A.A. Popova, doctoral student
Russian State University of Physical Culture, Sport, Youth and Tourism, Moscow

Key words: sports activity, corporate organization, organizational culture, logistization, entrepreneurial organization, demutualization, system, monitoring.

Every year more and more attention is being paid to organizational culture building as a factor that increases efficiency and competitiveness of physical training and sports organization (PTSO). This is particularly important in the context of globalization, when technical and technological, product, economic, organizational innovations not always help to achieve long-term benefits due to their potential imitation by competitors and when the search for new ways to achieve long-term competitive advantages is actualized [12].

However, it should be noted that the concept of "organizational culture" has been used in Russian science since quite recently and therefore is perceived ambiguously in society. It can be assumed that it means mainly the culture of physical training and sports activity and the culture of rules of behavior of workers of PTSO. As rightly considered by A. Franz, it is important because purposefully formed culture effectively motivates staff to make maximum profit, increase wage, maintain the high reputation of any organization and its competitiveness [10].

For the first time in the history of professional relations organizational (or corporate) structure began to be studied in the 30s of the XX century as it became clear that if one has to work, one would better work smartly and prudently. According to Henry Ford, the basis of the corporate values system is staff loyalty to the enterprise, their interest in its prosperity, willingness to work effectively in order to achieve success in business; on the part of the entrepreneur this is “aversion to extravagance with regard to material and labor”.

Following the corporate ideals of behavior, each employee should develop insistence and ability to see the positive side of his/her involvement in the functioning of PTSO, respect its founders, treat their property with due care, be careful and responsible when performing his/her duties [4]. Due to organizational culture (OC) PTSO staff members have the desire to improve their professional and survival skills, spend time reasonably, are willing to win in a competition, cope with possible failures adequately, learn from them and, ultimately, achieve success.        

The concept of “corporate organization” refers to corporate physical training and sports organizations. We are speaking about a spectrum of relations and distribution of relevant responsibilities within a physical training and sports organization (from the standpoint of organizational culture building) as well as in the interaction with the environment. Major parameters of the way of building it are presented in Table 1.

Table 1. Major parameters of corporate organizational culture building

A corporation in the sphere of physical training and sports is regarded as a corporate physical training and sports organization acting for the public good (thus emphasizing the social value of set goals). It is also considered a corporate entity, acting on the basis of a contractual paradigm (the contract theory).  

A corporate PTSO is also called an institution, a set of socio-economic rules intended to define internal organizational culture building (its direction from the points of view mentioned above). It is a kind of a regulator of the economic functions of physical training and sports activity, relations between production of goods and services and their exchange (relations of the economic authorities that depend on the evolution of reconciling the interests of social groups).

The term “corporation” literally means a union (within a corporate PTSO) created to achieve synergy as a result of using corporate property. The synergy is to be understood as a synonym for gain (multiplication) of corporate property.

Under present conditions of corporate organization of sports activity more and more attention is being paid to reasonably formed principles of OC and moral and psychological settings. The following can be attributed to the latter [10]:

- responsible attitude to the performance of professional duties;

- reliable operation of the given enterprise;

- respectful attitude towards the executives of the enterprise;

- friendly attitude towards the staff;

- attentive, friendly and demanding attitude towards subordinates (if any);

- positive attitude towards the recipients of professional services;

- attention to and monitoring of competitors’ activities;

- demanding and responsible attitude to oneself as an employee of the given enterprise (in particular, of a PTSO).  

The same author has rightly pointed out that every moral and psychological setting is filled with specific content and is employee’s inner motivation to perform professional duties. A consistent set of moral and psychological corporate settings of an employee contributes to his positive motivation with regards to his work at the given enterprise. It is the adoption of an optimal version of value orientation by PTSO staff that ensures perception of corporate interests by every employee as his/her personal need, makes it possible for PTSOs to maximize the use of personal potential of employees in solving the issues mentioned above.

In addition, it should be emphasized that organizational culture is increasingly associated by today’s authors with logistization of sports activity. A special role is given to the linking function of organizational culture.

During the years of prosperity and development many physical training and sports organizations abroad have been paying too much attention to growth and diversification [3]. However, their work in this direction has become increasingly damped. Assessment of how organizational culture and chosen strategies meet the challenges of the market of today, in which the consumer is taking a more and more dominant role, has become critical.

Emphasizing the above mentioned, M. Porter focuses on a sustainable competitive advantage as the basis of effective entrepreneurship in the long term perspective (otherwise high efficiency will only coincide with the “harvesting” period). The cost that consumer can get lies in the core of the exchange process: it can be expressed either in the ability of the organization to produce a similar product (but at a lower cost) or to make some new, unique offers for the characteristics of which customers are ready to pay extra money [8]. And it is true, in spite of the fact that different organizations have lots of strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats of carrying out physical training and sports activity.

If we consider a physical training and sports organization as a whole, we will never be able to learn the nature of a competitive advantage. There is sense in the division (decomposition) of its functionality. Implementation of multiple processes included in the development, production, marketing, delivery and service of each product allows us to trace how value that is offered for sale is created. Each of these types of sports activity may help to establish a competitive position in relation to costs and even provide a basis for differentiation of the manufactured product.

In other words, to understand the nature of competitive advantages it is necessary to study the logistics processes that determine “the value chain”. All this is becoming more widely used in practice and is considered by decision-makers with regards to organizational culture building.

For today logistization of sports activity is an integrated tool for managing material and information flows and an important area of PTSO competence. When all the functions within its framework are integrated (linked together), they are a source of competitive advantages. As rightly pointed out by D. Bowersox, “the certainty that integration of the entire system ensures much more outstanding results of operations than scattered control of individual functions constitutes a fundamental paradigm of logistics” [1] and the accompanying organizational culture.

Such functions as production and marketing can be divided into smaller ones. For this purpose a detailed analysis of the material flow (products movements) and the information flow (documents, emails, telephone calls, faxes, financial and non-material flows) is used. The function division can go to the deepest levels (as long as they are discrete). However, at the same time the role of organizational culture building becomes of a greater importance. 

Organizational culture can be defined as a set of collective basic concepts obtained by a group while solving the issues of adapting to changes in environment and internal integration. The effectiveness of these concepts is increasingly associated with logistization of entrepreneurial activity under the conditions of practical implementation of physical training and sports activity innovative strategies. 

Some authors, defining the essence of organizational culture, highlight the most essential features [11]. It is multifaceted, social, accepted (either consciously or unconsciously) by the entire team, can change (if necessary) under the influence of targets set by the executive (leader) of an entrepreneurial organization.

The latter is particularly important in the context of logistization that often radically changes “the value chain” by making not only hard but also soft factors of entrepreneurial activity a part of it. Among the latter a special role is played by organizational culture with its function of linking individual business processes into one - logistic - value chain, the chain of entrepreneurial revenue formation. 

It can be argued that these chains have complex interconnections that lead to the presence of so-called “linkages”, that is, the efficiency of physical training and sports activity logistization is increasingly determined by the organizational culture building undertaken by the leader (executive) of the organization.  

It is about administrative activity of “tuning” these linkages between individual business processes. Logistics tasks in this case are coordination and optimization of links in the value chain. This allows for the most efficient flow processes that meet consumers’ requirements the most. Optimization thus implies obtaining success (a positive result) by means of seeking a compromise between different kinds of entrepreneurial activity. This coordination, carried out during organizational culture building, promotes a significant increase of competitive advantages of the organization. Such a coordination of linkages reduces reserves of goods as well as decreases turnaround time and delivery of products to consumers. In other words, it is a philosophy of culture building management, the basis of which is to ensure gaining competitive advantages in the practice of this factor.

However, its practical implementation is not always a simple matter. Implementation of linkages requires new leaders capable of creating value chains in an organic link with organizational culture building. In practice this means intensifying search processes for linkages, detection of such types of activity where almost every PTSO employee influences other types of activity or is influenced by them. This is first and foremost the essence of culture building management, an example of which is “value stream mapping or VSM” [2].

Besides the internal linkages external ones should be noted as they are endless sources of competitive advantages. It is about coordination with suppliers and consumers. In this case coordination means “difficult negotiations about who will get the take” [4]. And further: “presence of “linkages” between two chains suggests that cooperation with suppliers is not a game in which one wins at the expense of the other; it is a win-win case”.

In order to make full use of the effect of applying “the linkages” timely delivery of qualitative information is necessary. It should be stated that it is via creation of corporate information systems that logistics received a powerful impetus to its development (thus making it possible to facilitate coordination and optimization of various types of sports activity, improve the manageability of the organizational culture building process).

Figure 1 shows main approaches to forming an organizational culture building monitoring system. The approaches include structural, criterial and functional ones. As seen from the figure it is the linkage function in the logistics chain of a newly created value that, being the target artifact, determines business success of a physical training and sports organization.

Approaches to monitoring                 Approach specification

Figure 1. Main approaches to forming a system of organizational culture building monitoring carried out by a PTSO

It should be noted, that organizational culture is an integral part of the management culture in socio-economic systems (another part of it - business culture). These very kinds of culture help to be free from managerial stereotypes, develop creative thinking and ability to solve a wide range of tasks to ensure the synergies by realizing the potential of PTSO [6]. The "hard core" of organizational culture building is defined by the following three statements: the limits of the scope of the management culture are determined by control of internal integration, adaptation to environment and ideas of physical and social realities; the PTSO management culture is always wider than "management culture"; leadership in management depends on the ability of organizational thinking of leaders of these organizations.

It should also be emphasized that organizational culture itself can be managed while accentuating its horizontal and vertical blocks [5]. Organizational culture building thus involves consideration of the ratio of profit changes before and after activities aimed at changing organizational culture to one-time expenses associated with development and implementation of activities aimed at changing OC.

Finally, it should be emphasized that we should be talking about organizational culture building [7], “the core of which is culture building management”. Strictly speaking, it is the topic of our paper “Corporate organizational culture building and logistization of physical training and sports activity”.

References

1. Bowersox, D. Logistics: integrated supply chain. Transl. from English. / D. Bowersox. - Moscow: Delo, 2000. - 280 P. (In Russian)
2. Vuman, J. Lean production. Transl. from English. / J. Vuman. - Moscow: INFRA-M, 2002. - 186 P. (In Russian)
3. Zhestyannikov, L.V. Economic regulation of the system of physical culture and sport: experience and prospects of development / L.V. Zhestyanikov. - St. Petersburg: SPbSUEF, 2000. - 166 P. (In Russian)
4. Corporate values ​​of educational institutions: Collected papers. - Yekaterinburg: RSPPU, 2008. - 233 P. (In Russian)
5. Ford, H. My Life. My achievements. Transl. from Engl. / H. Ford. - Moscow: Finansy i statistika, 1989. - 206 P. (In Russian)
6. Franz, A.S. Corporate culture of vocational training / A.S. Franz. - Yekaterinburg: RSPPU, 2011. - 92 P. (In Russian)
7. Schein, E. Organizational Culture and Leadership. Transl. from Engl. [Edgar H. Schein. - St. Petersburg: Piter, 2002. - 335 P. (In Russian)
8. Shironina, E.M. Improvement of the methodologies of company organizational culture management: abstract of Ph.D. thesis / E.M. Shironina. - Yekaterinburg: Institute of Economics of UrR RAS, 2013. - 22 P. (In Russian)