Social roles of sport organisations: developments, contexts and challenges: Editorial to special issue European Journal for Sport and Society

Abstract

port organisations are increasingly expected and encouraged to take up a wider social role. They are thought to foster social capital, social inclusion and democratic participation among organisational members, and to strengthen social cohesion in local communities. An increasing number of public institutions cooperate with sport organisations because of these supposedly positive spill-over effects. Next to these social roles for members and local communities, a number of sport organisations have explicitly begun to take up their social responsibility through taking an active position in combating organisational problems such as exclusionary practices or violence both on and of the pitch. While previous research has paid attention to these developments (e.g. Mutz & Baur, 2009; Spaaij et al., 2014; Vandermeerschen, Vos, & Scheerder, 2015), several authors have underscored the need for a more focused discussion which centres upon the social roles of sport organisations take in modern society. This is particularly needed with the ever more high expectations sport organisations find themselves confronted with, and which pose serious challenges for both organisational members and policymakers in the sports domain (Coalter, 2007; Haudenhuyse, 2017).