Game management by referees to compensate for errors in judgement: a decision flow model

ABSTRACT

Referees face various challenges in officiating games as there is no consensus on the complexity of tasks and the approaches that guarantee optimum performance. Most researchers and sports administrators agree that the best way to cope with these challenges is consistent decision making and efficient communication with the players. This holistic approach to refereeing is referred to as game management. However, existing models only give few insights into how referees can utilise game management. This paper introduces a decision-flow model that explains the different stages a referee must consider when implementing game management, namely the fast, intuitive decision in-game, the deliberate evaluation of this decision, and the chosen compensation if the evaluation regards the decision as an error. We argue that compensations need to be implemented differently depending on the severity of misjudgement and its impact on the game. Furthermore, we conclude that our decision-flow model applies to every decision that a referee makes when applying game management. Therefore, optimum game management is a continuous evaluation and compensation process in which the judgment scale is adjusted based on the evaluation of the previous decision.

KEYWORDS:

• Arbitrators
• decision making
• officiating
• game management
• compensation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.