Coaching transitions across borders: the pursuit of individuals advancing coaching careers in the competitive global landscape of Olympic sports
Intensified international competition for sporting success has facilitated coaches’ cross-national migration, which constitutes a space for coaches’ career transitions and development. This paper examines elite coaches’ international migration as part of coaching career transitions within the context of the global sporting arms race. Using a qualitative case study design, data were generated from documents and semistructured interviews with six South Korean coaches who had moved to Western nations to coach national teams in two Olympic sports. The analysis reveals an underlying mechanism of the coaches’ international mobility: dual imbalances existing between the sending and receiving countries—one in the levels of sporting performance; and the other in the perceived levels of modernisation in coaching cultures and sports systems. The migration opportunities were created by the performance imbalance between the home nation and destinations amid the structural context of the global sporting arms race. However, equally important is the individuals’ strategic initiative to seize the opportunities for their career development and mitigate the perceived modernisation imbalance in coaching practices. By highlighting coaches’ agentic capacity to navigate their career pathways within the global context, this study contributes to the literature on both international coach migration and coaching transitions.
Funding
IOC Olympic Studies Centre (2020 Early Career Academics Research Grant Programme)
History
School
- Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences
Published in
International Sport Coaching JournalVolume
12Issue
1Pages
116–125Publisher
Human KineticsVersion
- AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Rights holder
© Human Kinetics, Inc.Publisher statement
Accepted author manuscript version reprinted, by permission, from International Sport Coaching Journal, 2024, 12 (1): 116–125. https://doi.org/10.1123/iscj.2023-0058. © Human Kinetics, Inc.Acceptance date
2024-01-03Publication date
2024-03-11Copyright date
2024ISSN
2328-918XeISSN
2328-9198Publisher version
Language
- en