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Winand, M., Zintz, T., Bayle, E. & Robinson, L. (2010) “Organizational performance of
Olympic sport governing bodies: dealing with measurement and priorities”, Managing
Leisure, 15(4) 279-307.
Organizational performance of Olympic sport governing bodies.
Dealing with measurement and priorities.
Mathieu Winand
1
, Thierry Zintz
2
, Emmanuel Bayle
3
and Leigh Robinson
4
1 & 2
Université catholique de Louvain - Institut d'Education Physique et de Réadaptation
Chaire Olympique Henri de Baillet Latour & Jacques Rogge
en Management des Organisations Sportives
Center for Research in Entrepreneurial Change and Innovative Strategies (CRECIS)
Place P. de Coubertin, 1 B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve
Mathieu.winand@uclouvain.be Thierry.zintz@uclouvain.be
3
Université Jean Moulin (Lyon 3) - Institut d'Administration des Entreprises (IAE)
Centre de recherche en gestion Magellan
Cours Albert Thomas, 6 BP 8242 69355 Lyon cedex 08
Emmanuel.bayle@univ-lyon3.fr
4
School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences
Loughborough University
Loughborough, LE11 3TU, UK
2
L.a.robinson1@lboro.ac.uk
Organizational performance of Olympic sport governing bodies.
Dealing with measurement and priorities.
It is widely recognized that the performance measurement of organizations should help
them in their strategic decisions and in their capacity to evaluate their successes. This
measurement is, however, lacking in the sport governing bodies from the French
speaking Community of Belgium. This paper proposes a model to measure
organizational performance by considering objectives distributed among five main
dimensions: sport, customer, communication and image, finance and organization,
which are measured by quantitative performance indicators. The focus of the paper is
on governing bodies of Olympic sport (n = 27) and the model measures their strategic
objectives and operational goals. In addition, the priority that the Chairs of 13 Olympic
sport governing bodies attach to each dimension and each objective is assessed. Finally,
there is a discussion of the comparison of their priorities and their organizational
performance, which leads to the identification of four strategic orientations.
Keywords: organizational performance measurement; sport organizations, sport
governing bodies.
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1. INTRODUCTION
Sport performance is a well known concept. Everyone can judge if athletes succeed in their
sport and their victories or medals are indicators that allow an assessment of their level of
sport performance. Likewise, organizations often wish to improve their performance in
achieving their goals; understanding of performance comes when managers use tools to assess
their resources, their processes or their outcomes in order to ensure their successes.
Nevertheless, the performance of sport organizations, such as national sport governing bodies
(NSGBs) is often difficult to identify, to measure and to manage due to their not for profit
characteristics. For many years, the not for profit nature of these organizations has allowed
managers to avoid focusing on organizational performance.
However, within the NSGB context, new pressures have emerged from the state, sponsors,
members and other stakeholders which have required these sport organizations to become
more performance oriented, or to build their capacity in order to better manage their
organizational performance. Industry reports, such as the McKinsey Capacity Self-
Assessment Tool (2001) in Australia and Deloitte and Touche (2003) in the UK, research
(e.g. Wittock et al., 1996; Bayle and Robinson, 2007) and international sport organizations,
such as the International Volleyball Federation, the International Tennis Federation and the
International Olympic Committee have all highlighted the necessity for these organizations to
develop key competences in managing performance. This new culture of professionalization
and modernization around organizational performance can be explained by the social,
economic and political stakes which surround the objectives of NSGBs in society and the
competition they face to obtain public and private funds, all of which has required them to
become more accountable and effective.
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Generally speaking NSGBs, supervised by continental and international sport governing
bodies, have as their mission (also known as strategic objectives) the requirement to organize
sport activities and competitions for their members. As stated above, they are not for profit
organizations (NPOs) that develop and promote their sport as their main goal. However, in
Belgium, this fundamental objective is not necessarily the role of NSGBs.
Belgium is a federal state divided into three Communities: Dutch speaking (around 6 million
inhabitants), French speaking (around 3.7 million inhabitants) and German speaking (70.000
inhabitants). Sport is organized and coordinated by the Communities and is a responsibility of
the Department of Culture and coordinated by sport administrative bodies (respectively Bloso
and Adeps). Communities have their own regulations, their own laws (called decrees), and
their own system for recognising sport organizations. The sport priorities in the French
speaking Community are to develop sport participation, to promote sport for all, to develop
anti-doping campaigns and elite sport policies (De Bosscher et al., 2007). As a consequence,
in Belgium, a great majority of the Communities‘ sport governing bodies (CSGBs) are in
charge of the tasks and activities that are normally devoted to NSGBs.
Since 1978, Belgian sport governing bodies have had to split into CSGBs in order to receive
grants. The French speaking Community‘s decree of the 26
th
of April 1999 also required this.
As a consequence, there exists in Belgium non-split NSGBs and French and Dutch speaking
CSGBs which are responsible for organizing international sport representation in
competitions and coordinating Community structures (Pieron and De Knop, 2000; Zintz and
Camy, 2005). This paper considers the 56 sport governing bodies from the French speaking
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Community (called CSGBs here after) and, within this focuses on the 27 Olympic sport
governing bodies (OSGBs).
The 56 CSGBs make strategic and daily decisions to organize, to develop and to promote
their sport. They are rather small: two thirds had less than 5,000 members in 2005, with a
range of 263 members (French speaking Olympic Wrestling League) to 45,439 members
(Wallonia-Brussels Basketball Association). At this time, three quarters had an annual budget
lower than €450,000. The mean annual budget was €351,549, ranging from €12,454 (French
speaking Omnisports Federation) to €1,761,190 (Wallonia-Brussels Horse riding League).
Despite the increasing competitive environment
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, due to their small size, a great majority of
these CSGBs do not use management tools to assess their objectives and to make relevant
decisions. There is little professionalization and most are not performance oriented (Bayle,
2000). However, as noted above, increasing pressure from public authorities, their members,
the Belgian Olympic and Interfederal Committee and their commercial partners is leading
these organizations to be more performance oriented. Therefore, within this context a
measurement model of the organizational performance of these CSGBs is proposed. This will
provide the Chairs of CSGBs with a tool that will help them to lead their organizations to be
competitive in the long term. This will allow them to focus their priorities in order to better
achieve their strategic goals.
Firstly, this paper presents the literature on organizational performance, specifically in the
context of NSGBs. This is followed by an explanation of the proposed model and the
methodology used to measure the organizational performance of the 56 sport governing
bodies from the French speaking Community of Belgium, with a subsequent focus on the
