Competitive Intensity and National Participation in Elite Sports: Understanding Competitive Dynamics in International Athletics

Abstract

This study contributes to our understanding of competitive dynamics in international sports by investigating national participation in athletics. Recent scholarship has suggested that national elite sport policies follow strategic rationales when dedicating scarce resources to participation in international sport. Therefore, the study builds on the structure-conduct-performance paradigm of industrial organization and assumes that countries’ participation in international sport responds to competitive opportunities. Contrary to our expectations, countries seem to be attracted to highly concentrated and densely populated disciplines in which success prospects might be rather low. Thus, participation in international sport does not follow strategic considerations about competitive opportunities as suggested by the structure-conduct-performance-paradigm. Rather, national elite sport policies seem to resemble to some extent imitative behavior. Thus, the findings indicate the need to complement the ‘outside-in’ perspective of the structure-conduct-performance paradigm of industrial organization with an ‘inside-out’ perspective in the tradition of the resource based view. What we need is a more thorough investigation of how national elite sport systems and their distinctive capabilities evolve.

精英体育的竞争强度及国家参与: 了解国际体育运动中的竞争态势

本研究通过调查各国体育运动的参与情况, 帮助读者更好地了解国际体育中的竞争态势。最新的专家调查显示, 当国家将稀缺资源投入到国际体育运动中时, 国家精英体育政策会遵循战略原理。因此本研究以产业组织中的结构-行为-绩效范式为基础, 并且假设各国对国际体育运动的参与与相关项目的竞争机会呈正相关。但与预期相反的是, 各国似乎对那些有更多国家竞争, 参与人数众多的项目更感兴趣, 即便这些项目普遍的成功率更低。也就是说, 各国对于体育项目的参与, 并没有像结构-行为-绩效范式中预测的那样, 对竞争机会做出战略考量。从某种程度上来说, 国家精英体育政策更加类似于一种仿效行为。所以通过调查发现, 结构-行为-绩效范式中的“由外到内”的观点需要与传统资源基础理论中的“由内到外”的观点进行中和。我们需要对国家精英体育体系及其独特能力的发展过程进行更加透彻的研究。

Keywords:

• Industrial organization
• structure-conduct-performance
• competitive intensity
• inerti
• athletics

关键词:

• 产业组织
• 结构-行为-绩效
• 竞争强度；惯性
• 体育运动

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Henk Erik Meier

Henk Erik Meier (Ph.D., The University of Potsdam, Germany) is professor for the social sciences of sport at the Institute of Sport Science at Münster University, Germany. His research interests include sport economics, sport broadcasting, sport geography and sport governance. His work has appeared in the European Sport Management Quarterly, Journal of Sport Economics, Sociology of Sport Journal, Communication and Sport.

Malte Jetzke

Malte Jetzke (Ph.D., The Münster University, Germany) is research assistant at the department for the social sciences of sport at the Institute of Sport Science at Münster University, Germany. His research interest include the use of Big Data for sport analytics. His work has appeared appeared in the European Sport Management Quarterly, Communication and Sport, Social Science Quarterly.

Cosima von Uechtritz

Cosima von Uechtritz (B.Sc., The Münster University, Germany) has been a student assistant at the department for the social sciences of sport at the Institute of Sport Science at Münster University, Germany. She is currently continuing her education at the German Sport University in Cologne.