Perceived Organisational Responsibilities between Sport Organisations
This thesis contributed to existing knowledge by empirically investigating the similarities and differences in perceived social responsibility between organisational archetypes (RQ1). The first contribution that this research made to management literature was the identification that social issues were highly important in elite, national and community sport organisational archetypes. Each of the three organisational archetypes was found to have a high level of perceived responsibility to society. Although this is a seemingly obvious finding there is no research at present that has explicitly identified that community and national sport organisations possess an identifiable and quantifiable responsibility to society. Furthermore, non-profit organisations care for some of the most vulnerable groups in society, whilst governing bodies are both funded by taxpayer money and create legislation that underpins behaviour that is deemed socially acceptable for large parts of society that participate in sport. Yet, to this point there has been little research investigating the holistic responsibility of such organisations in the same way that corporations are scrutinised. The simple, yet profound finding that each of the three archetypes was perceived to have a relatively high level of responsibility to society is important to highlight here. In short, community and national sport organisations have identifiable organisational responsibilities too.
The second contribution this research makes to existing knowledge relates to how sport organisations’ are similar and different. These findings advance sport management knowledge by identifying the areas of organisational responsibility practice that are relatively constant between archetypes and those that are potentially distinctive to a particular type of organisation, or organisations. The first step toward this was to identify how similar the structure of sport responsibility categories was to existing corporate social responsibility frameworks. To do so Carroll’s (1979, 1991) seminal definition of CSR was used as a point of reference. Carroll’s (1979) definition contains four areas of responsibility; economic, legal, ethical and discretionary. Although these categories are not mutually exclusive, they give an abstract overview of the “shape” of the social responsibility configuration of an organisation. Collectively there were no major differences in the hierarchy of social responsibility categories between the three archetypes. Economic interests were perceived to be most important; discretionary interests least important; and, legal and ethical issues inseparable at the categorical level (Table 8). Difference was apparent in the strength
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of importance of each category. Legal responsibilities were emphasised more in the NSO compared to the ESO, and in the ESO compared to the CSO respectively. This suggests that more attention was likely to be put on legal responsibilities in an NSO and ESO, compared to an CSO. The NSO was found to have a higher ethical responsibility than the ESO and CSO. The NSO was also found to have a higher discretionary responsibility than the ESO. This suggests that the NSO was more likely to partake in overt actions to ensure ethical goals such as accessibility and inclusivity within the sport. Each of these findings was seemingly congruent with the organisations’ position within society. For example, the NSO writes and implements legislation and therefore is likely to have a larger emphasis on legal responsibilities than a local organisation. Additionally, an NSO is more likely to be the moral centre for a sport via the creation, distribution and implementation of socially progressive policies. Therefore whilst the progression of economic, legal, ethical and discretionary responsibilities was similar between archetypes, the level of emphasis of each category varied in some instances.
The third contribution this research makes is the identification of similarities between archetypes that may be less contingent on changes in the environment. Two areas of similarity between archetypes were identified: operational and non-essential responsibilities. Operational responsibilities can be thought of as the basic functions of organisational action and include financial management, protecting individuals within the organisation from harm and proactively preventing forms of inequity and discrimination. Operational responsibilities are important because they were identified as highly important regardless of changes in organisational context. That is, they may be considered fundamental to organisational responsibility and less contingent on changes in the institutional environment. Few, if any, of these actions would be considered overt social responsibilities of an organisation. In contrast, not fulfilling these actions would be perceived as a breach in the minimal behavioural standards of any organisation. Thus, they are considered fundamental to the organisational responsibility of any sport organisation.
Contrasting operational responsibilities were responsibilities that experts perceived to be of lower importance, or non-essential to each organisation. In other words, nonessential responsibilities were not identified as highly important in any context, and may be considered discretionary actions for sport organisations to pursue. Overt issues such as health promotion, environmental responsibility, community education, local investment and philanthropy were generally considered to be of lower importance to each organisational archetype. The lower perceived importance of these
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issues could be products of the existing relationship that non-profit sport organisations have with society. Non-profit seeking sport organisations may implicitly be seen as benevolent social actors whose sole objective is to pursue social good rather than profit. Consequently, the central ethical imperative to overtly demonstrate responsibility may be lower than that of a corporation, as the organisation’s stated aims are often already aligned with social goals. Paradoxically, this may mean that the primary responsibility goal for a non-profit organisation becomes financial performance. Given that the organisation cannot distribute economic resources gained via its activities, the heightened financial performance would make more resources available to the organisation to pursue its social purpose. This contradicts 40 years of the business case paradigm rationale for expenditure on social responsibility actions in the corporate context (Margolis & Walsh, 2003). In contrast, if an organisation’s primary purpose is to produce a socially beneficial product or service, then the influence of financial performance on social performance may be a better frame of reference for social responsibility practice in non-profit organisations. For example, diversifying revenue streams in NSO’s increases the financial resources available to the organisation (Wicker & Breuer 2014), allowing an NSO to more effectively deliver its core participation and elite sport products and services. Thus by focussing on core operational responsibilities, to the exclusion of selected nonessential (albeit socially desirable) responsibility actions may produce a more socially beneficial sport organisation, relative to an organisation that tries to pursue a broader range of responsibilities.
The fourth contribution is the identification of differences between each of the three archetypes (Table 9). Inclusive participation in the form of maximising player and volunteer participation; creating an accessible and inclusive sport setting (e.g. gender, ability); and, the governance frameworks, policies and procedures to ensure the implementation of these goals were common to both the community and national sport archetypes, but not the elite sport archetype. Issues of anti-corruption, fair competition and personal development and training of staff and players were important to the elite and national sport organisational archetypes, but not the community sport archetype. Each archetype also possessed one area of responsibility that was perceived to be important in the given institutional context, but not the other two archetypal contexts. Prioritising on field success was perceived to be important in the elite sport context, but not at the community level or in a national sport organisation. Improving social capital and community cohesion was perceived to be important in the community sport context, but not in the elite or national sport organisation context. Ethical leadership in
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the form of developing resources and public awareness of social issues was perceived to be important in the national sport organisation context, but not in the elite or community sport contexts. Therefore, although several similarities existed between archetypes, the holistic configuration of an organisation’s responsibility configuration varied depending on the specific contextual factors within the organisations institutional environment.
Perceived Organisational Responsibilities within Sport Organisations
The second section refers to the perceived social responsibility within different organisational archetypes (research questions two, three and four). The fifth contribution is developing context specific configurations of responsibility in three of the most prevalent organisational types in the sport industry. The national sport organisation had the highest number of social responsibility issues; 23 out of 33 issues were perceived to be highly important. Human rights, governance, labour practices and economic considerations were the highest priorities. Fair operating practices were also important, along with equitable access to facilities within the community development dimension. In contrast, the majority of the community development issues and environmental considerations were perceived to be lower organisational priorities. The NSO archetype also demonstrated a high level of coercive influence within an institutional environment. The organisation is responsible for producing and implementing procedures for a large part of society. Governance was central to the organisation’s responsibility in two ways. First, at the organisational level self- governance and the production of a safe and inclusive work environment was congruent with CSR research. Second, the NSO was responsible as an institutional actor to coercively influence and implement procedures regarding equality, health and safety and fair operating practices within the broader sport system.
The elite sport organisation had the least number of social responsibility issues that were perceived to be highly important to the organisation, with only 13 out of 33 issues considered highly important to the organisation. The elite sport organisation was positioned as a commercialised privately owned club. Economic factors such as fiscal responsibility to owners, financial viability and on field performance were the highest social responsibility priorities for the organisation. The majority of the remaining social responsibilities were concerned with labour practices, either within a broad human rights framework of equal opportunity, or more generally in providing a safe workplace and preventing injury. The latter could be more of a concern given the effect player injury could have on the organisation. Fair operating practices, particularly with regard
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to anti-corruption practices were considered highly important in this context. In contrast to the predominate literature on social responsibility, large areas of overt and explicit socially responsible actions were not considered highly important to an elite sport organisation relative to core operating responsibilities. These included community development, governance and environmental responsibility. These findings suggest that the social responsibility of elite sport organisations may be limited to a narrower set of actions than perceived in the broader sport corporate social responsibility literature.
The community sport organisation had a higher number of social responsibility issues than an elite sport organisation, but lower than a national sport organisation, with 17 out of 33 issues being considered highly important to the organisation. The CSO generated revenues nearly 30 times smaller than the ESO, indicating the organisational context, rather than the revenue available to the organisation, may influence the perceived responsibility of an organisation. The major dimensions of social responsibility were human rights and labour practices that were particularly concerned with providing accessible and inclusive sports participation at the community level. Governance and financial responsibility were considered important to the ongoing social responsibility of the organisation. Fair-operating practices and environmental responsibility were of lower importance to the social responsibility of the CSO. Inclusive sports participation was complemented by the perception that social capital and community cohesion were important to the community development dimension of social responsibility. Other social responsibility issues within the community development dimension such as health promotion, community education, local investment and donations were of lower perceived importance in the CSO context.
The sixth and final contribution from this project is the conceptualisation of organisational responsibility as a rationally bounded concept. That is, organisations cannot logically be all things to all people. The issues that reached consensus and high importance varied between contexts. On aggregate, no social issues were perceived low or very low importance to the organisation. The remainder were perceived to be of at least moderately important to an organisation. This raises an important question for future research. At what point does an organisation go from being socially irresponsible to socially responsible? Or simply, when is an organisation socially responsible enough? This is particularly pertinent in an environment where the behaviour of sport organisations to legitimise themselves is becoming increasingly complex in response to multiple and often-competing stakeholder demands. The major controversies that bring
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the legitimacy of these organisations into question are often a failure to fulfil central obligations such as financial accountability, corruption, health and safety and discrimination. Informative in this area is Campbell’s (2007) conception that organisations should meet minimum behavioural standards of avoiding harm to stakeholders and rectifying any harm caused once the organisation becomes aware of it. This position runs counter to the economic view of responsibility as a discretionary organisational activity that begins beyond financial and legal interests (McWilliams & Siegel, 2000). Given the nature of the ethical issues in sport organisations regarding corruption, governance, safety and equality; it would seemingly be of benefit for all sport organisations to ensure that these fundamental responsibilities are attended to prior to devoting resources to potentially more overt and socially desirable actions that have come to dominate the social responsibility discourse.