Positive Organizational Psychology in Sport: An Ethnography of Organizational Functioning in a National Sport Organization

Abstract

The 9-month ethnography reported here investigated the critical factors underpinning organizational functioning in a national sport organization. The findings illustrate the pivotal importance of interpersonal relationships and highlight the emergence of emotion-related abilities as highly influential in successful person-organization dynamics. Specifically, these related to managing conflict, communicating emotion, managing and expressing emotion for the psychological contract, contagious emotion regulation, and emotion regulation for building strong relationships. Individuals better able to monitor and manage their own emotions and those of others were able to develop and maintain more successful interpersonal relationships during a period of organizational change.