Strategic Planning in Sport Organizations: Is It Possible to Implement?

Strategic Planning is widely used by organizations in different industries and it is the process of developing the mission, major objectives, strategies and policies that govern the allocation of resources to achieve organizational aims (Johnson and Scholes, 1999).

Although it is well documented that strategic planning (and the existence of a strategic plan) is a valuable tool that supports good governance in sports organizations for a number of reasons, many sports organizations do not actually have a strategic plan. Some of the major reasons for the absence of strategic planning are (1) time (2) getting started (3) broad expertise and (4) lack of trust and openness (Kriemadis and Kartakoullis, 2011). It is equally important to note that in the cases where there was a strategic plan in sport organizations, strategy control was not actually implemented. According to Cronje and Smit (2002) strategy control is a continuous process and is interwoven with planning, organizing and leading.

The purpose of this study is twofold: (a) to provide an analysis for the essence of strategic planning in sport organizations (b) to propose a model that could be utilized in convincing the decision makers in sport organizations to start working on the development of strategic plans for their organizations.

The primary source of data for this study has been ethnographic research that has been conducted by the author the last two years (2016 – 2017) including interviewing individuals, high-ranked, officials in sport organizations in five different countries. Within the context of this ethnographic research, valuable data has been gathered on a number of `sensitive issues` that are not easily discussed openly.

References:

Johnson, G. and Scholes, K. (1990) Exploring Corporate Strategy, 5^th Edition, Europe: Prentice-Hall.

Kriemadis, T. and Kartakoullis, N. (2011) Management and Marketing for Football Clubs, University of Nicosia Press, Nicosia.

Cronje, G.T. and Smit, P.J. (2002) Management Principles: A Contemporary Edition for Africa, 3^rd Edition, Cape Town: Juta