Leisure Management

Leisure management has evolved over the decades to steadily increase the range of management responsibilities and tasks required to deliver leisure programs, facilities and services. Leisure management books have covered the fundamental management responsibilities such as planning, delivery, management and control of services (Torkildsen, 1983). More recent publications include the fundamentals but also address quality and performance management, (Taylor, 2011), community planning, accountability, partnerships, inclusion of diversity in the community and workplace (Edginton, Hudson, Lankford & Larsen, 2015), competency-based management, personnel practices, project management and allocation of resources (Hurd, Barcelona & Zimmermann, 2022). Leisure management was recently explained as a focus on the ‘what’ and the ‘who’. The ‘what’ relates to the leisure organisation’s understanding of the key leisure concepts, how organisations function and manipulate their resources to deliver programs, facilities and services. The ‘who’ is about the understanding of leisure service consumers and key stakeholders (Zimmermann & Tower, 2017).

Leisure management is more than working to achieve effective and efficient programs, facilities and services. Often leisure projects are designed to address issues of inequality, access and to help make the world a better place based on leisure’s contribution to a community’s quality of life. It is this focus on leisure impacts that provides a context for the LM SIG. There is a need to clearly articulate and document the ‘why’ of leisure services.

A Victorian government report identified the need for leisure centres and many other community services to justify their ongoing investment and to better document the outcomes they have achieved. Monitoring and measuring leisure services facilities and programs often focuses on outputs such as participant numbers, member retention, skill development, etc. (Victorian Auditor General Office, 2016). However, there is limited reporting of the outcomes achieved by leisure programs, facilities and services to determine the wellbeing, social and health outcomes that leisure services often have as part of their plans. (Marriott, Tower & McDonald, 2021).

The rationale for the LM SIG is the need to better coordinate and collaborate regarding measurement of the outcomes that leisure management initiatives are achieving. In a general sense it would be useful to document the achievements that are contributing to local communities’ quality of life. At a more specific level, there is value to focus on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) to document how leisure programs, facilities and services are working to achieve the SDGs.

The LM SIG will complement the WLO vision by documenting how leisure programs, facilities and services are enhancing the human condition and contributing to communities’ quality of life. Furthermore, the LM SIG will complement WLO’s focus on the UN SDGs by documenting successful leisure achievements and sharing the success stories via WLO and the wider leisure communities’ information sharing systems.