Moral leadership of soccer coaches
Date
1982
Authors
Goodger, Michael J. (Michael Joseph)
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Abstract
There are many variables involved in the leadership process but few authors have considered the concept of leader morality. Coaches, as group leaders, have moral responsibilities. The purpose of the study was to investigate and describe leader morality as it was reflected in coaches' attitudes towards keeping the laws in soccer, to determine and describe coaches' ethical ideologies, and to compare the attitudes and ethical ideologies of four different groups of soccer coaches.
Sport laws are essentially arbitrary. They serve to define the game. Moreover, there is nothing in a sport law which, of itself, makes it moral. However, what makes it moral is not the legislation but the individual's attitude towards it. Rules or laws, as agreements between men, constitute moral imperatives and a coach who intentionally breaks, or encourages his team to break, a law acts immorally.
Four groups of soccer coaches were selected for study: senior men's amateur coaches (n = 10), senior women's amateur coaches (n = 8), Secondary school head coaches (n = 10), and randomly selected juvenile coaches (n = 10). A structured, personal interview technique was utilized. The Ethics Position Questionnaire (E.P.Q.) (Forsyth, 1980) was used to assess coaches' ethical ideologies. Heinila's (1974) questionnaire, utilizing hypothetical game situations, was adapted to determine attitudes towards the laws of soccer. Both questionnaires were scored using a semantic differential scale and analysis of variance was used to determine any significant differences between the groups of coaches.
Soccer coaches did not profess an absolute commitment towards keeping the laws of soccer. Therefore, soccer coaches were immoral. Most of the soccer coaches (determined by the E.P .Q .) were situationists, rejecting moral rules and advocating individualistic analysis of each situation. There were no significant differences between any of the groups of coaches on the E.P.Q. and Heinila's Factors Toughness and Emotional outburst and Eye for eye. However, there was a significant difference (p=0.05) between two of the groups of soccer coaches indicating that senior men's amateur coaches we re more likely to break the laws, if it was in the interests of their team's victory, than Secondary school head coaches.
The laws of the game did not determine the criteria of what was "right". The officials , with the exception of violent conduct, were conceded the authority to determine "right" conduct in sport. It was recommended that coaches, as leaders in sport, accept as their responsibility, the promotion and maintenance of fair play in sport.