Perceived Support and Women's Intentions to Stay at a Sport Organization
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12018 |
| Date | 01 July 2014 |
| Author | Jennifer R. Spoor,Russell Hoye |
| Published date | 01 July 2014 |
Perceived Support and Women’s Intentions
to Stay at a Sport Organization
Jennifer R. Spoor and Russell Hoye
La Trobe Business School, Department of Management, La Trobe University, Bundoora VIC 3086,
Australia
Corresponding author email: j.spoor@latrobe.edu.au
Women remain underrepresented in upper management within sport organizations and
more broadly. This research examines organizational factors that may affect women’s
(and men’s) likelihood of remaining with their sport organization, which would presum-
ably affect their willingness and ability to step into leadership roles. The research
examines the effects of equity human resource management practices, top management
support for gender equity and gender-related barriers on organizational commitment and
intent to stay with their sport organization, as well as whether changes in perceived
organizational support would mediate the relationships. Results from a survey of current
employees in Australian sport organizations generally support the hypotheses. Perceived
top management support for gender equity is a strong and consistent predictor of
outcomes, and the effect is mediated by perceived organizational support. Implications
for top management’s role in implementing gender equity practices are discussed.
Introduction
Women are underrepresented in upper-level man-
agement and leadership roles in a range of indus-
tries, including sport organizations in Australia
(Broderick, 2010) and internationally (Sydney
Scoreboard, 2012). Although statistics on the
extent to which women leave sport organizations
prior to reaching leadership positions is not
readily available, women’s underrepresentation at
high levels is starkly evident. For example, women
occupy only about 20% of positions on the boards
of Australian National Sport Organizations and
nearly one-fifth of the boards have no women
members (Sydney Scoreboard, 2012). Factors
that affect retention of women in other industries
probably play a similar role in sport organiza-
tions, though sport has been noted as having a
hyper-masculine and hegemonic culture that mar-
ginalizes women and minority groups (Anderson,
2009; McKay, 1994; Shaw and Slack, 2002), such
that women have difficulty obtaining and effec-
tively functioning in sport leadership positions
(Pfister and Radtke, 2006; Sibson, 2010). Given
sport’s high visibility in mainstream culture
(Wolfe et al., 2005), increased gender equity in
sport leadership may affect practices in other
industries, thus it seems imperative to understand
the factors that affect women’s representation in
sport leadership. We believe that one part of
understanding women’s ability to step into sport
leadership roles is identifying the factors that
affect whether they choose to stay or leave a sport
organization (i.e. voluntary turnover).
We conducted a survey to examine patterns in
how two facilitating conditions, human resource
management (HRM) practices and top manage-
ment support for gender equity, as well as the
negative factor of gender-related barriers in the
organization, affect the psychological likelihood
of turnover, measured via organizational commit-
ment and intention to stay. The research also
examines the extent to which these relationships
are mediated by changes in perceived organiza-
tional support (POS). The theoretical rationale
and hypotheses focus on the consequences of
these factors for women in sport organizations,
though we note that men play a large role in
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British Journal of Management, Vol. 25, 407–424 (2014)
DOI: 10.1111/1467-8551.12018
© 2013 The Author(s)
British Journal of Management © 2013 British Academy of Management. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd,
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA, 02148, USA.
improving gender relations in sport. Thus, we
included a sample of male participants to explore
similarities and differences in how gender equity
practices affect women and men’s organizational
outcomes.
Theoretical rationale: Organizational support and
social identity
We draw on organizational support theory
(Eisenberger et al., 1986) and social identity
theory (Tajfel, 1978) to examine organizational
factors that contribute to women’s organizational
commitment and intentions to quit the organiza-
tion, two of the strongest and most consistent
predictors of actual turnover (Griffeth, Hom and
Gaertner, 2000). Organizational commitment and
intentions to quit are negatively correlated (Tett
and Meyer, 1993) and contribute to a psychologi-
cal state of readiness to stay with or leave the
organization, although we note that turnover is a
complex process (Hom and Kinicki, 2001; Lee
and Mitchell, 1994). Organizational commitment
refers to a psychological state that binds employ-
ees to an organization (Allen and Meyer, 1990).
While organizational commitment is multidimen-
sional, the current research focuses on affective
commitment, or an employee’s emotional attach-
ment and bond to the organization, because affec-
tive commitment tends to have a stronger and
more stable relationship with turnover compared
with other dimensions of commitment (e.g.
Somers, 1995). Turnover intentions are more cog-
nitive in nature and reflect wilful and conscious
deliberations about leaving the organization and
are usually measured in reference to intention to
quit within a specified timeframe (Hoye et al.,
2008; Tett and Meyer, 1993). For parsimony in
explaining the proposed relationships, we concep-
tualize these intentions in a positive form and thus
refer to intentions to stay with the sport organi-
zation in the future.
We propose that women’s organizational com-
mitment and intentions to stay are affected by
cues that their sport organization supports and
cares for women. We examined the implementa-
tion of human resource practices for gender
equity, top management support for gender
equity, and gender-related barriers as three
organizational cues of the extent to which organi-
zations support and value women. Organizational
support theory (Eisenberger et al., 1986; Rhoades
and Eisenberger, 2002) posits that employees
modify their commitment and contributions to
their organization based on perceptions of how
the organization and its representatives (e.g.
supervisors, co-workers) treat them. The psycho-
logical mechanism through which this change
occurs is POS, which is a global perception of
whether the organization cares for employees,
values their contributions, can be trusted to
provide necessary resources, and will look after
their well-being.
Perceived organizational support is based on
perceptions of an exchange relationship between
employees and the organization. Thus, employees
infer that the organization’s positive treatment of
them reflects the level of the organization’s
support and, in return, employees increase their
positive intentions and behaviour toward the
organization. Thus, POS serves as a mediator
between perceptions of organizational treatment
and employee behaviour (Moideenkutty et al.,
2001; Stinglhamber, De Cremer and Mercken,
2006). Research suggests that POS is shaped by
factors linked to HRM (Allen, Shore and
Griffeth, 2003; Shore and Shore, 1995), including
the fairness of policies and the opportunities that
the organization provides, though fairness is con-
sistently one of the strongest predictors of POS
(Rhoades and Eisenberger, 2002). In terms of out-
comes, POS predicts increases in organizational
commitment (especially affective or emotional
ties) and decreases in withdrawal behaviours
(Allen, Shore and Griffeth, 2003; Farmer and
Fedor, 1999; Ng and Sorensen, 2008; Rhoades
and Eisenberger, 2002).
In sport, POS has been linked to reduced stress
and increased satisfaction among coaches (Dixon
and Sagas, 2007). Similarly, Rocha and
Chelladurai (2011) found that POS predicted
greater affective commitment among university
coaches in the US. Support from the organization
also played a key role in determining decisions to
stay in a volunteer coaching role within Austral-
ian sport clubs (Rundle-Thiele and Auld, 2009).
More indirectly, research has linked fair and just
treatment within sport organizations to positive
outcomes such as retention and satisfaction
(Mahony et al., 2010), and fair treatment is
related to greater POS among employees in sport
organizations (Jordan, Turner and Pack, 2009).
While POS is the variable through which we
believe organizational factors influence commit-
408 J. R. Spoor and R. Hoye
© 2013 The Author(s)
British Journal of Management © 2013 British Academy of Management.
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