Sliding or Falling Downhill? A Critical Assessment of Alpine Skiing Resorts’ Snow Reliability and Technological Adaptive Business Strategies in the Italian Appennines

The purpose of this explorative, experimental study is to expand the existing academic and management knowledge concerning the vulnerability assessment and the adaptive business strategies for ski fields’ managers and managing organ- isations, with a specific focus on the Italian Appennine region. This chapter is structured as follows: literature review, business context analysis, research methodology outline, results presentation and discus- sion before conclusion. Accordingly, first, a consistent review of existing management and sports management academic literature concerning the effects of climate change on organisations will be presented. Resource dependency, organisational resilience and adaptive capacity perspectives will be highlighted as fundamental theoretical approaches. Furtherly, lit- erature review will include climate—on—snow sports studies and research on either natural or artificial snow reliability. A brief presenta- tion of the specific Appennines’ geographical and ski industrial condi- tions is outlined afterwards. The qualitative research methodology is featured by secondary data (altitude characteristics of operating ski resorts in the Appennine)’s use and their analysis according to specific snow- related academic and industrial standardisation. Discussions concerning results and adaptive strategic options, namely technological and business (Scott & McBoyle, 2007; Thrassou et al., 2022) are outlined below together with limiting elements of this study and future research opportunities.