Corporate social responsibility within a global pandemic: a qualitative analysis of the population's perception of sport organizations

The purpose of this study was to examine the population's perception of corporate social responsibility of three (inter)national sport organizations during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. Within an online survey in Germany, 389 open statements were gathered and analyzed using thematic analysis. Drawing on Carroll's CSR conceptualization, the identified themes were assigned to the economic, legal, ethical and discretionary responsibility of sport organizations. The analysis revealed a fifth dimension of responsibility referring to organizations' communication and transparency. Most answers were concerned with the economic and ethical theme, highlighting the importance of financial modesty and contributing to the health of others during the pandemic. This study stresses the importance for sport organizations to meet ethical and moral expectations of society during times of crisis to maintain mutually beneficial relationships with core stakeholders such as the resident population. © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Dealing With Statistical Significance in Big Data: The Social Media Value of Game Outcomes in Professional Football

The identification of relevant effects is challenging in Big Data because larger samples are more likely to yield statistically significant effects. Professional sport teams attempting to identify the core drivers behind their follower numbers on social media also face this challenge. The purposes of this study are to examine the effects of game outcomes on the change rate of followers using big social media data and to assess the relative impact of determinants using dominance analysis. The authors collected data of 644 first division football clubs from Facebook (n = 297,042), Twitter (n = 292,186), and Instagram (n = 312,710) over a 19-month period. Our fixed-effects regressions returned significant findings for game outcomes. Therefore, the authors extracted the relative importance of wins, draws, and losses through dominance analysis, indicating that a victory yielded the highest increase in followers. For practitioners, the findings present opportunities to develop fan engagement, increase the number of followers, and enter new markets.