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There has been limited research on why football clubs contribute to charity. This paper examines how football clubs and their charitable conduits report information when discussing their connectedness. In addition, it explores reasons why, and the extent to which, football clubs support altruism via such charitable vehicles.

Case studies of four major football teams (Manchester City/Manchester United in England and AC Milan/Inter Milan in Italy) are discussed, with formal reports of the clubs and their associated charitable conduits being analysed.

Boundaries between the clubs and their charitable conduits are frequently blurred. Evidence suggests that acknowledging the co-existence of different factors may help to understand what is reported by these organisations and address some of the caveats in terms of autonomy and probity of their activities and reporting practices.

The research uses case studies of four major ‘powerhouses’ of the game and their associated charitable spinoffs. While this is innovative and novel, expanding the research to investigate more clubs and their charitable endeavours would allow greater generalisations.

The study provides material that can be used to reflect on the very topical subject of ‘sportswashing’. This has the potential to input to deliberations relating to the future governance of the game.

The paper explores relationships between businesses and charities/nonprofits in a sector so far little investigated from a charitable accountability perspective. It suggests that motives for engaging in charitable activity and highlighting such engagement may extend beyond normal altruism or warm-glow emotions.

Institutional pressure and corporate social responsibility (CSR) are gaining increasing recognition in scholarly works; however, there is an apparent and unsettled relationship between these concepts and the concept of green marketing adoption (GMA) that influences efforts to gain a relative competitive advantage (RCA). This study is aimed at examining the roles of institutional pressure and CSR on GMA and RCA and proposes recommendations for promoting green marketing management and CSC in the banking industry in Vietnam.

In this study, partial least squares structural equation modeling is utilized to investigate the evolution of the structural model, while the hypotheses are evaluated using structural equation modeling (SEM). The data are scrutinized from 288 banking employees through an online survey.

The results show that the components of institutional pressure exert a significant impact on GMA and RCA, but the level and type of this impact differ. Additionally, the mediating role of the CSR variable in this relationship is revealed. Under the influence of institutional pressure, companies tend to increase their implementation of CSR activities, thereby promoting their GMA and RCA.

This study offers both theoretical and practical implications. Theoretically, this study adds to the extant evidence concerning the significance of CSR integration and institutional pressure to the advancement of GMA. In addition, maintaining a focus on fostering holistic GMA practices has enabled the banking industry in Vietnam to achieve an RCA.

This paper aims to investigate how a US firm’s political landscape affects the integration of environmental, social and governance (hereafter ESG) measures in CEO compensation contracts, thereby affecting the firm’s ESG performance and credit rating.

Based on the results of state senatorial and presidential elections and the location of a US firm’s headquarters, the authors categorize whether a firm has a political environment that is predominantly Democratic (blue) or Republican (red). The empirical analyses are based on a sample of US firms in the period 2014–2021.

The authors find that firms in blue states are more likely to link CEO compensation to ESG performance measures. Further, the results show that firms in blue states with ESG-linked compensation contracts have better ESG performance. Lastly, the authors find evidence that a firm’s ESG performance has a positive impact on its credit rating, but the impact is weakened if firms in red states link ESG performance to executive compensation.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first research that explores how a firm’s political environment affects the use of ESG performance measures in CEO compensation contracts. Furthermore, the authors contribute to the literature by showing evidence that the political environment interacts with the impact of ESG-linked compensation incentives on the firm’s ESG performance and, thus, its credit rating.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing businesses and daily life, with AI-powered technologies like personal assistants and medical diagnostic systems transforming how we interact and make decisions. However, the ethical implications of these technologies cannot be ignored. AI systems can produce biased results and decisions if not designed to be fair and unbiased. Corporate digital responsibility (CDR) provides a valuable framework for addressing these ethical dilemmas. Service organizations need to navigate CDR issues across the data and technology life-cycle stages (e.g., their creation, operation, refinement, and retention) and across its digital service ecosystem (including its external business partners). Despite the risks associated with poor CDR practices, companies may adopt them to benefit from data monetization, enhanced customer experience, and productivity improvement. To mitigate these risks and build a strong CDR culture, organizations need to establish ethical norms, prioritize customer privacy, and ensure equitable power dynamics with business partners. The emergence of generative AI poses enhanced CDR challenges, such as AI complexity, monitoring, accountability, and workforce changes. Going forward, CDR is a crucial framework for firms to address the needs of their multiple stakeholders and to ensure sustainable business practices in the increasingly digital service world.

The Department of Defense (DOD) has long partnered with universities and other nonprofit organizations to perform early-stage, military-related research using research centers established under long-term contracts known as Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs). Over the last 25 years, there has been a shift in the type of arrangement used to University Affiliated Research Centers (UARCs) that this paper argues is the result of bureaucrats acting as evasive entrepreneurs in response to changing regulations.

Extending the theory of evasive entrepreneurship to bureaucrats, the author shows how regulations increase the cost of bureaucratic action and incentivize the creation of substitute actions to avoid those regulatory costs and capture benefits. Qualitative evidence from DOD documents is used to support the contention that UARCs serve the same function as FFRDCs. Quantitative evidence on the number of FFRDCs and UARCs and their funding illustrates how bureaucrats respond to political restrictions.

Bureaucrats have little to no recourse to respond to budgetary cuts or spending ceilings. In the case of FFRDCs, spending ceilings were introduced starting in the 1960s and led to a decline in the number of DOD FFRDCs. Bureaucrats can however strategically evade new regulations by reorganizing transactions justified by existing federal law that contradicts new regulations. Once FFRDCs were federally regulated in 1990 there were strong incentives to create substitute arrangements leading to the creation of UARCs in 1996 that have ultimately replaced FFRDCs as the research center of choice for the DOD.

The article makes three contributions. First, it applies the concept of evasive entrepreneurship to a political context and then use that framework to understand the creation and establishment of the DOD's UARCS. Second, the organizational features and purpose of UARCs are analyzed. Third, the evidence provided shows how regulations resulted in a shift in the DOD's R&D strategy toward working with universities.

Spirituality refers to the relationship that individuals have with something greater than themselves. It is an inner experience that includes a sense of transcendence, a connection to a higher power, or a sense of purpose or meaning. Nonprofit organizations can be defined as a unique category of organizations whose primary goal is not to make a profit. They represent a wide range of collective action and have long been collaborators with public governance systems in both developed and developing economies.

In the current socioeconomic structure, nonprofit organizations have become prominent policy actors, responsible for producing and distributing goods and services. To fulfill their responsibilities, these organizations rely on spirituality as a means of obtaining resources.

While contemporary nonprofit organizations have evolved from religious charities of the past, it would be incorrect to suggest that religious influences have disappeared completely. In fact, today's nonprofit organizations and charity sector exist on a spectrum that can be defined along a religious – secular axis, under the influence at different levels.

As modern nonprofit organizations are directly affected by contemporary organizational processes and principles, it is essential to examine spirituality in such organizations, regardless of whether they are religiously affiliated or not. This chapter examines the relationship between spirituality and nonprofit organizations, while also assessing their organizational effectiveness, career opportunities, leadership approaches, teamwork, job satisfaction and job dedication, in terms of spirituality and spiritual intelligence not only from a religious and cultural perspective, but also from an organizational one.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how two types of drivers, namely, executive compensation and market competition, can affect hospital quality in the USA. Recently, patients, insurers and regulators have increasingly focused on hospital quality. Understanding the interplay of incentives in this industry is important because in 2019, hospital treatment contributed $1.161bn to health-care costs in the USA. This study answers the call for more studies in the so-called “mixed” industry, where ownership differences can affect organizational objectives and operating constraints.

This study explores the roles of hospital executive compensation and industry competition as determinants of health-care quality. Specifically, the study probes the heterogeneity in the factors that influence quality across hospital types in the USA.

Using California hospital data from 2006 through 2020, the findings show that the effects of compensation and competition on hospital quality differ by ownership type. Executive compensation is positively associated with quality in for-profit hospitals but is not associated with that of nonprofit hospitals, suggesting for-profit hospitals are more likely to use higher levels of compensation to attract managers with higher ability, whereas the utility function for nonprofit managers may be multidimensional. Within the nonprofit hospital group, competition is more positively associated with quality for religious nonprofits relative to secular nonprofits, suggesting that competition provides more monitoring for religious hospitals.

Taken together, the findings provide evidence that the drivers of quality vary across hospitals in ways consistent with differences in constraints and objectives across ownership types. The findings are important for regulators seeking to incentivize higher quality. For example, Medicare in the USA has incorporated quality measures into its new hospital reimbursement scheme (value-based purchasing) to incentivize quality. This study proposes that regulators should consider differences across ownership types when evaluating the best ways to incentivize hospital quality.

Also due to the “50+1 rule”, which exists in the German football Bundesliga and was introduced to regulate competition, clubs with a wide variety of legal forms participate. The aim of this article is to explain the consequences of the rule, the dominance of nonprofit organisations in German football and to contribute to the discussion on whether other football leagues should follow this model.

The study looks at the German Bundesliga with its special 50+1 rule. With reference to stakeholder theory, the management challenges of participants in the Bundesliga are elaborated.

There are still clubs that participate as purely nonprofit associations, even though from an organisational point of view there are some arguments against this legal form. Due to the 50+1 rule, a nonprofit association has the majority of decision-making powers in each participating organisation. The goals desired by the 50+1 rule, such as “maintaining football as a common good” and at the same time “competitive balance”, do not seem to be achieved.

The article shows that regulation in the leagues appears to make sense and, in the case of the German Bundesliga, has led to participants with different legal forms. However, it also shows that the 50+1 rule is also associated with opposing goals that cannot be achieved in equal measure.

Public sector institutional entrepreneurship efforts may contribute to addressing social challenges by creating an enabling regulatory environment that promotes social enterprise formation and fosters complementarity between the public sector and social enterprises. The outcomes of such public sector institutional entrepreneurship are explored in this study. To assess the outcomes of such public sector initiatives in South Korea, the perspectives of executives (n = 40) of government-certified social enterprises are assessed.

Several research methodologies were combined, including purposive sampling with an 11-point Likert scale, hierarchical clustering and principal component analysis. The literature on government–nonprofit relations as well as public sector institutional entrepreneurship was leveraged.

This research results indicate that the enabling regulatory environment with entrenched funding and incubation mechanisms produces mixed-to-positive outcomes if framed with reference to public sector–social enterprise complementarity. The authors identified three perspective-based ideal types that have differential views of isomorphic regulatory pressures, the efficacy of incubation and scaling programs, participation in policymaking and other aspects of public sector patronage.

This study contributes to relating the literature on public sector institutional entrepreneurship and government–third sector relations by empirically assessing how social enterprises attracted by government demand-side signaling to become certified as social enterprises encounter and perceive an ostensibly enabling regulatory ecosystem, with its derivative policies and mechanisms, crafted by the public sector.

In a post-pandemic society, non-profit organisations (NPOs) have become vital. A safe environment for such organisations to function in is therefore important. In spite of efforts to safeguard this sector, rampant abuse exists. This paper aims to provide an in-depth analysis of the South African non-profit sector and its vulnerabilities to economic crime, specifically money laundering and terrorist financing.

Secondary sources such as legislation, case law, textbooks and peer-reviewed publications are used in identifying the vulnerabilities in the South African non-profit sector. Common denominators are identified from these sources to provide a basis for the highlighted vulnerabilities.

The South African non-profit sector is most vulnerable, leaving the sector susceptible to economic crimes. This is highlighted in the 2021 Financial Action Task Force Mutual Evaluation Report. Governance structures in the sector cannot protect it effectively and concomitant regulations have become inadequate. It is necessary for the South African Government and Parliament to review existing laws and regulations to ensure enhanced governance over these NPOs.

This paper contributes to a research gap on existing vulnerabilities within the South African non-profit sector relating to money laundering and terrorist financing. The paper provides a comprehensive layout of the South African non-profit sector, highlighting areas at risk of exploitation and identifying key vulnerabilities within the sector.