Donald Sterling. Ray Rice. The Washington Redskins. The Miami
Dolphins. NCAA Athletes.
These names, among countless others, have blanketed the headlines as the
media has brought global attention to several recent sports
controversies. Now, Kenneth L. Shropshire, The Wharton School of the
University of Pennsylvania professor of Legal Studies and Business
Ethics and Director of the Wharton Sports Business Initiative, uses
these stories as a prism for exploring the leadership challenges facing
team owners, management, players, and fans.
In Sport Matters: Leadership, Power, and the Quest for Respect in
Sports, Shropshire examines the need for diversity, inclusion, respect,
and equality in sports, focusing on the need for leadership to embrace
and deliver these principles in a real and tangible way within the
sports industry. He also introduces the Sports Power Matrix, a framework
for understanding power within the sports industry.
Sport Matters addresses what the Donald Sterling drama can teach us
about race and the need for inclusion at the ownership level; the
lessons learned from the NFL and Ray Rice case; the Washington Redskins
name and the economics of change; what the Miami Dolphins matter tells
us about respect in the workplace and beyond; and compensation and
equality in "amateur" sports.
Sport Matters, filled with disturbing revelations and uncomfortable
truths, also provides hope, revealing how obstacles to achieving an
ideal culture of equality and respect within the sports industry can be
removed. Shropshire argues that while change matters, continued emphasis
on diversity, inclusion and respect is needed to create true progress.
