PtG Article 15.02.2013

New university studentship will make a governance audit of sports organisations

Loughborough University has announced that a new Graduate School Studentship will look closer into the governance of selected sports governing bodies. The research will add to the theoretical debates on the development and implementation of governance processes in international sports organisations.

The project is an offshoot of Play the Game’s EU project ‘Action for Good Governance in International Sports Organisations’(AGGIS), which has been carried out in cooperation with the European Journalism Centre and six European universities including Loughborough University. 

The studentship project will focus its research on the different models for measuring levels of good governance. Researchers will review and compare governance measuring models and assess their validity, reliability and overall usefulness. 

One of the models that the researchers will examine is the ‘Sports Governance Observer’, a tool developed as a part of the AGGIS project that can be used to measure transparency, democracy and accountability in international sports organisations. The tool will be revealed at a seminar in Brussels on 8 April 2013

Professors Barrie Houlihan and Borja Garcia of Loughborough University have issued a call for potential candidates that might be interested in applying for the studentship, which has the provisional title ‘A governance audit of sports organisations’. This is only a first call in order for the professors to identify candidates that feel will have a chance in the university-wide selection process and can be put forward by them to the University selection committee.

Interested candidates can contact Dr. Borja Garcia before 20 February, and selected candidates will be invited to apply for the studentship, which will then be presented to the corresponding committee that awards the studentship. The Graduate School Studentship is a competitive process and it is open to the whole university.