Understanding which dimensions of organisational capacity support the vertical integration of disability football clubs

ABSTRACT

Disabled people continue to face exclusion from full participation in community sports. Efforts to include disabled people in sports organisations have favoured structural solutions to make sport accessible. Our purpose was to understand which dimensions of a football club’s organisational capacity assisted the vertical integration of disability football clubs. A theoretical framework combining organisational capacity and acculturation informed an exploratory and qualitative research design using semi-structured interviews. Findings indicate that the brand and the size of the organisation assisted the generation of integrative capacity. Following the acquisition of integrative capacity, two types of integration – assimilation and accommodation appeared. This study contributes to the extant literature on the vertical integration of disability sport and the management and organisation of disability football. Recommendations for policy makers and practitioners seeking to implement the vertical integration process as this study provides a theoretical and empirical perspective on how mergers can create inclusive organisations.

KEYWORDS:

• Disability sport
• community sport
• organisational capacity
• vertical integration
• inclusion

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to express their gratitude to UEFA for their assistance in facilitating the wider research project from which this paper was drawn.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

P. J. Kitchin http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7219-5167

Notes

1 In this paper, we use the term disabled people in accordance language acceptable under the UK Social Model of disability (Oliver & Barnes, 2012; Scope, 2018).

2 The term mainstream has become synonymous with disability studies, often associated with the mainstreaming of education whereby children in “special” schools were placed into “mainstream” schools based on their learning abilities rather than their impairment. Barr (2011) highlights the difficulties with the term mainstream but in this paper, we use it as a reference to non-disabled social institutions, predominantly sporting that are in transition to become more integrated and inclusive.

3 Pan-disability in football refers to a range of impairment types, including Cerebral Palsy, wheel-chair users, blind and/or partially sighted, Deaf or hard of hearing, learning difficulties, amputees, powerchair and frame (Macbeth & Magee, 2006).

4 This policy is known across the United Kingdom as “mainstreaming”. Mainstreaming is defined as “integrating the delivery and organisation of [formalised] sporting opportunities to ensure a more coordinated and inclusive sporting system” (Kitchin & Howe, 2014, p. 66).