Thursday, April 23, 2015

CFS: NASSS 2015 - Sports at/on the Borderlands: Translations, Transitions, and Transgressions

La Sociedad Norteamericana para la Sociologia del Deporte
Societe Nord-Americaine de Sociologie du Sport
North American Society of the Sociology of Sport
2015 Conference
Santa Fe, New Mexico
El Dorado Hotel and Spa

Call For Session Proposals
Sports at/on the Borderlands: Translations, Transitions, and Transgressions

Inspired by this year’s conference location, Santa Fe, New Mexico, the conference theme engages in questions and considerations of borders, borderlands, and border work to explore the ways in which sports both materially and discursively constitute and are constituted by, in, and through myriad borders (whether geographic, economic, gender, racial, embodied, mediated, cultural, and so on). Session organizers are encouraged to engage the theme in creative and innovative ways. Sessions may engage how sports, sporting cultures, physical cultures, and/or body cultures, construct, navigate, and/ or dismantle such borders. Sessions might also engage the work sports do in the liminal spaces that exist in and around borders. Sessions may also consider how sports studies scholarship can most effectively be translated to communities for advocacy and social change, the potential and/or struggle in constructing translations between academic and public audiences, and what might be lost and/or gained in translational practices. Sessions may examine sports as “contested activities” wherein participants construct, navigate, and resist sports inherent transitional contents, forms, meanings, and relations. Sessions may also engage with the following questions: What ways do sports serve as a site for transgressions? What are sports potential as a transgressive space? Sessions may also consider how the discipline of “Sociology of Sports,” and specifically NASSS, serves as the site for the production of borders, whether those are disciplinary, theoretical or methodological, and address the question of what we can do/ are we doing as scholars to translate or transgress the very borders we construct, and whether this translation/ transgression desirable, and if so, for whom?

Format: Session proposals should include the name, institutional affiliation, and email address of the session organizer; a title of no more than 10 words; and a brief abstract (100-150 words maximum) that describes the session and ideally how the session fits into the conference theme. Please submit session proposals as a Microsoft word document with Times New Roman 12- point font, 1-inch margins, left-justified text. Please submit session proposals to the Conference Committee Chair, Cheryl Cooky at nasss15@purdue.edu by May 11, 2015.

Timeline: Session organizers will be notified of their acceptance on or before May 15, 2015. Call for Abstracts will be released on May 15, 2015. Deadline for submission of Abstracts is June 15, 2015. Session organizers will notify authors of abstract acceptance and submit their completed sessions (4-5 papers/presentations) no later than June 30, 2015. Final session submission is due July 15, 2015.

Santa Fe +1 Initiative: In partnership with the Diversity and Conference Climate Committee Interim Chair, Dr. Algerian Hart, the 2015 Conference Committee is pleased to announce the “Santa Fe +1” initiative. The goal of this initiative is to expand the audience for the NASSS conference to include those who have never attended the NASSS conference or who have not attended for some time. NASSS members are encouraged to invite a +1; this can be a colleague, student, peer, or friend who has never been to NASSS and to invite them to register and participate in the conference. As you are considering organizing a session and/ or submitting an abstract, we encourage you to distribute the announcements and Calls to your networks, and bring to your +1 to Santa Fe!

Monday, April 20, 2015

CFP: Contextualising Positive Organisational Behaviour: The Case of Sport Organisations - Int. J. of Sport Management and Marketing


Special Issue on: "Contextualising Positive Organisational Behaviour: The Case of Sport Organisations"

Guest Editors
Associate Prof. Christos Anagnostopoulos, Molde University College, Norway and University of Central Lancashire, Cyprus
Assistant Prof. Dimitra Papadimitriou, University of Patras, Greece

Nearly two decades ago, Doherty (1998) called for closer attention to be given to human resource management (HRM) issues within the context of sport organisations. More recently, Todd and Kent (2009) offered the theoretical insight that a critical area that distinguishes sporting contexts more than other organisational settings may be the psychology of employees. Although psychology has been criticised as being primarily dedicated to addressing mental illness rather than mental “wellness” (Bakker and Schaufeli, 2008), the seminal work by Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi (2000) placed more emphasis on positive psychological traits, states and behaviours. This “positive psychology” (Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi, 2000) – to which Todd and Kent (2009) implicitly refer – has subsequently had a great effect on the field of organisational behaviour (OB). For example, both Luthans (2002) and Wright (2003) argued that framing research with a positive lens through so-called positive organisational behaviour (POB) should be the way forward for organisational and management scholars.

According to Luthan (2002), POB is “the study and application of positively oriented human resource strengths and psychological capacities that can be measured, developed and effectively managed for performance improvement in the work place” (p. 59). While such an organisation-centred view has its value, Wright (2003) argued that the mission of POB should also encompass the pursuit of employee happiness and health as viable goals in themselves. Bakker and Schaufeli (2008) went even further and drew on the work of Zwetsloot and Pot (2004) to integrate the above-mentioned organisation-centred (Luthan, 2002) and employee-centred (Wright, 2003) views into a “positive business value model of employee health and well-being” (p. 148).

Although more than 3000 articles have been published relating to POB in various contexts (Rothmann and van Zyl, 2013), the sport management scholarly community has failed to explicitly address the matter in its respective context(s). The increase in publications outside the sport industry, however, indicates the need for and impact of positive psychological behaviours within organisations. This special issue seeks to cast a fresh and state-of-the-art eye on how POB shapes and influences the workplace within the sport organisational context. There is still much to learn about how and why POB and a variety of outcomes at work are interlinked, let alone when “there is extensive variability in the scope and size of sport organisations” (Taylor, Doherty and McGraw, 2008, p. 2).

Conceptual, theoretical and empirical works drawing on and engaging with POB are welcome for this issue. We hope that this issue will inspire and encourage scholars to expand their research horizons to investigate employees in flourishing sport organisations. Exploring and/or explaining the applicability/presence of POB in sport organisations is needed to discern (possible) differences highlighted by the sport context, and thus to address the need for theory development whilst acknowledging the various characteristics associated with sport (Chalip, 2006). Indeed, we strongly believe that POB offers a great platform to do what Slack (1998) called for nearly two decades ago: to use sport as a means of extending existing theory.

Subject Coverage

Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Passion at work: harmonious versus obsessive passion in sport organisations
  • Thriving and flourishing at work: what's the score?
  • Resilience: sport executives and team sport organisations
  • Happiness at work: beyond the team's results?
  • Virtuousness in sport organisations
  • Hope and optimism that sport (organisations) can lead to positive social change
  • Employees' emotional competence and customer satisfaction linkages
  • Satisfaction and work performance
  • Organisational commitment in sport charitable organisations
  • Feel-good factor of "mega events": beyond the organisation?



Notes for Prospective Authors
  
Submitted papers should not have been previously published nor be currently under consideration for publication elsewhere. (N.B. Conference papers may only be submitted if the paper has been completely re-written and if appropriate written permissions have been obtained from any copyright holders of the original paper).

All papers are refereed through a peer review process.

All papers must be submitted online. To submit a paper, please read our Submitting articles page.

 Important Dates

Submission of manuscripts: 31 January, 2016

Notification to authors: 31 March, 2016

Final versions due: 31 May, 2016

Thursday, April 16, 2015

JOB: Assistant / Associate Professor - University of North Carolina at Greensboro

The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Department of Kinesiology
Two Faculty Positions in Kinesiology
POSITION NUMBERS: 999399 and 999408

POSITION: Applications are invited for two 9‐month, tenure‐track positions in Kinesiology at the rank of Assistant / Associate Professor.

POSITION DESCRIPTION: We are seeking 2 innovative scholars in Kinesiology with interest and experience in graduate education to take major roles in our online professional EdD program in Kinesiology. The EdD program is a cohort‐ based, interdisciplinary professional degree program in which students move through the program together in learning communities to complete their coursework and dissertation in 4 years http://kin.wp.uncg.edu/edd/. Primary responsibilities include teaching, advising and supervision of dissertations in the EdD program, maintaining an active line of research, and engaging in departmental, professional and university service activities. The successful candidates are also expected to play a leading role in developing and maintaining community within the EdD program.

QUALIFICATIONS: Candidates must have 1) an earned doctorate in Kinesiology or related field, 2) a broad knowledge of Kinesiology and its sub‐disciplines, and 3) active line of scholarship that complements the EdD program.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS: Experience in graduate teaching and thesis/dissertation supervision. Interest or experience with a broad range of scholarly methodologies relevant for applied/action‐oriented scholarship. Experience with online pedagogy and digital literacy/technologies. Experience with program evaluation and evidence‐based pedagogical practices.

START DATE: January 2016 (preferred)

SALARY: Competitive and commensurate with experience and qualifications.

THE DEPARTMENT OF KINESIOLOGY: The Department has 23 full‐time faculty and is one of ten departments or programs in the School of Health and Human Sciences (http://www.uncg.edu/hhs/) at UNCG. The faculty has a strong commitment to curriculum and scholarly diversity, and a particular interest in increasing faculty representation among colleagues from historically under‐represented groups. The department has a history of excellent teaching, scholarship, and professional service, and ranked 15th overall in the most recent (2010) national ranking of doctoral programs in kinesiology. The department (http://www.uncg.edu/kin) offers B.S., M.S., M.S.A.T., and Ph.D. degrees, as well as the online EdD. The on‐line EdD in Kinesiology is the first of its kind in the country, and is supported by the Division of Continual Learning whose expertise in educational technology helps faculty develop and students experience the very best in online education http://dcl.uncg.edu/.

GENERAL INFORMATION: UNCG is one of 17 campuses in the University of North Carolina system with a current enrollment of more than 18,000 students. The campus is located 1 mile from the center of Greensboro, a city of ~270,000. Located in the heart of the North Carolina Piedmont, UNCG and the City of Greensboro take great pride in their family‐ and military‐friendly environments. With its temperate weather and hiking and biking trails, lakes, parks, and greenways located in the city and surrounding counties, Greensboro is an ideal place to work and live.

APPLICATION PROCEDURE: Review of applications will begin Sept. 15 and continue until the position is filled. Applications should include a detailed letter of qualifications, current curriculum vitae, and list of four references including name, position/relationship to applicant, address, e‐mail address, and phone number. Candidates are notified before references are contacted. Applications should be submitted through the UNCG jobsearch system at https://jobsearch.uncg.edu. Questions regarding the position or application process should be sent to Dr. William Karper, (wbkarper@uncg.edu), search committee chair. The University of North Carolina at Greensboro has been and will continue to be committed to equality of employment opportunities and does not discriminate against applicants or employees based on race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or national origin, political affiliation, genetic information, or age. Men, women, and members of all racial and ethnic groups are encouraged to apply. EOE AA/M/F/D/V

Wednesday, April 08, 2015

CFP: Research Methodologies and Sports Scholarship - Sport in Society special issue

Sport in Society 
Special Issue - Call for Papers 
Research Methodologies and Sports Scholarship

James Skinner, Loughborough University, London.
Terry Engelberg, Griffith University, Australia.

To understand the complex nature of sport, innovative and relevant research methodologies are essential. There is no one best research approach: Quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods approaches all have a place and it is vital that sport researchers use designs that are most applicable. The aim of this special issue is to advance our theoretical understanding and practical application of research in sport. We are aware that scholarly research in this field has evolved from various science and business disciplines and therefore we are keen to encourage cross-disciplinary contributions, encompassing a variety of methodologies (such as quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods), whilst keeping a sport focus. This special issue therefore aims to provide examples of a range of research methodologies that can be applied in sport research. We seek submissions that demonstrate the methodological eclecticism that is available to the sport researcher and legitimizes the distinctiveness of sport research perspectives and agendas.

The special issue seeks submissions from researchers across a range of sport disciplines including (but not limited to), sport management, sport sociology, sport philosophy, sport economics, sport psychology, sport politics and sport governance and policy.

When investigating the diverse, complex and changing contemporary field of sport we recognize there is no methodology that meets the needs of all sport. Possible research methodologies therefore include (but are not limited to):
  • Innovative quantitative experimental, correlational and survey research designs 
  • Research paradigms categories such as post-positivism, critical theory, constructivism, and participatory design models. 
  • Mixed method approaches that demonstrate how the sport researcher can merge, integrate, link or embed both separate types of data.
Deadline for submissions 
Submissions are due on or before 1st September 2015 via the S&S online submission system.

All manuscript submissions must adhere to the Sport in Society ‘Guide for Authors’ available at http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/fcss20/current

To ensure that all manuscripts are correctly identified for review in relation to the special issue it is important the authors select ‘Research methodologies and Sports Scholarship’ when they reach the ‘Article Type’ step in the submission process. 

Special Issue Editors Contact Details: 

Professor James Skinner 
Institute for Sport Business 
Loughborough University, London Campus 

Dr Terry Engelberg 
Department of Tourism, Sport and Hotel Management 
Griffith Business School Griffith University, Gold Coast