The relationship between organisational structure and marketing success: an analysis of Australian Rules Football clubs

Abstract

As professional football clubs compete in increasingly equalised environment, there is a growing need to concentrate on organisational capabilities to achieve superior performance. One area of organisational performance that has been shown to be increasingly relevant for sporting clubs is marketing success. Marketing success in this context is defined as the achievement of stakeholder satisfaction and many professional sporting clubs are beginning to understand that this cannot be achieved simply by winning games. Marketing success literature is rich with many factors that have been shown to be relevant; however this study looks at the impact of organizational structure as the main area of focus. Investigations into the relationship between structure and stakeholder satisfaction are scarce, specifically in relation to professional sporting organisations. Yet anecdotal evidence from sporting club CEOs suggests that this issue is of the utmost importance for many current sporting organizations and impacts significantly upon executive decisions. This paper reports the findings of an exploratory study that examines the organisational structures of three professional Australian Rules Football clubs and investigates how these organisational structures impact upon the club's ability to satisfy its key stakeholders and thereby achieve marketing success. Results indicate that most of these clubs have chosen to adopt a board of governance model in which the board sets direction and strategy for the club but is not involved in day to day operations or decision making. Results suggest that the organisational structure chosen impacts not only on how efficiently resources are allocated to the achievement of stakeholder satisfaction, but also on the accurate identification and acknowledgement of those key stakeholders