In this dissertation, I developed a measure of sports team reputation. The reputation construct is one that has been the subject of decades of scholarly focus in the broader management field, but has been comparatively neglected by sport management scholars. Consumers use the reputations held by organizations to predict future behavior, and decide the ways in which they will engage (or not engage) with those organizations; thus, it is intuitively important for sports teams to cultivate and manage their reputations in order to receive positive benefits from external stakeholders (e.g., fans, spectators, general sport consumers). The development of the measure provides scholars a tool with which to empirically investigate the relationship between sports team reputation and consumer outcomes. As such, this research should be viewed as a first—and necessary—step toward increasing our understanding how reputation affects sport consumer behavior. Herein, reputation is treated as a multidimensional construct comprising consumers’ collective beliefs and attitudes about a focal unit—in this case, a sports team. Beliefs pertain to reputations for actions pertaining to performance- or character-related attributes, while attitudes are related to favorable or unfavorable overall assessments of reputation. The measure is based upon this conceptualization. To develop this measure, I followed the six-step scale development process detailed by Hinkin (1998): (1) item generation; (2) questionnaire administration; (3) initial item reduction; (4) confirmatory factor analysis; (5) construct validity; and (6) replication. In the project, I completed the first five of these steps, through which I was able to provide evidence of the validity and reliability of the measure. Using two independent samples (n = 300; n =181), I demonstrated internal validity of a three-factor measure comprising subscales for performance, character, and organizational prominence. A fourth subscale for favorability was removed. Further analysis provided evidene of acceptable model fit in the three-factor models for both samples (Sample 1: RMSEA = .078, SRMR = .049; Sample 2: RMSEA = .075, SRMR = .039). Based on the results, a significant strong positive relationship was found between organizational performance and organizational prominence (Sample 1: β = .92, p < .001; Sample 2: β = .96, p < .001); while a weaker significant negative relationship was observed between organizational character and organizational prominence (Sample 1: β = -.28, p < .001; Sample 2: β = -.24, p < .001). One conclusion from the results is that sports teams become known primarily for good high performance, and to a lesser extent, their misdeeds. Reasons for these trends are discussed, in addition to managerial implications, and limitations of the study. Ultimately, the development and validation of the present measure enables future empirical study of the reputation construct within the context of sports teams, and other organizations within the sport industry.
