University of Lausanne and International Weightlifting Federation To Team Up

The International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) and the University of Lausanne, through its Institute of Sport Sciences (ISSUL) are teaming up in the context of a research project on international sport federations’ organizational performance. The overall research project is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation for a period of four years.
 
The project addresses two key questions. Firstly, how international sport federations’ organizational performance at a global level (sporting, economic, media, social and societal performance) can be measured efficiently and effectively. And secondly, how findings can inform and guide the federation’s strategic management. For this purpose, the researchers Prof. Emmanuel Bayle and Josephine Clausen (Ph.D) have developed a conceptual performance measurement model that is tailored to the reality of international sport federations.
 
“The IWF has made great strides in terms of improving its governance,” said IWF Interim President Dr Michael Irani. “We have adopted a new constitution, developed new mechanisms for incorporating athletes in our decision making and more. But there is always more that can be done. The IWF is grateful for this chance to engage with independent experts, in order to improve our future work.”
 
The overarching objective of the UNIL research project is to help international sport federations analyze, understand, monitor and manage their organizational performance holistically. Based on the fine-grained analysis of a federation’s organizational capacity, specific lines of actions can be defined within the various dimensions covered in the performance measurement model. Over a period of six months starting in January 2022, the goal of the collaboration between IWF and ISSUL is to apply the performance measurement model to the IWF and to help the federation in making informed decisions.
 
“We are excited to collaborate with IWF on this first application of our performance measurement model. Our goal is to collaborate with federations that seek to analyze their performance holistically in relation to their mission and their strategic objectives and to help them steer their organizational performance based on informed decision-making,” said senior ISSUL researcher Josephine Clausen.