Abstract
Although Japan’s community-based professional sports organizations are widely recognized as
essential entities that bring economic and social benefits to their communities, some teams have unstable management. Due to the unpredictable nature of the games in spectating sports, which is the main product, and the fact that this business model is greatly affected by natural disasters and infectious diseases, sports organizations require stable management that can respond to any crisis or change. In the present study, we focused on organizational resilience, defined as the ability of community-based professional sports organizations to cope with crisis and change. We developed a conceptual model to explore the structure, antecedents, and consequences of organizational resilience and conducted a questionnaire survey on managers (n = 36) of community-based professional sports organizations in Japan. The results revealed that organizational resilience is a two-dimensional concept consisting of resource possession and responsiveness. The results of a partial least squares structural equation modeling analysis revealed that entrepreneurial orientation affects responsiveness and resource possession, that community trust positively affects resource possession, and that responsiveness positively affects social performance and time required to recover from the effects of COVID-19. Based on the results, this study discusses management strategies for community-based professional sports organizations to make sustainable contributions to local communities and sports environments, even when facing a crisis. A more in-depth discussion of the conceptual model with a larger sample size and model validation by team size needs to be conducted in a future study.
