EURAM Special Interest Group: Sport as Business: Internationalisation, Professionalization, Commercialisation

Conference call for papers from Sport, Business and Management

Call for Papers EURAM 2012 Track

Track chair:

Harald Dolles, Visiting Professor in International Business
University of Gothenburg, School of Business, Economics and Law, Gothenburg (Sweden)
e-mail: harald.dolles@handels.gu.se

Co-track chair:

Sten Söderman, Professor of International Business
Stockholm University, School of Business, Stockholm (Sweden), e-mail: sod@fek.su.se

Sport today has developed into a major industry in the global marked place. Sport businesses build global brands and, increasingly, develop modes of international operation. The trade around the globe of goods, equipment as well as the construction of sports complexes, racecourses and arenas has developed into a multi-billion dollar business. Beyond the sports and political aspects mega events like the FIFA football world championships or the Olympic Games are also one of the largest international marketing events in the world, reaching billions of people in over 200 countries around the globe and generating millions of revenues in merchandizing and sponsorship.

Mainstream academic literature often suggests that sport should be studied in specialist niches on the grounds that it is “not generalisable”. Indeed, sport does have a number of distinctive characteristics which may influence the way in which it internationalises and the extent of its globalization. Sports events have uncertain outcomes, evoke strongly emotional responses from customers which result often in an intense, sometimes unexpected, loyalty. The proliferation of information technology has made it possible to serve the needs of fans all over the world. They can consume an event real-time or recorded from virtually anywhere. Within this, the opportunities for the promotion of sport, and the benefits for sport and its partners, are significant. Surprisingly the financial crises and even doping scandals seemingly only had limited impact on the sports industry.

The EURAM 2012 track seeks to gain a deeper understanding of the unique development in sports, its governance and its logic of co-creation of value and the advancement of the industry towards internationalisation, professionalization and commercialisation.

The track represents all management functions. Below is a additional partial listing of the issues among others papers submitted to the track might take up:

Leading and managing change in sports.
Reputation, branding and sponsorship.
HR management, voluntarism vs. professional staff, coaching.
Club management, revenue generation, financial effectiveness and success.
CSR, sustainability and ecology in sports, sport facility management.
Regulations of sport governing bodies, institutional control and elite sport systems.
Legal issues, doping regulations, players’ movements, salary caps, media rights.
Impacts of mega-sporting events on society, business and management.
Planning and managing events; antecedents, patterns and processes.
Culture in sporting organisations; definitions, conceptualizations and classifications on professionalization and commercialisation in sport.
Methods in reseach on sports management.

Submit a paper:

To submit your paper online you must first create an author account at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/sbm then follow the on-screen guidance which takes you through the submission process. ScholarOne Manuscripts is an intuitive and author-friendly interface for submitting articles to Emerald journals over the Internet. Online submission facilitates a fast and efficient publication service and provides the author with the ability to track their paper through the review process. All Emerald journals are moving to online submission.

Further information on EURAM 2012 can be retrieved at http://euram2012.nl/r/home.

Deadline for submissions: 20th February 2012