ABSTRACT
Since sport cuts across public, private and non-profit sectors, the concept of stakeholders is useful to describe the interwoven web of organisations and their connections. Public administration scholars have long understood the significance of engagement across organisational boundaries, hence why theories related to partnerships and networked governance remain salient in this context. Against this background, the purpose of this chapter is to evaluate the contribution of stakeholder theory in understanding the growing focus on ‘integrity’ in sport policy and governance. In light of integrity’s broad scope (from doping to bullying to child protection issues), stakeholder theory draws attention to the many organisations that consult towards sector-wide sport policy and programme development. Drawing from case data in New Zealand, the chapter illustrates the value of this approach in tracing the numerous actors in sector-wide policy-making and its potential for identifying patterns of interactions. However, the case also demonstrates the limits of a stakeholder approach in accounting for aspects of power and politics, in the absence of accompanying theories.
