Golf Club Management

Appendix: Club management terms

A plain-English glossary of the terms used in this module.

Governance and structure

Term	Meaning
Governance	Setting direction, overseeing performance and holding management to account. The board’s job.
Management	Running the club day to day to achieve the board’s direction. The GM’s and staff’s job.
Board charter	A document setting out the board’s role, powers, conduct and how it works with management.
Constitution / MOI	The club’s founding rules: membership, voting, the board, meetings. A voluntary association has a constitution; a non-profit company has an MOI.
Special resolution	A members’ vote needing a higher majority (often 75%), required for changes such as amending the constitution.
Delegation of authority	A written schedule of who can approve what spending or decisions.
Agency theory	The view that managers may act in their own interest, so boards must monitor them.
Stewardship theory	The view that managers want to do a good job, so boards should support and empower them.
Resource dependence theory	The view that boards exist to bring in resources such as skills, networks and legitimacy.
Design archetype	A typical pattern of structure and values: kitchen table, boardroom or executive office.
GM/COO concept	The CMAA model where one professional manager runs all departments, reporting to the board.
Silo	A department that works for its own goals without co-ordinating with others.

Strategy and planning

Term	Meaning
Vision	What the club wants to become in the long term.
Mission	What the club does, and for whom.
Values	The behaviours the club commits to.
Strategic goal	What must be true in three to five years.
Objective / KPI	A measurable target and the indicator used to track it.
Action plan	The specific actions, owners, budgets and dates that deliver an objective.
PESTLE	A scan of political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental factors.
SWOT	Strengths and weaknesses (internal), opportunities and threats (external).
TOWS	A matrix that matches SWOT items to generate strategies.
Stakeholder salience	How much attention a stakeholder needs, based on their power, legitimacy and urgency.
Emergent strategy	A pattern of action that develops without being planned.
SAFe	Testing a strategic option for being suitable, acceptable and feasible.
Balanced scorecard	A set of measures across financial, customer, process and learning perspectives.
Capital works plan	A long-term schedule of asset renewals and their costs.
Power purchase agreement (PPA)	A provider installs and owns an energy system and sells the power to the club.

Culture and change

Term	Meaning
Artefacts	The visible signs of culture: symbols, rituals, dress, behaviour.
Espoused values	What an organisation says it believes.
Basic assumptions	The unspoken beliefs that actually drive behaviour.
Cultural web	Johnson’s six elements (stories, rituals, symbols, power, structures, controls) that hold a culture’s paradigm in place.
Paradigm	The core set of assumptions at the centre of the cultural web.
Psychological safety	A shared belief that it’s safe to speak up, ask questions and admit mistakes.
Guiding coalition	The group with enough power and credibility to lead a change.
ADKAR	Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, Reinforcement: the stages of individual change.
Organisational silence	A collective habit of not raising problems.
Groupthink	A group suppressing dissent to keep harmony, leading to poor decisions.
Bounded rationality	Decision-making limited by time, information and mental capacity.

Systems, projects and risk

Term	Meaning
Policy	A rule or principle approved by the board.
Procedure	The steps for carrying out a policy.
SOP	Standard operating procedure: detailed task instructions.
Swimlane map	A process diagram with one lane for each person or department.
Segregation of duties	Splitting tasks so that no one person controls a whole transaction.
PDCA	Plan, Do, Check, Act: the continuous improvement cycle.
Work breakdown structure (WBS)	A project broken into deliverables and work packages.
Critical path	The longest chain of dependent tasks, which sets the project’s end date.
Scope creep	Uncontrolled additions to a project’s scope.
Planning fallacy	The tendency to underestimate how long one’s own tasks will take.
Risk register	A list of risks with causes, controls, ratings, treatments and owners.
Risk appetite	How much risk the board is willing to accept to pursue its goals.
Hierarchy of controls	Safety controls ranked from most effective (elimination) to least (PPE).
Psychosocial hazard	A work factor that can harm mental health, such as aggression, bullying or excessive workload.

Compliance and technology

Term	Meaning
Club liquor licence	A provincial licence for a bona fide members’ club, with conditions on who may buy liquor (in Gauteng, under the Gauteng Liquor Act 2 of 2003).
POPIA	South Africa’s Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013.
Information Officer	The person responsible for POPIA compliance, who must be registered with the Information Regulator.
Security compromise	POPIA’s term for a data breach; it must be reported to the Information Regulator through its eServices portal.
B-BBEE	Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment: South Africa’s framework for economic transformation.
NRSO	The National Register for Sex Offenders; people on it may not work with children.
Designated employer	Under the Employment Equity Act, an employer with more than 50 employees, which must have an employment equity plan.
COIDA	The Compensation for Occupational Injuries and Diseases Act: workplace injury cover funded by employers.
Section 30A	The Income Tax Act section under which SARS approves recreational clubs for partial tax exemption.
MOI	Memorandum of incorporation: the founding document of a company, including a non-profit company.
EME / QSE	B-BBEE size categories: exempted micro enterprise (revenue of R10 million or less) and qualifying small enterprise (R10 million to R50 million).
Public liability insurance	Cover for injury or damage claims by members of the public.
ESG	Environmental, social and governance performance.
GEO Certified	Independent sustainability certification from the GEO Foundation for Sustainable Golf.
CMS	Club management system: membership, billing, POS and communications software (e.g. Jonas).
WHS (handicapping)	The World Handicap System run by The R&A and USGA. Not to be confused with WHS meaning work health and safety.
HNA	Handicaps Network Africa, the official handicap system provider in South Africa.
Management information	Data organised to answer a specific decision question.
Generative AI	AI that produces text, images or other content from a prompt.
Jagged frontier	The uneven boundary between tasks AI does well and tasks where it fails.

Draft module material for the PGA of South Africa Director of Golf certificate, for discussion. South African law applies throughout. It is general education, not legal or financial advice: Acts, regulations and codes change, so check the current version and take advice before acting on them.