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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.
About the author
Kenneth L. Shropshire is the CEO of the Global Sport Institute and the adidas Distinguished Professor of Global Sport at Arizona State University. He is also Wharton Endowed Professor Emeritus at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. His most recent books are Sport Matters: Leadership, Power, and the Quest for Respect in Sports; Negotiate Like the Pros: A Top Sports Negotiatorand#8217;s Lessons for Making Deals, Building Relationships and Getting What You Want; and Being Sugar Ray: The Life of Americaand#8217;s Greatest Boxer and First Celebrity Athlete. His other works include In Black and White: Race and Sports in America; The Business of Sports; and The Business of Sports Agents.
