Achieving Organizational De-escalation: Exit Implementation Among U.S. Collegiate Athletic Departments

Background/Purpose: A recent international trend within the sport industry involves exploring the financial underpinnings of sport leagues and organizations. Given the increasing commitment associated with NCAA Division I participation, higher learning institutions in the United States have recently engaged in initial stages of de-escalation behavior, or the reversal of escalating commitment via project redirection. However, difficulty arises upon implementation of the selected alternative exit strategy. Applying escalation of commitment theory, the purpose of this investigation was to explore exit strategy implementation among institutions having achieved organizational de-escalation.

Method: A qualitative collective case study of eight (N = 8) NCAA Division I institutions was conducted. Participants interviewed included decision makers (n = 32) involved in athletics exit strategy implementation. In addition to interviews, documents, including board of trustee/regent minutes, faculty senate minutes, institutional reports and presentations, local/national press articles, and television recordings, were incorporated. NVivo 9 was employed for analyzing collected data throughout the course of a three-step coding process, further employing two measures of intercoder reliability (Guetzkow U = 0.04; κ = 0.81).

Analysis/Results: Findings revealed the importance of presenting stakeholders with objective data concerning the true costs of participation in a non-consulting manner. Additionally, exit implementation should consider the most timely departure possible, accounting for project-specific consequences potentially hindering de-escalation achievement. Finally, decision makers should consider implementing initiatives to alleviate stakeholder dissatisfaction, attempting to reduce the severity of de-institutionalizing the former commitment.

Conclusions: These findings provide both practical and theoretical implications. First, communication with stakeholders should be informing in nature, emphasizing the objective, fact-based motivations for de-escalating commitment to Division I athletics. From a theoretical contribution standpoint, these findings also speak to the potential for neutral or pro-de-escalation external forces to negatively impact exit implementation. As such, campus administrators need to identify these potential forces prior to enacting de-escalation initiatives, subsequently accounting for this potential obstacle in exit strategy planning. Finally, strategic maneuvers diffusing stakeholder dissatisfaction from de-escalation efforts should be considered as serving dual purposes in appealing to stakeholders and advancing project de-institutionalization. The incorporation of a positive distraction amidst de-escalation implementation serves a valuable purpose in minimizing dissatisfaction.