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

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.