Dr Alana Thomson

Research question: Governments often launch high profile and expensive bids to host large-scale sporting events to promote economic development. However, many studies have called into question the economic benefits of these events for host communities and businesses. This study examines the perceptions of host city businesses and their decision-making in relation to event leveraging, using the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games as a case study. Research methods: Using in-depth interviews, a purposive study of 38 business professionals and experts based in the host city of the Gold Coast were conducted. Example mass media, social media, documents, and personal communications materials are presented to illustrate the messaging that businesses were exposed to. Data were analysed using an inductive thematic content approach through the software NVivo. Results and findings: This study confirms that event-related information is vital for business leveraging behaviour. The data illustrated that local firms were at a point of information asymmetry between official forecasted information and their actual in-time experience. As businesses sought out information to inform their business decision-making, they found incomplete and inaccurate information which impacted their success in event leveraging decisions. Implications: Our contribution to knowledge and practice is to propose that event mis/information that is often associated with large-scale sporting events is problematic for business planning and decision making. In applying signalling theory, we discern how official event messaging influences business performance, making an important contribution by highlighting that this mismanagement of official event messaging by event officials presents a critical inhibitor for event leveraging decisions.

Introduction: Residential aged care (RAC) represents a fast-growing sector within Australia's health care system and is characterized by high levels of workplace injury. To better understand this injury problem, this study investigated key informant perspectives concerning sector occupational health and safety (OHS) focused on key issues associated with the risk of worker injury. Method: Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with nine key informants representing (OHS) specialists, healthcare employers, regulators, worker association representatives, and academic researchers in OHS or healthcare. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and analyzed using thematic analysis. Results: This study identified six themes on OHS within RAC including (i) the physical and emotional nature of the work, (ii) casualization of employment, (iii) prioritization, (iv) workforce profile, (v) OHS role construction, and (vi) clinical standards. The study highlighted differences in OHS roles between RAC and other safety-critical sectors regarding governance and management of OHS. The key informants identified a propensity within RAC to downplay or disregard worker OHS issues justified through prioritizing resident safety. Further, neither OHS professional nor institutional logics are prominent in RAC leadership and decision-making where the emphasis is placed on mandatory standards to maintain funding purposes. Several recommendations are made to address identified issues.

Women's professional sport has grown over the last decade and so has academic scholarship investigating it. It is timely to review and consolidate extant scholarship to identify patterns and gaps in research and future directions for research to support continued advancement in women's professional sport knowledge and practice. This paper presents a systematic quantitative literature review (SQLR) of 57 academic peer-reviewed journal articles researching women's professional sport leagues and published between 2000 and 2019. We provide bibliographic findings, extend the typical SQLR approach and provide an inductive thematic analysis of article findings to synthesise the knowledge base present in the extant research. Based on our SQLR findings, we highlight four key research directions, including the need for (1) diversity in inquiry and reflexivity by researchers, (2) innovative and enabling theories and conceptual frameworks, (3) transdisciplinary research approaches and (4) sustainable business models for women's professional sport. We emphasise that to advance our theoretical understandings and sport management practices in women's professional sport, academics must commit to exploring women's sport in new and different ways, to achieve new and different knowledge and outcomes.

Sport event studies have demonstrated that relevant stakeholders must share objectives and coordinate efforts to leverage a large-scale sport event to secure positive legacies. However, the challenging and complex task of collaboration between networks of diverse organizational stakeholders to secure legacies has received little scholarly attention. In this conceptual paper, the authors explore, through a political economy lens, differences between the political economies of sports and sport events pertaining to mass sport participation legacies. The authors focus on the mesolevel and consider how divergences in political economy elements¿structure and context, stakeholders and ideas/incentives, and bargaining processes¿influence the likelihood of mass sport participation legacies from large-scale sport events. The authors suggest a need for event legacy stakeholders to engage more meaningfully with the complexities surrounding securing mass sport participation legacies. In addition, they provide pragmatic, actionable implications for policy and practice to assist stakeholders in addressing the challenges they face to maximize legacy outcomes.

Delivering community-based benefits is oftentimes cited to justify the high costs associated with hosting large-scale events. The current research is embedded in positive psychology to examine how an event impacts host community members' PERMA domains, reflected through positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment. Adopting a longitudinal approach, the authors interviewed 15 host community members before and after a large-scale sport event to determine if and how the event impacted their well-being. The findings uncovered evidence that the event activated positive emotions, relationships, and meaning across both phases, and evidence of accomplishment within the postevent phase. The findings contribute to the knowledge by examining the links between large-scale sport events and well-being throughout the event lifecycle. This research forwards implications for event bidding committees, event organizers, and host community officials to maximize community well-being through hosting large-scale events and to help justify associated expenses from a social¿psychological perspective.

Given the rising global use of corporate social responsibility (CSR) by professional sport organisations, this paper acts to consolidate the state of scholarly research using a systematic quantitative literature review. Our aim was to critically analyse the literature on CSR and professional sport organisations and in doing so ask, how is the global research at the nexus of sport and CSR poised to deliver social good? Our findings indicate the presence of variability in approaches to investigating CSR in professional sport, and the lack of discrete reporting of target audiences and initiatives evidenced across our sample. We suggest there is potential to learn from other disciplinary approaches to CSR research and to push towards conceptual clarity. Finally, sport organisations can lever sports' unique qualities to deliver, engage and unite people across a range of boundaries, and to promote and create social value which is even more important as we navigate the post-COVID-19 environment of uncertainty and resource constraints.

The potential to realise social legacies through hosting large-scale sport events has gained saliency in policy and academic contexts over the last decade. However, social legacies, such as enhanced civic pride, social inclusion, civic engagement, and quality of life remain largely under researched. This article presents findings from a systematic quantitative literature review of academic articles which empirically investigated social legacies and were published between 2000 and 2016. Seventy-seven articles were examined to find patterns and gaps in the research. Our findings show 34 social legacy types have been examined empirically. However, empirical research on social legacies comes from a limited number of geographic contexts, and the theories and methods employed to research such legacies are also limited, suggesting opportunities for innovation in future research designs. We highlight a role for leisure studies to contribute to richer understanding of social legacies. We also call for greater intentionality by researchers to consider what constitutes social legacy and more meaningful and unique ways to research social legacies and inform practice.

Bids for large-scale sporting events and the accompanying political rhetoric typically include promises of economic development and gains for host business communities over the short and long term. Although conceptual models for economic leverage of large-scale sport events have been developed, our knowledge of the practical experiences of private enterprise converting opportunities presented by large-scale sport events is limited. In this article, the authors address this gap through a case study of the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games. The article investigates the opportunities and challenges perceived by private enterprises across the host city and explores the implementation of existing strategies to leverage benefits for business. Although participants identify the general benefits of hosting the event, they struggle to conceptualize benefits in relation to their own business settings. This suggests a disconnect between the legacy rhetoric of large-scale sporting events and the conversion of these opportunities into outcomes by private enterprises in the host city. Against this background, the article outlines a range of practical implications for private enterprise and key areas for future research.

The study of sport event legacies has grown rapidly since 2000 across a number of disciplines related to planning and hosting large-scale sport events. However, to date, there have been limited attempts to systematically review and synthesise extant sport event legacy research, reflect on existing knowledge, and identify key gaps for future research. In this article, the authors reviewed the state of sport event legacy research through a systematic quantitative review of 305 original, peer-reviewed research articles published in English language journals between 2000 and 2016. Results demonstrate that a small group of academics concentrated in particular countries are driving the publication of studies on sport event legacy in predominately specialised sport and event journals. There is a clear research interest in legacy outcomes realised through hosting sport events in areas of public life, politics, and culture, as well as mass participation sport. The authors identify key areas for future research and make recommendations for empirical research designs to progress scholarship and better inform policy and practice pertaining to sport event legacy.

Effective sport talent identification and development (TID) programmes are integral to a nation's success in international sport. Using a transdisciplinary approach that involved sport practitioners and researchers with diverse theoretical perspectives, we investigated TID factors in four Australian sports (Australian rules football, cricket, kayaking and tennis). A transdisciplinary approach allowed us to isolate and explore a range of factors critical to successful sport TID. This methodological article explores how this project moved TID research beyond its paradigmatic, quantitative, sport science lens and advanced knowledge and practice in TID from both theoretical and applied perspectives. The use of a transdisciplinary approach in future TID research is recommended.

Sport participation as a legacy of the Olympic Games (OG) has frequently featured as a component of the "legacy package" that government bodies and organizing committees promote to the local communities to gain support for the hosting of these mega-events. However, only recently increased sport participation has been explicitly included as part of a legacy plan in OG candidature files. This article examines the changes and development of sport legacy planning and implementation from Sydney 2000, London 2012, and Rio 2016. The three case studies confirm that sport participation legacies are only achieved if host governments engage the community, develop long-term strategies, and coordinate efforts between different government portfolios and with a range of relevant stakeholders. So far, there is limited evidence available to demonstrate that relevant government bodies have attempted to strategically leverage the Games with the purpose of developing a sport participation legacy for the wider population.