Organisational culture in sports: Perspectives, traps, and entry points for cultural practitioners

Culture is a key concept that can provide deep insight into how people work and live together in groups. Applied to organisations, it offers a means of studying the textures of organisational life and of working out what is socially significant and why. Most commonly, though, this capacity to elevate awareness of the implicit understandings that make things mean what they do for organisational members has often taken a back seat to a focus on the instrumental and assumed practical applications that connect culture with desirable organisational outcomes. Inexperienced practitioners seeking to understand the cultures they work within or who are charged with some kind of organisational culture intervention may find it hard to know how and where to begin, once accepting that culture is a little more complex and slippery than is typically made out. Having a conceptual map of what culture entails can initially help practitioners navigate the unfamiliar and challenging organisational culture in the sport terrain.