The Ramifications of Modernization on Community Sport Organizations: A Critically Informed Case Study

The modernization of public organizations through the adoption of business processes has been a fundamental feature of British politics over the past twenty years. This agenda acts as an institutional pressure to make recipients of public funds more efficient and accountable to government and their ‘citizen consumers’. In order to achieve the requirements established by modernization a number of management- inspired (New Managerialsm, New Public Management) tools and techniques have been used. This paper seeks to examine the case of a community sport organization and its experiences of seeking to conform with these pressures. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to our understanding of modernization and its ramifications on recipients of government and other statutory sector funding. To achieve this purpose we will draw Tatli’s (2010) organizational conceptualization of Bourdieu’s (1977) habitus using data collected through a longitudinal, ethnographic study that encompassed active-member observations and formal and informal interviews. The findings highlight how the organizational habitus acts as a moderating force that determines the success, or otherwise, of the organization’s strategies, policies and actions. This permits us to explore how institutional pressures, such as modernization interact with the organizational habitus and in doing so assists us in understanding the factors that facilitate or resist change.