Refining the Item List

The initial item list was developed using the following process. Based on the structuring of social responsibility in the ISO 26000 and GRI 3.1, the concept of social responsibility was ordered in a hierarchy of three levels: “dimensions”, “issues” and “items”.4 _{Dimensions are the most generic and outlined in Table 3. Social responsibility} issues (or sub-categories) occur within dimensions. For example within the social responsibility dimension of “environment”, multiple social responsibility issues exist such as prevention of pollution, resource use and climate change adaption. The third level of the hierarchy is social responsibility “items”. Items are used to identify aspects, actions and expectations of social responsibility practice that indicate the organisational response to a social responsibility issue.

The seven ISO 26000 social responsibility dimensions and 36 issues were used as the fundamental structure (see Appendix 6). Following this, the six GRI 3.1 dimensions and 37 social issues were layered on top of the ISO 26000 framework. Dimensions and issues that were similar to those already in the ISO 26000 were discarded. Dimensions and issues that were conceptually distinct from those present in the ISO 26000 were added. The result from this combination was the addition of the economic and removal of consumer issues dimension. In total seven social

4 _{The term “dimensions” (macro) and “indicators” (micro) are utilized to describe social} responsibility from the language of the Global Reporting Initiative. As indicators imply measurement, the term was replaced with “items” in this research. The term “social issue” (meso) is adopted from the ISO 26000 to replace ‘aspects’ in the Global Reporting Initiative. The purpose of combining the language from both reports is to avoid ambiguity in language throughout the research.

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responsibility dimension remained: human rights, governance, economic, labour practices, fair operating practices, community development and environment.

The author and supervisors (the research team) collectively refined and developed the initial item list on the basis of the ability to conceptualise social responsibility issues across multiple organisations’ archetypes. The research team consisted of an 1) the lead researcher who completed the initial dimension synthesis outlined above and has several years’ experience in the sport industry across community, elite and international sport organisations, 2) expert in the sport management and social responsibility field with over 20 years’ experience in the discipline and 3) an expert in participation, health and education within national sport delivery systems with over 10 years’ experience in the discipline. Collectively, the research team met several times to refine the item list.

There were two primary considerations in the first meeting regarding the usability of the survey process and applicability of the social responsibility items to archetypal settings. The usability of completing a multitude of social responsibility items was a central concern. Prior to considering items, there were already more than 50 individual social responsibility issues to consider. The time for participants to rank each item, combined with multiple iterations within the Delphi method necessitated a refinement of the item list. Second, several assumptions were made about the institutional environment based on the construction of the organisational archetypes. These included the organisations position within a post-industrial western economy and general conception of social responsibility been predicated on a number of preliminary environmental factors. For example, a foundation of basic human rights is extensively covered in the social responsibility frameworks. However, within the context of the item list issues regarding civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights were deemed implicit within the archetypal context. Similarly, a narrow conception of environmental responsibility and consumer issues was pursued due in part to the heavy reliance on context for subjective decision-making. For example, to perceive the importance of environmental responsibility at the item level, significant information regarding the type of organisation, product/services produced, and resources consumed and discarded went well beyond the scope of what can be effectively communicated using an organisational archetype. Such an approach made specific questions regarding precise environmental impacts and protection of consumers redundant at this level of abstraction.

The second meeting focussed on refining the item list. The initial item list from the above synthesis was 66 items. During the second and third meeting and in line with

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the above assumptions the item list was reduced to 25 items. The third meeting focussed on developing the specific language of each item to put into the pilot survey. Pilot Survey

The initial item list and Delphi survey rounds were piloted within an Australian University in May/June 2013 (Appendix 7). The main intent of the pilot survey was to check the wording of the social responsibility items and the likely completion time of each survey round (Gratton & Jones, 2004). The pilot study occurred in an Australian university and involved 13 sport sociology and sport management scholars completing the three round Delphi study. The survey was adapted to promote specific feedback regarding how accurately the statements describe the essence of the social responsibility issue; a prompt to allow participants to rephrase any or all items; identify new items that they felt were important; and, provide feedback on the user-friendliness, archetype descriptions and any general comments. The pilot participants were not involved in the global Delphi study; however their feedback did provide several opportunities to improve the social responsibility item statements and archetypal case studies.