Exploring the athlete’s sports learning effect based on leader-member exchange theory — college class A team of Taiwan as example

Recently, since there has been more intense competition among teams or players, a team has to reconsider a new strategy for strengthening their competitive advantage. This study tries to explore the relationship among the relationship trust, relationship learning and sports learning effect, which chose Taiwan’s college class A team as subject to do empirical study. We adopted purposive sampling and delivered the questionnaire in a total of 1,000 copies. The duration was from October 1st to 10th of 2009. The valid samples amounted to 459, valid rate up to 45.9%. We used structural equation model (SEM) to test the model fitness and the hypotheses.The results show: (1) “specific assets”, “internal complexity”, “environmental uncertainty”, “communication” and “commitment“ can positively affect the “relationship learning”; (2) the hypothesis presuming “specific assets”, “communication” and “perceived satisfaction”, “commitment” and “dependency” can positively affect the “relationship trust” is supported. In addition, the hypothesis presuming“behavioral uncertainty” negatively affects the “relationship trust” is not supported. The both-sides negotiation based on common benefit is the main reason for behavior and record adjustment of coaches and players in a college class team. Thus, the possibility of distrust can be declined and the relationship between the “behavioral uncertainty” and “relationship trust” proves nonsignificant; (3) the hypotheses presuming the “relationship learning” and “relationship trust” can positively affect the “learning effect” and the “relationship trust” can positively affect “relationship learning” are both supported; (4) the hypothesis presuming the “higher degree of trust will decline positive effect of the relationship learning and learning effect” is not supported. The reason is that the coach and players have the common benefit and the team also establishes a good and completed motivation system; thus, it can reduce the potential problem whereby the traditional business partners generally filter the negative or critical information, even the opportunistic behavior. According to these results, we further provide recommendations and hope these could be a reference for the coach in real training; moreover, can they improve the effect of the whole training and achieve the goal.