Game Analysis of Rugby and Its Application in the Management Theories
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Master’s Degree Program – Second Cycle in International Management Corso di Laurea Magistrale in Economia e Gestione delle Aziende Final Thesis Game analysis of rugby and its application in the management theories Supervisor Ch. Prof. Andrea Pontiggia Graduand Federico Curtolo Matriculation Number 829137 Academic Year 2014 / 2015 Index 1 Abstract 3 1 General introduction and literature review 5 1.1 The game of rugby 5 1.2 Historical origin 6 1.3 Introduction to the rugby metaphor 7 1.3.1 Rugby as a practice community 10 2 Performance analysis 12 2.1 What is game analysis 12 2.2 Performance analysis in rugby 14 2.3 Study design and data sample 15 2.4 The performance indicators (P.I.) 17 2.4.1 Team performance indicators 18 2.4.2 Individual performance indicators 21 3 Results 22 3.1 Descriptive analysis per year 22 3.2 Descriptive statistics 48 3.2.1 Team descriptive statistics 49 3.3 Performance indicators correlations 52 3.3.1 Correlations inside the teams 57 3.4 Factor analysis 61 3.5 Binary logistic regression analysis 67 3.6 Linear regression analysis 69 1 4 The metaphor 85 4.1 Performance indicator metaphor 85 4.2 Teams metaphor 89 4.3 Non-numerical similarities between field and 102 business Conclusion 110 Tables index 113 Bibliography 116 Appendix A. Teams descriptive statistics I Appendix B. Rules and players position. VII 2 Abstract. Since my early childhood I have had a passion for sport, both as a keen participant and as a spectator. This interest continued all the way through my university studies, when I focused on management, and I combined my managerial learning with my rugby professional career. This pathway gave me the chance to find a possible connection between the two things, trying to explain what characteristics of the game of rugby could be imported in the managerial and organizational world. Rugby is based on three main pillars: respect of the rules, ethic and fairness, but it also represents a powerful programming model and it can contribute to create a cooperative climate in the team environment. A rugby team is composed of fifteen players, and everyone must be ready to face every match not only from a physical side, but also from a technical, mental and motivational side. Moreover, players need a great amount of commitment, because the opposition will not concede “easy” points. Therefore, each player should be balanced in the four fundamental aspects reported above, but should also be competitive. When the team-members play together they should have reciprocal respect and they should follow a strategy, which is set up in advance, even if it seems not to be working. In the following pages I underlined the link between rugby and the “ideal” company, through the examination of different aspects. In the first chapter I introduced briefly the historical origins, the principles and the techniques of the game, to further present some suggestions that could be translated into business dynamics. In order to reach out this goal, I analyzed the teams’ results in eight years of Six Nation championship. The tournament is the European most important one and the participants are England, France, Ireland, Wales, Scotland and Italy. I analyzed the 3 teams’ performances through a series of twenty-two performance indicators, with the help of SPSS statistical program. Afterwards, I created a performance profile for each team, with a look on the team’s organization and style of play. Then I shifted the most interesting results into a business/organizational view. At first, I explicated some metaphors between the performance indicators and the organizational style. Suddenly I compared each team with a different organizational style. In the final part of the thesis I made some additional considerations about rugby and management that cannot be measured analytically. Because of rugby’s complexity, the metaphor cannot be reduced only to a quantitative analysis. So, in this section, I carefully analyzed those rugby’s features that a company should import for being successful. A “conclusions” section has been presented in order to review the main themes the study pointed out. Personal opinions and further developments of the research have also been included. 4 Chapter 1. General introduction and literature review 1.1 The game of rugby In 1823, in the College of Rugby, 50 km from Birmingham, some boys were playing a sport with the ball called football, during a break between classes. The same day, during an argument about the interpretation of a rule, an Irish boy grabbed the ball under his arms and ran until the opposition end-zone line. In this way rugby was born, as an act of insubordination during a boring afternoon. Despite the turbulent birth, rugby was the first ball-sport that regulated the game with clear and solid rules. According to the rules of the game, physical contacts with the opponent players are frequent, unlikely other team sports. Although rugby seems to have odd rules such as passing only to people behind you, it is not an artificial or complex sport. The way of scoring points in rugby consists in taking the ball over the try line to the opposite border of the field after beating all the defenders, similarly of planting a flag behind the enemy’s line. When sociology started to follow and analyze the game, they soon noticed a key factor that comes along with rugby that is the ability to regulate the aggressiveness within the game, which always needs to remain under control. Moreover, the socializing purpose of this sport plays a big role in rugby. Born in England, rugby quickly started to spread universally from the beginning of the twentieth century, also as a result of the size of the British empire. The common international threads of rugby have always been the unique approach to the game, the willingness to sacrifice and the mutual respect for the opponents. In the last few years, the training sector has shown an increasing interest in this game, emphasizing how strategies, behaviors and values of rugby offer inspiration and guidance to scholars of organizational theory. Indeed, team sports have often been used as an effective metaphor to describe how a team works and how the interpersonal relations occur. Expressions such as team building, team working, role-playing, and outdoor playing, derive from team sports. 5 1.2 Historical origin Ball games have a really ancient origin, and they have changed many times depending on cultures, traditions and geography. Ruggiero (2012)1 reports that in China, 2000 years B.C., there was a game called tsu chu (that literally means “kicking the leather ball with the feet”). The game expected two teams to kick the ball over a net. The game then expanded in Japan around the sixth century B.C. with the name of shu kiku: the objective of the game was passing the ball in a circle without letting it touch the ground. In addition, there are more significant information from the ancient Greeks: l’episkyros, played by two teams of 14 players each, that had to contend the ball and bring it over the opposition line; the game, played especially in Sparta was very violent and it was only practiced by men. As reported by Ruggiero (2012), the game was then imported slightly modified by the Romans, which called it harpastum: those matches were very successful among the poorer people and played in the city’s main squares. The game was very physical, especially the “one against one” to gain the possession of the ball, and the players were usually soldiers. During the middle age, the game survived with some variations across Europe: for example the “calcio fiorentino”, which used to be played by the aristocracy during the carnival period, is still played in Florence. In England, the game of rugby was at first banned for his violence, and only in 1835 with the Highway Act has been decriminalized, but it was only permitted in close spaces. During that period both the games of rugby and football grew up in the English major colleges but there were not established rules until 1848 when the University of Cambridge decided to organize a meeting with the colleges of Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Winchester, etc in order to define the basic rules and set up the British Football Association. Some years later, in 1863, the Association decided to change the rules, imposing to touch the ball only with the feet. These new rules were adopted from all the colleges apart from Rugby, which remained a supporter of a more physical game and with a special “ethic code”. 1 Management e rugby: strategie vincenti, Massimiliano Ruggiero, Milano 2012, Gruppo24ore. 6 As a consequence the British Football Association decided to found its own Association, that was the Rugby Football Union, in 1871. Therefore, it is clear that the team sports arose in England in the 19th century, and its greatest contributor to its development was Thomas Arnold. Headmaster of Rugby College, he is considered the father of the modern physical education and one of the greatest social educators of all times: he developed the concept of athletics inside the college, pushing on the importance of reaching psychophysical, moral and social objectives. Arnold’s greatest methodological innovation has been the self-government, in order to develop into the boys the sense of responsibility and self-discipline. For these reasons the sport practice became a way to increase the physical performance, but more important, to let the individual develop a system of moral and social values. In his vision, the sport was no more considered as leisure, but it became a cornerstone: knowing how to deal with the wins and with the defeats, it reinforces the emotional stability; it prepares to the social service, because it teaches how to follow established rules, to respect the opponents, to feel the belonging to a group and to accept the result of the game.