Abstract

The focus of this paper is sport club consultants, an under-researched role that is uniquely situated at the interface of sport policy systems and clubs. Incumbents of this role—the label of which varies between countries—conduct club-directed developmental work to align clubs with centrally issued policies and programmes. Conceptualising sport club consultants as a sport-specific street-level bureaucrat, the paper’s purpose is, first, to analyse sport club consultants’ interaction style vis-à-vis clubs and, second, to demonstrate that broader and unintended transformative effects may follow from this rather micro practice. We propose that sport club consultants’ institutionally shaped interaction style may be operationalised along four dimensions (e.g. case prioritisation principle, shaping of interaction context, interactor positioning, communicative strategy). The substantive empirical content of these dimensions may vary between systems and the policy in question. Nonetheless, we show that system-level fragmentation, professionalisation, and centralisation are potential consequences of the work through which sport club consultants attempt to reconcile tensions between centrally distilled policies and clubs’ readiness, willingness, and ability to change.

摘要

本文的重点是体育俱乐部顾问，这是一个研究不足的角色，独特地位于体育政策系统和俱乐部的界面上。这一角色的现任者——其标签因国家而异——进行俱乐部指导的发展工作，以使俱乐部与中央发布的政策和计划保持一致。将体育俱乐部顾问概念化为特定于体育运动的街头官僚，本文的目的是，首先，分析体育俱乐部顾问与俱乐部的互动方式，其次，证明更广泛和意想不到的变革效应可能来自这个比较微的做法。我们建议体育俱乐部顾问的制度化互动风格可以从四个维度进行操作（例如案例优先原则、互动环境的塑造、互动者定位、沟通策略）。这些维度的实质性实证内容可能因系统和相关政策而异。尽管如此，我们表明，系统级的碎片化、专业化和集中化是体育俱乐部顾问试图调和中央提炼的政策与俱乐部的准备、意愿和变革能力之间的紧张关系的工作的潜在后果。