Management of Sport Organizations at the Crossroad of Responsibility and Sustainability

Sustainable and responsible practices are also evolving in sports, and international sports federations request that organizations manage their operations sustainably and responsibly. Sport managers must, therefore, understand the underlying mechanisms of sustainable and responsible sport management. This book examines sustainable and responsible sports practices from countries around the world.

The management of sports organizations is at the crossroad of responsible, sustainable, and ethical management in the different sports sectors. This chapter problematizes the challenges of local and global practices, the influence of cultural contexts, and the need for collaborative efforts among stakeholders. Being at the crossroads of responsibility and sustainability, this chapter underscores the importance of ethical decision-making and transparency. This chapter emphasizes the global significance of responsible management, sustainability, and ethics in shaping an inclusive future for sports organizations worldwide.

Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) are relatively well-established topics within the sports industry in Flanders, Belgium. This chapter is based on semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders in the three different sports subsectors—commercial sector, civil society, and government—and aims to examine the trade-offs between the different dimensions of sustainability. More specifically, this research offers insights into the context-dependency and political-ideological-laden decisions about the three dimensions of sustainability by key stakeholders in the different sectors. The findings indicate that sustainability is not a balanced interplay of the social, environmental, and economic dimensions of sustainability in the Flemish sports industry. Rather, the historically social nature of the Flemish sports industry determines the social approach of sustainability, which largely dominates. Yet, a shift in priorities within sustainability is not evident in both civil society and the government sector. In contrast, the commercial sector plays a more proactive role regarding the three dimensions of sustainability due to its independence and flexibility, despite a focus on financial profit.

Rhetoric and policy have recognized the interconnectedness between sport and sustainable development goals in Botswana. However, how the current sport management practices relate to responsibility, sustainability, and ethical decision-making remains largely unknown. This study aims to fill this gap by exploring the perceptions, practices, and future directions of sustainability and responsible management in sports organizations.

The study employed qualitative methodologies in which representatives of the public, for-profit and non-profit organizations participated in the study. Interviews and a focus group were conducted using a common, semi-structured interview guide to support this book’s comparative nature. The data collected from the interviews and focus groups were recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed using a conventional content analysis approach.

The results indicate that although there is a general and consistent understanding of sustainability and responsibility, the implementation of practices is uneven and often restricted to more superficial activities such as tree planting and clean-up campaigns. The results further highlight a need for a policy to define, guide, and support the implementation of sustainability and responsible management practices across all sport sector organizations.

This study gives sport managers insights into implementing sustainability and responsible management practices. Furthermore, the study highlights the need for a policy to coordinate the implementation of sustainable practices in the Botswana sport sector. Moreover, the study proposes avenues for further research.

Brazil occupies almost half of South America and is the country with the greatest biodiversity in the world. In the last decade, it hosted the largest sporting events in the world, with the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. The preparation for sporting mega-events has improved Brazilian sports management through complex deliveries. This includes the sustainability dimension. The chapter summarizes findings from interviews with four sports managers from the public, non-profit, and for-profit sectors about responsible and sustainable management. Among the results, there is unanimity in the understanding that responsible management encompasses sustainability, the first being related to the intangible values that the organization supports, while the second to the implementation of actions. Goals related to the social dimension are more popular than environmental ones despite the opposite being fostered by international sports organizations such as the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) or the International Olympic Committee (IOC) during the mega events in Brazil. In the context of responsible and sustainable management, profit has an expanded meaning going beyond the monetary dimension. Among future trends, the public sector stands out as a developer and supervisor of policies while their implementation relies on the for-profit sector.

The present chapter elucidates the stance of sports organizations in Ecuador toward sustainability and responsible management. The investigations draw upon three separate interviews with representatives from three different organizations. To ensure a comprehensive outlook, the interviews encompassed a public organization, a privately owned entity, and individuals from non-profit sports clubs. Based on the results of the exploratory data analysis, it was found that there is a lack of consensus among the organizations regarding the concept of sustainability and a limited understanding of responsible management. Organizations predominantly associate sustainability with meeting the needs of their primary stakeholders. Despite being aware of the notions of environmentalism and social responsibility, these are not yet integrated into the core management practices of the organizations.

In this chapter, we study the management of responsibility and sustainability in for-profit, public, and non-profit Finnish sports organizations. To better understand the perceptions and current cases on responsibility and sustainability in sports organizations, we collected interview data from managers. The results revealed that responsibility and sustainability are understood as ambiguous, interrelated, and often problem-oriented concepts. Responsibility is most often realized in practices and experiences of social interaction within Finnish sports organizations. Yet, responsibility and sustainability may raise conflicting tensions when social and environmental aspects of responsibility are optimized. In addition, the measurability and evaluation of the responsibility goals should be enhanced, especially from the point of view that the proactivity of measures and operating culture would be emphasized instead of reacting to further problems and grievances. We conclude that in Finnish sports organizations, we need more understanding of different organizational logics that are prevailing within the sports interlinked with responsibility and sustainability and what motivates sports organizations to work toward responsibility on a continuous basis.

Sport is an important part of the society and economy in Germany. Over the past decades, the awareness of sustainability and responsibility in sport has increased. This chapter looks at sustainable and responsible management in German sports organizations. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews. The interviewees were managers from sports organizations from the non-profit, public, and for-profit sector. A thematic analysis was applied to identify patterns of meaning across the data set. The results show that all sectors apply sustainability measures in their daily work. There are differences in the focus between the sectors. The public and non-profit sector were more socially focused, whereas the for-profit sector put focus on economic issues. All three pursued Good Health and Well-Being as Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). The sectors also faced ethical issues, which they tried to solve with individual solutions. Furthermore, challenges in the future were discussed.

The Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games were the first mega sports events committed to the United Nation’s 2030 Agenda and the sustainable development goals (SDGs). Among sports organizations in Japan, the mega event’s positive impacts on their sustainability and responsible management are expected. Thus, this chapter explores the country’s unique cases to see how the management of sustainability and responsibility is perceived and addressed. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews with private, public, and non-profit sports organizations in 2022. The data were analyzed through reflexive thematic analysis to identify the pattern of meaning across a qualitative dataset. The results imply that individual sports organizations in Japan have not established a specific definition of responsible and sustainable management. Their organizational missions are based on the philosophy widely accepted in the Japanese economy, which is sustainable and responsible issues. This engenders a mood that the organizations are likely to label their existing businesses with the SDGs to appeal to their commitments to sustainability and responsibility. Therefore, spontaneous actions by sports organizations to demonstrate their commitment to a better community play a key role in the social responsibility of the sports sector for a sustainable society in Japan.

Although the country is relatively small by population, New Zealand prides itself as “punching above its weight” for athletes on the world stage and is seeking to do so in terms of sustainable and responsible practices across the sport system. The chapter begins with background on how sustainability and responsibility feature across New Zealand’s sport system. This is followed by presenting several important themes that emerged from the interviews. In short, sustainability and responsibility are priorities for organizations across New Zealand’s sport sector. The prevailing perception seems to be that sports organizations have no choice but to proactively consider an array of challenges to the end of providing a sustainable sport community. While sustainability has emerged as a key issue in the world of sport over the last decade (Moon et al., Front Sports Act Living, 2022), New Zealand sport practitioners may have eased into it to some extent. There seems to be momentum around sustainability and sport in New Zealand.

This chapter examines how sports organizations in the public, for-profit, and non-profit sectors define and prioritize responsible management and sustainability in their day-to-day operations. Representatives from each sector were interviewed to accomplish this goal. Results show that public sector sports organizations have a high awareness of sustainability and responsible management, while private and non-profit sectors prioritize it less. The current situation in South Korea is viewed as a transitional stage in organizational management for responsibility and sustainability. It is important to address the issues that need to be discussed in the future to achieve sustainable development through the harmonization of social stability and integration, economic growth, and environmental preservation, as well as to comply with the laws and the established five-year basic plan for sustainable development in South Korea.

This chapter presents an analysis of social responsibility and sustainability in the management of Spanish sports organizations, focusing especially on the perceptions, practices, ethical conflicts, and future perspectives reported by organizations in relation to these issues. Analysis of the main initiatives currently in place reveals that the public sector has an important influence on the adoption of responsible management criteria by sports organizations. Corporate governance issues were also revealed to be highly prominent, with such issues emerging to a greater extent in professional soccer clubs and large sports organizations. From an empirical point of view, the chapter presents analysis of five semi-structured interviews conducted with representatives of one sports organization from the public sector, one from the for-profit sector, and three from the voluntary sector. Findings reveal that organizations’ personal objectives and legal status condition their perceptions of issues regarding social responsibility and sustainability, in addition to the way in which they operate on a daily basis and their future prospects.

Voluntarily organized sport is the cornerstone of Swedish sports and has an important societal role. In this chapter, the Regional Sports Confederation and Sports Education Skåne, which is the gathering body of the non-profit sport clubs in the region, represents the voluntary, non-profit sector. The Leisure Department, City of Malmö, represents the public sector. The football club Malmö FF represents the for-profit sector, despite not being a completely commercial club. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews and analysis of documents.

The three sectors have overlapping interests and a lot to gain from extended cooperation and knowledge transfer to bring about change. All our informants state a clear awareness of the importance of sustainability and highlight sustainable development and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) at the leading level of their organizations. However, their capacity and incentives to act differ, partly due to each sectors’ specific logics. Malmö FF, strongly affected by commercial logics, stands out as the organization most active in realizing the SDGs. The Leisure Department, limited by political requirements, works hard to handle basic political requirements with an ambition to do good and even be a role model among municipalities. For the sports movement, the possibility of collective actions is challenged by voluntarism and the strong autonomy of sports clubs. Perhaps it would be logical to argue for a stricter control of the sports clubs’ operations to ensure proper handling of sustainability issues, but according to the Swedish sport ideology, the incentives should rather be created from the bottom-up.

Organizations in Swiss sport are increasingly confronted with the questions of their effect on sustainable development and their contribution to solving socially relevant problems. To capture the current state of the sustainability discussion in Swiss sport, interviews were conducted with representatives of the Sports Office of the city of Bern, the national sports federation Swiss Ski and the fitness and sport provider UNIK Sports.

The terms sustainability and responsibility are used differently and have only recently come into focus in the organizations. At the Sports Office and at Swiss Ski, where activities are (partly) dependent on public support, the issue has a higher priority. At the commercial company UNIK, sustainability issues often raise the question of costs. Emphasis is placed primarily where the core business is located or where the organization offers scope for action. At Swiss Ski, this tends to be in ecology and at the Sports Office and UNIK in society. All the organizations agree that sustainability issues will continue to gain relevance in Swiss sport, but they see different topics in focus.

The chapter aims to provide an overview of sustainable management and operations of sports organizations in the Gambia. Using interviews of three representatives from public, not-for-profit, and for-profit sports organizations, this chapter presents the landscape of sustainable management of sport in the Gambia in the three sectors. The chapter demonstrates the diverse reality that sports organizations operate in the same social setting. In addition, it highlights the opportunities and challenges local sports organizations in developing countries are faced with in their quest to mitigate the effect of sport on the environment and operate in an environmentally friendly way. The burden is almost entirely casted on central government to provide the blueprint and resources to ensure that sports organizations operate in a sustainable way.

The discussion and conclusion will highlight the meaning of responsibility and sustainability for sports organizations and their management across the non-profit, public, and for-profit sectors. This chapter aims to summarize the different country perspectives and viewpoints.