Tenth International Conference on Sport & Society

Abstract

On August 4, 2016, USA Gymnastics began to experience an organizational crisis when the Indianapolis Star (IndyStar) published the first in a series of reports that shed light on the history of USA Gymnastics’ failure to alert the authorities to a number of sexual assaults perpetrated by Dr. Larry Nassar. Once that first news story appeared, many victims of Nassar came forward, precipitating USA Gymnastics’ crisis from which it continues to recover. In this paper, we analyze the crisis experienced by USA Gymnastics as well as its crisis management efforts. This analysis will be shaped through a conceptual framework focused on crisis management, crisis response, and reputation management. USA Gymnastics experienced a sustained, reputational, and preventable crisis. Based on our case study analysis, USA Gymnastics’ crisis response proved to be too little too late. Because of that, its reputation was tarnished. Indeed, the Nassar scandal resulted in great damage to USA Gymnastics’ corporate reputation and the loss of many key executives, who were either fired or forced to resign to try and recover from the damage to the organization’s reputation.