The purpose of this research is to explore the process of engagement of actors initiated by the headquarters of a national sport federation during the formulation of its sport policy. The Actor-Network Theory and its four phases (problematisation, incentive, enrolment and mobilisation of allies) are used to understand the dynamics of actors during the process, with an emphasis on the constitution, expansion and stabilization of the actors' network. As part of an intervention research within the French Rugby Union over the 2013-2016 period, three series of semistructured interviews (58) were conducted with both national and regional actors with various statuses. The French case is of interest beyond France because the organisational configuration of the national federations has specific characteristics that are common to different countries: pyramid structure, state intervention (both financial and human) and relationships between volunteers and employees. The results of this study demonstrate that the process of designing a sport policy is not linear. In addition, some elements that are favourable for the engagement of actors are highlighted, such as having a defined scope of the sport policy to be designed and designating key actors regarding the formulation of the sport policy. These actors should be able to act as spokespersons in front of other actors in the network. The innovative methodology used in our research is relevant to policy makers because it helps them engage other actors during a concrete transformation project, namely, the formulation of a policy.

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.

The notion of sport policy is a relatively recent subject of study, but it has been frequently used over the last 20 years, particularly referring to governmental sport policies. However, less research has been conducted in the field of national sport federations (NSFs), which are key non-governmental structures in governing, organising and sustaining the development of sports. The objective of this article is to propose a conceptualisation of the notion of sport policy adapted to NSFs. The proposed approach consists of two steps: first, we conducted an extensive integrative literature review around the notion of sport policy. Second, based on the literature review, we developed a model that conceptualises what an NSF sport policy is. This conceptual model is intended to be a useful analytical tool to design, implement and assess the success of a sport policy for both researchers and practitioners working in the field of NSFs.

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