From performativity to normativity: the Gaelic Athletic Association as a case in point

This paper is a conversation between a management academic and a practitioner from the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA), the largest sporting and cultural organisation in Ireland. The GAA is an alternative organisation in that it (a) has a particular understanding of ‘management’, (b) emphasises place and community, (c) prohibits a market for players; (d) is volunteer-led; (e) operates on democratic principles; and (f) is concerned with more than sport. In the conversation, the practitioner asserts that, for him, critical performativity is arrogant and self-serving, with academics using practitioners as tropes in faux performative research. Instead, he argues that academic practice should become normative with academics becoming critics, adjudicating on what’s good and the bad in their objects of study.