The exclusiveness of group identity in celebrations of team success

Abstract

openAccessArticle: Falsecover date: 2015-08-01pii: S1441-3523(14)00089-8Harvest Date: 2016-01-06 13:07:37issueName:Page Range: 396-396href scidir: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1441352314000898pubType

‘I was there from the start’: The identity-maintenance strategies used by fans to combat the threat of losing

“…This contributes knowledge concerning how new organisations can adopt a relationship marketing approach and encourage co-creation from fans (Kim & Trail, 2011). The Owning Our Identity theme also revealed how some individuals considered the role of the community important to their sustained identification, consistent with other research showing the importance of external groups on team identification (Delia, 2015;Heere & James, 2007;Heere, Walker, et al, 2011;McDonald et al, 2015). Consequently, we extend new team research that has shown regional identification impacts team identification (Harada & Matsuoka, 1999;Lock et al, 2011) by demonstrating how team identification can affect integration within the representative city.…”

“…Here, we regularly reflected upon and discussed our allocation of concepts to themes with each other and with colleagues who were not involved in the research. This was done to ensure the themes were trustworthy and conceptually sound, and this process is consistent with the standards applied in other recent sport management enquiries (e.g., Delia, 2015;Filo, Cuskelly, & Wicker, 2015). The third step involved condensing the themes so that they were organised into primary and sub-themes, which allowed the major findings, discussed next, to be easily presented.…”

“…However, the team studied boasted one of the worst on-ice fair play records, illustrating that social creativity involves subjective, and often biased, comparisons. Other research outlines how a team's associated group identities (e.g., representative university, state or region) may be used to mitigate against identity threats at the team level (e.g., Delia, 2015;Heere, James, Yoshida, & Scremin, 2011;Heere, Walker, et al, 2011). In the social creativity example, individuals may shift the comparative dimension to a higher level to maintain a positive team identity following team failure (e.g., ''We lost but our University is still better than yours'').…”

The Multiple In-group Identity Framework

“…The propensity of sport consumers to bask in the reflected glory (BIRG) of winning teams provides a salient example of this phenomenon (Cialdini et al, 1976;Delia, 2015;Fink et al, 2002;Fisher & Wakefield, 1998;Trail et al, 2012). However, sport consumers also support unsuccessful teams (Fisher & Wakefield, 1998;Wann & Branscombe, 1990).…”

“…In a recent qualitative study, Delia (2015) explored how consumers used multiple external group memberships to BIRG or blast. She found that prior to, during, and after matches the complex repertoire of group memberships to which consumers belonged combined into a simpler identity structure.…”