Investigating Relationship between Strategic Thinking and Organizational Change Capacity of Sport Managers in Mazandaran Province

The aim of this work was to investigate the relationship between the strategic thinking and the organizational change capacity of the sport managers in the Mazandaran Province. 360 people, selected as the sample, answered the questions of the 2 questionnaires of strategic thinking and organizational change capacity. The results obtained showed that strategic thinking had a positive and significant effect on the organizational change capacity. Introduction Today, human beings live in a world that is changing rapidly. Given the dynamics of the internal and external organizational factors, this change is inevitable. On the other hand, strategic thinking is important for the organizations in order to ensure sustainability in a competitive world. Therefore, the use of strategic thinking leads to the development of better strategies to deal with the environmental changes.

The research method was descriptive-correlational, and was applied in terms of purpose. The statistical population of the work was 193 people that, due to the limited statistical population, was a whole number sampling. For data collection, the two questionnaires of strategic thinking of Lidka (1998) and organizational change capacity of Judge (2005) were used. The validity of the questionnaires was confirmed by 10 professors in the field of sports management. Also the values of reliability, divergent, and convergent validity of the questionnaires were estimated. The results obtained were analyzed using the structural equations.

The results obtained showed that most of the subjects were men, and had a master's degree, and most of them were between 31 and 40 years old. Also the standard coefficient of the path of the effect of strategic thinking on the capacity for organizational change was 0.313, which was the value of statistic (2.906); this means that the strategic thinking variable has a significant effect on the organizational change capacity. Given the importance of strategic thinking and organizational change capacity at different levels of the organization, it is suggested that courses are held to increase the manager's awareness of the effects of strategic thinking in order to better understand the components of strategic thinking and their relationship with the organizational change capacity against environmental changes. The organizations can create a special capability by emphasizing on strategic thinking. This capability makes an organization more flexible and adaptable to change, and helps the organization to achieve the principle of continuous improvement for organizational survival. In order to develop the capacity of the organization in the dimensions of strategic thinking and the capacity of organizational change in order to successfully implement future changes, it is necessary to emphasize on the balanced development of all dimensions and design mechanisms to strengthen them in the management team. Therefore, the need for this change and preparation for environmental change is the existence of strategic thinking. Also the establishment of strategic thinking at the individual and organizational level causes the organization to be more flexible and adaptable to change, and helps the organization.