Search

Purpose Being innovative is important for non-profit sport organizations in order to meet the ever-changing and increasing societal needs. Understanding why and to what extent organizational innovativeness differs between non-profit sport organizations is, therefore, important to assess and increase their chances of survival. The purpose of this study is to compare the structural characteristics and attitudes of innovation attributes between three groups of sport federations (SFs). Design/methodology/approach An online self-assessment survey was sent to all recognized regional Belgian SFs (N = 156). Simultaneously, an observational desk research (i.e. media analysis) was carried out. Results from both data collection methods were combined to develop a composite organizational innovativeness-index, based on which the federations were then clustered in three distinct adopter groups. Findings Comparative statistics show that structural background characteristics generally are poor indicators for adopter categorization. In contrast, the attitudes about compatibility (i.e. the consistency of innovations with existing values) and complexity (i.e. the extent to which innovations are difficult to apprehend) seem the most important distinctive determinants for the different groups of SFs. Originality/value The study's contribution is twofold. First, it offers a methodological contribution with the development of an index, which enables the categorization of non-profit sport organizations according to their organizational innovativeness; thus, it provides a critical counter-argument to the importance of organizational structural background characteristics from previous studies. Second, the study's results may support non-profit sport organizations in improving their innovativeness, for instance by improving the perception of compatibility with innovation or by guiding policymakers in creating a more supportive environment for these organizations to do so.

Aim and research interest The awareness for environmental sustainability (ES) in sport is gradually increasing, resulting in more literature being published in the field (McCullough et al., 2020). However, to date, numerous important research domains remain unexplored. The environmental management of sport federations (SFs), for example, is little discussed. Yet, SFs are considered to be impactful actors that interact with a wide range of stakeholders and are, accordingly, potentially meaningful enforcers of ES (Sotiriadou & Hill, 2015; Zeimers et al., 2020). Furthermore, McCullough and colleagues (2020) noticed that, despite the considerable pressure to combat climate change, the environment is still too often taken for granted in managerial sport contexts. As a result, strategic environmental initiatives that are embedded in national SFs are still the exception rather than the norm. A profound strategic approach will, therefore, be an imperative next step to leverage the full potential and unique position of SFs. To assist the SFs, the aim of this paper is to map ES efforts in SFs and to analyse to what level these efforts are embedded into their organisational strategy. Theoretical background and literature review Currently, the literature on ES in SFs focused on international sport governing bodies like the International Olympic Committee (Paquette et al., 2011) or discussed ES from a general corporate social responsibility perspective (Zeimers et al., 2020). There is, also, literature available that examined the strategic management of ES in sport (Dingle & Mallen, 2021), but literature that addresses ES from a strategic perspective in national SF is scarce. McCullough, Pfahl and Nguyen (2016) created the environmental wave typology, which enables researchers to classify the initiation and development of ES in sport organisations. The authors built on the institutional theory and diffusion of innovation theory to understand the increased efforts of the sector a