Chance events and strategic competitive advantage in elite sport: crises and sport-specific chance events

Abstract

This research spearheads the exploration of chance events in sport studies by the case study of Taiwanese archery, artistic gymnastics and baseball based on policy prominence and Taiwan’s international competitiveness. By using Porter’s national diamond model that examines the competitive advantage, this paper explores how unexpected and uncontrollable events impact competitive advantage and how nations can proactively respond to chance events. Three elite sports/disciplines in which Taiwan has were selected for in-depth case studies with 21 semi-structured interviews. The result shows that chance events are wide-ranging and the impact is context-specific, and chance events impact a nation’s elite sport competitive advantage by altering the national diamond. The key contributions of the study are the disaggregation/development of crises and the identification of unexpected successes and failures as major chance events. This study has substantial practical implications for how elite sport policy actors and practitioners acquire and maintain competitive advantage.