Sport Matters Leadership, Power, and the Quest for Respect in Sports

Donald Sterling. Ray Rice. The Washington Redskins. The Miami Dolphins. NCAA Athletes.

These names, among countless others, have blanketed the headlines as the media has brought global attention to several recent sports controversies. Now, Kenneth L. Shropshire, The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics and Director of the Wharton Sports Business Initiative, uses these stories as a prism for exploring the leadership challenges facing team owners, management, players, and fans.

In Sport Matters: Leadership, Power, and the Quest for Respect in Sports, Shropshire examines the need for diversity, inclusion, respect, and equality in sports, focusing on the need for leadership to embrace and deliver these principles in a real and tangible way within the sports industry. He also introduces the Sports Power Matrix, a framework for understanding power within the sports industry.

Sport Matters addresses what the Donald Sterling drama can teach us about race and the need for inclusion at the ownership level; the lessons learned from the NFL and Ray Rice case; the Washington Redskins name and the economics of change; what the Miami Dolphins matter tells us about respect in the workplace and beyond; and compensation and equality in “amateur” sports.

Sport Matters, filled with disturbing revelations and uncomfortable truths, also provides hope, revealing how obstacles to achieving an ideal culture of equality and respect within the sports industry can be removed. Shropshire argues that while change matters, continued emphasis on diversity, inclusion and respect is needed to create true progress.

Kenneth L. Shropshire is the David W. Hauck Professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and the Faculty Director of its Wharton Sports Business Initiative and Professor of Africana Studies. Shropshire hosts The Business of Sports show on Sirius XM Radio, and he teaches the Coursera course The Global Business of Sports, which has reached 30,000 global students. He is also Special Counsel to the global law firm Duane Morris LLP. He has consulted with the NCAA, Major League Baseball, National Football League, and the United States Olympic Committee. Follow him @KenShropshire.