Ready Or Not: On The Climate Vulnerability Of Sport Organizations

Abstract

Since the 1970s, North America has experienced warmer and wetter winters, and more frequent extreme weather events such as hurricanes and heat waves. These climate shifts have carried consequences for the business and performance of sport at all levels, such as event cancellations, decreased participation rates, and facility damages. In the format of three articles, this dissertation examines sport organizations’ climate vulnerability. The first article (Chapter 2) reviews the extant literature on sport and the natural environment, advances two sport-specific constructs for climate vulnerability: climate impacts on organizations (CIO) and organizational climate capacity (OCC), and proposed a framework that graphically represents the various states of vulnerability an organization may face based on the organization’s exposure to hazards, sensitivity to hazards, and capacity to respond. The second article (Chapter 3) presents a qualitative study using 16 semi-structured interviews with sport practitioners whose organizations have recently faced climate hazards, to determine dimensions for OCC. Findings revealed the dimensions of OCC are infrastructural resources, natural resources, planning and development resources, human resources, financial resources, and network and relationship resources. These dimensions bear resemblance to the dimensions of organizational capacity and adaptive capacity, adopting five dimensions from organizational capacity and the natural environment focus of adaptive capacity. In the third article (Chapter 4), the construct of OCC is operationalized beyond a set of dimensions into a list of 77 indicators, organized by dimensions. This list of indicators was developed through an online Delphi study involving 25 academic experts in sport management, and represents an important step in rendering the construct more applicable and understandable for sport managers.