Guest editorial: From social issues to organised action: responsibility and philanthropy in sport

Sport has emerged as a prominent institutional arena through which contemporary societies articulate and confront widely recognised social issues (Robertson et al., 2025). From a social constructionist perspective, such issues are not objective conditions that exist independently of interpretation. They are collectively defined situations that come to be understood as problematic within specific socio-historical contexts. A social issue emerges when a condition is publicly recognised as wrong, when it departs from prevailing normative expectations about how things ought to be, and when it is considered amenable to intervention. Such issues are neither private troubles nor universal constants. They require shared recognition, are embedded in time and place, presuppose evaluative standards and imply the possibility – indeed the expectation – of organised response. Attention, therefore, turns to the institutional arenas through which such responses are organised and enacted.The contemporary sport environment extends far beyond the playing field. Social issues, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and philanthropy have become integral to the organisation, governance and assessment of sport (Anagnostopoulos, 2025). Sport is increasingly understood not merely as an industry or entertainment domain, but as an institutional field capable of shaping public discourse and generating social value (Chiu et al., 2023). In this context, CSR refers to the expectation that sport organisations acknowledge, account for and actively manage the social and ethical implications of their activities through governance, strategic decision-making and organisational practice (Gammelsæter and Anagnostopoulos, 2025). Once peripheral and largely treated as a bolt-on activity, CSR has progressively become embedded – or “bolt-in” – within organisational structures and governance arrangements (Kolyperas et al., 2016). As a result, CSR is now closely linked to the institutional legitimacy of sport organisations (Walzel et al., 2018; Loos and Spraul, 2025) and increasingly associated with perceptions of organisational trustworthiness (Anagnostopoulos et al., 2024).Alongside this governance-oriented understanding of CSR, another mechanism through which sport actors engage with social issues is corporate philanthropy, defined as an organisation’s voluntary act to promote a community’s welfare, generally through financial contributions, in-kind goods or the donation of time (Gautier and Pache, 2015). Within sport, such philanthropic engagement has been widely documented among professional teams via foundations and community programmes (Yang and Babiak, 2023), among athletes who mobilise their personal visibility and resources to support social causes and charitable initiatives (Babiak et al., 2012), and among corporations outside sport that leverage sport platforms and partnerships to pursue their philanthropic objectives (Anagnostopoulos et al., 2021).Together, these practices illustrate the expanding ways in which sport actors engage with social concerns. Yet beyond specific initiatives, actors occupying visible and influential positions – clubs, leagues, governing bodies, athletes, foundations and corporate partners – face growing expectations to respond to socially recognised problems. Moving beyond episodic or highly publicised acts of charity requires strategies that embed responsibility within governance systems, stakeholder relationships and everyday organisational processes (Yiapanas et al., 2022; Mamo and Anagnostopoulos, 2023).This Special Issue focuses precisely on that organisational dimension. Rather than treating CSR and philanthropy as symbolic gestures or reputational instruments, the contributions examine how responsibility is structured, embedded and sustained. By “organised action”, we refer to the deliberate and structured processes through which sport actors translate socially recognised problems into governance arrangements, strategic decisions, leadership practices, resource allocations, communication systems, partnerships and evaluative mechanisms. Organising, in this sense, extends beyond formal policy adoption. It includes the design of ownership structures, board-level oversight, navigation of competing institutional logics, development of crisis-response protocols, establishment of philanthropic foundations, orchestration of digital engagement and integration of social metrics into performance systems. Responsibility becomes meaningful only when it is institutionalised through such organisational architectures – when social concerns shape decision-making routines rather than appear as symbolic appendages (Mamo et al., 2026).The contributions in this Special Issue illustrate these dynamics in distinct ways. Empirical analyses of governance structures demonstrate how variations in ownership form and board diversity influence both social performance and financial resilience (Davola and Vicentini, 2023). Institutional examinations of league and club contexts reveal how regulatory pressures, historical legacies and mimetic dynamics condition whether CSR is strategically embedded or remains reactive (Kolyperas et al., 2016). Studies of charitable foundations and corporate sport engagement show how organisations navigate tensions between market-driven imperatives and community-oriented missions (Anagnostopoulos et al., 2017). Research on racism-related crises, ethical engagement in experiential sport (Mamo et al., 2025), and inclusive leadership practices further demonstrates how normative commitments are translated into everyday managerial routines.Athlete activism expands these boundaries still further. High-profile athletes increasingly leverage their visibility to influence public debate and institutional agendas (Pfister, 2024; Kang and Matsuoka, 2023), reshaping stakeholder expectations and broadening the scope of organisational accountability (Tedone and Bruk-Lee, 2022). Mega-events and digital platforms intensify these dynamics. Global competitions and social media ecosystems amplify scrutiny while simultaneously providing opportunities to elevate social causes (Hwang and Henry, 2023). In such an environment, authenticity becomes central to maintaining a sport organisation’s social licence to operate (Jacobs et al., 2025). Policymakers and managers must therefore move from reactive and ad hoc responses towards proactive and structurally embedded commitments (Philippou, 2025), balancing competitive and commercial objectives with sustained social impact (Gammelsæter and Anagnostopoulos, 2025).Across these varied contexts, CSR and philanthropy do not appear as uniform or static constructs. They emerge as dynamic organisational practices shaped by institutional logics, stakeholder expectations, commercial pressures and political environments. In this sense, sport reflects broader societal tensions and aspirations (Yiapanas et al., 2024a, 2024b). By centring the processes through which social issues are translated into structured, “organised action”, this Special Issue situates (corporate) responsibility and (corporate) philanthropy in sport firmly within the domain of organisational analysis and contributes to wider debates on legitimacy, governance and the evolving boundaries between profit and purpose in institutions that increasingly serve as arenas through which societies confront social challenges.The 16 contributions in this Special Issue examine how socially recognised problems – defined, legitimised and rendered actionable within particular institutional contexts – are translated into organised action across the sport ecosystem. Rather than treating responsibility as a uniform construct, the papers reveal diverse organising logics through which CSR, philanthropy and activism are structured through governance arrangements, leadership practices, resource allocations, communication systems and institutional design. To synthesise this body of scholarship, we organise the discussion around four interconnected domains: governing responsibility, enacting responsibility, scaling responsibility, and contesting and reimagining responsibility. These domains reflect different ways in which sport actors convert socially defined issues into structured and routinised forms of organised action.The first domain examines how responsibility is embedded within governance architectures and institutional environments. Torres-Pruñonosa et al. (2025) challenge shareholder-centric assumptions by demonstrating, through Spanish football, that stakeholder-oriented ownership models can match or surpass shareholder structures in sporting and economic performance. Their findings position governance design as central to integrating social value into organisational efficiency. Dimitropoulos et al. (2025) reinforce governance as a strategic mechanism by showing that CSR performance and board gender diversity contribute to improved profitability and reduced financial distress risk in European sport and leisure firms. CSR and diversity emerge not simply as ethical commitments but also as structural features that enhance resilience and long-term stability. Botwina and Guo (2025) shift attention to transitional institutional contexts, illustrating how CSR practices in Polish football remain largely informal and reactive. Institutional legacies and mimetic pressures shape organisational behaviour, revealing how responsibility may remain symbolic when not anchored in formal governance systems. Boucher et al. (2025) deepen this institutional analysis by uncovering plural logics within the charitable foundations of French professional clubs. Their study highlights the dominance of business logic within non-profit vehicles, exposing tensions between market imperatives and community missions and raising concerns about decoupling between rhetoric and practice. Anagnostopoulos and colleagues (2025) shift the focus from CSR in sport to CSR through sport, examining how listed firms on the Qatar Stock Exchange strategically leverage sport within CSR agendas, particularly during mega-event momentum and regulatory mandates. Institutional isomorphism and national development priorities shape how responsibility is formalised and diffused through corporate governance structures.If governance formally embeds responsibility, organisational practice gives it substance. Dekoulou et al. (2025) demonstrate how ethical responsiveness in branded running events strengthens participant identification and engagement through relational processes of transparency and fairness. Responsibility here is enacted through interactional routines rather than structural reform alone. Vieira et al. (2025) examine racism-related crises in professional football, revealing how reactive approaches expose gaps between declared commitment and organisational preparedness. Proactive crisis protocols and sustained CSR engagement are shown to influence reputational stability and stakeholder trust. Toumpeki and Gdonteli (2025) explore authentic leadership within disability-focused organisations, showing that inclusive and innovative practices depend not only on leadership disposition but also on institutional support and accumulated experience. Næss and Svendsen (2026) extend this practice-based lens by examining how non-profit sport leaders navigate paradoxes of inclusion. Responsible leadership emerges as a continuous negotiation between individual needs and collective cohesion rather than a simple resolution of inherent tensions.The third domain explores how organised responsibility extends beyond internal governance to generate broader societal impact. Bilderback and Dunning (2025) conceptualise former collegiate athletes as agents of organisational sustainability, linking transferable competencies to long-term CSR outcomes and values-driven performance. Mamo (2025) provides longitudinal evidence of how CSR communication evolves in response to shifting societal salience. The analysis of NBA social media activity demonstrates how professional leagues strategically prioritise issues such as diversity and inclusion, scaling responsibility through digital communication infrastructures. Singh et al. (2025) empirically demonstrate how harmonious CSR initiatives influence organisational citizenship behaviour and sustainable business excellence, with fan engagement moderating long-term performance outcomes. Chantzi et al. (2025) investigate environmental sustainability in Mediterranean football, identifying structural barriers, limited regulatory pressures and mimetic dynamics that shape green integration efforts. Nicoliello and Efthymiou (2025) extend the analysis to event legacy, illustrating how recurring elite competitions can catalyse cumulative urban and social transformation when embedded within long-term strategic planning and stakeholder collaboration.The final domain captures how responsibility is challenged and reshaped at the boundaries of traditional governance. Chadwick et al. (2025) demonstrate how digital platforms enable geographically dispersed fans to mobilise collectively, transforming local grievances into transnational activism and redefining how organisational accountability is contested. Norrito and Cheng (2025) examine sport B Corps as hybrid enterprises integrating profit and purpose. By introducing the concept of ‘change consumption’, they reveal both the transformative potential and the tensions of inequality embedded in market-based approaches to social responsibility.Extending this perspective, Harini and Nilkantham (2025) examine the role of media in shaping the social impact of the esports ecosystem. Drawing on a systematic literature review guided by the social issues dimension of the reconceptualised Carroll’s three-dimensional framework (RCTD – as per Kolyperas et al., 2025), they identify uneven stakeholder coverage, limited theoretical grounding and notable gaps across areas such as environmental concerns and occupational safety. By positioning media as an institutional force that structures visibility and accountability in digitally mediated sport, the study advances a future research agenda at the intersection of CSR, corporate digital responsibility and esports.This Special Issue has examined how socially recognised problems within sport are translated into organised action(s). Across diverse contexts, methodologies and theoretical lenses, the 16 contributions demonstrate that responsibility in sport is neither automatic nor uniform. It is constructed, structured, enacted and, at times, contested through organisational processes shaped by institutional environments and stakeholder expectations.All contributions underscore that once social issues are publicly recognised as problematic, they demand structured organisational responses. Moving beyond ad hoc philanthropy requires integrating responsibility into governance systems, performance metrics, stakeholder relationships and strategic planning. Such integration is complex and frequently tension-filled, as sport organisations balance commercial imperatives with normative expectations and public scrutiny.For scholarship, this collection highlights several priorities for future inquiry. Greater attention is needed to understand how social issues gain organisational salience, how governance configurations enable or constrain meaningful integration, and how social impact can be evaluated without reducing responsibility to symbolic compliance. The studies presented here also suggest the value of examining responsibility across levels – from boardroom decisions and leadership practices to digital mobilisation and hybrid market forms – to better capture its dynamic and contested character.For practitioners, the implications are equally significant. Responsibility cannot be treated as peripheral expenditure or reputational insurance. It constitutes a dimension of organisational legitimacy and long-term resilience. Embedding responsibility structurally – rather than appending it rhetorically – is essential for sustaining stakeholder trust and maintaining a social licence to operate.Sport occupies a distinctive position at the intersection of cultural influence, economic power and public visibility (Smith and Westerbeek, 2007). Precisely because of this position, the translation of social issues into organised action within sport offers broader insight into how contemporary organisations respond to societal expectations. By analysing the structures and practices through which responsibility is embedded, this Special Issue contributes to ongoing debates on legitimacy, institutional design, stakeholder governance, and the evolving relationship between profit and purpose.