The Canadian Hockey Association Merger and the Emergence of the Amateur Sport Enterprise.

The purpose of this article is to understand the nature of large-scale organizational change within amateur sport through the analysis of a merger between two hockey organizations. This study expands upon the research on Canadian national sport organizations established by Kikulis, Slack, and Hinings (1992) by identifying a new archetype-the Amateur Sport Enterprise. In particular, the study presents a case analysis of the 1994 merger between the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association and Hockey Canada to form the Canadian Hockey Association . The results of the qualitative case study revealed that, contrary to previous notions of archetype coherence, aspects of competing archetypes might coexist within an organizational form or, more specifically, within particular elements of an organizational form. The characteristics of the Amateur Sport Enterprise archetype are discussed and implications for future sport management research are addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]