4 - Organizational Culture and Policy Support

Summary

We assess how change to gender equality might be achieved from the top down. Policymakers in the context of college sports are athletic department administrators. They can directly affect policy via the NCAA rulemaking committees and must implement policy at individual schools. We also explore the role of coaches; while they have less direct policy control, they still make hiring decisions within their team staffs and serve as important intermediaries between student-athletes and administrators. We build on work on organizational culture to predict that as women move into higher leadership roles (i.e., head coach or administrative department head), they become less supportive of gender equity initiatives. We show that is indeed the case; moreover, we find that, more generally, female coaches and athletic administrators exhibit less support for equity initiatives than female student-athletes. This suggests that organizational culture – where women administrators and coaches remain in the clear minority – is a hurdle to equality. It shows that marginalized groups pursuing change from the top down must contend with organizational cultures that are at odds with such transformation.