A study on the organizing process of community sports clubs : comparative analysis of two organizing types from a theory of social movements

Although there have been many studies of community sports clubs(CSC), little attention has been given to the organizing process of the CSC as a management body for community sport.The purposes of this study were to explain the organizing process of CSCs, based on a theory of social movements, and to consider how to promote community sport through the development of CSCs.The data were obtained from three CSCs, as typical examples, by reviewing previous reports and fieldwork.The main results are summarized as follows:1)The organizing process of a CSC could be explained by Katagiri's(1995)model which classifies the social movement process into seven phases.Applying this model, an organizing process model for a CSC was proposed.Furthermore a few obvious original characteristics of CSCs were highlighted.2)Taxonomy of the organizing process was constructed through a comparative analysis of the first type of organizing, termed "initiative of inhabitants", and the second type, termed"initiative of public administration".It consisted of five dimensions:degree of congnition for community issues, change agents of community sport environment, the meaning of organizing, resource mobilization, and types of decision-making.These findings suggest that supporting congnition of the sports environments is important for the development of a CSC.However, the present considerations are preliminary to further questioning based on better understanding of the development of a CSC.Further examination of the details of the proposed model is needed to build a support system for the development of CSCs.