The Role of Stakeholders in the Efficiency of Nonprofit Sports Clubs

• Published date: 01 September 2016
• Author: Dina Miragaia,Miguel Brito,João Ferreira
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/nml.21210
• Date: 01 September 2016

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N M  L, vol. 27, no. 1, Fall 2016 © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/nml.21210

Journal sponsored by the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences, Case Western Reserve University.

 e Role of Stakeholders in the

Effi ciency of Nonprofi t Sports Clubs

Dina Miragaia, Miguel Brito and João Ferreira

University of Beira Interior , Portugal

This article analyzes the efficiency levels of nonprofit sports clubs through the data envelop-

ment analysis methodology and specifically evaluates how efficient and inefficient clubs

perceive the distinct contribution of stakeholders in attaining their respective levels of out-

put efficiency. The results distinguish the varying levels of efficiency between such clubs

and highlight significant differences in the roles of the local government and of associations

and federations in attaining these efficiency levels. The study further suggests best practices

that can be adopted by officials at inefficient clubs toward reducing or eliminating their

shortfalls in efficiency.

Keywords: stakeholder theory , efficiency , nonprofit sports organizations , data envelop-

ment analysis , sports management

AT A TIME OF MAJOR FINANCIAL CONSTRAINTS, nonprofit sports clubs are faced with

new and complex challenges, in particular regarding their own organizational efficiency levels.

In striving to achieve their objectives, voluntary sports clubs should take into consideration

their available resources and adapt their financial structures to attain acceptable levels of effi-

ciency and sustainability (Guzmán 2006 ; Kirk and Nolan 2010 ) .

In the European context, sports clubs form the base of the sports system pyramid (Wicker

and Breuer 2011 ). They are fundamentally characterized as financed through membership

fees and grants and as defined by objectives geared toward meeting the expectations and

interests of their members (Heinemann and Puig 1996 ; Robinson and Palmer 2010 ), whom

they provide with access to sport activities, recreational, and free-time activities (Nagel 2008 ).

Sports clubs may be described as associations in which the members strive to implement

shared objectives in the field of sports based on a social contract (De Knop, Hoecke, and De

Bosscher 2004 ; Doherty, Misener, and Cuskelly 2014 ). Nevertheless, the sports club concept

incorporates an enormous variety of organizational types, ranging from professionalized clubs

to local sports associations (Esteve et al. 2011 ).

Currently, nonprofit sports clubs face various challenges, in particular regarding their ability

to attract human resources, their financial means, their infrastructure management, and the

Correspondence to: Dina Miragaia, University of Beira Interior, Sport Sciences Department, Convento de Sto. António,

6201–001 Covilhã, Portugal. E-mail: miragaia@ubi.pt.

 e authors would like to thank to NECE – Research Unit in Business Sciences funded by the Multiannual Funding Programme of R&D

Centres of FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, under the project UID/GES/04630/2013.”

Nonprofi t Management & Leadership DOI: 10.1002/nml

114 MIRAGAIA, BRITO, FERREIRA

development of relationships and networks between their internal and external stakeholders.

Given these challenges, it is crucial to improve the organizational capacity of sports clubs and

define an achievable and efficient strategic plan (Misener and Doherty 2009 ; Vinzant and

Vinzant 1996 ; Wicker and Breuer 2011 ). However, according De Knop et al. ( 2004 ), devel-

oping a strategic plan is one of the most problematic issues faced by sports club managers

because management decisions commonly focus on issues related to the survival of the club,

to the detriment of strategy and sustainability. Hence, club managers obviously need specific

knowledge about the way in which this organizational type operates to be increasingly able to

introduce and adapt management strategies toward accomplishing the organizational mission

(Thiel and Mayer 2009 ).

Heinemann and Puig ( 1996 ) pointed out some of the aspects that a sports club manager

needs to deal with, such as guaranteeing and facilitating the participation of stakeholders in

decision-making processes. Various authors have suggested that an analysis of the stakehold-

ers of an organization may represent an effective means of generating feasible solutions to

the problems that the organization may find (Freeman 1984 ; Friedman and Miles 2006 ;

Frooman 1999 ). Hence, identifying stakeholders and ascertaining their respective demands

and requirements may provide a significant input toward efficient management (Wellens and

Jegers 2015 ), enabling organizational efforts to focus on those aspects that are truly impor-

tant for sustainable survival.

Moreover, in nonprofit sports organizations, much attention is focused on the pressures

applied by the central and local government, sponsors, and other stakeholders to ensure

that such clubs attain all the capacities necessary to improve their respective efficiency levels

(Misener and Doherty 2014 ; Winand et al. 2010 ). Thereby, by defining the concept of effi-

ciency as the success obtained by a significant number of outputs through a given number of

inputs (Farrell 1957 ), it becomes legitimate to note how the efficiency of this organizational

type is bound up with its ability to show its internal organizational capacities while simulta-

neously responding to the expectations and needs of its stakeholders (Balser and McClusky

2005 ; Horton 2003 ; Leipnitz 2014 ; Misener and Doherty 2009 ; Robinson and Palmer

2010 ).

To optimize the organizational capacity, it is essential to identify the key attributes that can

influence the fulfillment of the mission of nonprofit sports clubs (Eisinger 2002 ; Horton

2003 ). Such identification gives the stakeholders, particularly internal ones (Freeman 1984 ),

the possibility to analyze which attributes have a critical behavior and can compromise the

achievement of the organizational objectives (Horton 2003 ). Furthermore, given the nature

of nonprofit sports clubs and because organizational capacity is multidimensional, it is essen-

tial to improve the coordination between internal and external stakeholders to perceive and

clarify the contribution of each to the necessary inputs toward mission fulfillment (Hall et al.

2003 ; Hou, Moynihan, and Ingraham 2003 ; Sakires, Doherty, and Misener 2009 ; Vinzant

and Vinzant 1996 ). For this reason, it is not enough to merely identify the key attributes;

it is also necessary to manage them in a sustainable way and to adjust them to the organiza-

tional mission. This perspective highlights the concept that organizational efficiency is linked

to the stakeholders’ contributions.

Several studies about the efficiency of sports organizations have been done, but these have

mostly focused on professional clubs (Barros and Leach 2006 ; Espitia-Escuer and García-

Cebrián 2008 ; Guzmán and Morrow 2007 ; Ribeiro and Lima 2012 ). Therefore, there is