Books – Aaron CT Smith

FOOTBALL ON THE BRAIN: WHY MINDS LOVE SPORT

More than five billion fans follow versions of football across the world. Football on the Brain explains why football is so important to so many by revealing how the human mind provides a perfect host for the immensely powerful beliefs that accompany football fandom. Football on the Brain argues that minds evolved with an impulsion to create, share and defend certain kinds of beliefs that deliver personal and social benefits. Football comprises the ideal content for minds that need to believe. Fans cling to football-related beliefs because, like a catchy tune, they resonate in the mind’s natural grooves. Football fandom exemplifies the heart of all human aspirations. From terrorist extremism, career progression, weight loss, spiritual commitment, and ideological passion, to love, grief, war, and identity, sporting beliefs guide our lives and to a great extent, determine our behaviour, satisfaction and happiness. Through a cognitive account, Football on the Brain explains how minds elevate certain forms of belief to sovereignty, exposing the mechanisms driving football fanaticism.

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WADA: A MULTI-LEVEL LEGITIMACY ANALYSIS

Examining the legitimacy of the World Anti-Doping Agency, this book offers a critical analysis of the anti-doping system and the social and behavioural processes that shape policy, asking why the current system is failing. Featuring in-depth, contemporary case studies from around the world, including the whereabouts system; Lance Armstrong; therapeutic use exemptions; the Essendon Bombers; recreational drugs policy; and the Russian Olympic doping programme, this is the first text to analyse empirically how the legitimacy of WADA is constructed, contested and managed in the field of anti-doping, and the consequent impact this has on anti-doping. The book discusses how legitimacy processes have shaped the current regulatory environment and offers structural and governance reforms to improve anti-doping policy design and implementation.

Philosophies of Organizational Change

This revised and extended second edition evaluates the diverse approaches to organizational change that have defined the field. Explaining the assumptions and implications that accompany these diverse philosophies, this book demystifies the complexities of conflicting perspectives and delivers valuable insights into the research and practice of organizational change. Philosophies of Organizational Change employs a critical analysis of scholarly writings that have shaped the evolution of alternative perspectives on change. By uncovering the deep assumptions associated with organizational change, the book supplies readers with a comprehensive analytical toolkit with which to pursue change in an unprecedented era of organizational disruption.

Qualitative Research in Sport Management

Good qualitative research can help sport management researchers and industry professionals solve difficult problems and better understand their organisations, stakeholders and performance. Now in a fully revised and extended new edition, this book is a user-friendly introduction to qualitative methods in sport management. Covering the full research process from research planning to reporting results, this edition includes expanded coverage of cutting-edge areas including digital and social media research, critical realism and social network analysis.

SPORT BRANDING INSIGHTS

In a sporting world dominated by media and money, an understanding of sport branding is an essential skill for any sport manager. The book explains how a sport brand goes beyond just an identifying badge that helps sport consumers recognise a product or an organisation. It reveals how a brand becomes linked with consumers’ opinions and perceptions of a sport product and the organisation that owns it. Readers will learn how to create a powerful brand that has both recognition in the market and strong associated imagery, by imbuing it with a spirit of the past through appeals to tradition, by endowing it with human qualities of emotionality, thought, and volition, and through the use of characters, colours, texts, and symbols. It also provides a brief guide to the new domains of digital sport branding and social media.

Fostering Innovative Cultures in Sport

Analysing the trends that are emerging in sport enterprises, such as advancements in technology and social media, Fostering Innovative Cultures in Sport tackles the issue of how to create new opportunities in such a changing industry. Providing valuable reading for sports business scholars, this book draws on examples from inventive companies as well as inspirational sports leaders and illustrates the various drivers behind innovation. Addressing the need for a culture of innovation within sports enterprises, the authors reveal sustainable ways for companies to stay ahead of the game in an increasingly competitive global sport market.

Performance and Image Enhancing Drugs and Substances

In the pursuit of more muscle, enhanced strength, sustained endurance and idealised physiques, an increasing number of elite athletes, recreational sport enthusiasts and body-conscious gym-users are turning to performance and image enhancing drugs and substances (PIEDS). In many instances, such use occurs with little regard for the health, social and economic consequences. This book presents a nuanced, evidence-based examination of PIEDS. It provides a classification of PIEDS types, physical impacts, rates of use, user profiles, legal and sporting status, and remedial program interventions, covering both elite and recreational use. It offers the perfect guide to assist students, government policy makers and sport managers in understanding the complex issues surrounding PIEDS consumption

Sport Management

Now available in a fully revised and updated fifth edition, Sport Management: Principles and Applications tells you everything you need to know about the contemporary sport industry. Covering both the professional and nonprofit sectors, it focuses on core management principles and their application in a sporting context. The book contains useful teaching features throughout, and the fifth edition includes expanded coverage of sport for development, analytics, monitoring and evaluation, ethics, risk management, sport and health, social media, sustainability, and other contemporary management issues. The publication is complemented by a companion website offering additional resources for students and instructors.

Reinventing Innovation

Based on research findings and detailed, original cases, this book charts the new innovation imperative, where organizations must deliver on dual goals: an efficient return on current operations, and a burgeoning pipeline of new products. It argues that the two pursuits cannot be achieved through a bland compromise, or by switching priorities back and forth. Only a ‘dual’ organization capable of amplifying the tension can optimize efficiency while seeding innovation. Reinventing Innovation examines the nature of dual organizing, presents a series of in-depth cases to reveal its principles, and explains how to fortify organizations with ‘ambidexterity’ capabilities. Ideal for tertiary students, academics, and practitioners, Reinventing Innovation contains a rich balance of theoretical principles, case insights, and practical guidance.

Brand fans

Combining the latest branding research with a diverse range of powerful case examples, this book reveals the cutting edge techniques of value co-creation, personalisation and customer engagement employed by sport’s leading brands. Based on the transferable lessons that emanate from these practices, Brand Fans explores and illuminates how firms can cultivate connected fans and lifelong advocates, while building brand equity exponentially in the process. This is a book that will appeal to scholars and practitioners alike, as well as anyone fascinated by modern marketing, consumer relationships and branding.

Cognitive Mechanisms of Belief Change

Belief change lies at the heart of all human aspirations. From career progression, weight loss, spiritual commitment, and ideological passion, to love, grief, war, identity, and sport, beliefs guide our lives and to a great extent, determine our success, satisfaction and happiness. Cognitive Mechanisms of Belief Change is relevant to anyone interested in the machinations of how this occurs. It explains how certain ideas and concepts steal a place in the mind because they latch on to hardwired ways of thinking, experiencing, and behaving. Concepts throw light upon the mind’s desires, which in turn casts a kaleidoscope of silhouettes against the walls of thought, with those taking distinct shape forging the outlines for beliefs to inhabit. Beliefs infiltrate our minds, and this book shows how they arrive and change in ways critical to our sense of meaning and identity.

Introduction to Sport Marketing

Introduction to Sport Marketing is a highly accessible text that presents the key principles and tools of sport marketing. It combines clear explanations with case studies, exercises, and illustrations, highlighting the techniques applicable to the non-profit, professional, and government sectors of sport. In addition to addressing traditional sport marketing concepts, the text also offers a unique chapter on cutting edge ideas and technologies in new media sport marketing. Written for readers new to sport marketing or at the start of their careers, the text equips the reader with a strong knowledge basis.

Thinking about Religion

Thinking about Religion presents a case for an inter-disciplinary science of religion, proposing that religion operates as a kind of psychological and social placebo effect. Religious belief combines thought, feeling and experience in a way that leverages the natural tendency of the mind to latch on to socially and personally useful concepts. This effect delivers tangible benefits because religious concepts and practice feed the mind’s natural drive to cling to strong beliefs. At the same time, beliefs are reinforced by favourable emotional responses. Thinking about Religion explains how these elements work together to make religious belief such a powerful placebo effect. Belief is the currency of thought, and religious belief offers a powerful return on investment. Religious activity concentrates the mind’s capacity to hold ideas that effectively galvanize groups and cultivate belonging

Rethinking Drug Use in Sport

Drug free sport is an unattainable aspiration. In this critical, paradigm-shifting reappraisal of contemporary drug policy in sport, Bob Stewart and Aaron Smith argue that drug use in sport is an inexorable consequence of the nature, structure and culture of sport itself. By de-mythologising and de-moralising the assumptions that prop up current drug management controls, and re-emphasising the importance of the long-term well being and civil rights of the athlete, they offer a powerful argument for creating a legitimate space for drug use in sport. Highlighting the irresolvable tension between the zero-tolerance model and the harm-reduction approach, the authors argue that a nuanced and progressive approach is required in order to safeguard and protect the health, social liberty and best interests of athletes and sports people, as well as the value of sport itself.

Organizational Culture and Identity

This book reveals the development, expression and potency of organizational culture and identity. With an emphasis on diagnosing culture and its underlying beliefs and assumptions, the book also shows how sport cultures can be reinvented, rebuilt and redesigned so that they create a productive, high performance organizational environment. This book is for readers who want to destroy the tyranny of tradition that keeps organizations in the managerial dark-ages, and transform clubs, associations, agencies and businesses into powerful collective identities

Managing Organisational Change

The complexities of change in today’s business environment can be overwhelming for organisations, irrespective of their operating motives and resources. The pressures of deregulation, privatisation, tax change, social renewal and globalisation have compelled organisations to change regularly in order to remain competitive. Managing Organisational Change navigates the minefield of acronyms, catchphrases, theories and principles that are associated with change management, weaving together the research, models and practical examples that shape change management studies. It explains basic concepts and theoretical approaches and their practical application to organisations.

20 Questions to Ask and Alien

This book began with the simple premise that we are defined by the questions we ask. It sets up a hypothetical meeting between humans and an advanced, extraterrestrial species, and asks us to imagine what questions we would ask them. What would we most want to know from a species who could communicate with us? Not only does author Aaron Smith contemplate our likely questions, he also speculates on the possible answers we might receive. He does this by drawing on the latest advances in scientific research emerging out of disciplines ranging from cosmology to biology, and from anthropology to psychology. 20 Questions to Ask and Alien explores the ‘big’ questions of life and science, providing a ‘snapshot’ of our civilisation, and a sharp picture of the human need to know.

Managing Sport Facilities and Major Events

From corporate boxes to sprinklers, food outlets to toilets, first aid to media, facility and event managers are accountable for the success of each sporting event. Managing Sport Facilities and Major Events explains how to get the job done from a management perspective. With detailed international case studies in each chapter, the book offers a systematic guide to the practical management issues and technical problems that sport managers address on the job

Business Leadership and the Lessons from Sport

Sport represents a very intense and dynamic form of competition for individuals and for teams. Many of the themes of business, including leadership, teamworking, mentoring and coaching, strategy, innovation, etc. occur in sport in a very acute and focused way and will determine success or failure. With the use of compelling international examples the authors show how sport provides crucial leadership lessons for business

The Sport Business Future

The Sport Business Future examines the impact of powerful changes on the business of sport, including human-computer interfaces, gene therapy and artificial intelligence. It focuses upon probable future trends, including the athlete of the future, corporate sport citizenship and environmentally friendly ‘green’ sport. The Sport Business Future , written by experts in the area, is a contentious but influential contribution to debates about sport, business and society in the future.

Australian Sport – Better by Design?

Australians have invested an enormous amount of emotional and physical capital in their sporting systems and structures. While Australian sport has many times been dissected from a historical and cultural perspective, there is little detailed analysis of sport’s relationship with government. The book focuses on sport policy, and examines the ways in which government has affected the development of Australian sport since 1919. The text identifies the political, economic and cultural context in which policies were set, and examines critical policy shifts. The book also provides a strong theoretical foundation by first discussing the underlying principles of policy formulation, and second, the rationale for government intervention in national sport.

Sport Business in the Global Marketplace

Sport has become big business. This book takes a global look at the business of sport focusing upon the structure of the sport industry, commercialisation of sport, sport marketing, franchising, television and other rights and the rise of the global super athletes and teams. This is positioned in a global political and economic context and in the framework of global uncertainties and scenarios.

Sports Management

Sport operates in an increasingly professional environment, in which hundreds of leisure pursuits are competing for the time and money of participants and sponsors. Sports Management: A Guide to Professional Practice offers a model of sports management that casts the principles of professionalism upon the ever expanding shores of sport and leisure administration, creating organisations able to respond to the demands of contemporary sport. Developed as a text for use by students in sports administration courses, or as a reference for practicing sports administrators, Sports Management makes extensive use of case studies, checklists, worksheets, tables, diagrams and charts.