Research Interests

My research examines how key actors in the global sports ecosystem (e.g., leagues, clubs, federations, sponsors, investors, media companies, and athlete-activists) create long-lasting socioeconomic change. My current scholarship focuses on the African sports market, examining how decisions on governance, strategy, and commercialization shape who benefits from the growth of the sports industry and how sport can drive both financial value and social progress. This work combines organizational theory and qualitative research to illuminate how influence, purpose, and institutional structures shape the development, strategy, and management of sport, and to help sport organizations design sustainable business models with a positive social impact.

My previous work examined how institutional practices in the sport industry reinforce inequality. As examples of my work, please see my 2018 paper on institutional disruption and my 2020 paper, published in Organization, which discusses the institution of sport as a site for social change. My 2021 paper in the Sport Management Education Journal (SMEJ) discusses how unpaid internships lead to racial inequality in the sport industry. This manuscript won the SMEJ Best Paper Award in 2021.

To date, I have authored or co-authored over 40 peer-reviewed journal articles. These papers are published in the following journals: Organization, Journal of Management Inquiry, Sport Management Review, Journal of Sport Management, African Journal of Business and Economic Research, International Review for the Sociology of Sport, International Journal of Sport Management, Journal of Issues in Intercollegiate Athletics, and International Journal of Sport Management and Marketing, among others. I am also the Editor-in-Chief of Sport, Business and Management: An International Journal.