Evaluating Sport Club Board Performance: A Customer Perspective

Customers are overlooked often as a stakeholder group when it comes to assessing board performance. To gain insight into the factors that affect customer perceptions of non-profit board performance, over 20,000 members from 14 different professional, non-profit sporting clubs were surveyed. The results suggest that sporting club boards are evaluated primarily in line with perceptions specifically related to their administrative effectiveness, although the on-field performance of the team is a contributing and correlated factor. Board performance and o n -field performance perceptions were both direct contributors to overall member satisfaction, with board performance being the stronger. Perceptions of board performance are clearly worth managing in a holistic manner. Introduction: Assessing Board Performance The idea that there is a positive relationship between board performance and organisational performance has remained virtually uncontested, however there is very little evidence to support this contention in the research literature (Hoye and Cuskelly, 2006). Amongst the four key stakeholder groups common to most organizations (shareholders, employees, communities and customers) it is customers who have been the subject of the least amount of board-related research (Huse and Rindova 2001). We could assume the perceptions held by sporting club members regarding board performance are also likely to b e influenced by performance. Certainly, sports journalists make the assertion frequently that member disquiet with club boards is almost entirely driven by below expected on-field results and funds raised (Healy, 2007). In the past 12 months we have seen the club board removed at one Australian League Football (AFL) club, with a three others either formally reviewed or suffering leadership challenges. Researchers in past work, however, (Brown, 2005; Long, 2006) have noted that prior attempts to establish a link between board and organisational performance, have been complicated, making precise understanding of these concepts difficult. Many studies of corporate governance attempt to link board performance with the financial performance of the organisation, however important non-financial performance measures are not well established in the research literature. For many organisations operating within the sport industry, an industry which is rapidly growing in size and economic importance, it is the on-field performance which is deemed most valuable. This research develops a model that investigates the relationship between the perceptions of the Board and member satisfaction for professional sport clubs, including both financial and non-financial measures of performance.