Practitioner Perspectives on Interorganizational Exchanges in Sport for Development and Peace

Abstract

As the sport for development and peace (SDP) field has grown, nonprofits managers have increasingly struggled to secure sufficient support. Nonprofits must seek resource-providing partners and engage in interorganizational relationships to procure the necessary resources for organizational survival. Thus, nonprofit leaders must navigate complex, power-laden relationships with more powerful resource-providers to ensure their survival. In Chapter 2, I utilize an autoethnographic approach and lean on life course theory and Milner’s positionally framework to analyze periods of transition and subsequent turning points in my lived SDP experiences. Thus, the purpose is to demystify the nuanced difficulties of SDP work with vulnerable reflexivity of difficult lessons learned. The value of the work is in the extent to which current and future global North stakeholders can resonate with, respond to, and be informed by these findings within their own pursuits. In Chapter 3, I used resource dependency theory to empirically explore nonprofits dependence on their environment. I employed a critical approach to interpret the power-laden relationships within SDP from small, nonprofit leaders’ perspectives. The research questions were focused on eliciting a deeper understanding of the nature of being a resource-dependent nonprofit seeking resources from external partners. Study 3 uses resource dependency theory and institutional theory to analyze nonprofit leaders’ strategies in response to the challenging nature of SDP partnerships. In addition, Chapter 4 gains insight from practitioners as to their wants and needs from resource providers to create more optimized SDP collaborations. Implications for global North/South, as well as resource-dependent/affluent stakeholders (e.g., consultants, volunteers, funders, scholars) are provided, with theoretical contributions and future research directions discussed.