Organizational performance of Olympic sport governing bodies: dealing with measurement and priorities

Abstract

It is widely recognized that the performance measurement of organizations should help them in their strategic decisions and in their capacity to evaluate their successes. This measurement is, however, lacking in the sport governing bodies from the French speaking Community of Belgium. This paper proposes a model to measure organizational performance by considering objectives distributed among five main dimensions: sport, customer, communication and image, finance and organization, which are measured by quantitative performance indicators. The focus of the paper is on governing bodies of Olympic sport (n = 27) and the model measures their strategic objectives and operational goals. In addition, the priority that the Chairs of 13 Olympic sport governing bodies attach to each dimension and each objective is assessed. Finally, there is a discussion of the comparison of their priorities and their organizational performance, which leads to the identification of four strategic orientations.

Keywords:

• organizational performance measurement
• sport organizations
• sport governing bodies

Notes

A majority of CSGBs are not aware of the competitive environment that surrounds them. For instance, they do not consider that their members could be attracted by other CSGBs or private sport organisations, or that they could attract members from these organisations.

Experts were the Vice-President and the General Secretary of the Belgian Olympic and Interfederal Committee and two Professors of the Louvain School of Management.

Countries were ‘Italy, Greece, Portugal and Spain’.

Four objectives could not be quantitatively measured in the collected data.

Three Chairs (French speaking Gymnastic Federation, Wallonia-Brussels Horse riding League and French speaking Archery League) delegated the task of answering the survey to their executive manager, part of the paid staff, including the strategic interrogations such as the identification of the priorities of their Olympic sport governing body.