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Inge Claringbould, Annelies Knoppers and Ramon Spaaij challenge cosmopolitanist/universalist perspectives on good governance in sport. Employing two particular feminist approaches, they both call into question the neutrality of knowledge and science and present an alternative to exclusionary notions of ‘good governance’. On one hand, they emphasise dialogical relations as essential for gaining insight into the heterogeneity of knowledge through critical self-reflection on personal positionality and understanding multiple points of view. On the other hand, they propose ‘ethics of care’ as an underlying ‘value of doing’ in governance practices. This implies that, instead of focusing on self-interest and strategy, those involved in ‘doing’ governance should base their action on the care for others in a broad sense.

Although diversity is an often cited organisational value, its support is often muted when it pertains to boards of governance. The aim of this study is to identify discursive practices that may prevent or limit the implementation of measures to increase gender balance in sport governance at the national and international levels. Drawing on a total of 60 qualitative, semi-structured interviews with board members, we explore both the content of and reasons for discursive opposition to implementing gender balance in the governing boards of international and national sport organisations that purport to value diversity. The results demonstrate that board members justify their resistance to gender balance by drawing on discourses of meritocracy, neoliberalism, silence/passivity, and diversity. Resistance to gender balance in sport governance may in part have roots in the sport capital and habitus of board members, and their ability to utilise that in normalising judgment that may keep women out.

Funding bodies seek to promote scientific research that has social or economic impact beyond academia, including in sport management. Knowledge translation in sport management remains largely implicit and is yet to be fully understood. This paper examines how knowledge translation in sport management can be conceptualized and fostered. The authors draw on a comparative analysis of co-produced research projects in Belgium and Australia in order to identify the strategic, cognitive, and logistic translation practices that researchers adopt, as well as enablers and constraints that affect knowledge translation. The findings show ways in which knowledge translation may be facilitated and supported, such as co-design, boundary spanning, adaptation of research products, and linkage and exchange activities. The findings reveal individual, organizational, and external constraints that need to be recognized and, where possible, managed.

Football rhetoric in recent years has emphasised the notion of the ‘football family’ as an inclusive concept, arguing that the global nature of football can be harnessed as a powerful force for positive social change. If this ‘footballing family’ analogy is applied to disabled people, they might be considered to have moved from being the relative hidden away in the corner at family events that nobody talks to (or about) to being the strange and eccentric relative whose right to be present is at least acknowledged if not fully understood. This chapter will outline briefly the history of disability and football, whilst identifying some of the issues faced by disabled people and investigating the increasing involvement of disabled people as both players and spectators.