The Social Responsibility of Football Clubs: The 'Shared Value' as a Process of Value Creation?

Abstract

In the literature, CSR has been studied as a mean to reconnect sport organizations and society. Nevertheless, little attention has been paid to Porter and Kramer's "shared value". Therefore, after presenting the management of sport organisations as well as CSR, this article will be drawn on Crane et al.'s six characteristics of CSR and on Porter and Kramer's concept to assess whether professional football clubs in Belgium are developing CSR or not. Then, we will assess, in this qualitative and exploratory research, if the most developed ones regarding CSR are also the most involved in the shared value process. In addition, value creation will be examined regarding supporters. This study, realized in 2012, allows discovering that if CSR is well developed in the observed football clubs, differences exist between them and opportunities to create shared value can still be taken. We will show that the success of one club doesn't depend only of the financial and human resources. A successful RSE process has an impact on the representation that the stakeholders have about the club and on the engagement for the club.

Keywords: Social Responsability, Stakeholders, Management Sport Organization, Communication, Ethics

JEL Classification: M10, M14, L83