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Joshua Gordon

Professor of Practice | Woodward Family Foundation Fellow | Faculty Athletics Representative

Affiliations: Marketing, Oregon MBA, Oregon Executive MBA, Undergraduate Programs, Warsaw Sports Business Center
Phone: 541-346-1634
Office: Knight Law Center 409B

About

Biography:

A leading business and legal strategist for more than 25 years, Joshua Gordon is an experienced educator, consultant, arbitrator, negotiator, facilitator, and organizational capability builder. He specializes in sports industry governance, strategy and crisis management that builds upon a deep history of contexts that have included business-to-business, organizational change, energy, environmental, real estate and housing, family, and gang-related challenges. He is the founder and lead practitioner at the Sports Conflict Institute (SCI), which supports competitive goals in athletics through understanding, preventing, and resolving destructive conflict inside and outside the lines and specializes in building high-performance culture.

  • Visionary who specializes in assessment and complex strategy to ensure optimal performance for teams and organizations.
  • Leading negotiation strategist adept at understanding and aligning interests in complex, multi-party challenges.
  • Educator who leverages cutting-edge pedagogy to ensure durable learning outcomes.
  • Empowering and participatory leadership style that breeds accountability, teamwork, and continuous improvement.

Gordon has advised on complex negotiations, built organizations' negotiation capabilities, and taught executives in such companies as HP, Young & Rubicam, Ogilvy, and McDonalds. He coached two University of Oregon Law School students to a National Championship in the American Bar Association Negotiation Competition. He especially appreciates and enjoys complex, multi-party conflict that requires non-traditional solutions to impasse.

Gordon has developed creative organizational solutions to ensure competitive success for a number of teams and leagues from collegiate through the professional levels. He has presented to audiences that have included individuals and teams from the NCAA, NBA, NFL, MLS, NRL, MLB, USATF, USTA, PGA, LPGA, and ATP.

Gordon is the coauthor of The Sports Playbook: Building Teams That Outperform Year After Year (Routledge, 2018), a book that introduces helps teams in any context fulfill its true potential.

In addition to his career in conflict management and dispute resolution, Gordon is a competitive runner with recent Masters All-American performances in the mile, 3K, 5K, and 10K distances. He competes as part of the University of Oregon Running Club and the Bowerman Track Club.

Gordon can be reached via Zoom on Tuesdays from 10:00–11:00 a.m.

Degree History:
  • JD, Suffolk University Law School
  • MA, University of Massachusetts
  • BA, Psychology and Sociology, University of Massachusetts Amherst / Brandeis University
Previous Positions:
  • Academic Committee, Oregon Executive MBA Program, Lundquist College of Business, University of Oregon, 2019–present
  • Faculty Advisor, Oregon Consulting Group, Lundquist College of Business, University of Oregon, 2019–2021
  • Program Manager, Warsaw Sports Business Center, Lundquist College of Business, University of Oregon, 2016–2019
  • Director of Minors and Undergraduate Sports Business, Lundquist College of Business, University of Oregon, 2018–2019
  • Program Director, Competition Not Conflict Program, School of Law, University of Oregon, 2010–2013
  • Faculty, School of Law, University of Oregon, 2010–2013
  • Adjunct Faculty, University of Massachusetts Boston and Boston College
  • Teaching and Research Assistantships, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Professional Leadership:
  • Arbitrator and Chair, USA Track and Field SafeSport Appeals Committee, 2021–Present
  • Arbitrator, Court of Arbitration for Sport, Switzerland, 2019–Present
  • Editorial Board, LawInSport, London, England, 2018–Present
  • Founder and Senior Practitioner, Sports Conflict Institute LLC, 2013–Present
  • Principal and Practitioner, Part of the Solution ADR Services (POTSADR), 1993–2013
  • Organizational Change Leader, Manulife Financial Services/John Hancock Financial Services, 1998–2005
  • Organizational Developer, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1993–1998
Honors and Awards:
  • Woodard Family Foundation Fellow, 2019–Present

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Areas of Expertise

  • Arbitration
  • Assessment
  • Conflict styles
  • Consensus building
  • Consultation, facilitation, and negotiation
  • Consulting and advocacy
  • Crisis management
  • Curriculum development
  • Digital and social media
  • DISC behavioral assessment
  • Dispute resolution
  • Event management
  • Higher education
  • Leadership development
  • Learning and development
  • Marketing
  • Mediation
  • Negotiation strategy and organizational capability building
  • Organizational development
  • Process improvement
  • Program and project management
  • NCAA
  • Research
  • Sports business
  • Sports conflict management
  • Sports marketing
  • Sport governance
  • Sports ombuds
  • Stakeholder analysis
  • Strategic planning
  • Strategy
  • Team optimization

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Publications

Books:

Gordon, Joshua, and Gary Furlong. Strategic Negotiation: Building Organizational Excellence. New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003243854.

June 2023

Gordon, Joshua A., Gary T. Furlong, and Ken Pendleton. The Sports Playbook: Building Teams that Outperform—Year After Year. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203733271.

June 2018
Magazine Articles:

November 2013

Gordon, Joshua. "The Meandering Path." Dispute Resolution Magazine.

January 2011

Cheimets, Peter, Joshua Gordon, and James Tull. "Negotiation for Engineers." Mechanical Engineering.

December 2010

Field, Patrick, and Joshua Gordon. "Building Trust in Corporate Communication: Candor, Conversation, and Commitment." Contingencies.

November 2007
Newspaper Articles:

Greene, Paul, and Joshua Gordon. "Will Colin Kaepernick's Lawsuit Win Him a Place Back in the NFL?" The Guardian.

October 2017

Presentations

  • Featured panelist, Portland Trail Blazers Career Fair
  • Featured speaker, Mr. Robbins' Neighborhood Football, Skills, and Career Development Camp
  • Featured presenter, "From the Front Page to the Mundane: How an Ombuds Can Help Athletes, Teams, and Organizations," Professional Association of Athlete Development Specialists (PAADS)
  • Panel moderator, "The NCAA in Crisis: The Crossroads of Intercollegiate Sports"
  • Featured presenter, Alternative Dispute Resolution Student Association (ADRSA), University of Oregon School of Law
  • Keynote speaker, Labor and Employment Relations Association
  • Featured panelist, Sports and Entertainment Law Conference (SELC)
  • Featured presenter, Professional Association of Athlete Development Specialists (PAADS)

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In the News

The critical role supports student athletes and acts as a liaison between academics and athletics.

Undergraduate and graduate-level students at the Lundquist College took advantage of summer break to pursue internships and study tours around the world.

Lundquist College faculty continue to impress with distinguished honors and top industry recognition for their pioneering work.
The Lundquist College of Business is now offering two new minor options, entrepreneurship and sports business, with a third in sustainability coming soon.

In preparation for the upcoming 2018-2019 school year, the Lundquist College of Business is proud to announce its upcoming faculty promotions and named appointments.

Sports business instructor Josh Gordon says winning consistently requires a team approach.

According to new research by marketing professors Conor Henderson, Joshua Beck, and their coauthor, there is untapped potential in out-of-market “isolated” fans.

In late February, ten Warsaw Center undergraduate students embarked on their first Boston study tour, engaging with myriad industry partners and attending the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference.