Corporate social responsibility and social partnerships in professional football

Applying a Communicating Vessels Framework to CSR Value Co-creation: Empirical Evidence From Professional Team Sport Organizations

“…(CF12) Indeed, our empirical findings align with previous studies on the charitable foundations of PTSOs in the UK and US (see Bingham & Walters (2013) and Sparvero & Kent (2014), respectively), which also point out that financial efficiency and overall organizational capacity requires both inward thinking (closer collaboration with the founding sport company) and outward tactics (greater collaboration with the commercial world). The latter is crucial not only because public funds are much more competitive (Walters & Panton, 2014) and large resource commitments from the parent organization during tough economic times become much harder to obtain (Bansal et al, 2015), but also because firms outside the sport industry demonstrate increased interest in co-creating their CSR agendas through collaboration with nonprofit organizations of this type (Bason & Anagnostopoulos, 2015;Morrow & Robinson, 2013). The excerpt below manifests just that:…”

“…However, although studies have established charitable foundations as authentic organizations, not simply a façade (Herlin & Pedersen, 2013;Husted & Allen, 2007;ReyGarcia, Martin-Cavanna, & Alvarez-Gonzalez, 2012), researchers have only recently begun to examine the organizational issues involved in replacing in-house social initiatives with foundations, as well as the latter's role in CSR value co-creation (Castro-Martinez & Jackson, 2015;Misener & Babiak, 2015;Pedrini & Minciullo, 2011;Walters & Panton, 2014). The switch from in-house to independent organizations is not necessarily a straightforward one, as charitable foundations and their founding companies do not automatically share common goals or stakeholder agendas, making for a relationship that is not always conflict-free (Anagnostopoulos & Shilbury, 2013;Westhues & Einwiller, 2006).…”

Corporate social responsibility and governance in sport: “Oh, the things you can find, if you don’t stay behind!”

“…Yet, we should be reminded that the construction, perception and managerial acceptance of a business case may build on rhetoric from interested individual parties such as the European Commission (2011) through its communication on 'CSR and competiveness' or interlinked coalitions of interest . Walters and Tacon (2011) even suggest that the implementation of CSR in European professional football organisations is hampered by the lack of belief in the benefits (see also Lenssen, 2007, for similar notion in regards to other industries). Recently, FIFA has tried to link the value of sponsoring the World Cup with at the same time partnering on global CSR initiatives (SportBusiness, 2015).…”

“…Consequently, the answer concerning whether there is a business case for CSR is not simply an intrinsic domain of the CSR concept itself, but rests equally with the very reality and actual approach a sport organisation enacts. In one way, a relevant question could deal less with why the sporting context offers great potential for CSR (Godfrey, 2009;Westerbeek and Smith, 2007), but more with what is the best modus operandi for implementing CSR in order to achieve the perceived benefits for all involved parties (Walters and Panton, 2014). Consequently, there may not be a business case per se.…”

“…In response to this, we believe that content--based research that connect CSR engagement with social media such as Facebook or Twitter has the potential to offer valuable insights on how social media content adds value to CSR--related practices and vice versa. We argue that future research endeavours should start shifting the focus from content--based towards more process--oriented studies although content--based research, in and through sport alike, have offered invaluable insights on the CSR matter within settings such as professional teams in US (e.g., Babiak and Wolfe, 2009;Sheth and Babiak, 2009;Extejt, 2004); teams in Europe (e.g., Hamil and Morrow, 2011;Hovenman et al, 2011;Kolyperas and Sparks, 2011;) teams in Australia (Alonso and O'Shea, 2012); European sport associations (Walters and Anagnostopoulos, 2012;Walters and Tacon, 2011); professional teams' (Anagnostopoulos et al, 2014;Bingham and Walters, 2013;Anagnostopoulos and Shilbury, 2013;Walters and Chadwick, 2009) or athletes' charitable foundations (Babiak et al, 2012;Tainsky and Babiak, 2011); non--team commercial sport organisations ; major sporting events (e.g., Dowling et al, 2013; or even sporting facilities (Uecker--Mercado and Walker, 2012). If content--based research focuses primarily on which CSR--related programmes lead to optimal performance under varying environmental contexts, then research on how a sport entity's CSR organisational structure, management systems and decision processes influence its strategic positions could advance discussions at theoretical and practical level alike.…”