Sport is big business, and few sectors of the business world inspire more passion and emotion than sport. Like other parts of the corporate world, large sporting organisations use corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities to bolster their brand and reputation, build stakeholder trust and loyalty, and give back to society. However, for these commercial entities, with large, loyal and emotionally connected fan bases, they may find that they have to use a different CSR playbook compared to other business sectors. It is at this intersection of sporting passion and CSR that Bryan Chiu Weisheng finds himself, investigating what makes CSR in the context of sport tick.
Chiu, an Associate Professor of Sport Management and Department Head of Management and Strategy in the Lee Shau Kee School of Business and Administration at the Hong Kong Metropolitan University (HKMU), started his line of inquiry with a review paper using bibliometric analysis to explore current trends and developments of CSR research in sports.
His initial review showed while there was a growing number of researchers looking at the implementation of CSR activities by sport organisations, and how they affect both consumers and employees. However, CSR in sports research still has plenty of room for scholars like Chiu to find their niche and add to the body of knowledge. “Sports teams doing CSR activities may have different motivations. They may do it for the public good, or just because they want to improve their revenue. How fans or employees perceive it may influence behaviours, says Chiu. “Compared to other corporate contexts, I would say it’s a bit lagging behind in sports. In other contexts, they have already tried to identify and manipulate how different ways of doing CSR activities may influence consumer behaviour differently. So that’s also the direction I’m exploring right now.”
CSR in sports has the longest history and most sophisticated manifestation in the United States. What is not yet known is how applicable their findings are to the Asian context. This has real-world implications for the Asian sports industry as it matures, expands and begins to use CSR activities more strategically. Professional teams in Asian countries realise the importance of CSR, and are doing a lot of CSR activities, but they lack the data that can guide them to use it more effectively.
“Many Asian scholars really want to know whether the findings of sports scholars in North America can be applicable to their country, including in CSR,” says Chiu. For example, in East Asian societies with Confucian aspects to their culture, the perception of CSR activities may be negative if they are not seen as having an intrinsic social benefit. “When we do the CSR research in the East Asian context, in general, we find the existing findings are applicable, but there are still some differences in terms of how the fans and consumers perceive the CSR activities, due to different cultural values. And I think that’s a hot area for scholars to explore, how CSR needs to be fine-tuned to different cultural contexts.”
Most people may think sports means professional clubs, but there is a whole industry that has grown up around professional sports leagues, such as sports facilities, equipment manufacturers and sports media. “There are a lot of different contexts in sports,” Chiu says. He and his colleagues have looked at various aspects of CSR in sport, such as the effect of specificity in CSR messaging on sports consumers' perception of corporate image and behavioural intentions. Message specificity is an attribute of CSR communication, and is important because specific messages are seen as more authentic and credible than ambiguous messages, and can minimise the risk of CSR efforts appearing self-promotional.
Chiu has also examined how sport teams’ approach to philanthropy can mediate fans' willingness to participate in their team's CSR activities. This participation in effect creates additional human resources for a team's CSR efforts, and at the same time boosts fans' psychological connection to their team, but it has to take into account the heterogeneity among fans. Conducting research in Taiwan with professional sports team fans, Chiu looked at how CSR communication through social media affects fan engagement and loyalty.
It is not just fans who are affected by CSR activities in professional sports, but also employees.
Done well, CSR activities, especially if CSR activities are co-created with employees, can boost staff morale, reduce turnover and have a positive impact on the company. How these established tenets of CSR play out in the sports sector may be different though, says Chiu. “From my studies we see from the identification perspective that employees working in sports teams will be a little bit different. They probably have a passion for sports. They have commitment not just to the sports organisation but to the team itself. They may also be fans of the team,” he explains.
Some scholars argue that these employees may develop an identity different from that of employees in the general context. “That’s also what we’ve found,” Chiu says, “especially when the employees are also fans. When they're doing CSR activities, which can help the team, it will build a sense of pride and also the connection or affinity to the team, and that will lead to different positive outcomes.”
Chiu started his CSR research in the US market, but he is increasingly turning his attention to the fast evolving markets of East Asia. Both Japan and South Korea have highly sophisticated sports industries, and strong sports fan cultures. The importance of sport in South Korea is reflected in the number of South Korean sports management scholars, both at home and in the US. Chiu, who is Taiwanese, found his scholarly kindred spirits and academic collaborators among them, as he lived in Seoul while he earned his PhD in Sport Management from Yonsei University and he speaks Korean. “It’s very interesting that there are a lot of Korean sports management scholars. They’re really influential in the field.”
Taiwan learned a lot from Japan and more recently, South Korea and the sports industry is growing rapidly. China will become a very important country for professional sports in the future, says Chiu. “There are a lot of good professional leagues and many famous players there. In Hong Kong the scale of the sports industry is relatively small, but there are lots of events. So I believe right now some sports clubs and organisations realise the importance of CSR, and they’re engaging in some CSR activities, but may lack strategic guidance and how to maximise the impact of CSR activities, so I see a lot of research opportunities, including cross-cultural comparisons.”
In future, when the sports industry in East Asia comes looking for data and evidence to inform their CSR activities and use them to greater effect, Chiu, his local and international collaborators, and the graduate researchers in sports management that HKMU is nurturing will have plenty to offer. Working in Hong Kong's first (and currently only) university of applied sciences should help Chiu connect to those who can benefit from his knowledge and expertise in sports CSR.
“Our curriculum has always been very applied; we want our students to get to be career ready,” says Chiu, “but what's different about being a university of applied sciences is that now we want to do more in applied research, and because of that designation we get a lot of consultancy project opportunities, so I do think we will become more connected to the sports industry. That’s what I want to achieve.”
