Perceptions of key stakeholders regarding National Federation Sport Policy: the case of the French Rugby Union

Abstract

This article proposes a framework that explains how a national association sport policy is operationally formalized in relation with the various perceptions of its internal stakeholders. This is an important issue, as a lack of engagement from these stakeholders may result in a limited impact of such a sport policy. Considering the latter as a management tool, a case study of the French Rugby Union (FFR) was built using archival material and interviews. We demonstrated that a national sport federation policy, when viewed as a management tool, is the consequence of a conceptual framework, consisting of a formal substrate, a managerial philosophy and a simplified representation of the actors’ role [Hatchuel, A., & Weil, B. (1992). L’expert et le système [The expert and the system]. Paris: Economica]. As part of an intervention-research within the FFR, 45 semi-structured interviews were conducted with both national and regional actors with various statutes. The analysis of these interviews shows both agreement and contradictions, categorized through the conceptual framework used to explain that a “one size fits all” approach should enable a degree of regional freedom for sport governing bodies that include organizational membership.

Keywords:

• sport policy
• national sport federation
• stakeholders
• management tool
• French Rugby Union

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 From then on, our conceptual framework focuses on a sport policy, understood as a “vision statement” including the “what?”, “why?” and “who?” questions, and so is different from a strategy (“how”) (Camy & Robinson, 2007). The strategic, then operational planning appears subsequent and dependent on the sport policy (Robinson & Minikin, 2011).

2 It is worth mentioning that there is no hierarchical relation among these three elements.

3 Data from April, 2016. Rugby is the seventh sport for the number of licensees in France.

4 Now “World Rugby”.

5 To make the link with the stakeholder approach, we opted for both primary and internal stakeholders of the federation sport policy (cf. page 5); they must take into account the potential interests of both secondary and external stakeholders of this policy (Slack & Parent, 2006).