Title of Dissertation:
Cooperation between Large-Scale Enterprises and Nonprofit-Organisations in Sport: A Social-Scientific Inquiry
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Josef Wieland
University: Zeppelin Universität Friedrichshafen
Scholarship: KSG Scholarship
Cohort: 1. Cohort, 2014-2017
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Short Abstract
Business-sport cooperation has long been established. There is a solid tradition of both commercial relationships between businesses and professional sport clubs or leagues mainly based on sponsorship and philanthropic relationships rather in amateur, mass and leisure sport. Lately though, these traditions and their corresponding cooperation routines have been slightly irritated. International debates on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Corporate Citizenship (CC) promoted new concepts and instruments for enterprises' involvement in society. Thereby, new forms of cross-sectoral cooperation especially between large-scale enterprises and non-profit-organisations have been suggested as innovative ways to pursue business and social goals at once. According to this idea, enterprises and non-profits would work together on common projects in various social areas such as education, culture, environment, social affairs or sport. However, surprisingly little has been said so far about how such disparate organisations whose behaviour grounds on different sectoral logics can work together at all. Against this backdrop, the study focuses on three questions: 1. Why do large-scale enterprises and non-profits cooperate in sport within the context of CSR? 2. Which characteristic cooperation problems do they face? 3. How do the organisations deal with these problems, i.e. how do they handle ambiguous and conflicting organisational demands? For these purposes, typical features of enterprises and member-serving non-profits are contrasted in a conceptual framework so as to reveal problematic issues of their cooperation conduct. These insights are then reflected in an empirical analysis based on 30 interviews with experts from German large-scale enterprises, sport clubs, sport federations and CSR consultancies.
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PhD Related Publications
- Pillath, M. (2020). Kooperationen zwischen Großunternehmen und Nonprofit-Organisationen im Sport. Eine sozialwissenschaftliche Studie (Angewandte Forschung im Sport). Wiesbaden: Springer VS.