Leadership in governance: Exploring collective board leadership in sport governance systems

The purpose of this paper is to introduce and explore a working conceptualisation of collective board leadership in a federal sport network. In this paper, the authors examine the relationship between collective leadership and governance systems specifically within the non-profit sport organisation context, bringing together notions of collective board leadership and collaborative governance. Neither concept has yet been presented in tandem for the benefit of developing sport governance knowledge and practice. As an outcome of the conceptualising, the authors make explicit the multiple levels of the sport governance system and pose two broad research directions that will help advance theory and drive a better understanding of collective board leadership within these types of governance systems. A central premise of this paper is that the sport management field is lacking literature that brings together leadership and governance, and that collective leadership is a topic where the intersection of leadership and governance renders advancement for both bodies of work. The authors offer implications for future work in collective leadership for sport governance.