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The influence of organizational behavior in the sports world.

Luis Alberto Placencio Villalobos

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"Organizational Behavior (OB) is the multidisciplinary study of the employee interactions and the organizational processes that seek to create more efficient and cohesive organizations." (University of Southern Indiana, 2018)Two key words in this phrase are efficient and cohesive. This is exactly what the organization of FC Barcelona was lacking. When the organization changed its president, everything went from successful to only troubles. This shows how a change in the organizational structure could make a drastically change. Problems brought by miscommunication and misbehavior in organization happens even in the sports world.

Bringing it to light organizational behavior is very important to the sports industry. This industry has so many factors that have to be taken into consideration. For example, take a look at a big sports entity such as a football club, they have to have consideration for their players, sponsors, fans, staff members and board of directors. Just imagine how difficult it has to be to keep everyone within the organization happy. Organizational behavior has four elements; people, structure, technology and the external environment. In this article we will indulge in these four elements and how they are implemented in a sports organization.

People

We will start with people; this takes part by figuring out the kind of personality the people in the organization have to see if it fits with the culture and the structure of the organization. When sports clubs hire staff or players they have to see if they fit well into the beliefs and goals of the organization. This ensures the club that everyone is fit to work together and work for the better of the club. This can be noticed for example when a player begins to be egoistic and will not be a great team player, this can cause the team not to be at their best and can also cause problems within the organization. This could have been avoided if the behavior had been overlooked better.

Structure

Next up is structure, within an organization there must always be structure. Structure makes workers know how they have to behave within the organization and it is the framework for the organization. This is how the organizational activities are organized. Structural problems can cause so much trouble within the organization. This could have been seen when Bartomeu became president of FC Barcelona they experienced many structural problems that caused key players wanting to leave. Resulting in the team not being happy and playing bad, within a club this can be considered a big problem.

Technology

Nowadays technology is far too important in our lives and this is also in organization. Organizations have to keep up with social media, new technologies and always analyzing data. Social media within an organization had to be kept up to date to stay in touch with the fans or the customers of the sports organization. They also have to keep up with new technological advancements, thus could make changes in the ways the sport can be seen, for example the newly implemented VAR. Also, there are always new technologies that can make the training of the players better.

External Environment

External factors are things that are outside the organization itself. These factors still can affect the operations of the organization. Organization have to respond or react to these factors to keep the flow of their operations. Within the sports industry there are many external factors. The most important ones are the fanbase satisfaction. A sports club without their fans would be nothing. Other external factors are technological factors, economic factors, political and legal factors, demographic factors, social factors, competitive factors, global factors and ethical factors.

The four elements of organizational behavior explored have let us see in short of how important organizational behavior is within this industry. Organizational behavior makes everything within an organization walk smoothly and sports organizations far often are not seen as the business they are people tend to forget how they are also organizations. I hope this article discusses more about organizational behavior in the sports industry and how it can be seen everywhere.