Organizational Resilience of Community Sport Clubs Impacted by Natural Disasters

Abstract

When community sport clubs are impacted by natural disasters, organizational resilience is critical to recovery. Within this study, organizational resilience is conceptualized as a function of robustness, redundancy, resourcefulness, and rapidity, and applied to community sport clubs. Using data from a survey of sport clubs (n = 200) in Queensland, Australia, the organizational resilience of affected clubs and their recovery from natural disasters (flooding, cyclone) was investigated. The findings show that clubs used human and financial resources predominantly in their recovery efforts. Organizational resilience, number of members, and the use of government grants had a significant positive effect on the extent of the club's perceived overall recovery. Clubs providing equestrian, golf, and motor sports recovered to a significantly lower extent. Proactively pursuing government grants, suitable insurance coverage, and interorganizational relationships were identified as factors that assisted clubs in becoming more resilient. The measurement of resilience should be refined and expanded in future research.