Theorising organisational resilience for sport management research and practice

Abstract

Purpose/Rationale: Helping individuals and teams achieve their goals by being resilient is an established research field in sport. How sport organisations can be resilient in adversity is comparatively neglected, so the purpose is to provide firm foundations for conceptualising organisational resilience in sport management. Research question: "How can organisational resilience best be theorised for sport management research and practice?" Design/Methodology/Approach: From a critique of the resilience literature, a new Framework for Organisational Resilience Management (FfORM) is developed, based on the theory of organisational resource conversion and the separation of normative and descriptive levels. The FfORM is applied to sport management contexts, including the resilience of National Governing Bodies of Sport (NGBs) to reductions in UK Sport funding. Results and Findings: Organisational resilience is conceptualised as a means to an end, to achieve externally generated goals, emphasising its dynamic, temporal nature. The FfORM illuminates the challenges for NGBs in developing organisational resilience because of trade-offs in the actions they take. Practical implications: As well as being an evaluation tool, the FfORM will be of utility to sport organisations addressing the unprecedented challenges arising from COVID-19. Research contribution: Development of theory on organisational resilience, for use in both sport and other contexts.

Reliability and Interrater Agreement: Development and Validation of a Universal Values in Sport Instrument

“…Similarly, understanding how to lose with dignity and grace is a valuable lesson that builds character and resilience; (c) How to Win: Winning in sports is not just about emerging victorious in a competition but also about embodying the values of sportsmanship, teamwork, and dedication (Fauziah and Candra 2023;Şemşek et al 2017). It involves celebrating successes with humility and acknowledging the contributions of teammates and coaches in achieving a common goal; (d) How to Lose: Losing is an inevitable part of sports, and understanding how to navigate defeat with grace and resilience is a crucial skill (Bostock and Breese 2021;Fletcher and Sarkar 2012). It involves acknowledging the strengths of the opponent, learning from the experience, and using it as motivation for improvement and future success (Crust and Clough 2011;Matsumoto, Konno, and Ha 2009).…”

Olympic and Paralympic Coaches Living With Stress—Is It Such a Problem? Potential Implications for Future Coach Education in Sport

“…Firstly, the coaches interviewed provided one-off, standalone accounts that could only provide a snap shot into their world. This could lead to a lack of contextual considerations, such as socio-economic statuses of the sports and the expectations on them to deliver medals to maintain funding (Bostock & Breese, 2021), which could influence the outcome of our findings. Consequently, future research could consider adopting a critical realist lens, that would allow for the consideration of social structures, biases (both conscious and unconscious) and institutional norms (Byers et al, 2021).…”

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“…The diagram includes elements of internal resources, such as: dynamic capabilities, innovations and proper management. Although there are studies in the literature that address the relationship between resources and resilience more broadly (Bostock, Breese, 2021), this topic has not yet been thoroughly analysed, which justifies the rationale behind the approach adopted in this study.…”

“…For example, Bostock and Breese (2021) offer a theoretical framework based on the concept of organizational resource conversion (Bostock, Breese, 2021, p. 2), which can be applied to any organizational context (Bostock, Breese, 2021, p. 3). This concept is used to build a framework adequate to the adopted perspective, which requires that recommendations for organizational resilience be supported by an understanding of the relationship between organizational features, processes, and outcomes (Bostock, Breese, 2021). What seems to be particularly important in this respect is the need to ensure business model flexibility so as to enable organizations to adapt routines and processes in response to threats (Appiah, Amankwah-Amoah, Liu, 2022, p. 30).…”