PERCEIVED ORGANIZATIONAL PRESTIGE AND COLLEGIATE ATHLETIC DEPARTMENT
EMPLOYEES
Damon P. S. Andrew1, Samuel Y. Todd2, T. Christopher Greenwell1, Simon M. Pack1 and Chris Cannon1
1 University of Tennesse, Sport Administration Program, Louisville, KY 40292, USA
2 Georgia Southern University, Sport Management Program, Statesboro, GA 30460, USA
ABSTRACT
One variable that has received little attention in the sport management literature is perceived organizational prestige, or construed external image. In the case where there is a very positive public regard of a particular profession or firm (e.g., an intercollegiate athletic department), an employee’s psychological state may be positively impacted. Therefore, the present study examined the impact of a NCAA Division I athletic program’s membership in the Bowl Championship Series (an indicator of the organization’s visibility and position) on the resulting perceived organizational prestige of athletic development directors. NCAA Division I athletic development directors (n = 115) responded to a questionnaire featuring Mael and Ashforth’s (1992) Perceived Organizational Prestige scale. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) showed collegiate athletic development directors whose programs were members of the BCS reported significantly higher overall levels of perceived organizational prestige (F = 4.63, p < .05) when compared to their non-BCS counterparts.
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INTRODUCTION
Successful sport managers consistently search for ways to enhance factors that attract their employees to their organization in order to retain quality employees and attract potential human resources. One variable that has received little attention in the sport management literature is perceived organizational prestige, or construed external image. Dutton and Dukerich (1991) first explored the concept of perceived external prestige (or construed external image) in a study that investigated how the negative public perception of the New York Port Authority affected organizational members. Dutton and Dukerich concluded that an organization’s image is very important to employees, because it represents employees’ estimations of the attributes that outsiders are likely to ascribe to them as well. Clearly, members’ views of an occupation or organization to which they are affiliated are sensitive to how they think outsiders perceive it. In the case where there is a very positive public regard of a particular profession or firm, an employee’s psychological state may be positively impacted.
Perceived organizational prestige is an important variable to study because it is also a proposed antecedent to organizational identification, a specific form of social identification where the individual defines one’s self in terms of his or her membership in a particular organization (Mael & Ashforth, 1992). Indeed, Dutton, Dukerich, and Harquail (1994) write, “when members believe that outsiders see the organization in a positive light, they ‘bask in the reflected glory’ of the organization” (p. 240). Successful sport teams have shown the ability to attract highly identified sport fans who bask in reflected glory (Wann & Branscombe, 1990; 1993; 1995), so it would not be surprising to find athletic department employees develop a similar psychological bond to their organization. Furthermore, perceived organizational prestige is also an important predictor of positive employee outcomes such as job satisfaction, affective organizational commitment, and affective well-being at work (Herrbach & Mignonac, 2004).
In the realm of collegiate athletics, one potential indicator of perceived organizational prestige is membership in the Bowl Championship Series (BCS). The BCS was established in 1997 to create a more objective basis for selecting a Division I-A college football national champion. Under the BCS arrangement, six of the eight slots in the Fiesta Bowl, the Orange Bowl, the Rose Bowl and the Sugar Bowl are reserved annually for the champions of the ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pacific-10 and Southeastern Conferences. The remaining two slots are open to any eligible Division I-A college football team. As a result, of the 56 bowl slots available to Division I-A college football teams, the BCS controls the
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four major and most lucrative bowl games, including the national championship game.
The advantages of obtaining BCS membership in NCAA Division I football are numerous. The four BCS bowl games generate over $100 million annually, and over 90% of that windfall is shared among BCS member institutions (Long, 2004). This additional revenue can be utilized by athletic departments to recruit a critical mass of elite-level athletes, attract and retain top coaches, build first-class facilities, garner national media attention and television appearances, and consistently attract large crowds (Roberts, 2003). Since the performance of collegiate teams impact applicants to universities (Allen & Peters, 1982; Chressanthis & Grimes, 1993; Murphy & Trandel, 1994; Toma & Cross, 1998; Zimbalist, 2001), SAT scores of incoming students (Bremmer & Kesserling, 1993; McCormick & Tinsley, 1987; Mixon, 1995; Tucker & Amato, 1993), and university fund raising (Baade & Sundberg, 1996; Brooker & Klastorin, 1982; Budig, 1976; Gaski & Etzel, 1984; Grimes & Chressanthis, 1994; McCormick & Tinsley, 1990; Sack & Watkins, 1985; Sigelman & Carter, 1979), membership in one of the six conferences affiliated with the BCS can provide several positive outcomes for those elite institutions.
While past research has primarily examined positive outcomes of BCS membership external to the athletic department, perhaps such membership can impact the psychological states of their internal human resources. As noted by Marsh and Simon (1993), perceived prestige of an organization is in part a function of the position of the group in society and the visibility of the organization. Since membership in the BCS bestows “elite” status to selected NCAA Division I athletic programs and guarantees representation of at least one conference member in one of the top four postseason bowl games, the elevated position of the group in society coupled with the increased visibility of the athletic program could result in enhanced perceived organizational prestige from the perspective of athletic program employees of institutions that possess membership in the BCS.
In consideration of the potential impact of the employee’s perceived organizational prestige on the organization, the present study sought to determine if an organization’s visibility and hierarchical position in the NCAA influenced the perceived organizational prestige of athletic administration employees. Specifically, we examined the impact of a NCAA Division I athletic program’s membership in the BCS (an indicator of the organization’s visibility and position) on the resulting perceived organizational prestige of athletic development directors.
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METHOD
Participants and Procedures
The sample for the present study was athletic development directors at all 327 NCAA Division I institutions. Athletic development directors were chosen as a sample based on the intuitively important relationship of perceived organizational prestige to their job duties (i.e., fund-raising directors might often cite the prestige of their organization when convincing constituents to donate to their athletic program). E-mail addresses for athletic development directors at these institutions were obtained from their institution’s respective websites. However, a total of 45 e-mail messages sent to athletic development directors were returned to sender due to complications such as incorrect e-mail addresses, terminated e-mail accounts, exceeded storage quota limits, and temporary absence due to administrative or maternity leave. A total of 115 athletic development directors responded to the request to participate, which resulted in an overall response rate of 40.8%. This response rate is similar to past studies sampling collegiate athletic administrators (Mahony, Hums, & Riemer, 2005; Weaver & Chelladurai, 2002).
The surveys were conducted in an online format in an attempt to maximize athletic development director convenience, secure response confidentiality, and minimize necessary paper. The survey was administered through a third-party company entitled FormSite (http://www.formsite.com). This service allowed for the administration of online surveys through existing or created templates. Furthermore, the data were collected and stored in a database spreadsheet format, allowing for an expedient transfer of data into a statistical analysis program. Since this survey was implemented online, frame error, or the extent to which the desired participants are actually sampled, needed to be controlled. Therefore, the online survey was password protected to prevent the possibility of survey submissions from non-desired respondents, and was administered through a secure website, thereby significantly restricting the potential for data tampering (Andrew, 2004).
Instrumentation
Demographic Variables. A demographic questionnaire was administered that incorporated the following items: age, gender, fundraising tenure, institution tenure, and institutional descriptors (i.e., student enrollment, urban/rural, state-
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supported/private non-religious/private religious, football team sponsorship details).
Perceived Organizational Prestige. Mael and Ashforth’s (1992) Perceived Organizational Prestige scale was utilized to assess the perceptions of organizational prestige by athletic department employees. The respondents completed five items in respect to their athletic department with a seven-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 signifying “strongly disagree” to 7 representing “strongly agree.” One sample item was: “People in my community think highly of this organization.” The Cronbach’s Alpha reliability estimate for this scale was reported to be .79 (Mael & Ashforth, 1992).
Data Analysis
Descriptive statistics were calculated for each of the demographic variables. Alpha (Cronbach) coefficients were calculated for the components of each measurement scale to verify internal consistency. Nunnally and Bernstein’s (1994) recommended alpha value of .70 was utilized to evaluate the internal consistency of each subscale.
BCS Membership and Perceived Organizational Prestige. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was utilized to determine the effect of BCS membership on perceived organizational prestige. The ANOVA statistic allows for a test of the statistical significance of the differences among the mean scores of two or more groups on one or more variables or factors (Vogt, 1999). This statistical procedure addressed the following hypothesis:
H1: Athletic development directors who are employed at institutions affiliated with the BCS will report significantly higher levels of perceived organizational prestige than their non-BCS counterparts.
RESULTS
Demographic Variables
The sample featured a total of 96 (83.5%) males and 19 (16.5%) females. Age of the subjects ranged from 26 to 72 years (M = 39.2, SD = 9.6), and the average fundraising tenure of the respondents exceeded eight years (M = 8.5, SD = 5.8) with an institutional tenure over six years (M = 6.5, SD = 6.4). The majority of the respondents were employed at urban (64.3%), state-supported (67.8%)
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institutions. Thirty-two athletic development directors reported their institution did not sponsor a football team, so those respondents were not included in further analysis in order to provide a fair comparison of BCS members and non-BCS members.
BCS Membership and Perceived Organizational Prestige
Although previous studies have indicated an acceptable degree of reliability for the perceived organizational prestige items used in this study, the researchers exercised an additional degree of caution by calculating Cronbach’s alpha for the construct as it has not been analyzed in a sport organization setting. The coefficient of reliability for the perceived organizational prestige scale was calculated to be .84, which exceeds the value of .70 suggested as adequate by Nunnally and Bernstein (1994).
Univariate analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted to determine whether differences on perceived organizational prestige existed as a function of BCS membership. The results revealed collegiate athletic development directors whose programs were members of the BCS reported significantly higher overall levels of perceived organizational prestige (F = 4.63, p < .05) when compared to their non-BCS counterparts (see Table 1).
Table 1. Analysis of Variance for Effects of BCS Membership on Perceived
Organizational Prestige
Variable Source Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Org. Prestige Between Groups 6.73 1 6.73 4.63* Within Groups 117.66 81 1.45 Total 124.39 82 *p < .05
DISCUSSION
Our findings suggest development coordinators working in athletic departments in universities belonging to the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) perceive their athletic departments to be more prestigious in the eyes of outsiders as compared to employees in non BCS schools. The demarcation between BCS and non-BCS in this study could be regarded as a reflection of the cultural differences among athletic departments based upon classification. Although we
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did not investigate the cause of the differences in perceived external prestige in this study, we can anecdotally assume the differences are a result of the size of the athletic department, the national media attention given to the university in the form of media coverage, and popularity of the athletic program in the local area.
Our discovery of the differences in perceived organizational prestige, although somewhat intuitive, could prove to be highly efficacious. Essentially, perceived organizational prestige represents an employee’s internal estimation of the value outsiders place on their employer, and concomitantly, the value outsiders assign them as an employee of the organization. In a sense, this theoretical idea stems from social identity theory, which maintains individuals have a tendency to classify themselves into social categories, such as age, gender, organizational affiliation, occupational affiliation, or religious membership for the purpose of making intergroup social comparisons (Ashforth & Mael, 1989; Tajfel & Turner, 1985). These comparisons by members and potential members are usually motivated by the underlying need for self-esteem and desires to be a part of some positively evaluated entity (Abrams & Hogg, 1988; Turner, 1975). Dutton and colleagues (1991, 1994) report members often feel proud to belong to an organization that is believed to have socially valued characteristics. This sense of prestige, or an internal assessment of the self, has been found to impact other organizationally relevant attitudes and behaviors. For instance, Herrbach and Mignonac (2004) recently discovered perceived organizational prestige to be an important predictor of job satisfaction, affective organizational commitment, and affective well-being at work. Thus, employees who perceive others to think highly of their organization were satisfied at work, felt a strong sense of belonging at work, and were generally positive while there.
Mael and Ashforth (1992) noted perceived external prestige was also an important predictor of organizational identification. At the heart of organizational identification is the idea that people identify with a group to inflate their self esteem and establish a respectable social identity. Tajfel and Turner (1985) suggest people try to maintain positive social identities because they create self-gratifying social opportunities, heighten social prestige, and facilitate social interaction. It is easy to imagine the situation where employees of a university with a national athletic reputation may realize instant socially gratifying opportunities every time someone new asks about his profession or employer. Indeed, Ashforth and Kreiner (1999) note that “…job titles serve as prominent identity badges. The robustness of occupational prestige rankings attests to the salience and importance that society ascribes to occupational identities” (p. 417). This heightened social prestige of working for such a well-known establishment would obviously contribute to a more positive construed external image. Thus, to
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the degree that members believe the external image of the organization is attractive to outsiders because of its prestige, organizational affiliation creates a positive social identity (Tajfel, 1982).
Future Research
Perhaps perceived external prestige associated with working for a sports team at least partially explains why sport management alumni working in the sport industry report significantly lower satisfaction with pay, yet equal overall job satisfaction, when compared to sport management alumni not working in the sport industry (Parks & Parra, 1994). The positive boost in self esteem as a function of one’s connection to a prestigious organization or job would itself be a substitute for other traditional components of job satisfaction such as pay or promotion ability. Future research should test this hypothesis formally. Also, investigators should examine to what degree perceived organizational prestige has a “shelf life.” That is, as an employee’s referent group changes with age and begins to appreciate other components and benefits of employment, does one’s perception of the prestige of the organization dissipate? Or, conversely, does the importance of maintaining a positive identity or affiliation at work somehow diminish over time and be replaced by other individual needs?
Finally, future research should attempt to explore to what extent all employees of an athletic department internalize perceptions of prestige, as opposed to employees who are boundary spanners, like athletic development officials. In a survey of French managers, Herrbach and Mignonac (2004) discovered higher levels of perceived external prestige in sales/marketing employees as compared to other employees in the firm. Perhaps this assessment of prestige is somehow contingent upon one’s interactions with outsiders on a daily basis. Thus, those athletic department employees in field operations or equipment may report lower perceptions of prestige due to their lack of daily and continuous contact with customers. In this light, it would be interesting to uncover the source of one’s perceived external prestige: friends, coworkers, colleagues in the community, or rhetoric absorbed from media.
Practical Applications
The concept of perceived organizational prestige has practical managerial implications as well as theoretical implications. Given that employees who exhibit high perceived organizational prestige are likely to be more satisfied with their
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jobs and more committed to their organizations, managers should find ways to reinforce these positive aspects with their employees. For example, athletic administrators may want to include statements about BCS membership in written materials or in other staff communications in order to remind employees about the positive aspects of working at that particular institution. For non-BCS schools, other antecedents of relevant job attitudes in the absence of perceived organizational prestige should be manipulated in the short-term, and a focused marketing strategy should be developed in an effort to boost the prestige of the firm in the eyes of outsiders, and conversely, in the eyes of insiders over the long-term. Identifying and reinforcing organizational qualities that generate high perceived organizational prestige should result in more satisfied employees, which should ultimately lead to higher productivity and retention.
This concept may apply to potential employees as well as current employees. When hiring new employees athletic administrators may want to include positive organizational qualities in job descriptions and advertisements in order to increase the attractiveness of the position, thereby increasing the quality and quantity of the applicant pool. This inclusion could also serve as a reminder to current employees about what first attracted them to their current positions.
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