ABSTRACT
There has been a growing interest in the issue of social responsibility in the area of sport management (e.g., Godfrey, 2009; Bradish and Cronin, 2009) with focus on specific areas such as professional sport (Babiak and Wolfe, 2006), cause-related sport marketing (Irwin et al., 2003; Lachowetz and Gladden, 2003; McGlone and Martin, 2006; Roy and Graeff, 2003), sport events (Babiak and Wolfe, 2006; Filo et al., 2009), corporate citizenship (Mallen et al., 2008), and sport and environmental sustainability (Babiak and Trendafilova, 2011; Ioakimidis, 2007). There has been less focus on the issue of communicating corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives however. The aim of this chapter is to consider CSR communication by focusing on the issue of social accounting and reporting. Social accounting and reporting are tools of communication that can legitimize the role of the organization in both structural and moral terms and in the perceptions of stakeholders within the community in which the organization exists. They can be used to highlight its links with the region in which it exists and can show how the organization, by pursuing its core interests, can contribute to improving the quality of life of the members of the community it is part of. Social accounting enables organizations to give an account ex-post to its social partners through its final product (the social report) and to
show how it can contribute to developing and pursuing the corporate mission. Social reporting in particular has become commonplace within large multinational organizations. For example in 2005, over 80 of the FTSE 100 listed companies in the UK produced a CSR/sustainability report separate from the annual report (Owen, 2005). Within sport, it can be argued that the social report for a sport federation will provide evidence of its ability to carry out projects coherent with its mission and the pursuit of which can highlight the organization’s social utility. However, there has been little focus on social accounting and reporting within sport. The aim of this chapter is to consider, within the context of Italian federal sports organizations, the factors that lead to the implementation of accountability instruments and also the impact that social reporting has on these organizations. The implementation of accountability models in sport organizations belonging to the nonprofit sector has been looked at previously in Italy (Marano, 2001) and within Italian sports federations (Buscarini et al., 2006). The chapter begins with an account of the Italian sporting system with a focus on the specific role of sports federations. The research methodology used in this study is briefly set out before analyzing the reasons why reporting in Italian sports federations took the form of a social report and the factors that determined this choice. We then consider the impact that the social report has had on the federal system.
