| dc.description.abstract | Within contemporary institutions of higher education, bureaucracy is still a common practice. Likewise, student development is still a consistent outcome for those carrying out work in student affairs. Conflict arises because bureaucracy is a rational process that seeks to normalize the actions carried out within an organization, while student development is an irrational process that requires individualized and creative approaches from student affairs professionals. This presents a problem regarding the ability of student affairs to achieve its student development goals. Thus, the purpose of this project was to understand how the structure, implementation, and interaction of club sport programs and individual sport clubs impact student development outcomes for sport club participants.
Using an embedded case study design, in-depth individual interviews were conducted with professional staff members, graduate assistants and sport club athletes to gain a comprehensive understanding of their perspectives on features of organizational structure in sport environments and their sport club experiences. Findings revealed tensions that emerged from loosely coupled interactions between the varied, informal structures of individual sport clubs and the formalized, bureaucratic hierarchical systems within which they fall. It appears that sport club officers are the primary operators in the overlapping space between their clubs and universities’ administrative substructures in an effort to shield sport club athletes from the administrative burden associated with bureaucracy and negotiate the bureaucratic influence of those substructures on the more laissez-faire approach adopted by many of the clubs. | en |
