Relationship between Internal Marketing and Organizational Agility in Sport and Youth Departments of Fars province considering Mediating Role of Goal-Orientation

In order to cope with the quick and unpredictable changes in societies and the changing needs and expectations of customers, it is inevitable for sports organizations to become an agile organization. Attention to the organization’ internal stakeholders along with emphasis on the determinate goals can pave the way for the formation of such an agile organization. The purpose of this work was to investigate the relationship between internal marketing and organizational agility regarding the mediating role of goal-orientation.
This study was a descriptive-correlative type that was administered as a field study. The statistical population of this research work was all the employees of sport and youth departments of Fars province (N = 320); 212 people were selected by simple random sampling as the statistical sample. Three questionnaires were used to collect data: 1) Forman and Muni’ internal marketing questionnaire (1995), 2) Sharifi and Zhang’ organizational agility questionnaire (2004), and 3) Woraputtinan’s questionnaire of the goal-orientation. The content and face validity of the questionnaires were approved by 10 experts in sport management. Furthermore, their reliabilities, measured and confirmed in pilot study by Cronbach’s Alpha, respectively, were 0.95, 0.96, and 0.93. In order to analyze the data, the Pearson correlation coefficient and structural equation modeling were used.
The results obtained revealed that the internal marketing had a direct and significant effect on organizational agility and goal orientation. Also internal marketing had an indirect and significant effect on organizational agility through goal orientation. Finally, the determination coefficient of endogenous variables showed that 49% of organizational agility variance and 37% of goal orientation variance were explained by predictor variables.
Findings of this research work indicate the importance of goal orientation as a mediator variable in promoting organizational agility. Therefore, in addition to the growth and development of employees, their contribution in goal-setting and their stimulation to pursue these goals can improve the ability of sport and youth departments to meet the sports community needs.