Leadership and Managerial Styles in Athletic Administration - Literature review Example

Introduction

The guarantee of modern businesses success is no longer the prerogative of quality and service delivery and these notions are no more the only assets that distinguish the firm from the competition. Instead, it is the role of leaders in influencing company’s image, organization and decisions made in there. Therefore, leadership is the most influential component to organizational longevity and brand recognition. For the same reason, leadership has been conceptualized through a number of theories, which identify the characteristics and behaviors of influential leaders and leadership styles. In the sport industry, the scholars have already recognized the importance of leadership and a number of lines of leadership research and leadership styles situated in sport were investigated. Within sport business, leadership is concerned by the sport psychology discipline with on-the-field team aspects of coach leading the team, while the sport management discipline centers leadership in the off-the-field aspect of sport of the athletic director leading the athletics department. This paper investigates the notion of leadership and management in sport business with the particular attention on the positive and negative patterns of each leadership style and application of these styles in the particular situations. The basis for investigation is taken from the review of literature of the recent years.

Review of related literature

Peachey et al. (2015), have presented a consolidated research on the topic of leadership in sport management for the last years, paying attention on the evolution of the concept of leadership. Thus, the author highlighted that leadership was changed dramatically with the appearance of contingency model of leadership effectiveness, which investigated the interaction of leadership styles and the parameters of situation. The other important aspect of leadership in sport was examined through the American sport context where the study indicated the importance sports teams coach as appointed leader.

Crust and Lawrence (2006), have tried to explain leadership as the behavioral process where one influences individuals and groups for the sake of common goals. At the same time, big attention was given to the necessity of interaction between the leader and group members and where the effective leader encompasses motivation and minimizes any loss of productivity by the influence. The other interesting aspect of leadership in sport was explained in the context of group structure model, which offered the idea that players who have positions that are more central and performed more dependent developed essential leadership skills and were more likely to become managers.

Boucher (n.d.), emphasizes on the necessity to present certain theories, which can be relevant to sport environment. Here, Fiedler’s contingency model explains the relationship between organizational performance and leaders’ attitudes. The situational componets of favorableness were identified as the relationship of leader and other members of the team, authority, which the leader provides and the degree of structure in the task which will be performed.

Following this statement, the discriminating leader attitude is connected to the performance of the team when the situation is favorable or unfavorable. The other theory applied toward the leadership in the context of sport is House’s path-goal theory, which is on the needs and goals of the followers and which describes leaders as those who impact the path-goal perceptions and satisfaction of the followers. Hence, if the leader behavior is directive, the main characteristic of the followers is authoritarianism caused by the personal perceptions of the leader. If the leader displays support, the followers show locus of control and are enough motivated for goals’ achievement. The participative leader follows the formal authority system and the subordinates are motivated only with rewards.

The question of whether the leadership in sports management can be teachable is controversial with much attention to be obtained in the recent time. Here, several aspects of leadership can be increased through different learning experiences. Thus, leadership skills can be acquired through practice and experiential educational programs. The article of Extejt and Smith (2009), presented the view on the development of leadership skills taking into account the findings from interview with former university team captains. Thus, team captains experienced the development of interpersonal characteristics and task behaviors as important elements of leadership.

Another important aspect of leadership in the sports refers to the understanding what constituted good leadership. Here, Watt (2003), states that many sports industry situations face difficulty in the need for democratic operation and such democracy does not produce clear unity of purpose or situation for leadership potential. What really matters is the particular quality of leadership. In sports management and administration, the qualities of leadership include technical knowledge, integrity, honesty, “thick skin”, love to sport, administrative ability and commitment and people skills. In addition, a leader should be aware of individual needs as well as task and group-maintenance needs when the dynamics of groups are to be connected with the tasks to be completed.

Good leadership is the guarantee of good team development. Here, Burton and Peachey (2014), state that ethical leadership in sports is essential. It is because ethical leader is able to demonstrate normatively appropriate conduct through actions and establishes good interpersonal relationships promoting the same conduct to followers. This is possible through communication, reinforcement and decision-making. Burton (2014), also states that to understand the meaning of ethical leadership in the sports organizational context, there is a need to examine the perceptions of subordinated of ethical leaders. Here, the more ethically the leader behaves and makes decisions, the more subordinates accept such conduct. They even accept punishments for unethical behavior appreciating rewards for ethical conduct. Moral manager in the context of intercollegiate athletics should be explicit in the communication of ethics and values message. Moreover, the one should establish ethical conduct and follow it in order to motivate others in being ethical.

Hodge and Lonsdale (2011), consider that while the recent research have employed the achievement of goal theory perspective in considering goals orientations and motivational climate variables, there is a relationship between the autonomy-supportive vs. controlling coaching style in sports. Thus, for most humans it is naturally to be prosocial, if proper nurturing is given. When one lacks such nurturing, then one seeks for the substitution, which is no good for the prosocial behavior. In terms of sport, such lack is displayed by the higher level of ego enhancement and fame that does not necessarily promote ethical behavior. In that case, autonomy-supported way of coaching does not serve its purpose, and controlling coaching style is more suitable. Thus, the autonomous motivation does not exist and actions of the follower are experienced as emanating from self-determination.

One of the best ways to investigate whether leader is capable to motivate the followers is through examining every particular leadership style, which in the context of sport consist of autocratic and democratic behavior, social support, positive feedback and training and instruction. These are the main elements of the multidimensional leadership theory, the application of which gives an ability to understand the perceptions of coaches as leaders. Thus, successful athletes perceive that their coaches use the same amount of autocratic style during the season (Bekiari, 2014).

Whether the coach as leader in the sport is more autocratic, provides less support to the followers and displays less democratic behaviors to the athletes, the less cohesive are the teams. Hence, there is a close relationship between the leadership style of coaches and teams’ ability to succeed. At the same time, when coaches employ a democratic and supportive style and use positive feedback, the training sessions are more efficient and such leaders are more likely to foster a cohesive team environment (Alemu & Babu, 2012).

Conclusion

This research paper was seeking to examine the different findings in literature regarding leadership and leadership styles, which better fit the sports context. It investigated the importance of different styles in managing teams’ success and revealed that more democratic leadership style promotes greater team’s commitment toward the achievement of their goals. Whether a teamwork success requires efficient management, for sports, the role of the one who would lead to such success belongs to coach and that is a coach who takes practice of team guidance and plays leadership role in the performance of sportsmen. Thus, this paper showed that good coach is a good leader if one has insight, personality and skills that honestly help athletes in reaching theory potential. What effective leader does and how one acts impose significant impact on the attitudes, feelings and performance of the followers.