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From the Ballfield to the Boardroom by
No one can deny that sports and business are two of the most potent forces in our culture today. Sport, play, and the terms and phrases that define them, are engrained in our collective psyche, influencing the ways in which we conduct business-as a game, with rules of engagement, tournaments of competition, the shame that accompanies defeat, and the bragging rights that accrue to the victor. The parallels are ubiquitous; as the NFL's Bill Parcells stated in a Harvard Business Review article, my guess is that the challenges I've faced are not all that different from the ones that executives deal with every day. People are people, and the keys to motivating them and getting them to perform to their full potential are pretty much the same whether they're playing on a football field or working in an office.
From the Ballfield to the Boardroom draws from Brian Goff's expertise as a managerial economist to shed new light on the sports-business connection. Using dozens of examples from across the spectrum of professional and college sports, he analyzes the ways in which key decisions are made on the playing fields and locker rooms and applies these lessons to the corporate context. From the distinctive leadership styles of legendary coaches Tom Landry, Vince Lombardi, John Wooden, and Bobby Knight, among others, to such culturally significant developments as the racial integration of Major League Baseball and the meteoric rise of NASCAR, Goff draws from the world of sports to provide a solid foundation in the managerial arts, including: assessing risk and uncertainty, conducting market and competitive analysis, wooing customers, fostering an innovative culture, managing information and communication flows, and resolving labor disputes. The result is an incisive look at the sport of business, with practical insights for successful management at all levels of your organization.
Sports Analytics by
Benjamin C. Alamar founded the first journal dedicated to sports statistics, the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports. He developed and teaches a class on sports analytics for managers at the University of San Francisco and has published numerous cutting-edge studies on strategy and player evaluation. Today, he cochairs the sports statistics section of the International Statistics Institute and consults with several professional teams and businesses in sports analytics.
There isn't a better representative of this emerging field to show diverse organizations how to implement analytics into their decision-making strategies, especially as analytic tools grow increasingly complex. Alamar provides a clear, easily digestible survey of the practice and a detailed understanding of analytics' vast possibilities. He explains how to evaluate different programs and put them to use. Using concrete examples from professional sports teams and case studies demonstrating the use and value of analytics in the field, Alamar designs a roadmap for managers, general managers, and other professionals as they build their own programs and teach their approach to others.
Human Resource Management in the Sport and Leisure Industry by
The sport and leisure sectors possess unique characteristics that pose particular challenges for managers and human resource professionals. The age profile of workers, seasonality, the pressure to achieve short-term results, media intrusion, wide differences in pay between elite and community levels, and the importance of competition and consumer (fan) behaviour, all combine to set sport and leisure apart from 'mainstream’ business and management. Human Resource Management in the Sport and Leisure Industry is a comprehensive and accessible introduction to HRM in sport and leisure that examines these challenges in the context of organisational structure, systems, and individual and group behaviour, encouraging the reader to develop a strategic approach to HRM, and emphasising the importance of reflective professional practice.
Practical Ethics in Sport Management by
Leaders and managers throughout the sporting world face many ethical challenges on a daily basis. This book addresses such issues as violence in sports, racial and gender equity, performance-enhancing drugs, academics, and commercialization. It provides specific examples from real-world sports situations and reflective questions to encourage students to think critically. It also explores practical application ethics at all competitive levels, giving future athletic professionals the tools needed to navigate the tricky waters of ethics in sport.