Bennett S. LeBow College of Business
Deceptive Behavior in NCAA Realignments
K at Lin LEBOW COB Business Marketing
Dr . Azi G era Faculty Mentor Management
Poster Session B
Through the years, universities have given multiple reasons for their decision to switch NCAA conferences. Conference changes influence the public’s opinion of both conferences and universities. NCAA conference realignments affect the competitive landscape in more than just athletics. Specifically, it has potential significant monetary benefits for the changing university. In an effort to maintain a favorable reputation, universities deceptively emphasize certain reasons for its decision to change conferences, which downplays the economic aspects. The main objective of these deceptive reasoning is to uphold the reputation of the academic institutions. With some examples from recent realignments, the poster will be illustrating the efforts of the university to shape a reputation it desires through deceptive behaviors. In order to substantiate my argument, we took a qualitative research approach. After reviewing numerous scholarly articles, speeches and other works, we propose that realignment related actions universities take to manage their reputation adhere to theories of deceptive behavior, specially focusing on the perception of the external stakeholders on favorable aspects of the decision to realign rather than the economic reasons. This case helps create a framework for other similar organizational deceptive behaviors. 126