Creative Tensions and Conversations in the Academy

Academic life invokes creative tensions within and among teaching, research, and service. Work–life balance plays a prominent role in those tensions and in the conversations that they engender. As NASSM’s strategic plan demonstrates, sport management has grown to the point that it will benefit from closer attention to the content and potential of those conversations. Systems thinking in the scrutiny of tensions provides insight that can further inform our conversations. The resulting discourses will engage our thinking about our discipline’s values, content, and environmental influences. As a result, they will move us forward.