The Use of Normative Control in Voluntary Organizations: An analysis of the USTA 18's & 16's Junior National Championships
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Authors
VanderWiere, Jeff
Issue Date
1993
Type
Thesis
Language
en_US
Keywords
Alternative Title
Abstract
Alvin Zander, author of The Purposes of Groups and
Organizations, defines a group as a "collection of
individuals who interact with and depend upon one another". 1
In order for a group to be successful it must consist of
members who are committed to that group and its particular
cause. The United States Tennis Association (USTA) 16's and
18's junior national championships is no exception. In fact
this group relies tremendously on its members to make it the
best junior tournament in the world.
In the fifty-one years the tournament has been held at
Kalamazoo College there have been only two directors, Dr.
Allen B. Stowe and Rolla Anderson. This in itself says
something about the kind of special organization it is. In
the thirty-plus years that Anderson has been at the helm he
has built up a volunteer network from just two people when he
first started as the director of the tournament to over 750
volunteers in this years tournament which happens to be
Andersons last. Next year Timon Corwin will be taking on the
dual role of head men's tennis coach for Kalamazoo College
and tournament director. In his first years the tournament
was small enough so as to allow Rolla to handle most of the
organizational aspects himself, thus he only needed a couple
of assistants. As the tournament began to flourish and grow,
the organizational demands on Rolla required that he begin
setting up committees to handle different parts of the
tournament. This meant that as the tournament grew, the
number of volunteers Rolla needed also grew. Today, Rolla's
primary responsibility as director is to secure sponsors for
the tournament. The actual organizing of the different
aspects of the tournament is left to several committees which
are headed by loyal volunteers, many of whom are good friends
of Rolla's who are committed to helping the organization live
up to its billing as the premier junior national tennis
tournament.
The most striking characteristic of the tournament,
however, is the number of volunteers involved with this past
years tournament. Over seven hundred volunteers helped out
with this years tournament many of whom keep coming back year
after year. Obviously something is motivating them into
returning each year and spending tremendous amounts of time
in order to see that the tennis tournament can be the best it
can be.
There has been attempts by some people in the USTA's
national body to move one of the age divisions to another
site, but these proposals have been overwhelmingly voted down
mostly because of the efforts of the individuals involved in
the tournament. Kalamazoo has proven to people around the
country that its group members are committed to keeping the
tournament right where it is.
A group must have a reason for its' existence. The
Kalamazoo tennis volunteer organization seeks to serve and
promote junior tennis in the U.S.A .. This group has
consistently received tremendous support from the volunteers,
Kalamazoo College, and the surrounding community. I plan to
study the basic questions of why people join groups, like the
Kalamazoo volunteer tennis group, why they find it necessary
to become members of particular organizations and why certain
organizations are more popular than others.
In studying these questions, I hope to apply them to how
the tournament attracts its members, concentrating on how it
keeps its volunteers coming back year after year and what is
the motivation behind why people put in tremendous amounts of
hard work to see that the tournament succeeds?
In addition to discussing the above questions I will
attempt to apply some theories derived by Randall Collins
that deal with organizational theory. I will show how these
theories help to "sensitize" you to some of the important
aspects of the tournaments' organization. These theories tie
into the previous questions I stated and should help explain
why people commit themselves to different organizations.
They also help to explain why the amount of loyalty to the
group a person has, varies among different individuals.
In attempting to accomplish all that I have described
above, I have done a number of things to insure that I get as
much information about the organization as possible. This
includes studying every relevant aspect of the tournament as
a participant-observer. In addition I distributed surveys
and conducted interviews with a few select people from the
tournament. All this I hope will provide a concise and
detailed report as to the answers to all the questions that I
have posed above.
It is my hope that the tournament, will follow many of
the theories done by past research on other organizations and
will also shed new light on why the tournament has been such
a success during its' fifty-one years in Kalamazoo.
Description
196 p.
Citation
Publisher
Kalamazoo, Mich. : Kalamazoo College.
License
U.S. copyright laws protect this material. Commercial use or distribution of this material is not permitted without prior written permission of the copyright holder. All rights reserved.