A Blueprint, Auditing Tool, and Process for Culture Building in Atlantic Provincial Sport Organizations

Dr. Jennifer Walinga received a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council grant to identify opportunities to enhance sport safety, trust, health and performance through culture building.

The Challenges: This project responds to the recent Safe Sport crisis in Canada and announcement of federal reforms in Canadian sport. Canadian sport organizations and governing bodies are reeling from 1000's of claims of maltreatment, lawsuits, investigations, and calls for a national inquiry from well-organized advocacy groups. Canada's federal, provincial, and municipal sport leaders are grappling with how to better protect the health and well-being of their employees, volunteers, and athletes. Discussions have focused on how best to deliver a safer sport experience for all, while facing a new reality that requires a total rethinking of sport policy and practice. With any crisis, a palpable crystallization of a society's fundamental values emerges. Underlying these new challenges to sport is a renewed understanding of sport's purpose and value to humanity: human and social development.

Olympians often recount how, at the very least, sport built their character; at the very most, sport saved their lives. Currently, sport itself needs rebuilding. While efforts are underway to 'clean up' sport in Canada, the most significant and enduring work involves ensuring that the abuse never happens again. If we are to prevent abuse from occurring, we must culturally re-engineer the structures, policies, and practices that have led to abuse in the first place by reconciling them with the purpose and values of human and social development at the heart of sport.

Overall Goal and Objectives of the Proposed Partnership: The goal of the study is to identify opportunities within the Canadian Sport Institute Atlantic network of provincial sport organizations to enhance safety, trust, health and performance through culture building. The project will examine the cultural integrity of provincial organizations by evaluating the degree of alignment between principles, priorities, and practices, and co-designing with participating organizations a system and process for building, monitoring, and maintaining their cultural integrity. The overarching research question is: How can provincial sport leaders build, monitor, and maintain the cultural integrity of our provincial sport organizations for the delivery of a safe, healthy, excellent sport experience for all?

Partnership Breadth and Engagement: CSI A and provincial partners will be involved in all stages of the project. The provincial partners will provide relevant organizational cultural data and artifacts; participate in interviews (presidents, CEO's, directors, and executive directors) about cultural congruities and incongruities across the organization; collaboratively discuss, problem solve, and seek opportunities for greater cultural alignment between espoused priorities and enacted practice within their contexts; co-design an adaptable and scalable culture building, monitoring, and maintenance process; and help publicize the results by providing links to the final report and presentation on the organizational websites, newsletters, and other communication channels.

The study's participatory approach inherently engages sport system leaders and stakeholders in the research background, process, outcomes, dissemination and knowledge mobilization processes. Outcomes will be summarized through brief reports, which are first distributed to participants and then made publicly available. CSI A will also receive the resulting cultural framework, tools, and systems. Finally, dissemination will occur through the Canadian Olympic and Paralympic Sport Institute Network (COPSIN) website and social media channels as well as academic and practitioner conferences and publications.