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Endurance Canada is facing a dire situation. It must turn itself around or face bankruptcy. The problems are piling up for Endurance Canada’s Board of Directors. Over the last 20 years, the Board’s Chair, Bill Fitzpatrick, has seen his sport’s athletes go from winning Olympic medals to not having any medals internationally. Within Endurance Canada, he has seen high staff turnover and burnout, power struggles between the national and provincial/territorial levels, and their revenues have been hit hard. COVID-19 was the proverbial nail in the coffin. Something drastic needs to happen. So, Bill brings in Amanda Tsang, a strategy expert. She has 1 month to come up with a plan to bring Endurance Canada back to life. The case follows Amanda as she reviews the strategy, structure, and governance issues in the organization. This fictional case asks students to (a) develop a strategic plan for Endurance Canada, (b) show how structure and strategy are interrelated, and (c) reflect on governance issues in a multilevel governance system.

The purpose of this article is to develop a framework of how organizing committees operationally evolve and the types of issues with which they and their stakeholders must deal. Based on a combination of stakeholder theory and issues management, a case study of the 1999 Pan American Games held in Winnipeg, Canada, was built using archival material and interviews. Three major organizing-committee operational modes emerged: planning, implementation, and wrap-up. Issue categories faced by the organizing committee and its stakeholders included politics, visibility, financial, organizing, relationships, operations, sport, infrastructure, human resources, media, interdependence, participation, and legacy. Issue-category prominence depended on the operational mode and organizing-committee member hierarchical level, such that issues became less strategic and broad as one moved through operational modes or down the hierarchy. Issue categories also differed within stakeholder groups, whereas stakeholder interests (material, political, affiliative, informational, and symbolic) differed between stakeholder groups.

The purpose of this article was to examine how the decision-making process changes as a major sport event’s organizing committee moves from the planning to the implementation to the wrap-up modes. A case study of the 1999 Pan American Games, its organizing committee, and its stakeholders was built by means of interviews and archival material. Velocity impacted decision making in different ways. First, the importance of the time, context, and resources parameters changed, as did the model of decision making (from administrative to garbage can to rational). As well, four drivers of decision making (structural dimensions, stakeholder interactions, information management, and personal characteristics) were found. A key strategy for decision makers faced with an increasing velocity environment was planning for the need to react (come Games time) through risk assessments and contingency plans.

This study’s purpose was to uncover national sport organizations’ (NSOs) perceptions of social media to understand how social media are situated and implemented. Specifically, the study sought to understand the perceived utility of social media, the rationale for the content produced and disseminated, and the factors affecting social-media implementation. Through semistructured interviews with Canadian NSOs, results were grouped into 3 themes: the value of social media (i.e., benefits, potential, and credibility), social-media use (i.e., content, types of social-media platforms, and rationale/motivations), and the challenges associated with social media (i.e., capacity, language issues, stakeholders engagement or lack thereof, and resistance). NSOs implement social media solely for business-to-consumer purposes. Social media act as a “double-edged sword”: NSOs believe that a good social-media presence requires sufficient resources but remain unconvinced of the “true” strategic value of social media.

The purpose of this study was to examine sport organizations’ social-media activity using an institutional approach, specifically, to investigate the main themes emanating from Canadian national sport organizations’ (CNSOs) social-media communication and the similarities and differences in social-media use between the CNSOs. An exploratory qualitative thematic analysis was conducted on 8 CNSOs’ Twitter accounts ranging from 346 to 23,925 followers, with the number of tweets varying from 219 to 17,186. Thematic analysis indicated that CNSOs generally used tweeting for promoting, reporting, and informing purposes. Despite the organizations’ differing characteristics regarding seasonality of the sport, Twitter-follower count, total number of tweets, and whether the content was original or retweeted, themes were generally consistent across the various organizations. Coercive, mimetic, and normative isomorphic pressures help explain these similarities and offer reasons for a lack of followership growth by the less salient CNSOs. Implications for research and practice are provided.

The purpose of this study was to examine national sport organizations’ (NSOs’) social networks on Twitter to explore followership between users, thereby illuminating powerful and central actors in a digital environment. Using a stratified, convenience sample, followership between the ego (i.e., NSO) and its alters (i.e., stakeholders) were noted in square, one-mode sociomatrices for the Fencing Canada (381 × 381) and Luge Canada (1026 × 1026) networks on Twitter. Using social network analysis to analyze the data for network density, average ties, Bonacich beta centrality, and core–periphery structure, the results indicate fans, elite athletes, photographers, competing sport organizations, and local clubs are some of the key stakeholders with large amounts of power. Though salient users, such as sponsors and international sport federations, are also present in the network core, NSOs seem better able to increase visibility of their content by targeting smaller scale users. The findings imply managers may wish to reflect upon how these advantaged users can be incorporated into their social communication strategies and how scholarship should continue examining followership as well as content in online settings.

Sport event volunteers have predominantly been examined in able-bodied events using quantitative methods. Studies examining the volunteer experience have focused on its relationship with different constructs, resulting in a siloed body of literature in which a holistic understanding of the volunteer experience remains poor. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationships between key constructs (satisfaction, motivation, commitment, and sense of community) and the first author’s (E.L. Lachance) volunteer experience in a para-sport event. The analysis of the narrative using a volunteer experience conceptual framework composed of the key volunteer constructs identified two themes: (a) the power of sense of community and (b) the volunteer role as a source of dissatisfaction. Contributions include the volunteer experience conceptual framework and the relationships between the four constructs and the volunteer experience. Event managers should implement strategies to create a strong sense of community to enhance their volunteers’ experience.

Although identity, image, and reputation are important issues for the sport management field, little research has examined how sport organizations construct and manage such intangible yet critical aspects of their organizations. This article addresses this gap in the literature by exploring the process of identity construction within organizing committees of major sporting events. The insights gained from two case studies indicate that committees draw on three types of identity referents: the nature of the event, context, and key individuals of organizing committees. These referents are projected as images from the organizing committee to various stakeholder groups and then reflected back to the organizing committee. In addition, images are often received by stakeholders through indirect channels of transmission, especially the media, further complicating the process of image and identity management. Finally, organizing committees attempt to manage the process primarily via verbal and symbolic communication strategies.

The purpose of this study was to develop a model of brand creation for one-off large-scale sporting events. A case study of the 2005 Montreal FINA (Fédération Internationale de Natation) World Championships highlighted the importance of the leadership group (which must include individuals with political/networking, business/management, and sport/event skills), the context, and the nature of the event for creating the event’s brand. The importance of each aspect is suggested to vary depending on the situation. For example, the lack of an initial event brand will result in the leadership group having the greatest impact on the event’s brand creation process. Findings also highlighted differing communication paths for internal and external stakeholders. Thus, this study contributes to the literature by focusing on brand creation and its related factors instead of the management and outcomes of a brand.

This case study explores the issue of team leadership among players who have been selected to play for their national team in an international tournament. After the coaching staff had solidified the roster, a total of 12 (fictional) players were chosen to represent Canada Basketball on the senior women’s development team. With some players having known their teammates for only 2 weeks, the coaching staff has asked the team’s analytics specialist to gather data regarding the network of players within the team and present potential captains of the team to the coaching staff. Students will take on the role of the analytics specialist and provide the summary of the analysis to the coaching staff. Specifically, using a social network analysis approach, students will use the team’s network of players to determine which individual players are involved in the team’s leadership structure as captains. The primary objective of this case study is to afford students an opportunity to be acquainted with social network analysis in a sport management setting.