INTRODUCTION
In recent sport psychology scholarship, researchers have become increasingly
sensitive to the influence of cultural phenomena on various important aspects of
contemporary professional sport (Duda & Alison, 1990; Ram, Starek, & Johnson, 2004).
Within a context of increasing international mobility of players and coaches (Maguire,
1999), a ‘cultural turn’ (Ryba, Schinke, & Tenenbaum, 2010) in the study of sport psychology
has highlighted the importance of understanding cultural factors influencing contemporary
experiences of elite athletes, many of whom now perform within multicultural teams, or
train and compete in culturally diverse environments. For instance, according to the latest
International Basketball Migration Report (CIES Observatory, 2013), in seasons 2010/11 and
2011/12, the FIBA (International Basketball Federation) registered more than 6,500
international transfers of basketball players, with an increase of 6 per cent between these
two seasons. 45.2% of transferred players were Americans, the vast majority of whom (76%)
went on to play in Europe during the most recently completed season (2012/2013).
As such, a key area of focus for researchers within the newly emerging field of
‘cultural sport psychology’ (Schinke & Hanrahan, 2009) has been on the experiences of
migrant players, as well as their (non-migrant) teammates and others, such as coaches, with
whom they interact both on and off the field of play. A growing body of literature – mostly
conducted by North American scholars working within North America – has identified a
number of important issues, such as challenges for immigrated athletes after relocation
(Schinke, Yukelson, Bartolacci, Battochio, & Johnstone, 2011), their adaptation strategies
(Battochio, Schinke, McGannon, Tenenbaum, & Yukelson, 2011; Schinke, Michel, Gauthier,
Pickard, Danielson, Peltier, Pheasant, Enosse, & Peltier, 2006) and experiences of
acculturation in new environments (Schinke & McGannon, 2014).
Within this developing research literature, the impact of cultural differences on
coaches’ work experience within diverse teams has been examined in a small number of
studies (Duchesne, Bloom, & Sabiston, 2011; Schinke, 2011; Schinke, McGannon, Battochio,
& Wells, 2013). Such a focus on coaches’ perspectives is considered vitally important for this
body of work, owing to the central role coaches play within professional teams and the
responsibility they often have for helping migrant athletes to adapt to their new working
and living environments (Schinke, 2011).
While these findings have collectively illustrated a range of important issues for
consideration, to date the work in this area has almost exclusively relied on North American-
based samples. Ironically, this obscures the complexity of cultural difference, as multi-
cultural environments are likely to develop and be experienced in different ways within
various national locations. Indeed, cultural sport psychology emerged partly in response to
the need for greater diversity in the production of sport psychology knowledge, which
tended to mostly reflect the experiences of white Western (male) researchers and
practitioners working among groups of Western athletes (Ryba et al., 2010; Ryba,
Stambulova, Si, & Schinke, 2013).
In this sense, the present study, which was conducted as part of the author’s
doctoral programme, sought to further knowledge within the small but rapidly developing
cultural sport psychology research on migrant athletes by extending the research base
outside of its traditional North American home. Drawing on data collected from a series of
small-scale, qualitative case studies of professional basketball teams, the research aimed to
provide exploratory insights (Creswell, 2007) into the experiences and perspectives of
coaches working in multicultural teams within three Central European countries – an as-yet
under-researched area in this newly emerging field of study. While the wider research
project which this paper derives from included investigating both coaches’ and players’
experiences, a specific focus on the perspectives of coaches is chosen here, due to the
importance of coaches’ roles in multicultural teams, as outlined above.
METHODOLOGY
Epistemological position
This study was conducted from an interpretivist epistemological standpoint
(Atkinson, 2012), which takes for granted that individuals experience and make sense of
reality in different ways, and that researchers cannot easily determine objective ‘truth’
about other people’s understanding of the world. Thus, rather than attempting to quantify
and objectively measure the perceptions of others, research conducted within this paradigm
relies mostly on qualitative methods, which help to build up detailed, individually-specific
descriptions of how particular people make sense of a given phenomenon. This was
considered particularly appropriate for the present study given its exploratory nature and
empirical focus on perceptions and experiences.
Participants
The research sample in this study was purposive, given that the perspectives of
particular groups (coaches/athletes experienced in multicultural sports teams) were of
interest to the research. Although the wider project included a sample of 35 athletes, the
sample discussed in this particular paper consisted of six professional basketball head
coaches (all of them were White males) working within the Czech Republic, Germany and
Latvia. Four coaches worked with male teams, and two coaches worked with female teams
(see Table 1, below). All participants were professionals with at least 5 years of experience,
and were working in teams competing in the highest leagues of their respective countries.
Professional teams were chosen as the research sample because they commonly
employ international players, whose presence was essential for this research. However,
because of their professional level, it was very difficult to contact the teams and establish
the relationships necessary in order to conduct this research, an issue discussed elsewhere
in the literature on high-level migrant athletes (Elliott, 2012; Elliott & Weedon, 2011; Magee
& Sugden, 2002), and the reason for the relatively small sample size.
In order to protect their identity, and due to the sensitive nature of some of the
information disclosed, all participants in the study remain anonymous, with all identifying
information – including age, nationality, and years of experience – removed for the
purposes of protecting confidentiality. The coaches are identified in this paper using the
names provided in Table 1, below, which also identifies the gender and national location of
each coach’s current team.
Table 1
Name
Country of current
team
Gender of current team
CO1
Latvia
Male
CO2
Latvia
Female
CO3
Germany
Male
CO4
Germany
Female
CO5
Czech Republic
Male
CO6
Czech Republic
Male
Data collection and analysis
Semi-structured interviews were used in order to explore participants’ knowledge,
feelings, and understanding of the impact of cultural differences within teams in their
coaching experiences. This type of interview was chosen because of the control over the
conversation that participants can have. In this case, the conversation tends to be relatively
flexible and can be adjusted according to the interviewees’ responses (Howitt, 2010), but
remains somewhat tied to the interviewer’s own interests. This was important to do, as
while open-ended interviews are often chosen for exploratory research due to their ability
to gather richer qualitative data and more overtly foreground the perspectives of
interviewees, these tend to be significantly more time-consuming, and each interview in this
study was conducted under time pressure due to the coaches’ professional commitments
and the limited access to these elite-level teams which the author was able to achieve. Also,
the coaches in this study expected the researcher to ask direct questions – presumably
because they were used to being interviewed in such a way by media professionals. As such,
a semi-structured approach was deemed an appropriate method for this particular sample
and research aims. The interviews lasted from forty minutes to one hour, and were
individually conducted by the author in Czech, Russian and English languages, to suit the
coaches’ preferences.
At the beginning of each interview, all of which were conducted within the
respective teams’ training centres, participants were informed about the research aims.
They were reminded about the anonymity of the research, about the possibility of not
commenting on any question that was uncomfortable and about the absence of ‘right’ or
‘wrong’ answers. Oral informed consent was taken prior to beginning the interviews. The
participants were then asked a series of open-ended questions about their experiences of
coaching multicultural teams and their relationships with foreign players, which were
derived from the issues identified within the literature outlined previously, as well as the
researcher’s experiences arising from a similar, previous study conducted as part of her
masters’ programme (AUTHOR). Although the current findings cannot be widely
generalised, the value of this qualitative research lies primarily in the specific, up-close
empirical findings and themes developed in this particular context (Creswell, 2009).
Immediately following the conclusion of the interview process, each interview was
transcribed verbatim, translated into English by the author, and later analysed using
inductive thematic analysis (Boyatzis, 1998), which allowed for the categorisation of data
from the interviews based on common, reoccurring topics that arose throughout the study,
rather than the exploration of the data on the basis of a previously-determined theoretical
framework. For the current study, six steps of thematic analysis, outlined by Braun and
Clarke (2006), were used: 1) transcription of verbal data and familiarisation with them; 2)
generating initial codes; 3) searching for themes which unite initial codes; 4) reviewing
themes on the basis of emergent patterns; 5) defining and naming themes; 6) producing the
final written report.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
During the fourth and fifth phases of data analysis, three overarching themes were
identified in the interviews regarding coaches’ work with multicultural teams. These
included: the importance of value differences (with particular respect to ‘individualistic’ and
‘collectivistic’ cultural approaches); the influence of race/ethnicity in coach-athlete
relationships; and the formation of ethnic subgroups within teams. Each of these themes
contributes towards revealing the coaches’ experience in working with multicultural teams,
highlighting some specific problems and strategies used for handling them.
