Measuring the organizational effectiveness of National Sport Governing Bodies.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to analyze the relationship between the goal and systems models of organizational effectiveness in Canadian National Sport Governing Bodies. The major issue addressed was whether elite amateur sport organizations which are more successful at acquiring scarce financial resources, are also more successful at achieving goals of performance excellence. World rankings, changes in world rankings and an effectiveness ranking, which accounts for the number of competing countries, were used to measure the degree to which the organizations are achieving their goals of performance excellence. The 1982 total operating budget of each NSGB and the increase in financial support received from Fitness and Amateur Sport from 1970 to 1982 were used to measure the ability of the NSGBs to acquire scarce financial resources under the systems model of effectiveness. The results revealed that one of the goal model indicators, the effectiveness ranking, was positively and significantly correlated with one of the system model indicators, the total operating budget. This suggests that the ability to acquire scarce financial resources is related to the ability of an NSGB to achieve its goal of performance excellence. This also suggests that the goal and systems models may be complementary methods of measuring the concept of organizational effectiveness even though they are most often viewed as being alternative approaches in the literature.