Designing a Managerial Skills Model for Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of Professional Sports Clubs in Isfahan Province

Abstract The objective of this study is to examine and analyze skills of the Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of professional sports clubs and to present and suggest an appropriate skills model for managers. The respondents of this study are all the managers in different managerial levels of Sepahan, Zob Ahan, Foolad e Mahan and Giti Pasand clubs in Isfahan Province. Validity of the questionnaire, which was made by the researchers and contained 19 questions with Likert 5sclaes, was approved by 15 professionals and professors in the field and using Cronbach Alpha Coefficient test, its stability was α = 0.97. Questionnaires were distributed among 83 managers of different units of the specific clubs and 76 questionnaires (91.5%) were returned as answered. Structural equation modeling and Amos16 Software were used for data analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. The results of the research showed all four Conceptual, Human, Technical and Political factors are significant skills for managers and suitability factors/indexes of the confirmatory factor model of the study had also proved these factors. The final design of this study demonstrates the existing high level of interaction among skills; as such managers need to be capable of all four skills and work toward improvement of the skills they are less capable of, because the high interaction of the skills with one another in this study’s model proves that weakness in one skill will cause less and lower capability level in other managerial skills.