To better understand the intangible impacts on host communities of major sport events, the psychic income of local residents was examined. In addition, social anchor theory was applied to potentially better explain the lasting intangible benefits of hosting the event. The impetus of the study came from the 2012 Major League Baseball All-Star Game, held in Kansas City, MO. Data were collected from local community organizations before and after the event. The results suggest that some components of psychic income dissipated after the event, whereas other components did not significantly change. Furthermore, social capital increased, but neighborhood identity decreased after the event. As such, the event as a social anchor was unable to sustain residents’ psychic income after the event. Potential limitations and future research directions are also offered.
Search Results
Major Sport Events and Psychic Income: The Social Anchor Effect
Brent D. Oja, Henry T. Wear, and Aaron W. Clopton
Exploring Sport Employees’ Conceptualizations of Meaningful Work
Nathan R. Baer, Claire C. Zvosec, and Brent D. Oja
Modern sport management scholars have paired the fields of positive organizational behavior and human resource development with sport management to enhance the productivity of sport organizations through their employees. One area of study receiving increased attention is meaningful work, an emerging employee well-being metric whose definition is debated. The purpose of this study was to explore the ways in which sport employees conceptualize meaningful work. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 32 sport employees. The following themes were identified: meaningful work is work that serves, meaning gained from sport organizations, and individual meaningful work experiences. Discussion offers valuable implications for practitioners of sport management, as well as the emerging scholarly field of human resource development in sport management, and the evolving discourse surrounding meaningful work.
Developing Student-Athlete School Satisfaction and Psychological Well-Being: The Effects of Academic Psychological Capital and Engagement
Minjung Kim, Brent D. Oja, Han Soo Kim, and Ji-Hyoung Chin
The quality of a student-athlete’s experience can be a product of the services provided by their sponsoring sport organization. In an attempt to improve the student-athlete experience, this study was positioned to examine how collegiate sport services could use academic psychological capital (PsyCap) and student-athlete engagement to promote school satisfaction and psychological well-being. A total of 248 National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I student-athletes participated in this study. Results indicated that academic classification moderated academic PsyCap’s influence on engagement. In addition, the academic PsyCap of the student-athletes positively influenced school satisfaction and psychological well-being, but student-athlete engagement fully mediated the relationship between academic PsyCap and psychological well-being. This empirical evidence provides new knowledge on the relationships among student-athletes’ motivational cognitive constructs, educational engagement, school satisfaction, and psychological well-being in the context of highly competitive collegiate sports. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed, including incorporating the results with services provided to student-athletes.
The Roles of Perceived Safety Climate and Innovativeness in the Performance of Sport and Recreation Organizations
Minjung Kim, Han Soo Kim, Brent D. Oja, Jasamine Hill, Claire Zvosec, and Paul Yuseung Doh
The recent COVID-19 pandemic created an unpredictable environment regarding the safety operations of sport and recreation organizations. This study was designed to examine how safety climate and organizational innovativeness could promote preferred organizational behavior outcomes in college campus sport and recreation centers. A total of 227 sport and recreation employees were recruited through the National Intramural and Recreational Sports Association. With the collected data, we employed structural equation modeling to assess the research hypotheses. The results indicated that safety climate and innovativeness positively influenced job engagement, therefore leading to enhanced safety compliance and employee innovativeness, which ultimately resulted in higher levels of organizational performance. Peer safety compliance was also found to be a moderator in the relationship between job engagement and safety compliance. In this study, the authors offer new insights into sport organizational performance by emphasizing safety and innovation.
