Abteilung Sportwissenschaft

In Canada there has been a push for gender diversity in sport through government policy funding multiple research agencies and arms-lengths organizations that promote change. Likewise, in Germany one focus area of the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) is attracting women into leadership positions (DOSB, 2018). Specifically, the DOSB statutes state that the share of women in committees must be at least 30%; thus stating a gender quota at the national policy level. The DOSB has achieved the 30% within its own organization, but most of the national/state sport governing bodies have not.

Within this project, we recognize that increased funding and policy are helpful, however to create sustainable change it is important to reflect on the context where change is occurring. In these two countries, the human resource management (HRM) policies and practices (i.e., recruitment, onboarding, evaluation) of sport organizations and their boards may be signaling whether organizations are ready (or not) to address national policy and progressively promote and support women in leadership positions in their organizations in a sustainable manner. According to signalling theory, Ali (2016) describes that a signaler (i.e., the sport organization) may be attempting to send signals (i.e., an observable action or piece of information, such as the organization welcoming female board members during HRM orientation); however, the receivers (i.e., women) may provide feedback (i.e., not stepping into leadership roles) about the organizations readiness for change.

Therefore, with signaling theory as a frame (Spence 1973; 2002), the purpose of this project is to extend knowledge by shedding light on HRM policies and practices around gender diversity within sport governing bodies. Moreover, drawing on different theories explaining the link between group diversity and group outcomes such as social categorization theory and the categorization-elaboration model (Lee & Cunningham, 2019; Wicker et al., 2022), this project also examines the relationship between board gender composition and board performance using Canada and Germany as research contexts. This project has three main objectives:

1. To study the HRM policies and practices around gender diversity of nonprofit sport organization boards
2. To analyze differences in HRM policies and practices by type of board gender composition and country of origin
3. To examine the relationship between board gender composition, gender diversity policies and practices, and board performance.

We use a mixed-methods explanatory case study approach consisting of multiple phases where all three research objectives will be examined using quantitative and qualitative data. Phase 1 consists of an online survey of sport governing bodies in both countries about their gender-focused policies and practices and a selection of 16 cases depending on the board gender composition for qualitative collection and analysis in Phase 2. In Phase 2, using signalling theory as a frame, document analysis and interview data will provide in-depth information regarding HRM policies, practices, and challenges related to gender diversity in specific organizational contexts and boards. In Phase 3, comparisons will be made across countries to identify macro level effects on gender diversity policies and practices. The expertise of the leading scholars and the proposed budget with 67% of resources going to training of research assistants, guarantees that the project is feasible within the proposed time frame of 4-5 years.

Issue to be Addressed: The results of the project will address the HRM processes that are signalling the importance (or lack thereof) of gender diversity in sport organizations.

Contribution to Knowledge: Previous research has emphasized imbalanced gender composition of boards, and the impact of diversity on board performance; however, there is a dearth of knowledge regarding how gender diversity is embedded in policy and practice (if at all) and the impact on board outcomes.

Project Team

Please contact us for further information about our project.

Principal Investigator:
Assoc. Prof. Shannon Kerwin, PhD
Brock University
Department of Sport Management
Graduate Program Director
1812 Sir Isaac Brock Way
St. Catharines, Ontario Canada
Phone: 1-905-688-5550
Email: skerwin@brocku.ca

Collaborator:
Prof. Dr. Pamela Wicker
Bielefeld University
Department of Sports Science
Chair III: Sport and Society
Universitaetsstr. 25
33615 Bielefeld, Germany
Phone: +49-521-106-12994
E-mail: pamela.wicker@uni-bielefeld.de

Project Manager:
Dr. Lara Lesch
Bielefeld University
Department of Sports Science
Chair III: Sport and Society
Universitaetsstr. 25
33615 Bielefeld, Germany
Phone: +49-521-106-67355
E-mail: lara.lesch@uni-bielefeld.de

Post-Doctoral Research Lead:
Erik Lachance, PhD
Brock University
Department of Sport Management
Post-Doctoral Research Fellow
1812 Sir Isaac Brock Way
St. Catharines, Ontario Canada
Email: elachance@brocku.ca

First results from the German survey are presented at the 2023 EASM Conference in Belfast, Ireland.

First results for Canada from our quantitative survey are available. We prepared a report entitled ‘Signaling change: Exploring gender diversity, equity, and inclusion and human resource management practices’ for the Canadian data. The report can be downloaded here.

Another report was created for the data from Germany. The report is entitled "Veränderung signalisieren: Geschlechterdiversität, Personalmanagement, geschlechtsbezogene Zusammensetzung des Vorstandes und Organisationsleistung von Sportverbänden" and can be downloaded here. 

Our project was presented as a poster at the 2022 SCRI Conference (virtual). The poster can be downloaded here.