SPT 501: Research Methods - Literature Review on Ethics in Sports

This literature review explores the relationship between business and sports, highlighting the ethical issues that arise in contemporary sports management. It discusses the impact of business on sports, leading to ethical concerns such as wage disparities for student-athletes and the prioritization of revenue generation over sportsmanship. The review also examines the connection between governance, business ethics, and sports management, emphasizing how core values and governance bodies maintain the integrity of sports by preventing scandals and promoting transparency. Furthermore, it addresses the occurrence of conflicts of interest in sports management, including issues like match-fixing, doping, and corruption, which erode trust and damage the reputation of sports. The review cites various sources to support these arguments and provide a comprehensive overview of the ethical landscape in sports management.

Running head: RESEARCH METHODS SPORTS MANAGEMENT MOD 3
Research Methods Sports Management Mod 3
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Table of Contents
Literature review..............................................................................................................................3
Relationship between business and sport increased the ethical issues and affecting
contemporary sport management.................................................................................................3
Relationship between governance, business ethics and sport management.................................3
Occurrence of conflict of interest related to sport management..................................................4
References........................................................................................................................................4

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Literature review
Relationship between business and sport increased the ethical issues and affecting
contemporary sport management
According to Van der Wagen & White (2018), the relationship between sports activities
and businesses associated with it have created complexities and affected the sports management,
thereby giving rise to major ethical issues that can affect the business scenario negatively. As
stated by Lewis-Beck, Bryman & Liao (2003), the social science research methods should be
deduced following the literature review of the source concerned with the relationship among
business management and sports, which has given rise to multiple ethical issues and affected the
contemporary sports management too. It has been found that the sports activities and events are
organized to promote business and often the athletes and popular sports persons are linked to
endorse the brand, thereby giving a clear scope to enhance the brand name, image and reputation
for making more products and services available in the market (Lewis-Beck, Bryman & Liao
2013). According to Stewart et al. (2018), there are ethical issues that have arisen due to the lack
of providing the right wages and benefits to the student sports athletes and due to which, there
has been shift from contemporary sports to revenue generation in business. This has often
deteriorated the quality of sports events and activities and created complexities for managing the
sports activities properly and with ease with the ethical aspects taken into consideration. The
sports activities, nowadays, are more of a business than just a proper game only because of the
immense competition in sports and every sports persons are quite good (Van der Wagen &
White, 2018). The corruption along with subset doping have affected the professional sports and
have threatened the sports management and created ethical concerns too such as violating the

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rules, regulations and not following the principles of sports along with bringing bad reputation in
name of sports too.
Relationship between governance, business ethics and sport management
There is relationship between the corporate governance, business ethics and sports
management, because sports governance and business ethics shape up the way core values are
managed to maintain the spirit of sports. This also helps in managing the roles of sports
governing bodies and allows the values embedded in those to protect the integrity of sports as
well. Stewart et al. (2018) stated that the core values are set with the management of sports
governance, which has assisted in creating shared values and made people acknowledged about
the social skills, furthermore defined the sports activities as part of human rights. This ensured
that each and every individual have the right and possibility to practice sports and there must not
be any sort of discrimination thereabout (Stewart et al., 2018). Tomlinson (2014) stated that the
sporting Governance bodies have also made sure to prevent any kinds of scandals associated
with the unethical sports activities including corruption, match fixing, etc. to prevent integrity
risks as much as possible. The relationship between Sports Governance and Business ethics have
further contributed to the promoting of good sports by creating transparency and openness, while
at the same time, created awareness about the ethical risks that might be experienced (Tomlinson
2014). To overcome this, the \Sports management authorities have abided by the laws, rules and
regulations set by the Sports Governing bodies and made sure to provide necessary training to
the athletes, sports persons, sports officials and referees to reduce the scopes for ethical risks and
maintained integrity and ethical business aligned with sports management perfectly.

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Occurrence of conflict of interest related to sport management
The occurrence of conflicts of interest is related to the sports management and it could be
because of match fixing, corruption and doping as well. According to Henry (2013), there have
been multiple cases of doping that affected the competition and hindered the management of
trust in sports activities, furthermore contributed to corruption of the entire sports system.
Various implications suggested that the approaches used to make the doping decisions and the
athletes were also driven by complex cases of cost benefit analysis, issues related to reputation,
spillover effects along with social contagion too (Henry, 2013). Doping has been considered as
harmful as it has affected the health of sports persons negatively and provided the doped athletes
with an unfair advantage in sports, which are beyond the ethical obligations whereas the
reputation of sports is also destroyed. Bryan et al. (2016) argued that the conflicts of interest are
also related to the sports management because it has affected a diverse group of people and
created potential for conflicts of interest to arise furthermore. There are also cases of match
fixing where the athletes were provided with incentives and other monetary benefits to do
something wrong and violate the game rules to change the entire game scenario (Bryan et al.,
2016). The increased media and public attention have created greater awareness of conflicts of
interest situations to give spot light on the ethical issues that have arisen and make sure not to
commit those blunders again.

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References
Bryan, M. A., Rowhani-Rahbar, A., Comstock, R. D., & Rivara, F. (2016). Sports-and
recreation-related concussions in US youth. Pediatrics, 138(1), e20154635.
Henry, I. (2013). Transnational and comparative research in sport: Globalisation, governance
and sport policy. Routledge.
Lewis-Beck, M., Bryman, A. E., & Liao, T. F. (2003). The Sage encyclopedia of social science
research methods. Sage Publications.
Stewart, B., Nicholson, M., Smith, A. C., & Hoye, R. (2018). Sport management: principles and
applications. Routledge.
Tomlinson, A. (2014). The supreme leader sails on: Leadership, ethics and governance in FIFA.
Sport in Society, 17(9), 1155-1169.
Van der Wagen, L., & White, L. (2018). Event management: For tourism, cultural, business and
sporting events. Cengage AU.