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The purpose of this paper is to examine how North American professional team owners are engaging in broader urban development projects that have their teams as anchor tenants in new sports facilities, by examining the case of Rogers Arena in Edmonton, Canada.

Approached from a constructionist perspective, the study employed an instrumental case study strategy as it facilitates understanding and description of a particular phenomenon and allows researchers to use the case as a comparative point across other settings (with similar conditions) in which the phenomenon might be present.

Using urban regime theory as a framework, the authors found that in Edmonton, the team owner was able to align his interests with other political and business interests by engaging in a development strategy that increased the vibrancy of Edmonton’s downtown core. As a result, the owner was able to garner support for both the arena and the surrounding development.

The authors argue that this new model of team owner as developer has several implications: on-field performance may only be important insofar as it drives demand for the development; the owner’s focus is on driving revenues and profits from interests outside of the sports facility itself; and the team (and the threat of relocation) is leveraged to gain master developer status for the ownership group.

This paper adds to the understanding of owner interests and how franchise profitability and solvency can be tied to other related business interests controlled by team owners.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how, once a city has made a decision to build a new arena, local stakeholders envision the venue as a leverageable asset to achieve broader development goals through event hosting.

A total of 66 semi-structured interviews were undertaken in 12 cities across Canada. Participants included city employees (parks and recreation, tourism), elected officials (current and former mayors, councilors), arena management, management from the local team (serving as anchor tenant), members of chambers of commerce and local business associations, prominent members of the local business community, and other politicians and relevant stakeholders (members of parliament, bloggers, journalists, educators, and community activists). Interviews were transcribed and subject to coding to identify themes.

Core themes were identified which captured how key stakeholders viewed the arena as an opportunity to leverage other events being targeted and held at the arena. This included: opportunities and benefits of hosting other events; the arena, competitiveness, and competition; partnerships and collaboration; capacity: knowledge and experience; and leveraging challenges.

This study makes several important contributions to the literature. First, it examines sports facilities in smaller cities, a subject more widely studied in larger, “major league” cities. Second, it takes a different approach to understanding leveraging, examining facilities rather than the event that the city is hosting or the franchise that plays in the city. Third, it examines a context where the facility has been built for a sports team, and not for other sport and entertainment events that might be hosted there.

In this article, I address connections between processes at the micro (e.g., negotiation) and macro or contextual levels of analysis. The discussion situates process analysis in the broader settings in which the interactions take place. The first major section shows how various contextual factors may influence micro‐level processes. These factors include events, structures or institutions, and cultures. In the second major section, I consider the ways that small‐group processes may influence the macro‐level context. Societal (organizational, international) changes may result from such processes as those that occur in problem‐solving workshops, educational exchanges, and formal negotiations, including the objectives sought and strategies used, the tone and content of rhetoric displayed, and the formats and procedures devised. The article concludes with a way to conceptualize the linkages between processes and structures at the different levels.

Sports leagues and media providers are constantly seeking new ways of improving the consumption experience of viewers. Several new technologies have arrived in the industry, but many have not proved financially viable. Among these new technologies is tracking technology, used to augment television coverage and for coaching enhancement. This has had mixed results. In this paper I argue that the emergence of Moneyball management practices in sport have created the supervening necessity (Winston, 1998) required to drive demand for player tracking technology in ice hockey. This technology is able to collect the data necessary to implement statistical analyses comparable to those used in professional baseball to cover media enhancement, coaching enhancement and Moneyball management.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the complexity of – and conflicts inherent in – managing sports leagues at both the league and franchise level.

The paper draws on changes to the National Basketball Association's (NBA) amateur entry draft, which has attempted to balance the need to preserve league parity and reduce the incentive for teams to deliberately lose games in order to improve draft position.

The discussion reveals the conflict between league and team goals. In addition, using Oliver's strategic decisions as a framework, the findings also illustrate how sport league commissioners have to balance pressures from both the internal and external environments.

This paper expands our understanding of how leagues manage institutional pressures, and how these pressures impact the team, leagues, and the decision makers involved.

Building on recent research that emphasizes the role of managers as central in the adoption and implementation of management ideas, the purpose of this paper is to explore the reasons why managers may vary in their responses toward these ideas.

Drawing on a cognitive perspective, the research uses a repertory grid approach to analyze survey data from 189 managers.

Rather than stressing only the role of organizational context, the paper indicates the likelihood that more invariant mental models shaped by especially position and disposition play an important role in explaining the way managers view and eventually implement management ideas.

The findings indicate the significance of cognitive factors in explaining managers’ attitudes toward ideas, and advance the understanding of the variety in managers’ responses toward these ideas, particularly in implementation trajectories.

The marketing of alcohol and tobacco products and their related public policy implications have become controversial issues worldwide, due mainly to health‐related issues. Uses a telephone survey methodology to compare attitudes toward Olympic sponsorship by a leading US brewer with general attitudes toward the use of sports sponsorship to promote tobacco products. Results suggest that respondents have significantly different attitudes towards the two product categories and their use of sponsorship, accepting more readily the use of the Olympics to promote beer. Respondents’ self‐interest is also found to significantly affect the level of acceptance for the use of sport to promote alcohol or tobacco products, although in slightly different ways. The findings are discussed in relation to previous research, along with their managerial implications.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the role of culture in international business studies, viewed from the perspective of textbooks in the field.

This paper analyses the separate chapters on the role of culture in 19 survey texts in international business at three levels: factual assertions; social and historical interpretations; and application of general theories.

Although all textbooks in international business emphasize the importance of culture, the survey reveals serious weaknesses at all three levels, including straightforward errors of fact, more subtle errors of interpretation, and serious problems with definitions and application of theories of cultural difference. The weaknesses are strikingly consistent, and the paper examines a range of possible common causes. Imbricated in the professional structures of the field, the authors appear to be under pressure from publishers, they share a US‐centred bias, and they appear professionally isolated.

Parallel to theories of nationalism and some postcolonial theorists, it can be argued that the implicit purpose of the texts is not to engage sympathetically with actual cultural differences, but rather to mould the next generation of American managers into a common pattern, by identifying an exotic cultural Other against which students will form their new identity. One of the consequences is that it does not matter greatly to the authors whether other cultures are presented accurately, or not. In practical terms, however, cultural differences are important and are recognized as such in international business studies, and so there is reason to hope that the texts will be improved.