What is championship?

"Answer this question and we will have captured the crucial ingredient which lets the human spirit soar."

Professor Allan Snyder FRS
The Inaugural Edwin Flack Lecture
Sydney, 26 June 1998

What Makes a Corporate Champion?
Joint research project commencing early 2002

"If your competitor were to have this knowledge and we did not, then we are history!" AMP executive

What differentiates extraordinary success from mere excellence in the corporate world? This question fascinates our corporate partners.

Great corporations aim to imbue their organisations with a champion mindset. The worldÕs largest management consultancy company, McKinsey & Company, have joined this ARC funded project which aims to assist realising this goal by developing a framework to identify and replicate championship in individuals and organisations. A multi-disciplinary team will apply quantitative and qualitative measures to address issues raised from the Centre for the Mind's existing research. Findings will contribute significantly to the social and economic benefit of private and public sector organisations.

It is a mark of the innovation of this project that there is little previous research in this field, with the exception of research into championship in sport. Expected outcomes are refined understandings and application of championship in corporations, the publication of reports, a book, refereed articles and a training video.

Background

The two Chief Investigators of What Makes a Corporate Champion?, Professors Janet George and Allan Snyder, played a central role in the What Makes a Champion? research team.

The Centre for the Mind developed an interest in the champion mindset initially with the realisation that the mind has as much to do with an athleteÕs performance as their physical prowess. Soon after beginning to examine this phenomenon, the Centre discovered that the sector most interested in understanding the champion mindset was the business community.

We differentiate between corporate expertise and corporate championship in much the same way as a distinction can be drawn between an expert and a breakthrough scientist. Much has been written on corporate expertise and corporate leadership but the study of corporate championship is comparatively novel. A novelty that necessitates examination in a world that demands that one corporation be highly differentiated from another.

Significance and Innovation

This research addresses a significant corporate need and is innovative in its interdisciplinary and conceptualisation. The research aims to provide a quantitative and qualitative basis to assist corporations in realising their goal. We do this with a highly qualified multi disciplinary team including two corporate executives, a senior sociologist and a mind scientist.

The What Makes a Corporate Champion? project has four primary objectives:

1. to define the concept of 'championship' in corporations and identify and understand the factors that differentiate 'champions'
2. to test the reliability and validity of these factors in organisations
3. to apply these factors in two industry settings to the development of champions and their relationships with management and leadership
4. to develop human resource management strategies that promotes championship and evaluates their utility.

The Centre for the Mind with our corporate partners has access to some of the most successful corporate champions globally. We study these individuals within their corporate context and with a view to extracting those elements which differentiate them from the others. Interdisciplinary in its scope, the research draws on empirical and theoretical insights from sociology, psychology and management. It is a mark of the innovation of this project that there is little previous research in this field, with the exception of research into championship in sport. In the preparation of this proposal, therefore, the researchers will draw on the findings of the What Makes a Champion? conference that highlighted social, economic, political and social factors in the development of individual excellence across a wide range of cultural, legal, political, sporting and corporate fields. It will draw deductively on concepts from its interdisciplinary territory, such as self authority, achievement motivation, brain wave states, social class, bureaucracy, power, profession, leadership, it will take an inductive, theory building approach to the problem of championship in organisations.