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A level playing field: social inclusion in public leisure

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journal contribution
posted on 2014-06-05, 14:12 authored by Ian HodgkinsonIan Hodgkinson, Paul Hughes
Purpose: The transfer to partnership in public sector management has created significantly new modes of service delivery, and is suggested to be the best means of ensuring that disadvantaged groups are socially included. The purpose of this paper is to examine New Leisure Trust (NLT) structures in public leisure provision relative to direct, in-house managed facilities and privately run Leisure Management Contractor (LMC) facilities. In particular, NLTs receive significant government funds and subsidies through tax breaks that are not forthcoming to rivals, which raises questions as to whether NLTs deserve such aid for delivering upon the social inclusion agenda of the government. Design/methodology/approach: The research involved a national survey questionnaire to 1,060 public leisure service providers in England. Empirical testing through multiple analysis of variance and regression analysis was applied to the dataset. Findings: The authors find that NLTs do not follow social orientation strategies to any significantly greater degree than rivals, nor seem to create social inclusion to any greater degree. Further, NLTs have the least to gain in terms of business performance from creating social inclusion, whilst in-house (in particular) and LMC facilities stand to gain the most. Practical implications: Though each approach to provision examined places a considerable strategic emphasis on being socially oriented, they are not effective at increasing the social inclusion of recreationally disadvantaged groups. Originality/value: This paper calls for the current public leisure management playing field to be levelled in a rebalance of opportunity and investment through the removal of anti-competitive measures. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

History

School

  • Business and Economics

Department

  • Business

Published in

International Journal of Public Sector Management

Volume

25

Issue

1

Pages

48 - 63

Citation

HODGKINSON, I.R. and HUGHES, P., 2012. A level playing field: social inclusion in public leisure. International Journal of Public Sector Management, 25 (1), pp. 48 - 63.

Publisher

© Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publication date

2012

Notes

This article is © Emerald Group Publishing and permission has been granted for this version to appear here: https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/dspace-jspui/handle/2134/14768. Emerald does not grant permission for this article to be further copied/distributed or hosted elsewhere without the express permission from Emerald Group Publishing Limited. The definitive version is available here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/09513551211200285

ISSN

0951-3558

Language

  • en