Corporate Social Responsibility Governance, Implementation, and Communication in Professional Sport Organisations: An Integrated Literature Review and Empirical Studies on the Football Industry

Research Background and Context: The agenda of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been gaining momentum in the industries of professional team sports, including the football industry. Football (soccer) has been widely popularised and held in high regard as the world’s most renowned sport. Since the last two decades, the football industry has undergone drastic modernisation and commercialisation processes, a phenomenon that has simultaneously reinforced many professional football clubs to engage more intentionally and extensively in a plethora of CSR activities. In practice, CSR engagement activities, in the forms of community-oriented programmes, socio-cultural activities, and environmental initiatives, have been well endeavoured by European football clubs in the top-tier leagues of England’s Premier League, France’s Ligue 1, Germany’s Bundesliga, Italy’s Serie A, and Spain’s La Liga. On a similar note, although the North American football industry is less prominent in size and popularity, the elite Major League Soccer (MLS) clubs, based in the United States (US) and Canada, have also embraced the value of sport philanthropy and invested substantial organisational resources to coordinate various philanthropic activities within their respective local communities. Those football clubs are often regarded as sport entities with tremendous CSR potential to be a catalyst of social change and a contributor of sustainability values. Collectively, their engagement in socio-cultural and environmental activities are fundamental for not only the economic prosperity of the football business itself, but also for the positive systemic change that the football business sector as a whole aims to accomplish amidst the increasing importance of CSR engagement, which is also quite evident in other professional sport organisations (PSOs). It is equally noteworthy that the football industry is at its prime stage of development as it has to navigate certain complexities and market dynamics, including but not limited to, the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, the transformation of clubs into commercial sport entities, and particularly the emerging legitimacy crisis in the increasingly competitive football business market, resulting from various controversies concerning certain social issues and breaches of ethical conduct (e.g., corruption, match-fixing, doping, hooliganism, racism, etc.). Considering these dynamics, the principal purpose of this thesis is to embark on an in-depth research investigation to explore and explicate the growing institutional and strategic importance of CSR for professional football clubs in the European and North American settings and contexts, specifically emphasising their CSR governance, implementation, and communication processes. Research Objectives: The research objectives of the thesis are three-fold and outlined as follows. The first research objective is to conduct a wide-ranging integrated literature review to consolidate the scholarly research output pertaining to the contextualisation of CSR in the organisational setting of professional football clubs, whilst also appraising the status quo of the extant literature, highlighting existing knowledge gaps, and offering recommendations for future research endeavours. The second objective is to examine the growing importance of CSR communication in the football industry by emphasising the salient characteristics of the CSR communication and sustainability reporting practices of professional football clubs. The third and final objective is to explore the linkages of the notions of sport philanthropy and legitimacy management associated with the CSR implementation and communication processes of not only football clubs, but also their established community foundations or charitable sport foundations. Structure of the Thesis: The structure of the thesis is organised in three chapters in the following manners. The first chapter is an introductory section which sets the scene and provides a descriptive overview of the research background, strategic goals of the thesis, state of the art, theoretical foundations, and research design and methodology. The second chapter is structurally parallel to the three research objectives outlined above. Thus, the structure of the original research components of this thesis is a consolidation of three independently developed yet inter-connected research studies, each of which is written in the format of a journal article, and then they are synthesised and combined together to emphasise a macro research topic (i.e., CSR governance, implementation, and communication in the football industry). The third and final chapter is a concluding section which concisely depicts a collective overview of the thesis’ key findings, research implications, and limitations and considerations for future research. Research Output: Given that the second chapter of the thesis is the most prominent section which comprises original research components, the key features and outputs of the three research studies are detailed as follows. The first study is entitled “Examining the X Factor of Corporate Social Responsibility in Professional Football Clubs: An Integrative Literature Review”. This study is an integrative literature review which aims to consolidate and examine scholarly contributions in the current CSR vis-à-vis football scholarship. A content analysis was conducted on 55 studies, published from 2008 to 2024, resulting in the establishment of a thematic framework that elaborates on five CSR-in-football strategic areas, i.e., (1) implementation and governance, (2) drivers and barriers, (3) impacts and perceptions, (4) communication, and (5) measurement. The key findings indicate that the extant CSR-in-football research is rather limited in various aspects. The study also provides a discussion to address those core areas in need of further attention for future research endeavours. Those areas specifically concern the expansion of the research scale and scope, the strengthening of theoretical foundations, the prominent instrumental approach in CSR implementation, the minimal attention on drivers and barriers, the lack of focus on impact assessment and evaluation, and the lack of emphasis on disclosure and communication issues. Additionally, the second study is entitled “Corporate Social Responsibility Communication in the Football Industry: Evidence from Juventus Football Club”. This study investigates the CSR communication and reporting practices of professional football clubs with an aim to examine the range, variety, and visibility of their CSR information. This study adopts a case study strategy to singularly focus on Juventus Football Club (hereby Juventus FC or Juventus). A qualitative content analysis method was employed through NVivo 12 to gather and measure the CSR information disclosed through the club’s 2019/2020 sustainability report and official Facebook page within the same timeframe. The findings indicate that the communication approaches and information variety differ across the two communication modes. The most represented CSR topics in the sustainability report are “society and community” and “education”, addressed with a backward-looking approach. On the other hand, the CSR-related Facebook posts have a more forward-looking approach and mostly cover the topics of “health” and the “Covid-19” pandemic and its impacts. Notably, Facebook users appear to be less engaged by the CSR-related Facebook posts, as indicated by their limited provisions of likes or reactions, compared to those dedicated to football-related topics. The third and last study is entitled “Corporate Social Responsibility and Legitimacy Management in Major League Soccer Clubs and Their Community Foundations”. This study emphasises a different empirical setting, specifically the North American Major League Soccer (MLS), focusing on the 29 MLS member clubs and their affiliated community foundations based in the US and Canada. Grounded in legitimacy theory, this study aims to explore the two (i.e., clubs and foundations) entities’ perceived organisational importance of CSR engagement for legitimacy management purposes. A web content analysis was conducted to examine the CSR engagement scopes and disclosure levels of both the clubs and foundations. In addition, four semi-structured interviews were conducted with club and foundation representatives to gain more insights into key legitimation strategies. The content analysis indicates that the clubs vis-à-vis foundations’ CSR engagement approach is isomorphic to a great extent as various CSR activity types largely correspond with the four key initiatives promoted by the league, i.e., (1) Soccer for All, (2) Kick Childhood Cancer, (3) Greener Goals, and (4) Special Olympics Unified Programme. Nevertheless, their CSR engagement scopes and disclosure levels also transcend the four-initiative agenda of the league, with 30 CSR activity types identified spanning across six thematic dimensions, i.e., (1) community development, (2) philanthropy, (3) promotion of football, (4) health, (5) education, and (6) environment. In addition, the interview data derived from the key informants specifically explicates the dynamic institutional relationship of the clubs and foundations and indicates five inter-organisational features, including (1) autonomy in implementing discretionary activities, (2) proactiveness in going above and beyond, (3) collective brand identification, (4) strategic alignment and consistency, and (5) transparent communication. The discussion part of the study further elaborates on key legitimation strategies describing the sport entities’ normative and strategic value co-creation approaches towards CSR engagement. Conclusion and Research Implications: The principal theoretical and managerial implications of the thesis are detailed as follows. First, the integrated literature review in the first study informs both academics and practitioners in the sport management domain about the current workings and linkages between the CSR and football topicalities through an integrated assessment of previous research that is based on both theoretical knowledge and concrete practical evidence. Furthermore, the thesis also extends the scope of legitimacy theory to the limited but growing strand of CSR vis-à-vis football literature, specifically through the focus on legitimacy management which has been widely investigated and adopted as the main theoretical framework of both the second and third studies. On another note, the overall output of the thesis also reiterates the normative and strategic importance of CSR engagement for contemporary football clubs and appeals to sport managers to adopt a bird’s eye view of CSR as a strategic mechanism to reconcile business and social outcomes (i.e., value co-creation approach). This managerial outlook may help football managers perceive CSR as an opportunity-driven concept, rather than a problem-driven one. They are then encouraged to align their CSR orientations in a more strategic and proactive manner to cope with both any challenges and opportunities arising in the constantly evolving football business market. Another message to be conveyed concerns the growing importance of CSR communication and disclosure. The outcome of the thesis also elucidates on football as a prolific context for the developments of CSR implementation and communication processes, thus making it imperative for football managers to be proactive with promoting and disseminating their CSR activities in a multi-faceted setting of stakeholders. Football managers and other sport managers alike may also continuously assess and monitor their CSR governance, implementation, and communication processes to ensure that they can engage with stakeholders more interactively in order to co-create values and generate more positive contributions in society at large.