Change or Be Changed: Empowerment of World Culture in the New Olympic Format of Equestrian Sports

Abstract

This study aims to analyze institutional challenges faced in contemporary society. The globalization process has changed international society rapidly, while organizations and institutions are struggling to maintain their progress in a line with the developing global society. During this research, I will be conducting a study over the Olympic equestrian society by investigating the equestrian discourse related to the IOC’s obligatory recommendations. In 2016, the IOC announced that there is no guarantee whether the equestrian sport can stay in the Olympic Games without clear improvements. The world culture values play as having a crucial role in the modern society by empowering institutional activity. Nowadays organizations aim to implement global values in their principles in order to gain public legitimacy, authority and acceptance. This study examines the challenges faced by the equestrian society by inspecting how well the equestrian sport correspond with world culture values and whether the lack of values may have actually caused institutional problems. New institutionalism has studied institutional and organizational changes, but there is no coherent research based on the topic where a sport institution has serious responsibility to modernize its sport to be more globally attractive. It can be expected that in the case of equestrian sport especially developing the media relations policies plays an important role, subsequently media is an essential link between the equestrian society and the general public. The study also explores how well the Olympic equestrian values correspond with the ethics of the IOC, as the Olympic movement is seen as the embodiment of the global culture.