| This research presents a study of six national gymnastics organisations in terms of their structures and written policies to manage the sport; the countries involved in the study are: Australia, Ecuador, France, Indonesia, Italia and New Zealand. The study focused on the regulations that control four main groups of members of the organisations: administrators, coaches, judges and gymnasts. The research was initiated by two main questions: What is the internal structure of the gymnastics organisations for the different groups? and, Are the gymnastics organisations that achieved better success in the last 10 years, more organised than those that have had lower results?; This study was addressed as a theory building research project in the framework of qualitative methods. The organisations submitted documents and semi-structured interviews with fifty-two (52) participants were conducted, besides group discussions and other activities. Triangulation in the collection of data was used in order to become familiar with six organisations that have similar goals and are located in different countries. However, they share a similar elite sport culture in artistic gymnastics. The presence of some words in different languages is a normal element in this thesis as it contains information from countries with different languages.; In this study, literature from organisational behaviour, sport and law, sport management, and social policies was used to explain the findings. The thesis is presented in eight chapters and an introduction. The appendices are presented with attention to methodology and research findings from the literature of different organisations.; The analysis of the data is presented in three different chapters. One compares the written policies, the others look at the opinions presented by the interviewees. The study of regulations was not complete by just looking at the written policies. The voices of the members of the organisations, who are affected by the policies, are an essential element to understand the complex phenomenon. In each one of these chapters there is a discussion, and later they are summarised and combined with the literature reviewed in a following chapter; This study explores the regulations used by national gymnastics bodies to manage the sport and its effects on the outputs and members. It presents the findings about how the presence of written policies affect the output of the organisations.; It is a case study that attempts to enhance an understanding of the importance of written policies in sport environments, and how they affect the way people work in this type organisation. |
