Presentation of Strategic Behavior Paradigm Model of Iranian Sport Managers based on Grounded Theory

One of the most important facts involved in the success of any organization is how human resources behave, especially the behavior of the managers inside and outside the organization. In fact, every manager who enters an organization should think that s/he has entered a competition, and thus it is necessary to be aware of all its rules and regulations and follow them during the competition. The managers are required to be aware of the strategic thinking with the spirit of teamwork and synergy, strengthen behavior, and transform the organization into a transformative and strategic organization. In this work, the analysis of the paradigmatic model of the strategic behavior of the Iranian sports managers is carried out. The present work will show that the behavior of the managers is based on their managerial knowledge, beliefs, and thoughts, and the researcher intends to provide a solution for the managerial processes according to the strategic barriers.

In order to gain a competitive advantage, the sports organizations are trying to select the managers who can identify the strategic threats and barriers of the strategic behavior, and make decisions in line with the goals of the organization using the features of the strategic thinking, resources, and facilities of the organization in the conditions of uncertainty. In the present work, we intend to design a strategic behavior model for the Iranian sports managers.

In order to achieve this goal, the qualitative methodology and research method of the data foundation theory was used, and in terms of purpose, it was in the category of the applied research. The research population included the elites in the field of physical education in the university sports (including the senior managers of the physical education departments of the universities and the managers and experts of the general directorate of physical education), and the subjects were sampled theoretically by the snowball’s method. The data collection tool was the semi-structured interviews, and the data from the interviews was coded and analyzed in a contextual method.

The achievements were identified in the form of six dimensionsof the paradigm model including the factors (12 categories), main causes (6 categories), strategy (6 categories), background factors (4 categories), consequences (8 categories), and intervention factors (6 categories). It seems that the managers can eliminate many strategic bottlenecks of the sports organizations by institutionalizing strategic thinking and making decisions based on the strategic behavior.