Global human resource management influences on local sport organisations

Societal consciousness has shifted from national to international and global spheres, and the world is increasingly perceived as one place. Many sport organisations now find that they are under increasing pressure to engage in globally benchmarked sustainable management systems and processes, across all functional areas from finance to HRM. Some sport organisations have used aspects of the globalisation process to create new opportunities for expansion and growth, while others have been reluctant or resistant to externally instigated change. We assessed the adoption of "best practice" HRM practices in a range of amateur and professional sport organisations to see how they were reacting to these convergence pressures. This issue fits in the wider convergence-divergence debate that has been the concern of many cross-cultural researchers. Our empirical results indicate that while government policy has urged movement to a universally derived system of HRM processes, few sport organisations have adopted a formal HRM strategy and HR practices are widely variable across organisations.