Search

With growing governmental involvement in sport, there has been a corresponding demand on national sport organizations (NSOs) to operate within performance measurement systems. In this study, we analyze data from New Zealand to determine NSO officials’ perceptions of (a) their reporting relationship with the central agency (Sport and Recreation New Zealand), and (b) the system of performance contracts (or “investment schedules”). Following Norman (2002), we found differing perceptions regarding the legitimacy of performance systems and three tensions emerged. First, the clarity of focus enabled by performance measurement was tempered by the perception of an ever-changing political environment. Second, NSO officials acted strategically and opportunistically at times, marshalling arguments around performance measures to “capture” their principal. Third, neither trust nor distrust in the system necessarily translated into compliance; some NSOs sought independence from the system. This research speaks to the legitimacy of performance systems, a significant but tenuous element to their sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governing state-funded sport is tenuous because of the need to maintain legitimacy and support from political authorisers, stakeholders and network partners/members. The purpose of this paper is to compare/contrast how central sport agencies in Norway and New Zealand create, build or sustain legitimacy through their accountability regimes. More particularly, this comparison distinguishes between input and output sources of legitimacy, where the former is associated with democratic processes (e.g., electoral procedures and public consultation), and the latter is linked with results and demonstrable benefits. While the Norwegian Olympic and Paralympic Committee and Confederation of Sports (NIF) draws legitimacy from its representative membership structures and status as a social movement, Sport New Zealand claims legitimacy on the basis of achieving targets and outputs. In both cases there are emerging pressures to recast input-output legitimating narratives, suggesting their 'depleteability' over time. These shifts are discussed in relation to their influence on policy reforms within environments of accountability that are fluid and incomplete. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Legitimacy building is an increasingly recognized feature of bureaucratic practice under networked governance. Mark Moore's (1995) model of ‘public value creation’ captures the strategic imperative to build credibility, legitimacy and support for policies and programmes in this context. As an emerging ‘narrative’ in public organizations, it combines perspectives on managerial and political leadership and is therefore useful to explain bureaucratic experiences with legitimacy building and their implications for policy. This article investigates the efforts of Canada's federal sport agency to secure legitimacy and explores the implications of public value creation on future policy-making. Drawing from interview data as well as public and internal documents, the study outlines Sport Canada's initiatives to establish sport's ‘benefits’, collaborate widely and add value in terms of equity and ethics. Two related implications (or storylines) are considered and discussed: (a) the tendency for public value creation to reduce the policy sector to anecdotal understandings in the eyes of political authorizers, and (b) the propensity for building public value to result in over-commitment due to the accumulation and embedding of new collaborations, mandates and target populations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]