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RESEARCH PRODUCT

CSR practices in professional sport clubs : towards a new model of legitimization?

subject

description

The concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), developed in the US throughout the second half part of the 20th century, is the application of the principles of sustainable development in businesses. Formerly used by the multinational sector only, the concept of CSR has spread nowadays over a large kind of organizations including French professional sports clubs. The purpose of this research is to show, in the continuity of neoinstitutionnalism, that CSR practices in these organizations are primarily answering to goals of legitimating, aiming to make their activities viable towards the expectations of their environment stakeholders. Suggesting a framework, and applying it to four case studies (Elan Chalon, Asvel, AJ Auxerre and Olympique Lyonnais), different CSR behaviours are highlighted. The results of this research stress that CSR practices firstly hold a “cosmetic” nature, in which CSR is not well integrated in the clubs’ global strategies. In a normative approach, numerous prescriptions are established to underline future prospects on the matter of CSR in these organizations.