Does size matter when public management tools meet (the voluntary) reality in sports facilities?

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on leisure management in private non-profit (PNP) sports halls. The aim of the paper is to assess which strategic behaviour the PNP sports hall pursued under different types of public management steering models and whether changes in behaviour influenced utilization. The implementation of an activity-based steering model is compared with a non-activity-based steering model. Based on both qualitative and quantitative data, implementing the activity-based steering model resulted in strategic behaviour with a higher utilization, but also the size of the PNP sports hall played an important role for those deciding which strategic behaviour to pursue. To a greater extent than the small ones, the large PNP sports halls had a focus on attracting new users in order to increase utilization as well as income. Furthermore, the small PNP sports halls focus on Voluntary Sport Organizations (VSOs) as their primary user group. Based on the results, it is suggested to change the composition of the board for the PNP sports hall so that the PNP sports halls can escape its current partial deadlock as the VSOs seem to play a dominant role on both the boards and in the sports hall in general.

KEYWORDS:

• Non-profit organisations
• sports facilities
• leisure management
• implementation
• public management

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.