La investigación describe la situación de 17 servicios deportivos municipales de ayuntamientos de más de 30.000 habitantes en Andalucía. Un cuestionario sobre el tipo de gestión, información, y comunicación, recursos económicos y humanos, instalaciones y cultura organizativa ha sido rellenado mediante una entrevista cara a cara contestada por personal técnico deportivo. Los resultados muestran similitudes y diferencias según el tamaño de los municipios. El aspecto más relevante es que la gestión indirecta se da más en los municipios de mayor tamaño. Así mismo los niveles de externalización varían dentro de un mismo municipio y ello tanto para la gestión de la oferta deportiva como para la de instalaciones. La interpretación de los resultados obtenidos se hace desde la perspectiva de la imagen social hegemónica del Estado y del proceso de democratización y progresiva consolidación de la sociedad civil acaecidos desde 1975.
Interest on academic research about sports management has increased as well as the articles in this regard. In relation with the studies on municipal sports services, it has been observed the existence of investigations which extract results of their main structural characteristics.
Given the progress experimented by the Andalusian community on sport matter, a study for the improvement of sports municipal services’ knowledge has been carried out, trying to describe their characteristics, to examine the differences on the municipalities analysed and to provide some elements which help to interpret the obtained results.
For this purpose, a quantitative and descriptive-transverse methodology about the main features of this municipal sport services in this region has been used. The study object are the municipal sports services of over 30,001 inhabitants of the provinces of Jaén, Córdoba, Sevilla, Granada y Almería. Sampling is carried out with case total collection. By this way, 17 municipal sports services have been analysed through a standardized face-to-face interview, where the interviewer asks the questions according to the proposed order, showing in some cases the answers or their fields, and annotating the responses given by the surveyed. Those interviewed occupy the head of services, address and / or management or failing, the sports services coordinators.
The tool used to collect the information was the previously validated questionnaire for Barcelona’s (2011) and Girona’s (2011) Deputation researches. For their application in Andalusia, we made the translation from Catalan to Castilian as well as the adaptation to the social reality of Andalusia. The following results have been analysed with the SPSS STATISTICS v.17 for Windows software.
The most relevant common features in the whole of analysed services are those referred to the way of disseminating information where many of them use the same mediums, as well as those related aspects with opinions and problems which affect to the municipal sports services. Other common aspect is the consideration of a high dependency of public funds, not reaching the desired self-financing ratio.
However, the greatest interest lies on the differences about municipal population size. For example, towns of over 100,001 inhabitants are configured under a patronage or municipal sports institute, prevailing the indirect management in some sports facilities On the contrary, the municipal sports services on towns of less population tend to set under a Council dependent formula, establishing a smaller network of collaborations with associative and commercial fabric. Regarding the management of sports facilities, the direct management thereof is rooted.
The previous differences on the structures have their reflection on the expressed opinions about culture and services and problems which affect them. A greater adaptation capacity to the marked demands are observed in the municipalities of higher population. These accuse in higher degree the produced consequences by the temporality of the political office. Nevertheless, a larger number of less population towns conceive the lack of staff as a service management problem.
As means of conclusion, it is noted that the municipalities of higher size, unlike the towns of lesser population, have adopted further forms of indirect management, and they also count with other sports system agents to develop their programs. The interpretation made about it is that they have more developed sports systems. Likewise, the hegemonic social image of the state (in our case of municipalities) has been changing to a less central and more cooperative or subsidiary role. Thus they resemble to companies that have a more consolidated third sector, as the countries of central and northern Europe. Classification-JEL: R1 Keywords: Servicios deportivos, Sport services, Municipios, municipality, Gestión deportiva, Sport management, Stakeholders, Sociedad civil, Civil society, Imagen social hegemónica del Estado, Hegemonic Social Image of the State Pages: 35-61 Volume: 3 Year: 2016 File-URL: http://www.revistaestudiosregionales.com/documentos/articulos/pdf-articulo-2503.pdf File-Format: Application/pdf Handle: RePEc:rer:articu:v:3:y:2016:p:35-61