The Significance of FIFA as a Global Football Governing Body
The FIFA, Federation Internationale de Football Association is the governing body of the global football. Established in 1904, the association of FIFA was established under the Swiss laws. The first world cup of FIFA was held in 1930 at Uruguay in the scenario of football association with the European affair. Like the other international governing bodies of sports, FIFA has considerably changes through the years. It has developed and evolved from a simple club organizing and arranging sports competition to a economic enterprise that has gained lots of power (Hough and Heaston 2018). The importance and significance of football and sports to the public in the current state has helped the organization to emerge as powerful intergovernmental organization. The organization has emerged to be one of the high profile organizers of the event, a powerful entity of the corporate and the regulator of the popular game attracting numerous attention of the public. The organization has been under query and questions in the recent years due to the management practices that has been long critiques in the public spaces for years. Questions regarding human rights, the practices inside the organization that challenges the future of the accountability in the organization has been increasing day by day (Szymanski 2016). The assignment focuses on the questionable organization, FIFA and its practices of management that has been under long public scrutiny. It furthermore states some of the recommendations highlighting the theoretical perspectives of the organization that deepens the personal and the critical awareness of the practices of the organization and the management with some of the relevant theoretical lenses in the literature.
The discussion of the public regarding the significant adverse effects the management of FIFA has on the communities and the individuals has some of the similar trajectory. The reality was unknown till the public discussion of FIFA that went viral after the 2010 selection of the Russia. The report tries to highlight the issues in the management and the accountability shortcomings of FIFA (Matheson, Schwab and Koval 2018). The controversy related to the dark side of the management practices of FIFA is not a new concept. Their work connects to the concept of human rights and the international relations exerting quiet an important influence on the rest of the world.
Some of the problems within the FIFA are:
- Lack of proper accountability
- Lack of efficient regulatory body and enforcement of the legislations
- The member countries having incentives towards the engagement in the seeking of the rent
In context to the above study of the much controversial and questionable practices of the management of FIFA that has been under the constant scrutiny of the public, the last few years has been much challenging for the international organization (Kassem and Higson 2016) The practice of management and corporate governance of FIFA have been constantly highlighted under close public scrutiny as the international organization has been facing multiple allegations regarding the corruptions (Bean 2015). Some of these allegations included the news of the buying of the vote in case of the election of the president and the unethical bribery in the procedure of bidding in world cup. The procedure and the way FIFA has dealt with these issues and the allegations have drawn some of the widespread criticism raising queries among the public regarding the degrading management process and the effectiveness of the current administrative process of FIFA. On of the most noted issues was the facing of the complaints by FIFA while constructing stadiums and dealing with lot many corruption charges.
Evolution of FIFA from a Simple Club to an Economic Enterprise
The relevant theories and the models of the corporate responsibilities help to identify the transformation of the FIFA. Among all of the relevant organizational theories, the stakeholder theory is one of the most relevant in context to the management process of FIFA.
Stakeholder theory is one of the most widely understood concepts in the world of business today. The theory focuses on the purpose of the business for the creation of the value for the stakeholders and not only the shareholders. The theory highlight that the business of any of the organization requires the consideration of the customer, the suppliers, the shareholders and the communities. The theory furthermore suggests that the main aim of the business is the creation of the possible value for the stakeholders (Sharma and Gursoy 2017). It explained that for effective success and sustainability in respect to the time frame, it is important for the executives to keep the interest of the customer and the shareholders aligned towards similar direction of the business. Edward Freeman in his influential research illustrates how the managers and the leaders are not answerable to the shareholders. The theory focuses on the concept that the shareholders, consideration should be made for any of the individuals and the group who can get affected by the management process of the organization.
Apart from the various criticism of the theory, the stakeholder theoretical approach is essential for the international organization, FIFA, due to a number of reasons. These include the concept of the improvement of the state of the world and the driving force towards the increase in the value of the stakeholder (Matheson, Schwab and Koval 2018). The theory furthermore illustrates that the effect of the management process of the international organization towards the world and the people is directly proportional to the name, the recognition and the finance of the company (Nunkoo et al. 2018). The international organization, FIFA tends to fail consistently in case of the practice of the basic governance and modules. The corruptions and the allegations over the last few years have affected the rate of the stakeholders of the organization (Kassem and Higson 2016). The non profit organization that majorly runs with the promotion and the funding from the foreign governments and the nations is losing its stakeholders and the profit for the business thus affecting the stakeholder and the shareholder model. The organization is lacking the importance of the stakeholder theory.
Organizational Culture from the list of the organizational theory lenses illustrates different perspectives with the deepening critical and personal awareness related to the management practices at FIFA (Boudreaux, Karahan and Coats 2016). The organizational culture can be defined as the assumptions, values and the ways of interaction, the underlying beliefs that furthermore contributes to the psychological and the social environment of the organization that are unique in the nature.
Organizational culture furthermore includes the experiences, the expectations, the philosophy of the organization that tend to guide the behavior of the members with the interactions, the inner workings and the future expectations (Maennig 2018). The culture of the organization furthermore includes the visions, the values, the systems, the norms, the languages and the habits of the organization that keenly aware the strategic objectives of the business. Some of the basic principles for the mobilization of the organizational culture in case of the international organization like FIFA are the following.
Management Practices and Accountability Issues in FIFA
On May 2015, some of the top executives of FIFA were arrested on the charges of corruption in the case of fraud, bribery and money laundering (Rowe 2017). The governing body of the football world has been long perceived as a reluctant committee that allows multiple interventions and interference. Most of the people in Britain and the public of the other nation have reported the organization to be one of the most corrupted organizations with continued corruption scandals and financial issues. The organizational culture has been destroyed and FIFA has gradually lost to regain any of the credibility that it has lost in the recent turmoil and corruption evidences against the international organization. From the receiving of the complaints for the development of the stadium to taking participatory actions in corrupted activities, world cup bidding process, the engagement of FIFA towards the corruption allegations are currently over the tip of iceberg.
The calls for the reformation and strategic measures for the improvement of the organization in FIFA have been repeated and widespread. The need and the requirement for the changes appears apparent towards the FIFA circle and the general secretary of the organization has claimed for looking towards some of the radical changes for the improvement of the governance of FIFA (Nunkoo et al. 2018). Furthermore provision of the relevant organizational tools and the procedures that will initiate help in facing the challenges that may come in the way are some of the basic recommendations for the management of FIFA.
In context to the important and the relevant theories discussed in the analysis part, the recommended theory of importance in case of the international organization, FIFA is the stakeholder theory (Boudreaux, Karahan and Coats 2016). This is because the stakeholder theory initiate recommendations and suggestions for the players, the clubs, the sponsors and the fans in the national and the international associations of the football and sports that requires to get involved in the review for the purpose of FIFA.
The stakeholder theory illustrates FIFA as a chain of competitive and collaborative relation that needs simultaneous attention. The deceptively simple theory is important for the easy identification of the groups and the individual that are affected by the organizational scandals (Hough and Heaston 2018). The theory furthermore assumes that values of FIFA are explicitly and necessarily one of the important part of the international business platform as slight alteration of the values and the image of the organization challenges the sphere of the business ethics.
FIFA furthermore requires to reconstruct and define a clear and ethical code of the principles of the organization and the values (Esposito 2016). They need to follow and roll these out with frequent meetings with the staff and the members of the board for accounting against the prescribed code. Besides this, implementation of effective schemes for the encouragement and the protection of the values of the organization regarding the code of ethics are some of the important recommendations for the international organization.
Introduction of some of the new approaches and robust governance framework is thus required for FIFA with some of the clearly defined principles that will provide a broad outline of the values of FIFA. Below are some of the factors of recommendation that FIFA needs to initiate for the changes in its management process to answer back regarding the allegation of the corruptions towards the organization.
Theoretical Perspectives to Deepen Personal and Critical Awareness
Discipline – To commit the organizational behavior that will be recognized on an universal basis and will be properly accepted worldwide
Independence – To introduce effective mechanism for avoiding and managing organizational conflicts (Verver 2015).
Social Responsibility – To be aware of the current trends and the news against the organizational values and effective responses towards the social issues
Transparency – To give importance to the stakeholder analysis and analyze the action of the international organization.
Accountability – To ensure effective accountability
Apart from the above factors the international organization furthermore focus on the specific aspects of the leadership traits and change the current corrupted management practices of FIFA.
Conclusion
FIFA is an essential umbrella that covers some of the group of the football confederations. The continued allegations of the corruptions towards the organization have been challenging towards the image and the process of management together with the raising level of criticism. The existing model of corporate governance of FIFA has not at all been effective in addressing these issues and these recommendations towards the introduction of the proper strategic measures needs to be done. FIFA should initiate measures to win back the trust of the public, recover its image and the stakeholder engagements. These can be done by maintaining transparency and encouraging stakeholder engagement for the long term success in the world of football.
References
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Esposito, C., 2016. A Red Card for FIFA: Corruption and Scandal in the World’s Foremost Sports Association. Rich. J. Global L. & Bus., 16, p.45.
Maennig, W., 2018. Governance in Sports Organisations. In The Palgrave Handbook on the Economics of Manipulation in Sport (pp. 247-256). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Bean, B.W., 2015. An Interim Essay on FIFA’s World Cup of Corruption: The Desperate Need for International Corporate Governance Standards at FIFA. ILSA J. Int’l & Comp. L., 22, p.367.
Szymanski, S., 2016. 3.5 Compromise or compromised? The bidding process for the award of the Olympic Games and the FIFA World Cup.