Changing organizational culture in community sport: a systematic review

Community sport organizations - encompassing grassroots, recreational, amateur and voluntary clubs and settings distinct from elite or professional sport - are increasingly positioned as sites for advancing social inclusion, health and wellbeing, yet the role of organizational culture in enabling or constraining these outcomes is not fully understood. While policy and practice increasingly call for culture change in community sport, the extent to which such efforts have been empirically evaluated remains unknown.

A systematic review was conducted across five databases (PubMed, SPORTDiscus, PsycINFO, Web of Science, Scopus) from inception to June 2025. Studies were included if they evaluated an intentional strategy described as aiming to change culture in community sport settings and reported participant- or organizational-level outcomes. During title/abstract screening by reviewers, records were prioritized using machine-learning algorithms to rank relevance. Study quality was appraised using the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool.

Twelve studies met inclusion criteria. Most were qualitative, small-scale, and context-specific. Culture change efforts clustered thematically around: (i) integrity and safety cultures, (ii) inclusion and diversity for marginalized groups, and (iii) adult conduct in youth sport settings and coach development. While the evidence base meeting our criteria is nascent and heterogeneous, precluding quantitative synthesis, findings suggest that deliberate, multi-level culture change efforts can produce positive shifts in attitudes, behaviors and club practices, particularly when initiatives combine individual learning with organizational-level change and sustained external support.

Culture change in community sport settings is complex, uneven and often gradual, influenced by entrenched traditions and resourcing constraints. Future efforts should prioritize longitudinal evaluation designs, clearer conceptual and operational definitions of culture change, and theoretically grounded frameworks that can be compared across contexts.