Organizational culture and sport: a narrative review and proposed synthesis framework

In September 2025, the Brisbane Lions won an improbable second consecutive Grand Final of the Australian Football League—the Australian equivalent of a National Football League (NFL) Superbowl Championship or the English Football Association (FA) Cup. With a relatively inexperienced team and haunted by almost two decades of mediocrity, the sporting press and public immediately began searching for the secret to their success. For the Lions, the reasons for their victory were neither a surprise nor a secret. In the immediate aftermath of the game, co-captain Harris Andrews stated: “We've set up a culture where guys can thrive.” The “culture” of a sporting organization is often cited as being key to building a successful sporting organization at both the elite and grassroots or recreational levels of competition. Despite the apparent centrality of this factor, definitions of what constitutes positive “culture” in sporting organizations remain elusive. Sporting organization culture is currently undertheorized and often understood only within the context of a specific body, club, or organization. This narrative review closes the theoretical gap and aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of the existing approaches to developing positive cultures within sporting organizations in Australian and internationally. To do so, we review six prominent models of organizational culture drawn from the broader literature in management and organizational studies. For each model, we examine whether and how it has been applied to sport organizations. We conclude by proposing an integrative framework that synthesizes insights from across these models to offer a new conceptual lens for understanding organizational culture in sport that can be adapted and applied to diverse settings.