James Skinner

• Professor at Loughborough University

Research Question This paper seeks to contribute to the theoretical understanding of team cohesion in sport. While a robust foundation of research on team cohesion in sport exists, there is a dearth of research examining the role of physical proximity. With physical group exercise temporarily suspended due to COVID-19, herein lies an opportunity to...

Painkiller (mis)use in sport presents a range of potential health risks to athletes (e.g., injury exacerbation). There is a lack of qualitative data examining the sociological genesis of variations in attitudes toward painkiller use. Focusing on the concept of physical capital, this article explores how attitudes toward painkiller use among profess...

Doping is a well-known problem in competitive sports. Along the years, several cases have come to public, evidencing corrupt practices from within the sports environment. To guarantee fair play and prevent public health issues, anti-doping organizations and sports authorities are expected to cooperate in the fight against doping. To achieve this mi...

This conceptual article advances the value of Bourdieu's practice theory and physical capital as a tool to understand the various types of painkiller (mis)use in sport. Consuming painkillers to manage injury and fatigue is a common practice among male professional footballers and misuse can exacerbate existing injuries and contribute to chronic phy...

League regulators aim for an equitable competition where each team has an equal chance of winning the championship, termed competitive balance. It is generally assumed that closed leagues with stricter labor market regulations should demonstrate better competitive balance than open leagues with promotion and relegation. The aim of this research was...

this paper investigates the influences of change recipients' supportive behaviors toward the national reform in the chinese football sector. Qualitative data were collected through semi-structured interviews (n = 29), which were conducted with change recipients from national and local football associations and commercial football clubs. Drawing on...

Research question Institutional work by actors (e.g. organisations or individuals) to create, maintain or disrupt institutions requires redefining what is considered legitimate behaviour. Furthermore, research indicates that field-configuring events (FCE), such as conferences, which temporarily unite actors, are important junctures for institutiona...

Established in 1999, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) was an ambitious project to harmonise anti-doping regulations globally. Since its creation, WADA has engaged in additional activities such as investigating doping allegations, managing whistleblowers and coordinating with national and international customs organisations. These activities demo...

International Sport Management, Second Edition, takes a comprehensive look at the organization, governance, business activities, and cross-cultural context of modern sport on an international level. As the sport industry continues its global expansion, this second edition serves as an invaluable guide for students whose careers will require an inte...

Implicit leadership theories (ILTs) are people’s mental models of the characteristics that they believe leaders should possess (Foti et al., 2017; Lord, 1985; Tavares et al., 2018). People implicitly compare actual leaders to their mental model to determine whether they perceive them as leaders or not (Alipour et al., 2017; Lord et al., 1984). From...

Implicit leadership theories (ILTs) matter because they are used as the benchmark against which people determine who is a leader and who is not. This assessment informs their behavioral responses. People are thought to have a superordinate-level ILT representing their prototypical mental model of leadership and a series of basic-level ILTs. Each of...

The aim of this study is threefold. Firstly, we aim to establish whether implicit leadership theories (ILTs), which are cognitive structures held by observer’s comprising traits and behaviours of leaders, exist in sports, and if so, how they differ from business ILTs. Secondly, we address the call by various scholars in the field (i.e., Van Quaqueb...

The effectiveness of the World Anti-Doping Agency as an international non-governmental organisation with a mission to regulate anti-doping policy has been challenged by doping scandals in sport. Historically, anti-doping policy development has been primarily reactive, determined by the need for dominant organisations to maintain power rather than t...

In March 2015, the Chinese government issued the Overall Plan for Chinese Football Reform and Development, which aimed to develop football in China from the grassroots level to the elite level. The salient element of the plan was to separate the Chinese Football Association (CFA) from direct government control. Considering the previous failed attem...

This chapter establishes the key aspects of leadership that can facilitate innovative cultures in the sport context. In the first section, the chapter discusses the meaning of leadership and culture, and emphasises their important connection with innovative outcomes. Next, the chapter introduces the sport leadership ecosystem and addresses how usin...

This chapter introduces entrepreneurship as a driver of innovation, social change, and economic development. It argues that entrepreneurship is critical for sustaining economic prosperity through job creation as it improves the competitiveness of an economy and creates new wealth. However, it is equally important to maintain the entrepreneurial spi...

This chapter establishes the sport innovation landscape by distinguishing where innovation can occur in the sport industry, and how these sites intersect with a cultural context. The chapter addresses how a sport enterprise can go about mapping its culture with innovation in mind. The first section of the chapter maps the potential sites within the...

This chapter outlines how leadership is integral in the process of developing cultures where creativity thrives and innovations continually emerge. The chapter provides a variety of lenses to view leadership’s role in this process. It notes that there is no one way to lead for this type of environment; however, there are certain leadership approach...

This chapter highlights the relationship between change and innovation, with a particular emphasis on why a sport enterprise must recalibrate its cultural expectations and norms in order to accommodate a lasting innovative culture. It further explains how sport enterprises can approach innovation in a practical sense. That is, how to cultivate new...

This chapter contextualises the sport business marketplace. It begins by noting the radical expansion of the industry over the past few decades, from a modest amateur sector to an immense commercial powerhouse. Next, the chapter outlines sport’s remarkable and unique features from both an economic as well as a sociocultural perspective. In this res...

This chapter argues that sustained innovation is a high-productivity growth state underpinned by a supporting culture that reaches across all aspects of a sport enterprise. This requires a seamless, structured approach that begins with a new paradigm of thinking about management, focuses on the process of cultural renewal, mobilises emboldened but...

In bringing the book to a conclusion, this chapter acknowledges that it is not easy to change the culture of sporting enterprise, since they are by nature conservative, masculine institutions, which value their traditions and histories. While organisational culture is troublesome to reveal, and difficult to manage, it remains the cornerstone of any...

Analysing the trends that are emerging in sport enterprises such as advancements in technology and social media, the authors of this illuminating book tackle the issue of how to create new opportunities in such a changing industry. Providing valuable reading for sports business scholars, this book draws on examples from inventive companies as well...

Conventional approaches to leadership in sport management regard leadership as a leader-centric phenomenon. Recent advances in the generic leadership literature have highlighted the way that people construct their own understanding of leadership and shown that these influence their assessment and responses to people they regard as leaders. This obs...

Generic leadership scholars have begun to analyse leadership from a perspective that focuses on the perceptions of observers and challenges the default position of leader-centric research. This observer-centric perspective is commonly referred to as the social construction of leadership; it is yet to be applied to a sport management context. By hig...

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Employment relations, much discussed in other industries, has often been neglected in professional sports despite its unique characteristics. The book aims to explore in detail the unique nature of the employment relationship in professional sports and the sport industry.

This chapter presents a historical summary of anti-doping policy. For a more detailed analysis of doping, anti-doping policy, deterrence and detection, please refer to Detecting Doping in Sport (Routledge)

This SMR editorial is based on Engelberg & Moston's analysis "Somebody else's problem" (available by request) which contains a more thorough analysis than the editorial.---

For copy of article in SMR visit JCU Research Repository For full copy of the funded research, please contact first author ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Although the use of banned drugs in sport is not a new phenomenon, little is known about the...

In this manuscript, we use Bitektine’s (2011) theory of organizational social judgments to develop a framework to Capture Perceptions of Organizational Legitimacy (CPOL). We outline a three-stage framework as a method to measure the perceived dimensions on which constituents scrutinize a sport organization’s legitimacy. In stage one of the framewor...

Contact first author for copy. Stephen.Moston@monash.edu

Contact first author for copy. Stephen.Moston@monash.edu Objectives: Surveys of the perceived incidence of doping in sport suggest that such behaviour is relatively common. Perceptions may potentially be of greater significance than actual incidence: athletes who believe that other athletes are doping may be more likely to engage in such practices...

CONTACT TERRY ENGELBERG FOR ABSTRACT AIM: The three-year study study aims to assess the incidence of PED use in a large sample of young elite athletes (aged 12 to 17 years at the commencement of the study) and to identify the demographic and psychological characteristics that underpin such behaviour.