The research in Talent Identification and Development (TID) in sport comprises a wide literature that is categorised into five key constructs in the second study of this thesis. The fifth construct concerns the role that the stakeholders (the sport organisation, coaches and parents) have in athlete development. However, this construct has attracted less research attention, despite its obvious and important contribution to athlete success. The second study indicated low degrees of stakeholder understanding of all five constructs of TID and poor levels of coherence between them, (as described by their perception of each other’s views of the research constructs). Further investigation endorsed this lack of coherence, and suggested specific areas of knowledge that would be helpful for coaches and parents in particular. There were very apparent perceptual differences between what parents wanted to know and what coaches thought they should know. Subsequently, testing the impact of parent workshops gave a clear indication that such an intervention could increase understanding of the key issues of athlete development and lead to improvement in coach-parent relationships. The different studies were based primarily in the UK and in one sport, but cultural differences suggest that the findings of this thesis may not pertain to other sports and nations. To this end, the final study compared TID systems and coach- parent coherence in three different cultures. Very few significant differences existed either in each nation’s TID process or in coach-parent coherence, suggesting a substantial influence of sporting over national culture. The conclusion is that the many and consistent outcomes of TID research are largely ignored by sport systems. Where TID processes are put in place for junior athletes by sport systems, they appear to contribute to low levels of coherence between the stakeholders and to the lack of success, as adults, of selected junior athletes.

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The study was designed to establish the extent and nature of the difficulties clubs experience with a view to preparing the way for creating practical guidance on ways to overcome them. Clearly, in order to survive in the long term, small professional football clubs require very effective strategic decisions. This study has addressed this issue by inquiring into the nature of strategy making for these organisations with the objective to establish the general direction in which the football clubs in question should be moving. As a result, the main research question to guide this investigation was determined as: Why do small professional football clubs have difficulties making strategies. The investigation was based on an analysis the concept of strategy and its elements, the strategic vision and objectives, the process by which strategic action comes about, the strategic action itself, and the context within which this action occurs. Data has been collected, analysed and interpreted in relation to each of these elements. Together with a wide variety of published material, 20 small football clubs have been sampled and personal interviews were conducted with board members of those clubs. The findings indicate that small football clubs do indeed experience considerable difficulties in making strategies, the reasons for which lie both in the characteristics of their competitive environment and their approaches to strategy-making. The competitive environment is characterised by a cartel-like structure with a high degree of regulation, high levels of uncertainty, little control over the core product or the production process, short-term business cycles and a close geographical link between a club with its local market. The management of clubs is characterised by the need to balance conflicting sporting and business objectives. Formal planning techniques are of little use in the small football club context as decision-making processes have a strong political character and the development of novel strategies is hindered by a strong conservative, industry paradigm and a lack of financial and managerial resources. It is concluded that there is no simple advice to be given to clubs, as they must re-examine the relationship between their playing and business objectives to create a unified and workable approach.

This paper develops a theory of tourist satisfaction which is tested by using a consumerist gap scale derived from the Ragheb and Beard Leisure Motivation Scale. The sample consists of 1127 holiday makers from the East Midlands, UK. The results confirm the four dimensions of the original scale, and are used to develop clusters of holidaymakers. These clusters are found to be determinants of attitudes towards holiday destination attributes, and are independent of socio-demographic variables. Other determinants of holiday maker satisfaction are also examined. Among the conclusions drawn are the continuing importance of life cycle stages and previous holiday maker satisfaction. There is little evidence found for the travel career hypothesis developed by Professor Philip Pearce.

An apparatus was developed to project spinning golf balls directly onto golf greens. This employed a modified baseball/practice machine with two counter-rotating pneumatic wheels. The speed of the wheels could be varied independently allowing backspin to be given to the ball. The ball was projected into a darkened enclosure where the motion of the ball before and after impacting with the turf was recorded using a still camera and a stroboscope. The resulting photographs contained successive images of the ball on a single frame of film. The apparatus was tested on eighteen golf courses resulting in 721 photographs of impacts. Statistical analysis was carried out on the results of the photographs and from this, two types of green emerged. On the first, the ball tended to rebound with topspin, while on the second, the ball retained backspin after impact if the initial backspin was greater than about 350 rads-1. Eleven tests were devised to determine the characteristics of greens and statistical techniques were used to analyse the relationships between these tests. These showed the effects of the green characteristics on ball/turf impacts. It was found that the ball retained backspin on greens that were freely drained and had less than 60% of Poa annua (annual meadow grass) in their swards. Visco-elastic models were used to simulate the impact of the ball with the turf. Impacts were simulated by considering the ball to be rigid and the turf to be a two layered system consisting of springs and dampers. The model showed good agreement with experiment and was used to simulate impacts from two different shots onto two contrasting types of green.

L'objectif de cette thèse consiste à faire une analyse approfondie des méanismes d'articulation dialectique qui lient la sphère sociale du loisir aux sphères de la production éonomique et de la (re)production domestique. Cette analyse se situe dans le cadre d'une probléatique construite en termes de rapports sociaux de sexe. Une revue bibliographique des recherches sur le loisir permet de constater que les trois paradigmes thériques qui ont éétraditionnellement employé dans léude sociologique de ce 'fait social' manifestent un biais androcentrique implicite qui pose d'importants problèmes quand il s'agit d'éargir le champ d'analyse de ce phéomène au-del à du rapport travail salariéloisir qui constitue l'entré théatique principale de la majoritédes recherches existantes dans ce domaine. Bien qu'il ne soit nullement notre intention de proposer une nouvelle conceptualisation thérique du 'loisir', l'attention porté sur les difféences de sens subjectif et symbolique que les individus et les groupes sociaux attribuent à leurs pratiques de loisir permet, nénmoins, de constater la nature insatisfaisante des recherches fondés sur une analyse quantitative des caractéistiques sociales des pratiquants et soulève la question de l'etude sociologique des méanismes de production-reproduction des identité sociales objectives et subjectives qui s'opèrent à travers les pratiques de loisir. Afin de réondre à cette question, deux approches méhodologiques distinctes ont ééadoptés. Les donnés statistiques portant sur les pratiques 'hors-travail' des femmes sont issues d'une enquête effectué à l'aide d'un questionnaire ferméauprès d'un éhantillon non-repréentatif de 157 mères de famille franc caises (actives et inactives). Les donnés sur les repréentations temporelles proviennent d'une séie de 30 entretiens semi-directifs approfondis effectué auprès de femmes ayant dé à réondu au questionnaire. Une mise en rapport de ces deux types de donnés permet l'analyse du rôle de l'articulation entre la 'part rélle' et la 'part pensé' des rapports sociaux de sexe et la conceptualisation du rapport entre les pratiques et les repréentations du loisir en fonction de l'inscription objective et subjective des enquêtés dans la hiéarchie sociale de classe et de sexe. De cette analyse déoule une déinition de la sphère sociale du loisir en tant qu'espace social contesté oø se jouent à la fois les méanismes de reproduction des systèmes des rapports sociaux à l'identique et les méanismes de réppropriation et de rénterpréation des normes de sexe de la part des groupes sociaux.

Few people would dispute that today’s world is highly technological. But what do we mean when we talk of ‘technology’, and is it possible to quantify its effect on human beings? This thesis considers the relationship between technology and humanity as being one of symbiosis - we shape our tools and in turn, our tools shape us. The nature of this relationship is described by ‘essentialist’ critics of technology as narrowing the focus of human endeavour towards a technological value-set dominated by efficiency, to the detriment of other values important to the human animal. Sport provides an excellent framework for examining the impact of technology defined in this way, as it is a ubiquitous and highly technological arena. If it can be plausibly argued that an increasingly technological and performance-centred approach to sport is detrimental to an holistic understanding of sport’s potential to benefit both the individual and society as a whole, it may be the case that sport provides accessible and irrefutable evidence for the truth of the essentialists’ claims regarding the impact on society of technology writ large. This thesis presents such an argument. Furthermore, if we grant the essentialist critics their contention and admit the impossibility of returning to an ‘untechnological’ world, we have to find some way of restoring and maintaining an holistic existence in the face of the restricted value-set imposed by our technology and our interactions with it. To this end, the latter part of this thesis promotes ‘metaphysical’ sporting values (freedom, self-affirmation and beautiful, harmonious action) as a way to counter-balance the impact of technology in sport and suggest ways to solve the ‘technological problem’ more generally.