Perceptions of key stakeholders regarding national federation sport policy: The case of the French Rugby Union

This article proposes a framework that explains how a national association sport policy is operationally formalised in relation with the various perceptions of its internal stakeholders. This is an important issue as a lack of engagement from these stakeholders may result in a limited impact of such a sport policy. Considering the latter as a management tool, a case study of the French Rugby Union (FFR) was built using archival material and interviews. We demonstrated that a national sport federation policy, when viewed as a management tool is the consequence of a conceptual framework, consisting of: a formal substrate, a managerial philosophy and a simplified representation of the actors’ role (Hatchuel & Weil, 1992). As part of an intervention-research within the FFR, 45 semi-structured interviews were conducted with both national and regional actors with various statutes. The analysis of these interviews shows both agreement and contradictions, categorized through the conceptual framework used to explain that a “one size fits all” approach should enable a degree of regional freedom for sport governing bodies that include organisational membership