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In this chapter, we examined issues related to research design and research management as applied to scientific research conducted in applied school settings. In terms of research design, randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have an important role to play in advancing a scientific agenda for school-based research. However, given their enormous cost and complexity, it is important to carefully time their implementation in the development cycle. We suggested that the use of RCTs is most appropriate in the later stages of the development cycle when the focus is on demonstrating the efficacy and/or effectiveness of an intervention and establishing its generalizability under the real world conditions of schooling. We also recommended establishing a hierarchy of evidence for an intervention that involves implementing a cost-efficient mix of single case, quasi-experimental, and true experimental designs where appropriate and feasible. In examining issues related to the management of research and the implementation of a knowledge development agenda for schools, it has become apparent that treatment integrity is a keystone variable. We discussed the importance of treatment integrity, with attention to the impact on internal and external validity. Finally, we offered practical considerations to support high-quality, respectful school-based inquiry.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become increasingly significant in the sport industry, and athletes, leagues, teams and sport organizations are actively engaging in socially responsible activities. The popularity of CSR has attracted the attention of scholars in the field of sport management. However, little research has investigated the overview and evolution of the extant literature on CSR research in sport management. Therefore, this study aims to explore the knowledge structure of CSR in sport management and provide implications for future research.

This work investigated and examined bibliographic data of scientific documents (N = 234) indexed in the Web of Science (WoS) database from 2008 to 2021. The Bibliometrix R package and VOSviewer software were used to analyze and visualize the knowledge map of CSR research in sport management.

The bibliometric analysis found that CSR has become a critical topic in the field of sport management. Most studies focus on the implementation of CSR activities by sport organizations and their impact on consumers' reactions and behaviors.

The findings of the current paper provide an efficient overview of the evolution of CSR in sport management and offer avenues for future scientific endeavors.

The paper sets out to describe how children from disadvantaged areas perceive their communities and actively negotiate threats in their lives.

A total of 60 interviews and 16 discussions groups were held with 8 to 14‐year‐olds sampled from four deprived communities located in the West of Scotland. Participants were asked about their local area and how they kept safe. Data were coded thematically and area, age and gender differences examined.

Children mentioned both positive and negative aspects of their local area. Positive elements primarily related to being near friends and important adults. The negatives were linked to local youth gangs, adults, litter and graffiti, traffic, and drug and alcohol misuse. Participants used both preventive and reactive strategies to keep safe.

Owing to the strategies used to sample areas and participants, the extent to which findings can be generalised is limited. Thus, the study should be repeated on a larger scale, with areas and participants being randomly sampled.

The article will enable practitioners and policy makers concerned with the wellbeing and safety of young people in deprived areas to frame interventions that are in line with children's own concerns and preferred means for dealing with challenges.

The paper provides fresh insights into how children from deprived areas perceive their communities and deal with the risks and tensions they face. It highlights the subtle balancing involved in peer relationships that are central to both support and threats in children's everyday lives.

Because of their relationship‐oriented values, avoiding conflict is thought to be particularly prevalent and appropriate in collectivist societies like China Although research in the West has assumed that avoiding conflict is one approach and a largely ineffective one, collectivists may use conflict avoidance in different ways, including protecting the other protagonist. Eighty‐five managers and employees in six State Owned Enterprises in South China described concrete incidents when they avoided conflict and responded to specific items to measure the prior relationship, motivation, strategies, and consequences. Results identify major motivations and strategies used in conflict avoidance. Findings indicate that Chinese managers and employees relied upon the other person, promoted task productivity, and strengthened the relationship when they had a prior strong relationship and cooperative goals. Cooperative goals and fear of revenge were both found to underlie outflanking (trying to work around the other). Results were interpreted as indicating that avoiding conflict can be useful and even reaffirm an already effective relationship, but like open conflict, it must be managed constructively.

This research serves to determine causal configurations of corporate social responsibility (CSR) conditions that best influences grassroots football club stakeholders to meet a sponsor's goals through promotional activity.

The research uses a case study of the Essex Alliance League, a local amateur football league in England. Firstly, semi-structured interviews were held with multiple stakeholders to understand the ecosystem of grassroots football. From here, further semi-structured interviews were held with club sponsors to identify the conditions of CSR. This allowed the research to then issue a survey from which results were analysed and discussed using fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA).

The ecosystem of grassroots football is formed by a myriad of stakeholders operating at a national level, all the way to more local governance structures within which the business-club relationship exists. Sponsors identified three main conditions of CSR: shared values, self-congruity, and happiness. However, following fsQCA, two pathways were found: (1) presence of shared values, and (2) presence of happiness with the absence of self-congruity.

For practitioners, adaptations can be made for clubs to attract and maintain sponsorship as businesses seek to use grassroots sport as a channel for their own CSR objectives. To attract long term sponsorship, club managers are recommended to maintain long-term relationships with business owners especially in relation to personal values, fit, and happiness. As such, the responsibility of the club to ensure its stakeholders engage in promotional activity on behalf of their sponsor will help in maximising the financial value over multiple seasons.

Where fertile ground for academic analysis in grassroots football is present, this research investigates CSR activity at this level of football, where most research is more concerned with professional levels of the game. Furthermore, this research reaches into the sport ecosystem through an understanding of co-created values between organisations in this exchange of shared values to meet common objectives.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the social impact of an initiative (Hockey FIT) aimed at improving the health and well-being of sport fans and their community.

Fans (n=80) participated in 12 weekly health promotion sessions hosted in local hockey club facilities. Objective health measurements, diet and physical activity levels of fans were measured at baseline, 12 weeks and 12 months, to determine the intermediate, long-term, individual and community impact. Furthermore, one-on-one interviews with 28 program participants were conducted to further understand the program’s social impact.

The intermediate impact was noticed as improvements in weight loss, body mass index, waist circumference, systolic blood pressure (BP), steps per day, healthful eating, self-reported overall health and fatty food scores at 12 weeks. The long-term individual impact of Hockey FIT was realized as participants maintained or continued to improve their weight loss, waist circumference, healthful eating, systolic BP and diastolic BP 12 months after the program had been offered. The program was also reported to increase family bonding time and improved the diet, daily physical activity, and general awareness of health promotion programs and components for friends, family members and coworkers.

The positive health-related results from this study contradict prior research that has suggested there is minimal evidence of any substantial contributions from social programs in sport. Through a collective approach to corporate social responsibility, this research demonstrates the ability for sport organizations to contribute to meaningful social change and the positive role that they play within the community.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the role that employees play in helping embed a corporate social responsibility (CSR)-advocated culture into their organizations through a voice behavior. This study examines: first, the effect of employees’ negative perceptions (i.e. persuasion knowledge (PK)) of CSR on voice behavior; second, the influence of employees’ motivational dispositions regarding goals (i.e. promotion focus) on voice behavior; and third, the positive moderating effect of promotion focus in the negative relationship between PK and voice behavior.

Data were gathered from 168 employees representing all five Korean professional sport organizations at an inaugural sport marketing workshop, a moderated multiple regression analysis was performed to test the hypotheses.

The results indicated a marginal negative effect of PK on voice behavior and a significant positive effect of promotion focus on voice behavior. Further, it was found that promotion focus played a positive moderating role in the negative relationship between PK and voice behavior.

Although employees bear much of the burden of and responsibility for enacting ethical and competitive CSR practices, a paucity of the research has addressed their contributions to CSR as internal promoters of the activities. The present study contributes to the CSR literature by focusing on the role of employees in voicing CSR and empirically examining how promotion focus played a positive role in the relationship between PK and voice behavior.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the efficacy of using a multi-paradigm perspective to examine the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and strategic decision-making processes in the context of charitable foundations.

This paper integrates and synthesizes the micro-social processes of “assessable transcendence” (Anagnostopoulos et al., 2014) with Whittington’s (2001) perspectives on strategy. “Assessable transcendence” was achieved from the constant comparison of categories developed through an early iterative process in which data collection and analysis occurred during the same period. In all, 32 interviews were conducted among a sample of key managers in the charitable foundations for the first two divisions of English football.

The present study illustrates empirically that strategic decision making in charitable foundations does not “seat” neatly in any one of Whittington’s perspectives. On the contrary, this study indicates a great deal of overlap within these perspectives, and suggests that conflicting paradigms should be celebrated rather than viewed as signs of theoretical immaturity. Multi-paradigm approaches can potentially reveal insights into the “mechanics” of managerial decision making that are not easily discernible from a mono-paradigmatic perspective.

This is the first empirical work that examines CSR in relation to strategy within the context of the English football clubs’ charitable foundations, and does so by employing a multi-paradigm perspective on strategy formulation and implementation.