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Contextual changes in communications, social activism and perceptions of commercialization have changed the dynamics in sponsorship. This paper investigated the patterns in sponsorship and social justice within the context of a major sports event.

The European Football Championship serves as an impactful platform for sponsors due to its global reach. The sponsorship activations of the twelve official sponsors were investigated by analysing sponsorship expressions on the LED boarding during every match of the tournament. Furthermore, additional data on sponsorship characteristics and brand positioning was collected for every sponsor to define relevant factors to understand the differences in sponsorship communications.

During UEFA EURO 2020, five official sponsors changed their sponsorship activations. Adjustments were made in sponsorship expressions to position the brand on diversity and inclusion. The analyses of over 90,000 press photos and 51 official match videos clarified the dynamics of brand positioning, sponsorship characteristics in perspective of globalization patterns and different sponsorship approaches in different geographical, social and political contexts.

Decision makers in the global sports industry are challenged in their brand management and sponsorship approaches for the social good. This study supports to understand the sponsorship approaches and factors affecting these different strategies.

Despite the growing attention to social justice issues in sports, there is a need to understand inclusive marketing strategies in sponsorship relationships. Using data triangulation, the findings enabled to clarify differences in sponsor approaches to social justice and illustrate the complex dynamics of brand positioning on diversity and inclusion in the sponsorship ecosystem.

This paper aims to assess the impact of corporate social irresponsibility (CSiR) media coverage on firm performance in India. It also analyses the effects of the environment, social, governance, and cross-cutting issues on firm performance.

The paper utilizes a sample of Indian firms from the Reprisk^® database, amounting to 1,103 CSiR media coverage counts for 693 firm-year annual observations from 2008 to 2015. Further, Reprisk^® segregates comprehensive CSiR coverage counts into the environment, social, governance and cross-cutting issues, for which the study runs the fixed effects panel regression. The study takes year-fixed effects, industry-fixed effects and clustered standard errors at the industry level.

The results of this study indicate that CSiR coverage negatively influences the firm performance of Indian firms. All issues, including social, governance and cross-cutting, except environmental issues, negatively impact firm value in India.

The involvement of firms in CSiR costs the firms financially and drives down firm performance. Social issues, including community and employee-related matters, governance issues and cross-cutting issues, also reduce the firm performance.

The insignificant environmental impact on firm performance does not indicate that environmental issues have no detrimental consequences. Instead, it might need more stakeholders' awareness to understand the harmful implications of environmental issues on society.

Limited studies have explored CSiR in India so far. The study is novel as it analyses the Reprisk^® database and its segregation of media counts into the environment, social, governance and cross-cutting issues in the Indian context.

The aim of this study is to test for a moderating role of employee participation in volunteering in links between employees' relationships with peers and supervisors, work meaningfulness (WM) and affective commitment (AC).

The study is based on a survey conducted on a sample of 711 employees, both those involved and those non-involved in corporate volunteering (CV).

The results suggest that employee participation in CV strengthens the effects that employees' perceptions of positive relationships with peers and perceived supervisor support (PSS) have on employees' AC. Contrary to expectations, although participation in CV strengthens employees' sense of WM, it does not affect its links with other phenomena analyzed in this study.

CV is a fast-growing practice in corporate social responsibility. The reasons companies implement CV include the benefits they gain from it, such as positive effects on employee attitudes and behaviors. The paper contributes to the understanding of CV effects on employee attitudes and behaviors and builds a better business case for this CSR practice.

The role of labor unions in relation to corporate social responsibility (CSR) remains both ambiguous and crucial for union members and business leaders. Given the complex relationship between labor unions and corporations, this study aims to address whether labor unions keep corporations honest (by monitoring CSR activities) or potentially render CSR initiatives less necessary.

Using data from the MSCI Kinder, Lydenberg, Domini Database for firms in the Russell 1000 Index, this study examines the link between labor unions and CSR in U.S. companies over a six year period. Generalized least squares models were used to test the hypotheses for 3,937 firm-year observations.

The findings show that unionized companies generally pay less attention to CSR compared to nonunionized ones. The presence of labor unions and positive union-management relations both show a significant negative impact on CSR ratings, where positive union-management relations negatively affect CSR ratings more than just the presence of labor unions. Further, when considering the environmental, social and governance aspects of CSR separately, the results are more complex, suggesting that the relationship between labor unions and CSR varies depending on specific ESG dimensions.

CSR, a well-researched area, rarely addresses the companies' relationships with labor unions. Studies in South Korea and the UK have touched on the impact of labor unions on CSR, but in the USA it remains unexplored. This study extends this line of work by examining U.S. companies.

Previous corporate social responsibility (CSR) research has mainly revolved around the “usual target” (that is, fans and consumers) that invest money, time and energy in supporting their teams in isolation while largely ignoring individual members of the public. Building on social exchange theory and social media analytics, the authors examine the social outcomes of CSR aggregated from individual members of society's perceived benefits (intangible and psychological).

Raw data were drawn from the CSR-focused Twitter accounts of six professional leagues (i.e. @nbacares, @nflplay60, @InspireChange, @thewnbpa, @Pr_nhl, @Mlsworks and @Mlbsocial). The authors collected historical data from each CSR-focused Twitter account (N = 136,076) from March 2010 to September 2022.

After conducting sentiment analysis of public perceptions, the majority of tweets (53%) were neutral, 39% were positive and 8% were negative. All CSR-related accounts received more positive tweets about their initiatives than negative ones did. The most prevalent positive topics are supporting the community, education, youth wellness and health and inspiring the young generation. The most prevalent negative topics were related to fake, hypocrite, hate and social justice.

The study contributes to the CSR-sport literature by incorporating members of the general public into the stakeholder ecosystem and empirically examining their perceptions of sport organizations' CSR activities. Also, by drawing on the social exchange theory and the unique nature of social media, the authors highlight when and how the public expresses positive, neutral and negative perceptions over time. Finally, it joins a small but growing body of research that adopts the application of big data to sport management, and it measures the sentiment, frequency, distribution and topics of tweets, thereby determining positive and negative public perceptions.

This study reviews the literature on institutional theory in international business and examines the institutional factors behind the success or failure of multinational corporations (MNCs) in emerging markets.

This systematic literature review analysed 116 peer-reviewed articles published in leading journals between 2005 and 2022. The R package Bibliometrix and VOSviewer visualization software were used for analysis. A hybrid methodology combining bibliometric and content analyses was utilized to obtain a descriptive evaluation of the publication impact along with a keyword co-occurrence map, context-specific institutional effects and subsidiary strategies.

The Journal of International Business Studies, along with influential authors such as Mike W. Peng, Klaus Meyer, and Mehmet Demirbag, have taken the lead in advancing institutional theories for MNC internationalization in emerging markets. The clusters from the co-word analysis revealed dominant MNC entry modes, institutional distances and MNC localization strategies. The content analysis highlights how the institutional environment is operationalized across the macro-, micro- and meso-institutional contexts and how the MNC subsidiary responds in emerging markets. Meso-level interactions emphasize the relational aspects of business strategies in emerging markets.

Contextualizing subsidiary strategies and institutional forms can help managers align their strategic responses to the dynamic relationship between subsidiaries and the institutional environment. The review findings will enable policymakers to simplify regulatory policies and encourage MNC subsidiary networks with local stakeholders in emerging markets.

Legitimacy strategies such as corporate community involvement in emerging markets are crucial for enhancing societal support and removing stakeholders' scepticism for MNC business operations in emerging markets. Moral legitimacy should be implemented by managers, such as lending support to disaster management efforts and humanitarian crises, as they expand to new business environments of emerging markets.

This study is the first to explore institutional diversity and subsidiary strategic responses in a three-layered institutional context. The findings highlight the relevance of contextualizing institutional perspectives for international business scholars and practitioners as they help build context-specific theoretical frameworks and business strategies. Future research recommendations are suggested in the macro-, micro- and meso-institutional contexts.

This study investigates whether carbon media legitimacy is influenced by carbon performance and/or carbon disclosure using a direct measure of carbon media legitimacy in UK context.

To test this study's hypotheses, the authors employ Tobit regression analysis of 95 UK companies listed in FTSE350. The authors use balanced panel data (475 observations in total) to reduces the noise introduced by unit heterogeneity.

The authors find that while corporate carbon performance is not reflected in carbon media legitimacy, carbon media legitimacy is positively and significantly affected by voluntary carbon disclosure (irrespective of its quality). Thus, voluntary carbon disclosure is shown to be an effective tool in legitimising corporate activities.

The results show a certain degree of naivety on the part of the media in assessing corporate carbon behaviour, since it values carbon disclosure (irrespective of its quality) more than carbon performance. Such media behaviour may hinder future improvement in carbon performance of firms.

This study's results indicate that the existing UK carbon disclosure policy does not address the heart of climate change and global warming. Thus, tougher regulations should be considered by policy-makers in relation to voluntary carbon disclosure in the UK.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to examine whether carbon media legitimacy is associated with both carbon performance and carbon disclosure using a direct measure of carbon media legitimacy, and to use the UK context when addressing this association. It also examines the effectiveness of quality of carbon disclosure as legitimation tool.

This article conceptualizes and constructs a comprehensive framework that can better help to answer that question – Who is accountable for social and public problems? – theoretically and practically.

Tracing the drivers behind two phenomena “accountability hole” and “accountability black hole”, stemming from “pushing power game” and “pulling power game”, respectively, this study considers (1) the three actors of society: citizens (civil society), corporations (market) and civil servants (government), and (2) the principal-agent relationship between the three actors in the face of social and public problems. As a result, the 4CAs framework that contains the three actors’ collaborative accountabilities to one another is presented.

The 4CAs model emphasizes (1) all three actors function as agents that are accountable to one another, (2) collaborative accountability beyond collaborative governance and (3) repowering citizens and corporations beyond just empowering them, i.e. returning their inherent rights and obligations to serve one another.

The 4CAs model may function as a descriptive and prescriptive lens through which the trilemma between market failure, government failure and citizen failure can be re-assessed and balanced. The model can also be used as a set of indicators for assessing and helping a society to better resolve the social and public problems collectively.

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) expenditure and business responsibility report (BRR) on a firm’s financial performance. Additionally, the study explores whether CSR expenditure and firm performance are related linearly or otherwise. The study also assesses the influence of mandating CSR expenditure on a firm’s performance.

The study is set in India and uses a nine-year data set from 165 companies listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange. Data compilation and analysis are done by using content analysis and panel data regressions.

The main findings of the study are that the effect of CSR expenditure on firm performance in India is non-linear and can be characterized as parabolic for investigated firms. While some performance indicators suggest a U-shaped relationship, others show an inverted U-type pattern, making a definitive conclusion elusive in either direction. BRR scores themselves have a positive impact on firm performance. Mandatory CSR expenditure affects the financial performance negatively, but the market performance improves in general.

The study provides new insights on the relationship between CSR expenditure, BRR scores and firm performance from India, which is not only a notable emerging market but also has other gripping characteristics. It has a prolific history of philanthropy, and yet, it is the first country in the world to mandate CSR expenditure in recent times. The equation between reported economic progress and general quality of life remains intriguing, and yet the number of studies on the effects of CSR expenditure on firm performance are no match to the volume of ongoing and completed works in more developed markets. This study attempts to trim the gap and provide some useful insights for managers, policymakers and stakeholders, apart from prompting further research.

This research aims to develop a moderated mediation model to examine the relationships among participants' motivation, organizational identification and participation loyalty with perceived business practice corporate social responsibility (CSR) in philanthropic road-running events.

The data come from a questionnaire survey that was administered to a sample of 236 participants as runners at philanthropic road-running events. All hypotheses are tested using Statistical Product and Service Solutions (SPSS) and structural equation modeling (SEM)–Analysis of Moment Structures (AMOS) with a bootstrapping technique.

The results reveal that perceived business practice CSR moderates the relationship between extrinsic motivation and organizational identification and then influences the mediating effect of organizational identification on the relationship between extrinsic motivation and participation loyalty. This highlights the important role of perceived business practice CSR to participants' attitude and behavior when supporting philanthropic road-running events.

This research scrutinizes the role of perceived business practice CSR on philanthropic road-running events through an empirical study and resultant evidence. One recommendation is that when a firm intends to host a philanthropic road-running event, the firm must implement the reality of sound CSR in the firm's business practice.