Board composition in national sport federations: a cross-country comparative analysis of diversity and board size

ABSTRACT

Rationale/Purpose

The purpose of this study was to analyse the composition of national sport federation (NSF) boards in Australia, India, South Africa, the UK and the USA. Specifically, this research assessed board size, occupational diversity and gender diversity, which are theorised to influence board performance.

Design/Methods

This study employed a positivist descriptive research approach and gathered data from online secondary sources. In total, board composition data was collected on 253 NSFs across five countries, which equated to 2937 directors.

Findings

The results showed that the average board size in Indian NSFs (19.5 directors) is larger than in the sampled Western countries (on average between 7.2 and 14.2 directors). The occupational background of directors in Australia and the UK is similar, with a strong degree of business involvement (61% and 67%, respectively). Compared to Australia and the UK, India, South Africa and the USA have a larger proportion of directors from sporting backgrounds. Indian NSFs have a relatively significant number of politicians (16%) and few (7%) women on their boards compared to the Western countries.

Practical implications

This study provides empirical evidence to support sport governance policy processes.

Research contribution

This research contributes to the sport governance literature by showing the extent to which NSFs are adopting good governance standards.

KEYWORDS:

• Board structure
• gender diversity
• good governance
• secondary data
• sport governance

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to sincerely thank our talented and hard-working Research Assistants for helping to gather the data for this paper. In no particular order, this includes Boni Zhang, Mahin Rai, Aditya Sarkar, Namit Anurag Halakhandi, Parv Verma and Raj Shah.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 In some cases, the board of directors of NSFs is described as the “executive committee”, “executive board” or “apex council”.