About the Journal

As a journal community, we offer the following working definitions to further delineate the scope of our medium:

  • Administration: a working structure that combines the creation of policy with the direction of management functions
  • Supervision: a supportive structure of authority and delegation that seeks to empower workers through a culture of learning to confidently make efficient, effective decisions in an accessible, cooperative environment

Mission

Our mission will be advanced by four primary drivers.

1. Phenomenology

JSAS will shift research focus in the academic field of sport management toward a more precise study of distinct phenomena, ideas, and events.

In his pioneering work regarding phenomenology in the field of philosophy, Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) attempted to shift the focus of philosophy away from large-scale theorization toward a more precise study of discrete phenomena, ideas, and events. Subsequently, French phenomenology philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961) once contended that science and too much abstraction had resulted in a philosophical tendency to reduce every phenomenon, every object, and every person to nothing more than collected data. Merleau-Ponty believed that philosophers had a duty to relate things as they were viewed, not as science described them.

The founders of JSAS likewise believe that a distinct lack of congruence exists between academic research and practice in the field of sport management. The founders also believe that this disconnect can be traced to the ambiguous and conflicting goals and expectations of scholarly research, such as:

  • Creation of theoretical versus pragmatic knowledge
  • Use of data-supported versus logic-driven information
  • Use of the scientific method versus case studies
  • Prestige of academic-oriented versus practitioner-oriented journals
  • Pressures of academic tenure versus the need for organizational effectiveness

JSAS seeks to address such conflicts and narrow the gap between the academy and sport properties by evolving research in practically applicable directions.

2. Development of the Scholarly Sport Practitioner

JSAS seeks to be a channel of pragmatic information that encourages practitioners in the sport management field to champion ethics and pioneer innovation by helping create a greater understanding of the applicability of sport management research to their organizations, job duties, and skills.

The Scholarly Sport Practitioner is the needed next-generation evolution in the sport industry's work force. This worker can cause sport organizations to successfully generate management practices that utilize the power of knowledge as the primary capital of the future economic landscape and marketplace. Accordingly, JSAS seeks to supply this worker with meaningful research that builds his/her knowledge capital base for successful organizational and stakeholder management in the sport industry.

3. Development of Social Responsibility in Sport Organizations Stakeholders

JSAS seeks to publish research that will enable sport organizations and stakeholders to better understand and function in their roles within sport, one of society's more prominent, preeminent, pervasive, and powerful social institutions.

The founders of JSAS believe that, as an institution, sport must begin to fully acknowledge and completely embrace its role as a social product, formulate ethical imperatives to improve society, and generate long-term ideals that are good for society.

For too long, sport as an institution has clung to various defenses of aged clinical, value-neutral capitalism and modern advertisement-based refusals to accept role model functions. In postmodern times, however, sport professionals and organizations must imperatively employ knowledge as their power capital in the competition to shape and define the character and meaning of sport.

Instead of a philanthropically-rooted approach, the founders of JSAS believe that sport must take a socially responsible mindset that can best be described as business activism—an approach that seeks to show the world that business can be a powerful, positive, and progressive voice in society, and accordingly manages organizations to do well (functionally) so they can do good (become forces for positive change in the world).

4. Open-Access

JSAS will be a publication of the Middle Tennessee State University Sport Management program in partnership with the University of Michigan Library's Michigan Publishing (which will house the journal) in order to disseminate research knowledge in a format that is readily and globally accessible to scholars, practitioners, students, media, and the public.

In the Internet age, methods of sharing and using academic research are rapidly, fundamentally, and irreversibly changing, bringing about great potential as a result, including faster and wider sharing of journal articles, research data, simulations, syntheses, analyses, and other findings which fuel knowledge and practice advancements.

In scientific fields, journals have long been the binding glue of a multifaceted system of scholarly communication.

Open-access journals not only recognize and preserve the important role of peer review in scholarly communication but help break down or lower access barriers between the basic functions of journals, including:

  • Registration of intellectual property
  • Certification of quality/validity of research
  • Awareness of new research by potential users
  • Archiving of scholarly record for future use
  • Rewarding of scholars

Goals

To fulfill its vision and mission, the Journal of Sport Administration & Supervision will:

  • Apply systems-based thinking and learning approaches to the examination of both classic and new lines of research inquiry in sport to produce a body of knowledge that connects climate, culture, and community to innovation through a greater understanding of the administration and supervision of coaches, sport managers, sport properties, sport organizations, and related stakeholders
  • Obtain the endorsement of elite sport governing bodies/properties, and to utilize the strengths of those organizations to advance the body of knowledge in the sport academy and industry, and to underscore the relevance of its contents, goals, and objectives to practicing sport professionals
  • Utilize its accessibility to foster timeliness of complimentary research and increase the prospect of informed policy decisions by practicing sport professionals
  • Further disseminate the knowledge contained in JSAS through aggressive indexing/listing/profiling of JSAS in relevant databases and publications, as well as through active media relations initiatives

Partnerships

Contact

Benjamin D. Goss, Ed.D.
Editor in Chief
bgoss@jsasonline.org