P31 Sport as enabler of the citizens’ and the communities’ wellbeing
Panel Members & Contact Details
Corresponding Chair: Gianluca ANTONUCCI, Associate Professor, "G. d'Annunzio" University of Chieti-Pescara, Italy. Email: gianluca.antonucci@unich.it
Panel Chair
Hiroko KUDO, Full Professor, Faculty of Law, Chuo University, Japan. Email: hirokokd@tamacc.chuo-u.ac.jp
Co-Chairs
Peter McCUE, Australian National Physical Activity Network (NPAN) and Asia Pacific Society for Physical Activity (ASPA) Advocacy Committee, Australia.
Elisabetta TRINCHERO, Associate Professor of Practice, SDA Bocconi, Bocconi University, Milan, Italy.
Joyce LIDDLE, Full Professor, Centre for Policy and Practice, University of Durham, UK.
Summary
This panel explores the role of sport and physical activity as a strategic tool for public management to enhance health, social inclusion, and community well-being. It emphasizes the importance of grassroots sport and public sector involvement in promoting active lifestyles, addressing societal challenges such as aging populations, sedentary youth, and digital transformation. By leveraging integrated governance models and aligning with sustainability goals, sport is positioned as a catalyst for public value creation and a contributor to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Description
In 2025 UNO recognised that “Beyond national-level transformation, sport is renowned for its capacity to foster bilateral and multilateral cooperation (…) [and] has served as a bridge between nations, fostering cultural exchange and unity. According to the EU White Paper on Sport (COM, 2007), public authorities, also working together with private organisations, should contribute to promoting sport activities for all.
Public sector bodies have always had a direct and/or indirect involvement in the provision of sport, having the more responsibility in developing grassroot sport rather than professional one. Public bodies definitively ought to be proactive in sustaining local communities by encouraging engagement through sport activities, thus related in favouring physical activities for health, and social interactions for inclusion and wellbeing. It could be indeed a leverage to tackle nowadays issues For instance, the promotion of active aging can be an answer to the aging of population, as well as the promotion of sport among youngsters could tackle sedentary lifestyles which are now exacerbated by their reliance on digital tools in this period of digital transformation.
This is possible since the direct involvement of public bodies in promoting physical activity as well as active recreation through sport, can actively contribute to the improvement of citizen’s health (including those with disabilities). Sport and/or physical activity can be seen, indeed, as a booster for health, social inclusion, social connectedness and community well-being thus having a positive impact in terms of both health and people wellbeing.
Emerging models of new public governance and integrated networks across public, private, civic, and non-governmental sectors represent the possible solution for managing resource constraints and enhancing the potentials of sport in creating public value. Indeed grassroot sport and the promotion of physical activity could be considered as a lever for public management to support citizens’ relationships and therefore their quality of life. Public bodies ought to be proactive in sustaining local community social growth, by encouraging physical and sporting activities with the twofold aims of fostering physical wellness and facilitating social diversities and interactions. These deal also with aspects related to social, economic, and environmental sustainability, being all these factors linked to the general theme of its legacy.
Last but not least, apart from the above mentioned aspects, sport activities are also considered for their impact both on people health and mitigation of climate change because of its capacity of promoting sustainable lifestyle. In this respect, sport can be a critical element in satisfying some of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Relevance
Public Policy making, public administration and public services are increasingly challenged in a complex world brimming with dilemmas where successive attempts at transformation and reform have had limited sustainable or scalable effect. Public Management and Public managers (and the academic community who collaborate with them) are working at the boundaries of these problems seeking to ameliorate and innovate ways and means which have traction with communities and citizens. This panel seeks to build on the international exploration of Relational Public Management at IRSPM which began in Bologna 25 where two streams were brought together resulting in lively fascinating discussions around the nature and role of RPS drawing from the contributions of over 25 papers. We seek to continue this journey with colleagues in Australia, New Zealand and beyond to build mobilizable knowledge in contexts which develops academic thinking in Public Management, adjacent areas such as public policy making, administration and also provides insights in practices of transformation, innovation and reform