Sport Management, Becoming a Profession or Being Professional: A Response to Dowling

Abstract

Based on Abbotts (1988) theory of a profession and Greenwood’s (1957) five attributes of a profession, Dowling (2018) has examined the status of sport management as an academic profession. After carefully scrutinizing the status of sport management on those attributes, Dowling rightfully concludes that sport management is a semi or quasi profession. Accepting this position, I explore further the factors that limit the field of sport management from gaining recognition from society as a profession. Given that sport management is not likely to be designated as a profession by society and be given the authority to supervise and control the activities of its members, I suggest that being professional in our operations both at the individual and organizational levels is more critical than being called a profession. I also point out that the steps and processes of being professional have been articulated in several of our publications and pronouncements.

体育管理, 成为一种职业或成为职业人员：对道林的回应

根据阿伯特(1988)的职业理论和格林伍德 (1957)的职业特征, 道林 (2018)研究了体育管理作为学术职业的地位。在仔细审视了体育管理在这些属性中的地位之后, 道林正当地得出结论, 体育管理是一种半或准职业。接受这种定位后, 我进一步探讨了限制体育管理领域作为一种职业得到社会认可的因素。鉴于体育管理是不可能被社会指定为专门的职业并且被授予监督和管控其成员的活动的权利, 我认为, 在我们的运营中, 无论是在个人层面还是在组织层面, 成为专业人员都比被称为专业更重要。我还指出, 在我们的一些出版物和声明中已经阐明了专业的步骤和过程。

KEYWORDS:

• Profession
• professionalism
• professionalization
• social responsibility
• service quality

关键词:

• 职业；专业；职业化；社会责任
• 服务质量

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 While I was in India, I and my students would mark the 400 meters track with white ash only to be washed away by rain just before the start of the meet.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Packianathan Chelladurai

Packianathan Chelladurai (Ph.D., University of Waterloo, Canada) is a Distinguished Professor at Troy University in Canada. He has received the Earle F. Zeigler Award from the North American Society for Sport Management, the Merit Award for Distinguished Service to Sport Management Education from the European Association of Sport Management (EASM), Sport Management Scholar Lifetime Achievement Award from Southern Sport Management Association, and Letters of Law (LL.D., honorary degree) from The University of Western Ontario, Canada. EASM has named its most prestigious award the EASM Chelladurai Award.