The central contribution of this thesis is a shift in the social responsibility paradigm from a single organisational form to the meta-category of rationalised organisations (Bromley & Meyer, 2013). Stated simply, the view that all organisations have a responsibility to society extends from Neves and Bento’s (2005) term of “organisational social responsibility”. Organisational responsibility is contingent on numerous contextual actors such as industrial sector (Godfrey et al., 2010); national culture (Habisch et al., 2005; Maignan & Ralston, 2002; Matten & Moon, 2008), time (Rivoli & Waddock, 2011) and organisational type (Global Reporting Initiative, 2012a).
The expansion of social responsibility into the non-profit and government sectors is a major contribution to the responsibility discourse considering the direct influence these organisations have on society. The findings of this thesis frame organisational responsibility as a contextually contingent phenomenon and extend on the GRI’s logic of dividing a central social responsibility construct into several “sector supplements” that are specific to certain types of organisations. The deconstruction of social responsibility by the GRI offers confidence that the exploration and expansion of the responsibility concept has application beyond the corporate boundaries that “responsibility” often is limited to.
Furthermore, this expansion is not a conceptual leap beyond the realm of social issues that are currently investigated in sport management and sociology studies. Social issues such as governance, labour practices, human rights, the environment, community involvement, fair operating practices and economic issues are already
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extensively investigated in academia, from a variety of perspectives and in a variety of organisational forms. The lack of collective, interdisciplinary research of these issues under the banner of social responsibility forms the gap in sport management research (Doherty, 2012). This thesis adopts the social responsibility concept to aggregate these issues into a conceptual “configuration” and looks at how the perceived importance of issues differs between organisations.
By breaking the “corporate monopoly” on the organisational responsibility discourse, future research may begin to work toward a more constructive and encompassing dialogue that investigates the “rational” and “relative” responsibility of non-corporate organisations’ that influence and affect the lives of individuals in society in a variety of ways. For example how would a community objectively know if a local sport club was a responsible and socially progressive organisation? How could the same organisation benchmark its practices relative to other community sport organisations? Corporations are criticised for irresponsible actions and breaches that harm society and yet the same issues, albeit in a different context, are not extensively investigated outside of the corporate context in the same integrated way. To clarify, it is not suggested that organisations go and complete a resource intensive certification process such as the Global Reporting Initiative certification. Such organisations’ clearly do not have the resources to do so and such an approach is irrational. Instead, future research could look to adapt measures developed in the corporate context and apply them relative to the specific context the organisation operates within. Goodsports in Australia and ClubMark in the England are indicative of this change in practice, yet little research has looked into this in sport management. The frameworks developed within the CSR discourse may be informative in this area for national, state and local sport organisations looking for ways to improve their social performance.
At the national level, NSOs’ are another location for future research, particularly in the age of big society (and smaller government). A logical extension of this research is to further query whether a national sport organisation is accountable to, and meeting the expectations of the society that funds it? How could this be known? How well does one NSO perform, relative to another NSO? If the stated goal of sport funding is for population health benefits then is the inability for NSOs’ to demonstrably contribute to such benefits tantamount to irresponsibility? If the primary purpose of an NSO is to maximise participation are participation numbers clearly accessible and collected using a standard methodology? Does the NSO rely on socially detrimental sponsorships such as gambling, alcohol or tobacco? Does an NSO do anything to offset these sponsorships? Does an NSO have socially progressive inclusion and occupational
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health and safety policies? In short, can the same questions we apply to corporations that are often similar in scope to many large NSO’s, be asked of NSO’s.
For elite sport organisations and equally highly commercialised sport organisations, several of the same criticisms of CSR are appropriate. Do elite sport organisations have a demonstrable long-term positive impact via their social responsibility programs? Or is the criticism levelled at many corporations that CSR is proverbial public relations window dressing, applicable to some elite sport organisations? Is the organisation meeting its minimal and often implicit responsibilities to keep its employees safe, provide sound governance practices and avoid corruption? Can high profile elite sport teams leverage their mass communication power to positively influence society?
The underlying theme of the future research from this project is that the expansion of responsibility discourse into non-corporate contexts is a relatively new thought. Corporate social responsibility theory has developed for over 60 years, in contrast research into non-corporate organisations is only beginning to emerge. By virtue of the variety of organisational forms that are contained within the sport industry, sport management researchers and practitioners have the opportunity to influence the broader organisational responsibility discourse by investigating the responsibilities of organisations that operate within diverse institutional environments.