The Presentation of the Paradigmatic Model of Social Capital Development in Sports Organizations based on the Grounded Theory Approach

The purpose of this research was to present a paradigmatic model of social capital development in sports organizations. The study was conducted through the qualitative grounded theory approach. The study scope was Isfahan province’s Sports and Youth Offices, while the experts of the sports field of study constituted the statistical population.  Purposive snowball sampling was used to select the participants. The data collection tools tool in this study was semi-structured interview. The data saturation was achieved after 23 interviews; however, one additional interview was also done to ensure adequacy of the interviews. To confirm the validity of the instrument, Lincoln and Guba’s criteria of credibility, dependability, confirmability, and transferability were taken into account, and to assess the reliability, process auditing and internal agreement methods were used. The data was analyzed in three coding levels, namely open, axial, and selective. In the three levels of coding, the primary and secondary categories were identified and were related to each other. These included causal conditions (structural, communicative, and cognitive), contextual conditions (creating the professional groups and organizing the professional groups), moderating conditions (human resource management, organizational culture, and organizational justice), strategies (recruitment strategies and educational strategies), and consequences (employee empowerment, entrepreneurship and creativity, organizational commitment, organizational healthfulness, organizational citizen culture, work life quality, and knowledge management). Ultimately, the coding process was explained and the final model was formed. The consideration of the presented model can set the grounds for the development of social capital in sport organization and using its advantages.