The structure and management of the three major professional sports provideanalogies that can serve as guides for managers in analyzing theirorganizations and determining their best game plans.

Baseball, Football, andBasketball: Modelsfor Business

Robert W. Keidel

creamwork and hustle . . . game plans and goalline stands . . . playing hardball in the bigleagues. Not only is professional sports abusiness; it is an exemplar for business. In-deed, if it can be said that nature follows art,then surely business must follow sports.How many executives, for instance, strive forthe historical precision of the Dallas Cow-boys or the cohesiveness of the Boston Cel-tics? How many deep down see themselves ascorporate Billy Cunninghams, GeorgeAliens, or Whitey Herzogs? Probably quite afew.

Business's identification with sports.

sports teams, and sports personalities is per-vasive. None of this is lost on periodicals likeSports Illustrated, which touts its "speakersbureau" of 2,000 sports stars 'ready tosparkle at sales meetings, award dinners,conventions, store openings, or wherever elsethe color and excitement of sports can helpyou shine."

For most managers, sports' rele-vance to running a business consists of globalconcepts like "team spirit," "competitiveness,"and "winning." Something more, however, issuggested by the use of sport-specific meta-phors like 'liome run hitter," "quarterback," or

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"point guard." I believe that managers' habit-ual use of such metaphors suggests an identi-fication with a particular sport, which maythen be projected onto their orgaruzations.Thus a manager constantly in search of a"stopper" may be projecting an uncriticalbaseball-team view of behavior onto his orher organizational world.

Such projection may be of littleconsequence, especially if the sports image ishighly generalized. However, if the sportsimage is rather specific and if it correspondsmore to a decision maker's personality thanto organizational reality, it could causetrouble. Consider the following cases:

• The operations vice-president of a dura-ble-goods producer was convinced that thebest guarantee of effective manufacturingwas an overachieving plant manager. Whenone of his plants — a highly integrated, high-volume facility—ran into difficulties, hequickly inserted a new, more ambitious plantmanager. Six months later, with the plantstill floundering, the director declared: "I'vehad it with singles hitters; I need someonewho can tum it around with one swing."Thereupon he brought in still another man-ager, even more aggressive than his predeces-sor. The decline continued. As the plant'sproduction control staff later recounted, theproblem was never the plant manager; it wasan incomprehensible production/inventorycontrol system that no one — at the plant orat corporate headquarters — had ever reallyunderstood. Unfortunately, the vice-presi-dent's 'long-bair model —in which the cru-cial individual would carry the day —pre-vented him from seeing this.

• The president of a high-technologymarketing firm sought to imbue a "total teamconcept" throughout his organization. Hismode! was basketball: close teamwork andcooperation among all organizational units.The company's structure, however, workedagainst this. Units were geographically scat-tered across the country, and each operated

Robert W. Keidei is a senior fellow at theWharton Applied Research Center, Universityof Pennsylvania. He also directs his own con-sulting firm, Robert Keidel Associates, based inWyncote, Pennsylvania. He received his B.A.from Williams College, and his M.B.A. andPh.D. from the Wharton School, University ofPennsylvania. A former Naval officer and cor-porate project manager, he consults widely inboth the private and the public sectors. Heserved as program consultant at the NationalCenter for Productivity and Quality of Work-ing Life and held consecutive faculty fellow ap-pointments in productivity research with theU.S. Office of Personnel Management. He alsohas consulted to the }amestown. New York,and Philadelphia area labor-management com-mittees. His current research interests are man-agerial/professional quality of work life, the re-lation between corporate strategy and humandevelopment, and the use of sports metaphorsin organizational diagnosis and change. Dr.Keidel's publications include recent articles onquaht}/ of work life in Management Scienceand Human Relations. He is working on abook, to he published by Dutton, which showshow corporations can use sports models as onorganizational design and development tool.

quasi-autonomously. They rarely interactedwith each other and in fact perceived them-selves (correctly) to be in competition witheach other for corporate recognition and re-sources. Hence, attempts to inspire a sense of"all-for-one" were set up to fail, and did.

• The corporate training director of aleading office systems company believed that

the twin keys to managerial success were"clear direction and precise execution." Thisindividual had attended a university re-nowned for its football prowess. While not afootball player himself, he had identifiedwith the sport and with his university's team.This identification carried with him intobusiness. He organized a series of corpora-tion-wide training seminars featuring video-tapes of prominent football coaches. Thebasic pitch was "You need a quarterback andyou need to pull together as a team." Theseseminars may have had a positive effect onsome, but they became a standing jokeamong the company's large population ofself-starting individual contributors — whoranged from entry-level salesmen to solid-state physicists.

• The leader of a multi-disciplinary man-agement-consulting team on location at aclient's site abruptly resigned. He was re-placed by the most senior member of the pro-ject team. The new leader brought togetherall project staff to explain his approach tomanagement: "When you have a team ofMike Schmidts, Dave Parkers, JohnnyBenches . . . you don't manage them. You justlet them play. Well, that's what you guys are.You're all-stars. You can manage by your-selves." Several consultants took this literally.They began to work more and more on theirown, just as the project demanded greatercollaboration across disciplines. The clientorganization soon became dissatisfied withthe overall consulting performance and ter-minated the engagement.

As compelling as the above casesare, the significant point is not that managershave done damage by applying inappropriatesports notions. What is significant is the op-portunity that managers have to actuallyleam from sports. The three major profes-sional team sports in the United States —baseball, football, and basketball — exhibitprofoundly different dynamics and exem-plify three organizational pattems common

in business (and other sectors). Each repre-sents a model —a coherent set of relation-ships that captures the essence of an organi-zational form. By studying these models,managers can gain new insight into their ownorganizations — and possibly their own cog-nitive orientations.

Each model is grounded in a partic-ular kind of intemal "interdependence." Thisidea has to do with how parts (or members)of an organization interact. In pooled inter-dependence, there is little or no interaction;the parts act more or less independently ofeach other. In sequential interdependence,the parts interact in series: A feeds B, whichin turn feeds C, and so on. In reciprocal in-terdependence, each part interacts with everyother. The flow is back-and-forth.

In fact, each sport contains exam-ples of every form of interdependence. Forinstance, each displays reciprocal interdepen-dence because offense and defense alwaysfeed each other. Granted this, however, sig-nificant differences separate professionalbaseball, football, and basketball. These dif-ferences are summarized in Figure 1, whichsketches the three organizational models. Inthe rest of this article I will explore thesemodels by (1) contrasting team structuresand the latters' implications for team man-agement and (2) detailing the relevance of thesports models to business management.

TEAM STRUCTURE

Each of the three professional sports has aunique structure. Here are the relevant de-tails.

Baseball

Of the three sports, professional baseball ex-hibits the greatest degree of pooled interde-pendence. Team-member contributions arerelatively independent of each other. In the 7

figure ITHREE ORGANIZATIONAL MODELS

Dimension

Dominant interdependenceDensityBasic unitKey coordinating mechanismCore management competenceDevelopmental focus

Baseball

PooledLowIndividualDesign of sportTacticalIndividual

Sports

Football

SequentialModerateGroupPlanning and hierarchyStrategicIndividual and group

Basketball

ReciprocalHighTeamMutual adjustmentIntegrativeIndividual and team

words of Pete Rose, "Baseball is a team game,but nine men who reach their individualgoals make a nice team." Where interactiondoes occur, it is usually between no morethan two or three players (on the same team)—for example, pitcher-catcher, batter-base-runner, infielder-infielder. Rarely are morethan a few of the players on the field in-volved directly in a given play—outside ofmaking adjustments in fielding positions inanticipation of a play (or to back up a play).

The geographical dispersion of theplayers in baseball is also the least dense ofthe three sports. Players are spread across awide playing area, especially in the "outfield."This widespread placement, combined withlow interaction, makes a baseball team-anda baseball game — a 'loosely coupled" system.Spatial separation is mirrored by the relationbetween offense and defense: They are total-ly separate or "disjointed." The contest isstopped while one team leaves the Held andthe other takes it.

The basic unit in baseball is the in-dividual. More so than in either football orbasketball, overall performance approxi-mates the sum of team members' perfor-mances. This is vividly demonstrated by theway offense works: Players come up to batone at a time. Of course, scoring typically re-quires a sequence of actions such as walks,hits, and sacrifices. But individual contribu-tions remain rather discrete.

Football

Professional football exhibits sequential in-terdependence in two ways. First, on offense,the line leads ("feeds") the backfield by pro-viding the blocking necessary for runningand passing. Second, in a more fundamentalsense, the flow of plays usually required toscore — that is, a linear series of "first downs"across a "gridiron"—could not be moresequential.

The dispersion of the players infootball is denser than in baseball. Footballinvolves twice as many players on a smallerfield. Most players —the lines, offensivebacks and, to an extent, the linebackers — areusually bunched together. Further, all playerson the field are involved in every play. In twowords, football is "tightly coupled."

Moreover, there is a continuous ele-ment of contingency as to who controls theball. Offense and defense can tum into eachother at any time as a result of a tumover (afumble or an interception). Apart from turn-overs, the (normal) transition game has be-come a third component of football, linkingoffense and defense. Transitions are fre-quently played by specialists, members of"special teams" who may have made thesquad solely on the basis of their play in thisfacet of the game.

The basic units in football are thelarge group or platoon (offense, defense, and

transition) and, to a lesser degree, the smallgroup (linemen, linebackers, backfield, andso forth). Overall performance is basicallythe sum of the platoons' performances. Eachplatoon's challenge is to be as machinelike aspossible —a metaphor that is especially aptfor this sport. It is instructive to picture thefootball field as a factory, with the movingline of scrimmage representing product flowthrough the factory. According to GeorgeAllen, then-head coach of the WashingtonRedskins:

A football team is a lot like a machine. It's made up

of jjarts. If one part doesn't work, one player pulling

against you and not doing his job, the whole

machine fails.

Basketball

Professional basketball exhibits a high degreeof reciprocal interdependence, as demon-strated by the back-and-forth flow of the ballamong players. The reciprocal character ofthe sport also shown in the often freneticmovement up and down the court—a far cryfrom the deliberate, measured advance of aclassic football scoring drive.

The dispersion of players in basket-ball is the most dense of the three sports. Likefootball, basketball is also tightly coupled.But the coupling differs. In football playersare coupled to their individual roles, asthough programmed; in basketball, playersare coupled to all of their teammates in afluid, unfolding manner. Every player (1) isinvolved in offense, defense, and transition;(2) handles the ball; and (3) attempts toscore.

If offense and defense are linked"in football, they are overlapping or "inter-secting" in basketball. Offense and defensemay tum into each other instantaneously,and often do. The transition game is not aseparate piece with separate players, as it is infootball; it is continuous, part of the flow. In-

Figure 2THREE MEANS/END STRUCTURES

Meoni End

Individual ClQup Tm

-oFootfao"

Basketball

deed, a fast-breaking professional basketballgame gives the sensation of an electronicvideo game.

The basic unit in basketball is theteam. With only five players on the court, anintermediate grouping between the team andthe individual is unrealistic Unit perfor-mance therefore is a function of player inter-action, where each player may be involvedwith every other player on the court.

The means/end structures of thethree sports are depicted graphically in Fig-ure 2. In baseball, team outcome —a win ora loss —is the aggregate of individual (andsmall group) efforts. It is predominantly thesum of individual v. individual (pitcher v.batter) confrontations. In football, team out-come is the aggregate of platoon perfor-mances. The dominant competition is groupV. group (offense v. defense, special team v.special team). Finally, in basketball, teamoutcome is not an aggregate of subunits' per-formances; it is a function of team perfor-mance — player actions and especially, inter-actions. The dominant competition is team v.team (encompassing offense, defense, andtransition).

IMPLICATIONS FOR TEAM MANAGEMENT

These structural differences make a differ-ence in the way teams are managed in thethree sports. Implications concem coordina- 9

tion, management competence, and develop-mental focus.

Baseball

In baseball, coordination is achieved primar-ily through the design (structure) of thegame. There are no "game plans" or over-arching strategies to devise —with the possi-ble exception of pitching rotation. Game-related decisions are tactical, both before thestart of the contest (filling out a lineup card)and during it (making substitutions, posi-tioning fielders, pitching out, pinch hitting,advancing a runner, and so forth). The coremanagement competence is the ability tomake episodic judgments in real time. Theeffective manager in baseball may be de-scribed as a "tactician."

Because a baseball team is looselycoupled, instilling team —or, at least, team-manager — cohesiveness may not be critical.Indeed, one can find evidence for the oppo-site conclusion — that is to say, a disruptivemanager may succeed in part by stirringthings up. Billy Martin and Dallas Careen,who won World Series with the Yankees andthe Phillies, respectively, are two recent casesin point. The value (or irrelevance) of disrup-tiveness may extend even to owners, as wit-ness Charley Finley and George Steinbren-ner. Concerning Steinbrenner, an editorial inThe Wall Street Joumal speculates: "Do theYankees succeed despite their boss's nasti-ness, or because of it? The idea that nice guysfinish last . . . isn't new by any means, but ithas been brought home with particular forcein sports of late."

Because baseball's basic unit is theindividual player, developmental effortsfocus primarily on honing individual skills.Clearly, certain interactions (double plays,pickoff attempts, relay throws, and so forth)are important. But these tend to involve fewplayers and significantly, depend more on in-

10 dividual execution than on interaction.

Football

Coordination in football is achieved throughplanning and hierarchical direction. Of thethree sports, only professional football isstrategy-intensive at the game level. This is afunction of both the "strategic" importance ofeach contest and the nature of the sport. TheNational Football League's regular seasonconsists of 16 games, as compared with 82 inthe National Basketball Association and 162in major league baseball; hence the averagefootball game has five times the significanceof a basketball game and ten times that of abaseball game. Moreover, in the post-seasonplayoffs, a football team is eliminated by asingle loss, whereas at each step in the elimi-nation process baseball and basketball teamsplay the best of a series.

In football, films of the upcomingopponent are run and rerun to provide cluesas to likely play sequences, formations, cov-erages, and so on. The team's own previousperformance is also reviewed, a game plan isformulated, and players are drilled exhaus-tively in anticipation. In neither of the othertwo sports are instructions for each play soprecise, or job descriptions so narrow. Foot-ball's combination of meticulous prepara-tion, high information volume, and fraction-ated tasks helps to explain why there is muchmore of a coaching hierarchy in this sportthan in baseball or basketball.

The primary unit to be internallycoordinated is the group. Indeed, playeridentification with the group, especially theplatoon—whether offense, defense, or transi-tion—may be more readily achieved thanidentification with the team as a whole. Itmay also be at least as valuable: Interplatoonrivalry within a team can physically and psy-chologically prepare players for the conflictof the next game. Thus reports that fights arebreaking out as offense and defense "bang oneach other" during practice may be a positivesign. In any case, the platoon's integrity is

SPORTS ANALOGY FOR PRODUCT INNOVATION

The analogical value of sports extends to product innovation. A senior research and developmentmanager with considerable experience in new product development in the pharmaceutical industryfinds sports images powerful for patterning phases of drug discovery and development. According tothis manager, "The process moves through three distinct stages. It's like going from baseball, to foot-ball, to basketball."

In the first stage, basic research, scientists work more or less independently. Medicinal chem-ists produce new molecules for biological testing; biochemists and pharmacologists develop evaluationmethods for detecting potential new drugs; and pharmacy researchers devise new dosage forms anddrug delivery methods. The product of all these efforts is an increased pool of knowledge about howto discover a drug. It is the sum of individual contributions —as in baseball.

The second stage, "lead development," begins once a promising drug has been identified.Things move in train. First, developmental chemists engineer an economical process to manufacturethe potential drug in adequate supply for further testing. Then the drug is sent to pharmacy re-searchers (who develop specific dosages) and to toxicologists (who test the safety of the drug in ani-mals). Next, after governmental approval has been secured, clinical trials are performed. The investi-gational new drug is evaluated in healthy subjects for safety, and later in patients who suffer fromthe disease that the drug is intended to treat. The sequence is cumulative —like a series of first downsin football.

Only after all these steps have been completed successfully—and the company is convincedthat the drug is safe, effective, and salable —does the third stage, aimed at developing a *new drugapplication" (NDA), begin. In this stage, relevant groups of specialists (physicians, statisticians, phar-macists, pharmacologists, toxicologists, chemists) work together reciprocally —like a basketball team-— to win approval of their NDA from the Food and Drug Administration.

central; developing cohesiveness within it isan essential management task.

Basketball

The key coordinating mechanism in basket-ball is mutual adjustment by the players. Thecoach's tasks are (1) to develop the team'sability to adjust and (2) to intervene (duringa game) on an exception basis. Indeed, thegame strategy of the effective basketballcoach often resembles that of the coimter-puncher in boxing: It is "planned reaction."And while his or her counterpart in baseballmust make a flow of adjustments to specificgame situations, the basketball coach mustmake adjustments to the flow of the overallgame (through time outs, match-up changes,and so forth).

In basketball, interaction is more

important than the sum of individual players'actions. Thus it is often said that the coreskill in basketball is passing, which requirescontinuous movement by all — not just by theplayer with the ball. An effective passinggame diminishes the need for outstandingshooters or (offensive) rebounders because itproduces dunks and layups — high-percent-age shots.

To achieve the dynamic interactionrequired in professional basketball demandsinterpersonal as well as technical competenceon the part of the coach. The coach must beacutely sensitive to personality nuances andbe able to blend very different types — espe-cially because the placement of players inbasketball is so dense. Indeed, more than anyother sport, basketball appears to parallelJapanese industry (and society): Cooperationat close quarters is a matter of survival. In 11

sum, the successful basketball coach knowshow to cohere. The coach is — psychosociallyas well as technically—an "integrator."

As indicated, the basic unit in bas-ketball is the team. Individual developmentmust take place within this context. In termsof individual/team primacy, basketball is theopposite of baseball. A teamful of primadonnas can win it all in baseball; this is lesslikely in basketball. As Bill Bradley pointedout in 1977-after the talent-laden Philadel-phia 76ers had lost in the NBA finals l:o theless individually talented but more cohesivePortland Trailblazers—"Maybe someday ateam will have so much individual firepowerthat on that alone it can win a championship.It hasn't happened yet." It still hasn't.

SPORTS AS MODELS FOR BUSINESS

Professional team sports are a fertile labora-tory for managers because they mirror busi-ness. Despite obvious differences—for exam-ple, few businesses operate within such nar-row parameters as those governing sportsteams —the parallels are striking. At a gen-eral level they concem (1) the need to com-pete externally, (2) the need to coop-erate intemally, (3) the need to managehuman resources strategically, and (4) genericstructure.

First, sports exemplify competition.All businesses face intensifying intemationalcompetition for markets and resources.Sports provide a crucible in which to witnesscompetition in a concentrated form. Business(and other) organizations can observe com-petitive lessons in sharp relief by criticallyviewing sports contests — especially becauseresults are unambiguous.

Second, sports exemplify coopera-tion. One of team sports' major lessons isthat regardless of task requirements, some

12 measure of cooperation is crucial to competi-

tiveness. Sports provide the opportunity tocomprehend teamwork in an anay of con-crete forms (within each sport as well as be-tween sports). This actual variety contrastssharply with the vague and undifferentiatedsense in which "teamwork" tends to be used.

Third, sports are human resources-strategic In each of the three sports, the man-agement of human resources is a central partof overarching strategy—especially because(1) strategic decisions take place within a(sport, league, season, and game) frameworkalready mandated, and (2) sports are imequiv-ocally "people-intensive." The net effect isthat sports provides a direct window on stra-tegic human resources management.

Finally, sports encompass genericgroup structures. The size range of base-ball, football, and basketball teams —fromfive to eleven players in action (and from 12to 47 players in total) —parallels the sizerange of must organizational building-blockgroups (work clusters, departments, projectteams, and so forth) in business.

At a specific level, baseball, foot-ball, and basketball represent models thatcan help managers understand how their or-ganizations work. For all complex businessesare made up of disparate units, some ofwhich resemble baseball teams, othersfootball teams, and still others basketballteams. Articulating the resemblances canclarify management's charge.

What are the relevant criteria? Es-sentially they are the dimensions listed inFigure 1, which may be recast as a checklistfor selecting a model —or for assessing theappropriateness of a model-in-use. Figure 3summarizes unit properties of "baseball-,""football-," and "basketball-" companies.

While this display is worded interms of intra-unit relations, it applies as wellto inter-unit relations, where player:team isequivalent to unit:organization. Some exam-ples will illustrate.

Figure 3A DIAGNOSTIC CHECKLIST

Baseball-Co mpany Football-Company Basketball-Company

1. What is the nature(and degree) of task-based interactionamong unit members?

2. What is the geo-graphical distributionof unit members?

3. Given company ob-jectives and con-straints, where doesautonomy reside?

4. How is coordinationachieved?

5. What words best de-scribe unit structure?

6. What sports expres-sion metaphoricallysums up the operat-ing management task?

Pooled (low).

Widely dispersed.

Within each unitmember.

Through unit design inwhich the sum of in-dividual unit mem-bers' objectives aj)-proximates unit ob-jectives.

Network/conglom-erate.

Fill out (revise) theline-up card.

Sequential (moderate). Reciprocal (high).

Somewhat clustered. Highly concentrated.

Above the unit (thatis, within unit man-agement).

Among unit members (thatis, within the unit as awhole).

Through complex pro- Through continuous self-tocols that clearlyand tightly specifythe roles and respon-sibilities of eachunit member.

Bureaucratic/mechan-istic.

Prepare (execute) thegame plan.

regulation and responsi-bility sharing amongunit members.

Adhocratic/organic.

Influence the game's flow.

Baseball-Companies

Organizations that fit this type are looselycoupled. They include the classic sales orga-nization, made up of high-performing solo-ists. Also within this category are aggrega-tions of basic researchers, in which each indi-vidual independently pursues his or her ownline of inquiry—as happens with universityprofessors. At a more macro level, organiza-tions with dispersed, quasi-autonomousunits — geographically organized firms, hold-ing companies, franchise-based operations-— likewise have much in common with abaseball team. The whole is roughly the sumof its parts (units).

Football-Companies

Companies within this cluster tend to have"long-linked" technologies; that is, their pro-duction processes involve a complex of dis-crete steps, tightly coupled in serial (andsometimes parallel) order. The most obviousexample is the mass assembly line. In gen-eral, organizations that can be described as"machine bureaucracies," to use Henry Mintz-berg's term, resemble football teams. At amacro level, two varieties of football-like or-ganization can be identified: (1) the verticallyintegrated firm and (2) the large construction(power plants, ships, high-rise buildings, andso forth) firm. In each case effective perfor- 13

mance depends on the ability to orchestratea complicated but predictable set of activitiesin careful sequence.

Basketball-Companies

Organizations of this sort are tightly coupledbut less than tightly hierarchical. They de-pend more on member interaction than onmanagerial direction. Examples range fromthink-tank consulting firms, to creative ad-vertising agencies, to state-of-the-art compu-ter manufacturers. An analogue within moreconventional organizations is the ad hoc taskforce that cuts across levels and functions,and in which all members interact with eachother in virtually all aspects of problem-solving activity. Basketball-companies re-semble (sets of) autonomous work teams:They are self-organizing and highly flexible.

DISCUSSION

Although no organizational unit can pos-sibly perfectly fit any one configuration, re-semblance to a particular sport can highlightsalient features previously obscured. Thuseach business situation cited at the beginningof this article calls for a model quite differentfrom the one in use by the manager. (By re-ferencing each of the four cases mentionedthere to Figure 3, it is evident that the moreappropriate models are, respectively, foot-ball, baseball, baseball, and basketball.)

One caution must be raised here.When making comparisons with a sportsteam, it is important to be clear about boththe nature of similarity and the organization-al level of analysis. For instance, Ray KroQ,the founder of McDonald's and owner of theSan Diego Padres baseball team, has opinedthat "A well-run restaurant is like a winning

14 baseball team; it makes the most of every

crew member's talent and takes advantage ofevery split-second opportunity to speed upservic ." I believe that McDonald's as a wholedoes resemble a baseball team in two re-spects: (1) Corporate management effectively"fills out the line-up card" by authorizingfranchises, and (2) each store operates rela-tively autonomously—with minimal interac-tion among stores — within a preset design(that is, a corporate-imposed set of rules toinsure consistency). Within each store, how-ever, the (corporate-determined) structureand process more closely resemble football(which unlike baseball, does have a gameclock). Technologies are highly programmed,individual responsibilities are narrowly spe-cified, and the overall operation amounts towhat Theodore Levitt has called a "produc-tion-line approach to service." It is fitting thatthe title of Kroc's autobiography is a footballexpression. Grinding It Out: The Making ofMcDonald's (Contemporary Books, 1977).

PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE

SPORTS MODELS

The baseball, football, and basketball mod-els have practical managerial implications.

Individual-Organization Fit

An organization that resembles a baseballteam can and probably should concentrateon technical and individual criteria in assess-ing a prospective employee. On the whole, aperson's desire and ability to function auton-omously are more important in this sportthan in the other two. Author John Updikehas observed that;

. . . of all team sports, baseball, with its graceful in-termittences of action, its immense and tranquil fieldsparsely settled with poised men in white, its dispas-sionate mathematics, seems to be best suited to ac-

commodate, and be ornamented by, a loner. It is anessentially lonely game.

An organization rather like a foot-ball or basketball team must also pay specialattention to nontechnical and interpersonalcriteria. How compatible will this person bewith the firm's "system" (important in bothsports) and with its management style (criti-cal in basketball)?

According to Irv Cross, a formerall-pro defensive back who began his Na-tional Football League career with the Phila-delphia Eagles, "an Eagles player could nevermake an easy transition to the Dallas Cow-boys; the systems and philosophies are justtoo different." By contrast, any major leaguebaseball player can move to any other teamin his league and face only minor adjust-ments. He will find differences in the newhome park (weather, turf, lighting, outfielddistances, and so forth), but not much else.

Developmental Flexibility

Because of its loose coupling, a baseball-likeorganization has considerable flexibility indeciding whether to develop primarilythrough new hires or through existing per-sonnel. For the same reason, such an organi-zation is also vulnerable to losing key indi-viduals. Some teams —most notably the LosAngeles Dodgers — succeed by developingyoung players within their own organizationand reinforcing a sense of "family." But build-ing a spirit of togetherness is no easy mattergiven the port's individualistic structure.Baseball does seem to lend itself to freeagency. Effective managers often take ad-vantage. Thus, in the words of the formerBaltimore Orioles manager. Earl Weaver,whose career-winning percentage (.596) is thethird highest in major league history:

A n:ianager's job is to select the best players for whathe wants done. A manager wins games in December.

He tries not to lose them in July. You win [>ennantsin the off-season when you build your team withtrades or free agents. They're not all great players,but they an all do something.

By contrast, the relatively tightly coupledcharacter of football and basketball will like-ly continue to militate against winningthrough acquisition.

The organizational coherence thatfootball and basketball require favors inter-nal development. Development from withinhas been a hallmark of most of the consis-tently successful professional footballcoaches - for example, Vince Lombardi, TomLandry, Don Shula, Bud Grant, Chuck Noll.That is, they worked with what they had in-herited (or assembled) and from the collegedraft, rather than from trades. Although therecord in professional basketball is mixed,the sport's coaching legend. Red Auerbach ofthe Boston Celtics, also did it from within —often with draft choices that other teams hadpassed over. Of course, the small size of abasketball team means that one or two keyadditions can make a dramatic difference,and there are several examples of successfulteams put together through trades. But acqui-sitions that do work out tend to be interper-sonaily as well as technically "correct."

Managerial Continuity

In baseball-companies, managerial continui-ty appears to be unimportant. Manager turn-over in the major leagues mirrors playerturnover. Going into the 1983 season, onlytwo mariagers — the Dodgers' Tom Lasordaand the Pirates' Chuck Tanner—had beenwith their dub for as many as seven years.While Lasorda and Tanner—and the Orioles'Weaver — are evidence that continuity can bebeneficial, there is abundant alternative evi-dence that it is not essential.

Professional football stands in ap- 15

parent contrast to baseball. Teams that havesucceeded over the long haul have tended todo so under the same head coach (Lombardi,Landry, Shula, Grant, Noll, and others). Itcan be argued simply that winning coacheskeep their jobs, while losers do not. Withoutquestion there is a lot of truth to this. Still,one wonders whether certain chroriicallymarginal teams might not have fared betterhad they invested in greater coaching stabil-ity, especially since each coaching changetypically brings with it a new system and theneed to build a new culture.

In contrast, the loosely knit charac-ter of baseball renders managerial changesless consequential. Thus several teams havesucceeded under several managers; on theother hand, several managers —for example,Billy Martin, Gene Mauch, Dick Williams —have succeeded with several teams.

Professional basketball again pre-sents a mixed record. But it is difficult to dis-miss the example of Auerbach, under whomthe Celtics won nine championships in a ten-season stretch.

Figure 4

DIFFERENTIAL COORDINATION REQUIREMENTS

High , .Football

Q Baikttbell

High

Member Coordinalion

capitalize on individual identification withthis sub-unit level.

Finally, a basketball-company seemsto be made for unit performance incentivesinsofar as individual contributions defy neatseparation. Because such organizations de-pend on mutual adjustment, there is a ra-tionale for mutualism in reward systems.

16

Unit Performance Incentives

In a baseball-company, bonuses reflectingunit performance make little sense becauseindividual contributions are relatively dis-crete. And where individual performance isclosely linked to team outcome (as with apitcher's win/loss record), the connection isrelatively direct; hence, it is adequately rec-ognized by a reward system that is individ-ually based.

In a football-company, there is logicfor unit performance incentives, especiallywhere groups within the unit are highly func-tionally interdependent. Where groups aremore independent than interdependent (as isthe case with a football team's platoons),bonuses might be group-based in order to

Coordination

The nature and degree of a manager's controlwill vary with the sport his or her organiza-tion parallels. The management task may beconceptualized as a response to organization-al requirements for (1) managerial coordina-tion and (2) member coordination (involvingindividuals or imits). Baseball, football, andbasketball are arrayed against these dimen-sions in Figure 4.

Baseball presents the fewest de-mands along either dimension. The game'sdesign diminishes the need for managerialcoordination; its loosely coupled characteralso renders member (player) coordinationonly marginally important. On the surface,the baseball manager's job appears to beeasy. In fact it is exasperating, precisely be-

Figure 5PRACTICAL ORGANIZATIONAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE SPOSTS MODELS

Importance of individual-organization "fit"

Developmental flexibility(from outside v. fromwithin)

Importance of managerialcontinuity

Logic for unit-basedperformance incentives

Need for managerialcoordination

Need for member coordination

Baseball

low

high

low

low

low

low

Football

moderate to high

low to moderate

moderate to high

moderate to high

high

moderate

Basketball

high

moderate

moderate

high

low to moderate

high

cause he can control so little. A key prereq-uisite for managing a baseball-like organiza-tion, then, is the ability to accept these limits(and function tactically within them).

Football calls for special compe-tence in managerial coordination — so muchso that only a moderate degree of membercoordination remains necessary. Indeed, de-spite the size and complexity of his job, thesuccessful football coach may exercisemore control over his team than either of hiscounterparts.

There is a low-to-moderate need formanagerial coordination in basketball. Whatthe sport really demands is member coordi-nation—especially during spontaneous (thatis, nonprogrammed) activity. The basketballcoach can rely far less than the football coachon rehearsals because too much of the gameis emerging and unpredictable; unlikefootball teams, basketball teams do notpause and regroup after each play. The bestthe basketball coach can do —and what thebest coaches always do —is help the playersleam how to coordinate themselves.

The sports models' practical impli-

cations for business organizations are con-densed in Rgure 5.

CONCLUDING COMMENTS

In this article I have argued that professionalbaseball, football, and basketball teams rep>-resent models that parallel business organiza-tions. Clearly, the likenesses are inexact: Nosport can perfectly simulate a business. But Ibelieve that the metaphorical value of sportsexceeds this liability. Thomas Peters andRobert Waterman, in their best-seller. InSearch of Excellence (Harper & Row, 1982),argue that:

. . . people reason intuitively. They reason with sim-ple decision rules, which is a fancy way of sayingthat, in this complex world, they trust their gut. Weneed ways of sorting through the infinite minutiaeout there, and we start with heuristics - associations,analogues, metaphors. . . .

At the same time, the business or-ganization, unlike its counterpart in profes-sional sports, is able to change its structureand indeed, its purpose. Thus a baseball- 17

company seeking to develop deeper em-ployee commitment can take systemic meas-ures to reduce drift or destructive intemalcompetition among roles or units. Altema-tively, a football- or basketball-company cantake very different steps to increase individ-ual autonomy and accountability. In theseand other cases, the business organizationhas the opportunity to use a sports team asa mirror in diagnosing itself and then pro-ceed to make choices that transcend themodel.

It is a well-established fact that psy-chologically removing a person from a famil-

iar context (business) can stimulate learningabout that context. Anxieties and constraintsdiminish as a fresh perspective opens up.Sports can provide just such a vantage —especially since this realm is so pleasurablefor so many. Critical analyses that a managermight resist when applied to his or her owncompany are welcomed when applied to asports team. Paradoxically, the relevance ofsuch analyses to the business organizationmay then become inescapable. In this way,sports can serve as a heuristic medium forbusiness —and other—organizations. Sportstruly are user-friendly.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

TKe concept of interdependence, which underliesthis article, is taken from James D. Thompson'sOrganizations in Action (McGraw-Hill, 1967);this dimension is treated systematically in relationto additional organizational design criteria inGerald Susman's Autonomy at Work (Praeger,1976). The related notion of organizational <X)up-ling is developed at length in Karl Weick's provoc-ative article, 'Educational Organizations as Loose-ly Coupled Systems" (Administrative ScienceQuarterii/. March 1976), and more recently inWeick's essay, "Management of OrganizationalChange Among Loosely Coupled Elements," inPaul S. Goodman and associates' Change in Or-ganizations (Jossey-Bass, 1982). The phenomenonof long-linked technology is elaborated in DanielBell's Work and Its Discontents (McGraw-Hill,1956). Finally, a lucid discussion of differentgroup structures is P. G. Herbst's Alternatives toHierarchies (Martinus-Nijhoff, 1976); and an ex-cellent synthesis of organization structures is to be

1 8 found in Henry Mintzberg's book. The Structur-

ing of Organizations (Prentice-Hall, 1979).While the team structures of baseball,

football, and basketball constitute models forbusiness, these forms may also signify historicalparadigms of business organization: preindustrial(baseball); industrial (football); and postindus-trial (basketball). At an even more general level,the concept of sports itself represents a potentialcovering paradigm for business.

There is a significant developing litera-ture on the importance of paradigms and meta-phors to an understanding of organizations. See,for example, Thomas S. Kuhn's classic; The Struc-ture of Scientific Revolutions (University ofChicago, 1962); Peter K. Manning's "Metaphors ofthe Field: Varieties of Organizational Discourse"(Administrative Science Quarterly, December1979); Andrew Ortony's (ed.). Metaphor andThought (Cambridge University, 1979); andGareth Morgan's "Paradigms, Metaphors, andPuzzle Solving in Organization Theory" (Admin-istrative Science Quarterly, December 1980).