Corporate Social Responsibility in Professional Team Sports Organizations: An Integrative Review

Abstract

Professional team sports organizations (PTSOs) are highly influential in our society. They can both positively and negatively shape the public discourse around responsible norms of behavior. The purpose of this article is to describe and critically review the literature on PTSOs’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) to develop a comprehensive understanding of current and future research directions in the field. Our analysis reviewed articles on CSR within PTSOs and identified publication year; geographical dispersion; journal type; sports contexts; social issues investigated; research approaches and methods; and how CSR was conceptualized, defined, and theoretically supported. The findings indicate that CSR within PTSOs has primarily been investigated in community programs, using qualitative research methods and pragmatically conceptualizing CSR on the basis of return on investments to the organization in European and North American contexts. Our discussion provides a critical review of the literature before outlining avenues for future research and practice.

Team Social Responsibility Embedded in Correlates of Universalism Values, Sport Involvement, and Team Identification for Sustainable Management in Sporting Settings

“…The scale used to measure team identification included four previously validated items from previous studies such as James and Ross [28], Gau, Wann, and James [29], Gau and Kim [30], and Wann and Branscombe [31]. Respondents answered items with a 7-point Likert scale ranging from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (7).…”

“…It has been found that CSR initiatives have a positive impact on purchase intentions [1,5,6] (Mohr & Webb, 2005;Needham & Little, 2013;Walker & Kent, 2009). CSR works well for sporting organizations because they are influential and shape public discourse around responsible norms of behavior [7]. Additionally, as star players in professional sports make good role models and foster affect among sport fans, TSR can provide different meaningful perspectives compared to other business segments [1].…”

A multilevel analysis of implicit and explicit CSR in French and UK professional sport

“…sport institutions, public agencies) stakeholders that shape their environment (Breitbarth & Harris, 2008). CSR has become a major issue in the organisational literature on sport (Godfrey, 2009;Paramio-Salcines, Babiak, & Walters, 2013;Walzel & Robertson, 2016), with numerous studies showing how CSR operates as a strategic tool that can help organisations meet stakeholder expectations (Anagnostopoulos & Shilbury, 2013;Babiak, 2010;Babiak & Wolfe, 2009;Sheth & Babiak, 2010;Walters & Chadwick, 2009;Walters & Tacon, 2010). However, previous studies of sport organisations have focused mainly on football and/or on a single country, such as the USA or UK, where CSR is mostly explicit.…”

‘European-ness’ in social responsibility and sport management research: anchors and avenues

“…(Siebert & Haenlein, 2015, p. 71) The number of publications about social responsibility in sport has increased significantly over the years. For example, a systematic review from Walzel, Robertson, and Anagnostopolous (2018) into professional team sport organisations suggests a growing number of articles in leading sport management journals with a peak in 2016. A more open search in EBSCO/SPORTDiscus using the search terms 'social AND responsibility' resulted in 1771 hits in peer-reviewed journals related to sports by end of November 2018.…”

“…Taking professional team sport organisations as an example, research into social responsibility is very much limited to Europe (46% of papers found) and North America (38%) (Walzel et al, 2018), thereby creating a two-fold problem: is the current state of knowledge mainly based on a few 'Western societies' useful or a barrier for reaching into new extended territory? And, drawing on Foucauldian thinking (1980), are journals and 'experts' as the main means of legitimating knowledge within the academic community ('legitimation' and power) willing and capable of appreciating 'blue sky' work?…”