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Mandating Women Board Members in Sport Organizations: Change via Coercive Institutional Pressure

journal contribution
posted on 2024-05-21, 03:41 authored by Kathleen B Wilson, Adam Karg, Emma Sherry, Kasey SymonsKasey Symons, Tim Breitbarth
Boosting board representation of women redresses structural unfairness and improves corporate governance and performance. The Change Our Game initiative, running over 3 years statewide in Victoria, Australia, mandated 40% representation of women on state sport boards. At the start, only 44% of state sport boards had 40% women representation; by the mandate deadline, this had increased to 93%. Using an institutional theory lens, the authors qualitatively analyzed four stakeholder groups: mandators, policy champions, operationalists, and mandate targets. Stakeholder sentiments were analyzed pre- and postmandate deadline over 3 years. Sentiments ranged from positive to equivocation to denigration. The mandate’s coercive pressure, supported by institutional legitimacy and work to accelerate changes, led to institutional change and achieved a significant increase in women board members. Change was grounded in strong ethical and cognitive support from mandate champions. Microsocial expressions of denigration and change resistance did not prevent successful change.

History

Journal

Journal of Sport Management

Pagination

1-15

Location

Champaign, IL.

ISSN

0888-4773

eISSN

1543-270X

Language

eng

Publication classification

C1.1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal

Publisher

Human Kinetics