‘I found out the hard way’: Micro-political workings in professional football

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Author
Thompson, Andrew
Potrac, Paul
Jones, Robyn
Date
2015Acceptance date
2013-03-10
Type
Article
Publisher
Taylor and Francis
ISSN
1357-3322
1357-3322 (ESSN)
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
This paper examines the micro-political experiences of Adam (a pseudonym), a newly appointed fitness coach at a Football Association Premier League Club, in his search for acceptance by senior colleagues. Data were collected through a series of in-depth, semi-structured interviews, before being subject to a process of inductive analysis. Goffman’s (1959, 1963) writings on impression management and stigma, Ball’s (1987) micro-political perspective, and Garfinkel’s (1967) notion of status degradation are primarily utilised to make sense of Adam’s perceptions and actions. The findings point to the value of developing coaches’ micro-political understandings, and of including their formal facilitation within given professional preparation programmes. Doing so, it is argued, would better equip coaches for the problematic realities of their practice.
Journal/conference proceeding
Sport, Education and Society;
Citation
Thompson, A., Potrac, P. and Jones, R. (2015) '‘I found out the hard way’: micro-political workings in professional football', Sport, Education and Society, 20 (8), pp.976-994
Description
This article was published in Sport, Education and Society in December 2013 (online), available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13573322.2013.862786
Sponsorship
Cardiff Metropolitan University (Grant ID: Cardiff Metropolian (Internal))
Collections
- Sport Research Groups [1090]
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