“That’s where the dollars are”: understanding why community sports volunteers engage with intellectual disability as a form of diversity

ABSTRACT

Research question: This paper aims to provide new insights into why community sports volunteers engage with intellectual disability as a form of diversity, and how these drivers impact on the opportunities and activities provided for athletes with intellectual disabilities.

Research methods: The authors use a critical diversity management framework, combined with theoretical tenets of ableism, to explore volunteers’ engagement with disability. The paper draws on a ten-month ethnographic study undertaken in a community sports club in Melbourne, Australia, that had recently introduced two specialist teams for individuals with intellectual disabilities.

Results and findings: The findings indicate the business case for diversity as a driver for the club to engage with sport for people with intellectual disabilities; this, in turn, created tension and conflict amongst volunteers, resulting in a separation of the disability team from the main club activity.

Implications: Ableist discourses underpinned the business case for diversity held by some club volunteers, resulting in the disability team not being integrated into the club as part of its core business. Policy makers and advocates of diversity must critically consider the drivers of clubs for engaging in the different areas of diversity, and how this might impact on provision.

KEYWORDS:

• Diversity
• ableism
• diversity management
• volunteering

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/ or publication of this article: This work was funded by the Australian Research Council Linkage Projects Scheme [grant number LP130100366]. We gratefully acknowledge the funding support provided by Partner Organizations the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation (VicHealth), Centre for Multicultural Youth, and Australian Football League.