Abstract

While the corporate and public sectors un the United States, Canada, Australia, United Kingdom, and increasingly within the European Union, have embraced the notion of “diversity management”, sport organizations have paid little attention to managing diversity. They have also resisted attemps to improve the representation of women as well as ratial and ethnic minorities. This paper examines the notion of “diversity management” in light of its growing critique of its aims and claims in the scholarly and management literature. The sport-related literature, although limited, is overwhelmingly positive, urging sport organizations to consider the benefits of diversity management with little recognition of a now substantial critique. Diversity management, as currently practiced, will do little to improve the representation of women in the decision-making and leadership positions of sport organizations (similar arguments could also be made about race/ethnicity and other social categories).