Title: Sport as a vehicle for implementing corporate social responsibility: firms listed on the Warsaw and Moscow stock exchanges

Authors: Christos Anagnostopoulos; Samuel López-Carril; Jolanta Żyśko

Addresses: School of Business & Management, University of Central Lancashire, Cyprus; Faculty of Business Administration and Social Sciences, Molde University College, Norway ' Physical and Sports Education Department, Universitat de València, Valencia, Spain ' Józef Piłsudski University of Physical Education in Warsaw, Marymoncka 34, 00-968 Warsaw 45, Poland

Abstract: This paper provides a descriptive account of the extent to which firms listed on the Warsaw (WSE) and Moscow (MSE) Stock Exchanges use sport for their corporate social responsibility agendas. Drawing on institutional isomorphism, we deductively categorised CSR through sport cases based on the framework developed by Bason and Anagnostopoulos (2015). A total of 1317 documents were content-analysed, 442 from WSE firms and 875 from MSE firms. A total of 2501 CSR-through-sport initiatives were reported over the five-year period studied (2013-2017) in the WSE case and 2175 in the MSE case. Our results show that internationally listed firms are increasingly embracing sport for their CSR programs, with the 'personnel engagement' stream seeing a constant increase, followed by 'sponsorship' and 'philanthropic' initiatives. The young generation takes the lion's share when it comes to being the beneficiaries of these CSR programs, whereas 'sport participation' constitutes the basis of most such programs.

Keywords: corporate social responsibility; CSR; sports; isomorphism; stock exchange.

DOI: 10.1504/EJIM.2021.113271

European Journal of International Management, 2021 Vol.15 No.2/3, pp.367 - 390

Received: 23 Dec 2019
Accepted: 21 Feb 2020

Published online: 25 Feb 2021 *

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