ABSTRACT
Sport managers strive for organizational improvement and this requires an ability to identify problems, to address these and search for potential solutions. To achieve this, sport managers can spend a great deal of time evaluating other people's research, deciding what the strengths and weaknesses are in each case, and hoping to apply their conclusions to their own reading and to the procedures they follow in their research. The world of sport, however, poses many unique and novel problems that are not experienced in business, government or charity work – for example very few managers will ever deal with an employee who can prove they are the best in the world at their job. As such, sport managers, perhaps even more than other types of manager, need to look carefully at the claims of others, judging for themselves whether or not those claims are convincing and reliable. To do that, they need to understand the process by which other researchers have come to their conclusions, and this means understanding both their methodologies and the intellectual frameworks within which they have operated.
