The Casual Relationship of Strategic Alliance, Human Resource Flexibility and Sources of Organizational Conflict with Competitive Advantages in the Sport Industry Products

The purpose of this study was to design a structural equation model for causal relationship of strategic alliance, human resource flexibility, and sources of organizational conflict with competitive advantages in the industry of sports production. The method of this study was descriptive causal, which was conducted by survey method. Participants in this study included 306 owners, managers, marketing managers, and sales managers of sports production units in Tehran city. For data collection, four questionnaires were used to get the specific data which were the Strategic Alliance (r=0.88), Competitive Advantage (r=0.88), Organizational Conflict Resources (r=0.89), and Human Resource Flexibility (r=0.86). After confirming the validity and reliability of the questionnaires, these questionnaires were distributed among the participants. In addition, structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data. The results showed that strategic alliance significantly has a direct effect on the two components of human resource flexibility (0.27) and sources of organizational conflict (0.34). Moreover, organizational conflict resources significantly have a negative effect on human resource flexibility (-0.47). Furthermore, human resource flexibility has the greatest impact on competitive advantage (0.62). This coefficient is the sum of the indirect effects of strategic alliance and sources of organizational conflict, as well as the direct effect of human resource flexibility on competitive advantage. The following conclusion can be drawn from the present study that the management of the different companies of sports production enters the trade unions with full confidence, to take into account the issues within the organization, such as cost-effectiveness and time, which create a competitive advantage. Consequently, they can turn a competitive advantage from an impermanence competitive advantage to sustainable competitive advantage.