Investigating the Role of Identification in Team Sport Organizations

Abstract

The concept of identifying with an organizational entity has been widely researched in the mainstream management literature, with organizational identification now positioned as a key construct in organizational research (Edwards, 2005; Riketta, 2005). While identification has also been highly researched in the sport management literature, it has been done almost exclusively from the perspective of the consumer. This research stream has focused primarily on the construct of team identification, and the extent to which fans identify with their respective sports teams (e.g., Wann & Branscombe, 1993). However, it is of note that there has been little identification research undertaken with regard to sports employees, and no previous study has addressed the concept of sport team identification in the workplace. A general proposition of the current study is that employees working for team sport organizations may also be fans of their affiliated sports teams. More specifically, employees in this setting may simultaneously identify with both their overall employing organization and its affiliated sports team, which in turn may have implications with regard to important workplace attitudes. The purpose of the study was to establish team identification as a distinct construct from organizational identification, and assess its role for employees working in the professional team sport environment. As part of this process, a conceptual model was developed which situated these focal constructs in a multiple target framework of identification in the context of sport. A hypothesized research model was then developed which proposed both organizational and team-focused antecedents for the identification constructs, which in turn independently predicted the following attitudinal outcomes: affective commitment, job satisfaction, job involvement, work motivation, and job engagement. This dissertation employed a mixed method design and used an online survey for business operations employees in the five largest professional sports leagues in North America (N = 1,189). In addition, semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten employees who had also taken the survey. The first phase of the quantitative analysis addressed the discriminant validity of organizational and team identification, and strong support for this proposition was demonstrated through a variety of statistical assessments. The second phase addressed the relationships in the hypothesized research model by utilizing structural equation modeling. Support for all of the proposed relationships was demonstrated with two exceptions, where prestige was not found to have a significant effect on either identification construct. The findings of this study contribute to the literature by introducing the concept of a sports team as an additional target of identification in the organizational context. In addition, while sport organizations and their affiliated teams are often referred to interchangeably, the current study distinguished team identification as a distinct construct from organizational identification for employees working in professional sport. This study therefore provides empirical support for Todd and Kent's (2009) proposition that the sport industry contains areas of distinction in relation to employee psychology, where individuals in this setting have dual targets of identification which exist simultaneously and independently predict key attitudinal outcomes.