organizational capacity dimensions of Hall et al.’s (The capacity to serve: A qualitative study of the challenges facing Canada’s nonprofit and voluntary organizations, 2003) multidimensional framework are completed with correspon...

Recent evidence showed that community capacity building is one of the key methods to reach health improvements within disadvantaged communities. Physical activity and sports participation are important means to reach health improvements. This study investigates a capacity building method which aims at increasing sports participation in the communit...

Integratie wordt vaak gelijkgeschakeld aan participatie: een mens die niet deelneemt aan bepaalde activiteiten maakt immers geen contacten met andere mensen en maakt op die manier ook geen deel uit van de samenleving. Sport als middel tot integratie is een piste die meer en meer bewandeld wordt aangezien sporten een aantrekkingskracht heeft over et...

To define key factors of effective evidence-based policy implementation for physical activity promotion by use of a partnership approach. Using Parent and Harvey's model for sport and physical activity community-based partnerships, we defined determinants of implementation based on 13 face-to-face interviews with network organisations and 39 teleph...

Health care networks are widely used and accepted as an organizational form that enables integrated care as well as dealing with complex matters in health care. However, research on the governance of health care networks lags behind. The research aim of our study is to explore the type and importance of governance structure and governance mechanism...

Collaborative networks in the public and non-profit sector face challenges that are typical for their institutional context. The typical characteristics that might impede the functioning of networks and, in particular, the development of trust and network effectiveness, are related to type of instigation, network flexibility, and power in the form...

De vierde beleidsprioriteit van het Decreet Sport Voor Allen handelde al over transversaal samenwerken. Toch vragen nog steeds veel mensen in de sportsector zich af: is dat nu eigenlijk wel nodig? Wat bereik je met dat samenwerken? Wat je zelf doet, doe je immers meestal beter. Of niet? Buurtsport Antwerpen bewijst dat samenwerken wel degelijk loon...