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Abstract
This essay seeks to examine the process of organizational change from a new perspective – placing ‘race’ at the forefront of analysis. By resituating organizational sensemaking theory underneath the umbrella of critical race theory, this paper begins to explore how the National Basketball Association Indiana Pacers constructed a racialized strategic change initiative centred on (re)gaining fan support. Recognizing that its disgruntled fanbase had become disillusioned with perceived ‘athlete misbehaviours’, the Pacers' organization began to incorporate the fans' sensemaking process (i.e. ‘Hoosier Whiteness’) as its own. As such, specific attention is focused on understanding the historical, socio-political, and cultural importance of ‘Hoosier Whiteness’ – particularly as it signifies a racialized meaning within Indiana's basketball landscape. With consideration for these factors, this essay then moves on to problematizing the symbolic actions performed by the Indiana Pacers as they sought to rearticulate and reclaim ‘Hoosier Whiteness’ by developing a criminalized (Black) past and safe (White) future.
Notes
1 ‘Indiana Pacers Center David Harrison Suspended 5 Games for Violating Drug Policy’. ESPN Associated Press, January 11, 2008. http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/wire?section = nba&id = 3192141; ‘Bird Statement on Williams arrest’. Indiana Pacers Press Release, September 11, 2007. http://www.nba.com/pacers/news/bird_williams_070911.html. To appreciate the local contempt for these (and other) ‘athlete misbehaviours’, as they were constructed in the media, see clippings from The Indianapolis Star.
2 ‘Pacer to Miss Game Amid Murder Mystery’. NBC Sports Associated Press, February 28, 2008. http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/23381055.
3 ‘Police Say Daniels Not Suspect in Rape Reported at his Home’. WSBT Associated Press, February 25, 2008. http://www.wsbt.com/sports/local/15958912.html.
4 ‘Emotions Mixed After Latest Tinsley Incident’. Conrad Brunner, December 9, 2007. http://www.nba.com/pacers/news/tinsley_incident_071209.html; ‘Pacers’ Jackson Hit by Car, Fires Handgun, Police Say’. ESPN Associated Press, October 10, 2006. http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id = 2615124.
5 See Emily Udell, ‘Pacers Players Free After Being Booked’. The Washington Post, February 22, 2007.
6 See Daniel Lee, ‘Pacers Use Marketing to Win Back Fans’. The Indianapolis Star, November 2, 2008.
7 ‘Frank Luntz, the Word Doctors, CEO’. Inside Indiana Business, October 22, 2009. http://www.insideindianabusiness.com/video-player.asp?id = 10622.
8 CitationSinger, ‘Addressing Epistemological Racism in Sport Management Research’.
9 See, for example, CitationCialdini et al., ‘Basking in Reflected Glory’; CitationFunk and James, ‘The Psychological Continuum Model’; CitationMahony, Madrigal, and Howard, ‘The Effect of Individual Levels of Self-Monitoring on Loyalty to Professional Football Teams’; CitationWann and Branscombe, ‘Sports Fans’.
10 Citationde B'béri and Hogarth, ‘White America's Construction of Black Bodies’; CitationHughes, ‘Managing Black Guys’; CitationMcDonald and Toglia, ‘Dressed for Success?’.
11 Jamaal Tinsley was banished from the Indiana Pacers at the beginning of the 2008–2009 NBA season despite being healthy and under contract.
12 The 2008–2009 marketing campaign was an attempt by the Indiana Pacers to firmly embed Hoosier Whiteness as part of its own organizational identity.
13 CitationWalsh, ‘Managerial and Organizational Cognition’.
14 CitationWalsh, ‘Managerial and Organizational Cognition’, 281.
15 CitationLevine, Resnick and Higgins, ‘Social Foundations of Cognition’.
16 Gramsci, Selections From the Prison Notebooks.
17 CitationRowe, ‘Antonio Gramsci’.
18 Gramsci, Selections From the Prison Notebooks.
19 CitationWeick, Sensemaking in Organizations, 42.
20 CitationHumphreys and Brown, ‘Narratives of Organizational Identity and Identification’.
21 Weick, Sensemaking in Organizations, 14.
22 CitationHylton, ‘Race’ and Sport.
23 CitationDelgado and Stefancic, Critical Race Theory, 7.
24 Hylton, ‘Race’ and Sport.
25 CitationSefa Dei, Karumanchery, and Karumanchery-Luik, Playing the Race Card.
26 CitationSefa Dei, Karumanchery, and Karumanchery-Luik, Playing the Race Card; CitationLeonardo, ‘The Souls of White Folk’.
27 CitationSefa Dei, Karumanchery, and Karumanchery-Luik, Playing the Race Card
28 CitationSefa Dei, Karumanchery, and Karumanchery-Luik, Playing the Race Card
29 CitationMills, The Racial Contract, 18.
30 McDonald and Toglia, ‘Dressed for Success?’.
31 Gramsci, Selections From the Prison Notebooks, 323.
32 Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume 1, 101.
33 CitationMarkula and Pringle, Foucault, Sport and Exercise.
34 CitationMumby, ‘The Problem of Hegemony’, 366.
35 Weick, Sensemaking in Organizations, 4.
36 Personal interviews were conducted by the author between January and March 2011. Therefore, it is important to note the context under which interviewee responses were provided. Much of this paper focuses on the implementation of the organization's strategic change that began towards the end of the 2007–2008 and beginning of the 2008–2009 seasons. As such, conversations with interviewees were much more reflexive than they were reactionary to this organizational change. This provided the author with an interesting perspective from which conclusions could be made regarding the effects of the organizational initiative; however, the responses given were situated in a different space and time than what other sources (taken directly from the years 2006–2009) revealed.
37 Markula and Pringle, Foucault, Sport and Exercise, 31.
38 CitationMcDonald and Birrell, ‘Reading Sport Critically’, 295.
39 For example, a gendered critique might point to the white male power structure in the NBA (and its franchise owners/managers) who remain vested in preserving or reclaiming a hegemonic masculinity on which sport is seen to have its roots (see Walton and Butryn, ‘Policing the Race: US Men's Distance Running and the Crisis of Whiteness). Or, perhaps a class-focus might offer the reading that the values ascribed to ‘Hoosier basketball’ have less to do with race, than to do with class (see Holt, Sport and the British: A Modern History).
40 CitationLuke, ‘Text and Discourse in Education’, 11.
41 Sefa Dei, Karumanchery, and Karumanchery-Luik, Playing the Race Card, 17.
42 See, for example, Graf, ‘The Word Hoosier’.
43 See, for example, Webb, ‘Introducing Black Harry Hoosier’.
44 Citationhooks, Black Looks, 184.
45 CitationPaino, ‘Hoosiers in a Different Light’, 66.
46 CitationPaino, ‘Hoosiers in a Different Light’, 75.
47 CitationPaino, ‘Hoosiers in a Different Light’, 68, emphasis in original.
48 CitationPaino, ‘Hoosiers in a Different Light’
49 CitationPierce, ‘More Than a Game’, 14.
50 CitationPierce, ‘More Than a Game’, 16.
51 Paino, ‘Hoosiers in a Different Light’, 75. Paino also goes into further detail/analysis of this decline through an examination of attendance figures.
52 CitationLane, Under the Boards, 149.
53 CitationLane, Under the Boards
54 Hoosiers. In the movie, Milan High and Muncie Central are given different names. The 1954 state championship, often referred to as ‘The Milan Miracle’, is arguably one of the most culturally important events to Indiana basketball. One cannot underestimate the power of its (mis)representation through a popularized medium such as film, and its subsequent impact on transmitting the ‘constructed’ story throughout future generations.
55 Sefa Dei, Karumanchery, and Karumanchery-Luik, Playing the Race Card.
56 CitationBriley, ‘Basketball's Great White Hope and Ronald Reagan's America’, 15.
57 CitationBriley, ‘Basketball's Great White Hope and Ronald Reagan's America’
58 CitationRobertson, The Big O, 40–1.
59 Robertson led Crispus Attucks to back-to-back high-school state championships in 1955 and 1956 (the years directly following the glorified tale of the 1954 Milan Indians). The first all-Black high school to win a state championship(s) – let alone back-to-back – in the United States, one begins to question why the 1954 tale of small-town Milan was more fit for a movie titled CitationHoosiers than the story of Crispus Attucks?
60 CitationPfeffer, ‘Management as Symbolic Action’, 21–2.
61 Weick, Sensemaking in Organizations, 168.
62 Weick, Sensemaking in Organizations, 160.
63 Weick, Sensemaking in Organizations, 151.
64 CitationGioia et al., ‘Symbolism and Strategic Change in Academia’, 364.
65 ‘Simon Optimistic of Quick Turnaround’.Pacers.com, March 7, 2008. http://www.nba.com/pacers/news/herb_simon_qna_080307.html, 4.
66 Gioia et al., ‘Symbolism and Strategic Change in Academia’, 364.
67 Pfeffer, ‘Management as Symbolic Action’, 39.
68 ‘Walsh Will Not Return to Pacers’. Pacers.com, March 24, 2008. http://www.nba.com/pacers/news/walsh_release_080324.html, 5, emphasis added. Larry Bird was given final decision-making authority on all basketball-related decisions; while fellow Hoosier and team-owner, Herb Simon, assumed Walsh's business-related duties.
69 CitationChatman, Bell, and Staw, ‘The Managed Thought’, 211.
70 CitationDutton and Dukerich, ‘Keeping an Eye on the Mirror’, 548.
71 See David Benner, ‘Larry Bird Comes Home, So Do Fans as Former ISU Star Draws Faithful’. The Indianapolis Star, December 2, 1981.
72 The relationship between Larry Bird and Magic Johnson certainly reflected this dichotomization of styles.
73 See Mark Montieth, ‘Bird Sticks to Plan in Indiana Amid Often-Skeptical Pacers Fan Base’. Sports Illustrated.com, September 2009. http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/basketball/nba/09/16/bird/.
74 CitationWeick, ‘Cognitive Processes in Organizations’, 68.
75 CitationGioia, ‘Conclusion’.
76 See Rudy Martzke, ‘Bird: NBA Needs More White Stars’. USA Today, June 8, 2004, 3.
77 CitationHoberman, Darwin's Athletes.
78 See http://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/IND/.
79 See Rudy Martzke, ‘Bird: NBA Needs More White Stars’. USA Today, June 8, 2004, 3.
80 ‘Simon Optimistic of Quick Turnaround’. Pacers.com, March 7, 2008. http://www.nba.com/pacers/news/herb_simon_qna_080307.html, 2, emphasis added.
81 This evolutionary process occurred through trades, waiving, free-agent signings, and the draft. By the start of the 2009 NBA season, the Indiana Pacers no longer had any of the Black players remaining from their ‘troubled past’, and instead featured the continued likes of Jeff Foster, as well as Travis Diener, Mike Dunleavy, Tyler Hansbrough, Josh McRoberts, and Troy Murphy (all of whom are White, American-born players). It is important to note these White players as American-born in a global NBA era. White bodies are not subject to the same universal discourse (e.g. White, European athletes are often positioned as ‘soft’ compared to their American counterpart) – and thus, nationality must be recognized for its role in forging a distinctly ‘Hoosier’ brand of Whiteness.
82 Weick, Sensemaking in Organizations, 50.
83 CitationAbdel-Shehid, Who Da Man?, 48.
84 See, for example, CitationBrown, ‘Allan Iverson as America's Most Wanted’; de B'béri and Hogarth, ‘White America's Construction of Black Bodies’; hooks, ‘We Real Cool’.
85 For example, the NBA dress-code policy that articulates the need to present a more ‘professional’ (i.e. White) image to its largely corporate (i.e. White) audience, instead of the ‘unprofessional’ (i.e. Black, hip hop) styles that are embraced by many of its athletes.
86 Hughes, ‘Managing Black Guys’, 181.
87 CitationRidgeway, ‘The Emergence of Status Beliefs’, 258.
88 CitationVaught, ‘Writing Against Racism’, 579.
89 Hip hop, as a cultural art form, has grown from a space of critical consciousness and social and political commentary to resist everyday mainstream society. However, in its appropriated, mainstream format bell Citationhooks (2004) has argued that ‘… it is just a black minstrel show – an imitation of dominator desire, not a rearticulation, not a radical alternative’ (p. 143). Either way, hip hop is positioned as a threat to the existing power structures of society.
90 See Chris Broussard, ‘Sources: Tinsley May File Grievance’. ESPN The Magazine, February 3, 2009. http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id = 3880962.
91 See Chris Broussard, ‘Sources: Tinsley May File Grievance’. ESPN The Magazine, February 3, 2009. http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id = 3880962, 6.
92 The incident began once Pistons player, Ben Wallace, looked to persuade Pacer Ron Artest into fighting. Artest, wanting to avoid the situation, stayed clear of the fray but was hit with a cup of beer thrown from the stands. Running into the stands to confront the supposed suspect, Artest and many of his Pacers teammates became involved in physical altercations (both in the stands, and on the playing surface) with Detroit Pistons fans. Many of the spectators continued to throw various items onto the court, and some even stormed onto the hardwood to confront players. The NBA (i.e. Commissioner David Stern) placed the majority of the blame at the shoulders of Pacers’ athletes, culminating in suspensions and fines that indicated as much, further activating White anxieties concerning the Black male body.
93 See, for example, Liz Robbins, ‘NBA Bars 4 After a Brawl Involving Fans’. The New York Times, November 21, 2004; Oscar Dixon, ‘Five Pacers, Seven Fans Charged in Palace Brawl’. USA Today, December 8, 2004.
94 See Sekou Smith, ‘O'Neal to Return on Christmas Day’. The Indianapolis Star, December 24, 2004.
95 See Sekou Smith, ‘O'Neal to Return on Christmas Day’. The Indianapolis Star, December 24, 2004
96 Pfeffer, ‘Management as Symbolic Action’, 13.
97 See Daniel Lee, ‘Pacers Use Marketing to Win Back Fans’. The Indianapolis Star, November 2, 2008, 2, 41, emphasis added.
98 See Daniel Lee, ‘Pacers Use Marketing to Win Back Fans’. The Indianapolis Star, November 2, 2008, 2, 41, emphasis added
99 See Daniel Lee, ‘Pacers Use Marketing to Win Back Fans’. The Indianapolis Star, November 2, 2008, 3.
100 CitationLeonard, ‘The Real Color of Money’; McDonald and Toglia, ‘Dressed for Success’.
101 See, for example, CitationBoyd, Am I Black Enough For You.
102 See http://espn.go.com/nba/attendance.
103 See http://www.ibj.com/the-score/2011/05/12/pacers-games-earn-higherst-tv-ratings-in-five-years/PARAMS/post/27121.
104 See Daniel Lee, ‘Pacers Use Marketing to Win Back Fans’. The Indianapolis Star, November 2, 2008.
105 A queer-theory reading might examine how this ‘Other’ becomes managed by the hegemonic force of ‘Hoosier basketball’ through a politics of difference to maintain its power.
106 CitationHall, ‘The Spectacle of the “Other”’, 234.
107 CitationWertheim, Transition Game, 152.