Bachelor Thesis Lara FINAL

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Groupe Sup de Co La Rochelle
Institut Européen de Commerce et de Gestion
BACHELOR INTERNATIONAL
Promotion 2013
ETHICS IN THE SPORT INDUSTRY:
Facing a legitimacy crisis, in what measure do
major sport companies use CSR to improve their
social acceptability?
Mémoire de fin d’études présenté par Lara ARMAS
Tuteur de mémoire : Françoise TIGREAT
Enseignante en Stratégie et Développement International
Printed both-sided on recycled paper
for an eco-responsible publication

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Confidentiality Certificate

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Acknowledgement
First of all, I would like to thank my thesis adviser, Françoise Tigreat, for all her help
and support at a time when I felt lost. She managed to motivate me again and gave me back
the confidence I had lost. Thank you for the time she dedicated looking information for me,
contacting her network, and answering to my emails. She was my greatest help in the
redaction of this thesis.
I would also like to thank other professors from my Business School Sup de Co La
Rochelle: Mr. Emmanuel Renaud, my thesis director, for his advice and tips. Thank you also
to Mr. Brehonnet, my program director, for his availability in the last weeks. Thank you also
to Mr. Dimbi Ramonjy, who helped me define my subject and find the words to formulate
my title, and a last thank to Salomée Ruel for her last minute advice. Thank you all for the
quick responses.
Of course, I would like to thank Mr. Corbeil Thibault for his time and availability to
answer to my questions during an interview.
I can’t forget all those who helped me outside from school: many thank to my
American friend Riley Sievers who offered to proof-read my work. Unfortunately it didn’t all
work out, but thank you anyways for the initial offer. I would also like to thank my
roommates and friends, Claire and Morgane, for dragging me with them to the library with
them although I didn’t want to. Thanks for keeping supporting me even though I was tired
and grumpy, and continuing to make me laugh. Thank you to all my other friends who
understood I had to focus on my thesis for a while and couldn’t see them as much: Maya and
Damien in particular.
And at last, I would like to thank my family. Thank you to my mom and little sister
who helped me put everything together in the last minute, and thank you to my dad for his
motivational speeches and his stories about sports. I couldn’t have done it without you all,
so thank you again for all your help and support; I won’t forget it and I really appreciated!

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Summary
Confidentiality Certificate ...................................................................................................................2
Acknowledgement..............................................................................................................................3
Summary ............................................................................................................................................4
Abstract & Key words..........................................................................................................................5
Introduction........................................................................................................................................6
I. Ethics in the Sport industry ..............................................................................................................9
A. Sport in the society .....................................................................................................................9
B. Ethics – Place in our society.......................................................................................................15
C. Ethics applied to the Sport industry...........................................................................................25
II. CSR and Legitimacy .......................................................................................................................32
A. CSR and sustainable development.............................................................................................33
B. Legitimacy.................................................................................................................................45
C. CSR as a tool for legitimacy in the sport industry.......................................................................51
III. Field study: interview with Decathlon and analysis of consumers’ behavior .................................56
Hypotheses...................................................................................................................................56
Methodology ................................................................................................................................56
Analysis of the interview with Decathlon.......................................................................................57
Analysis Quantitative Survey.........................................................................................................60
Conclusion........................................................................................................................................69
Annexes............................................................................................................................................73
Annex 1: Verbatim with Mr. Corbeil - Décathlon ...........................................................................73
Annex 2: Customer survey and answers ........................................................................................87
Index of Figures and graphs ..............................................................................................................98
Bibliography......................................................................................................................................99
Books............................................................................................................................................99
Articles..........................................................................................................................................99
Websites.....................................................................................................................................100
Table of Contents............................................................................................................................105

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Abstract & Key words
Abstract
They are everywhere in the news: sports. These days though, we can easily notice
that they are bad news, and that there are a lot of scandals involving either professional
athletes or sports companies. Armstrong, Pistorius, Bangladesh… There seems to be ethical
issues within the sports industry that wasn’t as obvious in the past, and it seems to be linked
with the crisis. But not any kind of crisis: a legitimacy crisis. Indeed, through the recurrent
scandals hitting the sports sector, people lose credibility in the values of what once made
sports. In order to regain their lost social acceptability, companies have to react. Plenty
corporations found out that a way of getting their legitimacy back is through the use of CSR
actions. Major sports companies do everything possible to appear responsible and respectful
of their environment in order to justify their actions. But what does CSR mean, what is
legitimacy exactly, and how is everything linked together within the sports industry and its
apparent lack of ethics? This is what we will try to explain through this Bachelor thesis. We
will define each and every key word we are using, and use the main theories relating to the
subject in order to support our work. At last, we will go on the field and directly ask
questions to understand the relevance of this topic.
Key words
Sports, Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, Sustainable Development, Legitimacy Crisis
Abbreviations:
Corporate Social Responsibility – CSR
Sustainable Development – SD
Triple Bottom Line – TBL
Neo Institutional Theory – NIT

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Introduction
Whether the ancient or modern Olympics, gladiator fights or Roland-Garros, sports
continue to occasion great public interest, and this since the early ages. Results are no longer
decided by one person who chooses the winner depending on the show. Instead, there are
rules and regulations to apply for every sport, and referees responsible of making people
respect those established conventions. But these rules and regulations are the subject of
many discussions of ethics as it concerns athletes, coaches and management staff, the
media, arbiters, fans, agents, etc…
The sports sector is a multi-billion pound global industry nowadays, comprising a
wide number of sports businesses and professional sports practices. It is an unusual
combination of passionate public and athletes, who can be considered as highly profitable
business “celebrities” regarding the reputation and the salaries of some… The stakes often
are high, both financially and professionally, and the pressure to cross ethical lines and
cheat, dope oneself, or arrange some aspect of the competition is thus also important.
Stakeholders are unlikely to want association with brands, organizations or competitors that
display low ethical standards and therefore pose a reputation risk. Indeed, high profiles of
sportsmen and sportswomen have an obligation to behave responsibly as they often act as
role models for younger people. We therefore have to be very careful about their images
since many successful young athletes are role models for children around the world.
As we will see, the sports industry is experiencing rapid growth and development, and as it
grows, sport managers have to deal with ethical issues, which often are unique to the
industry. We will show that business ethics issues affect the whole sports sector, and that it
could therefore make a difference to the working conditions of millions of workers around
the world for example. There are several relevant business ethics issues pertinent to the
sports sector currently after what we have seen in the news lately about: doping scandals
involving famous biker Lance Armstrong, murder accusations against Olympic medalist Oscar
Pistorius, but we have also seen factories collapsing on thousands of women in Bangladesh a
few months ago, and how Parisian hooligans scared everyone in the capital a few weeks ago
after local PSG soccer club won the French championship… There are thus ethical issues

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concerning the supply chain, corruption and bribery, pay differentials, health of players, and
social impact of sports in general to name only a few important ones.
The sports industry is currently recognized as a business enterprise in magnitude of
hundreds billion of dollars. According to Sports Business Journal, sports enterprise revenue is
superior to the revenues of the country's auto and movie industries combined1
. And with
global warming and globalization among others, sustainability challenges are increasing and
the population is getting more and more aware of the dangers of this context of crisis. This is
why they ask for more responsible actions, like the 2012 Games in London which aim was to
be the “greenest” Olympics Games in History. Indeed, over the last few years, the concept of
sustainable development has become more commonplace. In the realm of sport, less
attention has been paid to sustainability, and we argue that it is time to start thinking about
the long-term sustainability of sport and the responsibility of the actors playing within the
sports industry, particularly major companies selling sports equipments like Nike, Puma,
Adidas, Décathlon, Intersport etc., who can have negative effects on the environment and
communities, both socially and economically. And these are the actors we will mainly focus
on during this thesis. We might talk about organizations dealing with sports too, like clubs or
federations for example, because it is true that sporting clubs and governing bodies have
made big strides in tackling issues such as racism and sexism until now. We believe that it is
now time for the sporting world to tackle its environmental and social impact and inspire
fans across the whole world to live more sustainably and in a more responsible and
respectful way.
Indeed, sustainability has become a significant political and social issue. Forward-
thinking businesses try to deal with sustainability challenges, and the sports businesses
should be no exception. Some could argue that sports, with its need for a clean environment
for the training and competitions of athletes, are closer to the issues than other businesses.
It is therefore in a strong position to take a lead and set the example in developing and
communicating sustainable practices. Moreover, sport plays an important and significant
role in the lives of many people, and can thus easily and positively influence the behavior of
fans. Indeed, we are surrounded by sustainability issues everyday in everything we do, and,
1
https://www.mercy.edu/academics/school-of-business/department-of-business-administration/bs-in-
business-administration-sport-management/

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with millions of people watching sports events across the entire globe, sports present a
unique opportunity to have an impactful agenda and achieve huge changes in the way we
live our lives. Sport based-programs can be used to improve children’s lives and to
strengthen communities. Sports have always played an important role in promoting values
such as ideals of peace, solidarity, fairness, respect, and social integration in different
cultural and geographical contexts. Today, we consider sports to be a powerful tool for all its
beneficial potential.
The purpose of this study is to explore CSR within the sports industry to fill a gap in
the existing CSR literature: in fact, little has been written about how CSR is defined in the
sports industry, and how it can be a way of legitimizing and justifying a company’s actions
within this competitive and ever evolving industry. Indeed, CSR has undeniably become a
legitimization tool for companies, but even though there are many illustrations of CSR
practices in all business sectors, there a few ones related to sports. And as we are
experiencing a world crisis, we can wonder about whether it could also be called a legitimacy
crisis or not. This is why we will focus on ethics in the sports industry, and in what measure
major sport companies facing a legitimacy crisis use CSR to improve their social acceptability.
To address this issue, this study employed a mixed-methods approach, including a
quantitative survey and a qualitative content analysis. Together, these methods will attempt
to answer the following hypotheses: Companies use CSR in reaction to a scandal;
Corporations use CSR actions in order to hide the real “heart” of the problem; Sports
companies have to use CSR, it is necessary and they can’t do without it; Sports companies use
CSR in anticipation of scandals; There is a generalization of CSR actions among companies.
In order to do so, we will first describe the sports industry, and see in what ways ethics is a
relevant and current debated topic within this business. Then we will discuss the theories
linked to CSR and explain that we are indeed currently experiencing a legitimacy crisis. We
will see how CSR and legitimacy are linked together, and how they apply in the sports sector.
And at last, we will have a field approach and attempt to analyze customers’ decision making
criteria and interview a production manager from a major sports distributor company in
order to confirm or invalidate our hypothesis. We will now start with our first part and
describe and define both first notions of this thesis: sports and ethics.

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I. Ethics in the Sport industry
Ethics and sports are two broad and commonly used concepts. But put together, they are a
quite new concept. Little studies have been done on the field of ethics and sports, or ethics
in the sports industry, as this one is a fairly new business. There are however some concerns
about the evolution of ethical behavior, from both athletes and organizations. We will see
what place sport has in our culture, and then develop on the concept of ethics in our society
to appreciate the link and importance of those two ideas.
A. Sport in the society
For several authors, the origin of sports can be traced back to Antiquity, when gladiators
from ancient Greece fought to death in arenas and for the show. But the history of sports
extends that far back in time, that it is hard to say when it really began and what sport really
is. Did sports exist in prehistory? Or wasn’t it considered sport? These doubts naturally lead
us to wonder how sports are defined. Indeed, we all understand the notion of sports; we all
know what it is because it has become common sense: it is a universal phenomenon. But
still, how do we define sports? What are the characteristics allowing us to say that a certain
activity is a sport, and another isn’t? We will try to define this key term, along with exposing
the evolution of sports to better understand what sports really are all about. We will also see
that the sector of sports has become a major business, and that it brings along several
contradictions and challenges.
a. Sport history and evolution, definition and values
Definition
According to Thomas, the word “sport” seems to offer a clear signification, but observation
shows it includes a wide variety of practices, which makes it hard to define it.2
Using Michel
Bernard’s word, he explains that sport is quite a paradox: it’s a word and phenomenon
understood by all, but nobody, even the best specialists, can correctly define it3
. Indeed,
even the most important institution in sport, the International Olympic Committee (IOC), has
no clear definition of it.
2
R. Thomas, Histoire du Sport, Ed. PUF, 1997, p. 4
3
Michel Bernard is a philosopher and professor. His remark comes from Encyclopedia Universalis, t. 15, p. 305

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Indeed, in the Review of the Olympic Programme and Recommendations on the programme
of the Games of the 29th
Olympiads in Beijing 2008, the Olympic Programme Commission
Executive Board stated through its Commission Chairman Franco Carraro that “while there is
no global definition of what constitutes a sport, and what the difference between a sport
and a game is, the most commonly accepted element of a sport is physical exertion in the
conduct of competition”. Nonetheless, “in 1995, the IOC the international bodies of the
‘games’ of bridge (WBF) and chess (FIDE) as IOC-recognized organizations. […] The IOC
acknowledged that bridge and chess should be considered as sports.”4
And even though
chess is not performed during the regular Summer or Winter Olympics, the FIDE
(International Federation of Chess) organizes Chess Olympiads every four years for example.
So what is a sport? We realize that a definition for sports does not exist and cannot be given.
But for the purpose of this thesis, we will try to give the most common features of what
makes a sport.
History and evolution
Antiquity
During Antiquity, men would fight in competitions taking place in honor of the Gods during
religious days. Every four years, masculine athletes would meet in Olympia to take part in
several sports disciplines, to venerate Zeus. In 776 BC, the first Games took place.5
A time of
peace was settled by all the cities, to allow participants to go to what became the Olympic
Games. It is in 394 AD that the last Games took place.
Etymology
In order to better understand the meaning of sports, we have to know where the notion
“sport” comes from: “sport” comes from the old French desport, meaning “pastime,
recreation, pleasure”. In the 15th
century, the sense evolved to "to amuse oneself by active
exercise in open air or taking part in some game”6
Evolution of sport
For some writers, sport is just any physical activity. However, several philosophers explained
that sport started as a ritual in most societies, only to become a competitive system in the
4
Article 2.5 ‘Mind Sports’, p. 8 on 18
5
http://www.icnsportsweb.com/a-brief-description.html
6
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=sport

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modern societies based on efficiency. Allen Guttmann, using works of Max Weber, identified
seven specific features of modern sport, compared to antic sport7
: the separation between
the sports and the religion, equal chances among all – which was not the case in the
Antiquity, more specific roles, strict rules and regulation, bureaucracy, measureable results
and the quest for performance and record (the notion of “record” has been created through
modern sports according to Guttmann and his book From ritual to record, 1978).
Most scholars agree that there is a discontinuity between modern sport and ancient
sport, and we will therefore focus on modern sport for the sake of this thesis, as it is what
prevails today in our society.
Pierre de Coubertin and the Modern Olympic Games
It is said that modern sports started in England in the 19th
century. It crossed the English
Channel thanks to Pierre Fredy de Coubertin (1863-1937), the French baron who is nobody
else that the “father” creator of Modern Olympics Games. He wanted to integrate sports in
schools, like he saw in the US and in England, to vulgarize it, and so that it was not only
accessible to the elite.8
He aspired to include it in the educational program to share the
values and the spirit with a broader population, convinced about the benefits of sports. It is
in 1894 - exactly 1500 years after the last Games in ancient Greece - that he manages what
several people had tried but failed before him: restore the Olympic Games. They will take
place two years later in Athena, Greece, in consideration of the original Olympic Games
located in the Greek capital. He also created the International Olympic Committee, which is
to become the supreme sport institution and organization in the world. But as we will see,
his utopia of the Games will soon disappear and make way to money and professionalism.
Values
A definition of amateurism appeared while Pierre de Coubertin concretized his big dream of
renewing the Games: he liked the idea of encouraging competition among amateurs rather
than professional athletes, like it was the case in the ancient Olympics. He saw value in it and
believed that athletes should not be paid. His ideal is well articulated in the saying “What’s
7
R. Thomas, Histoire du Sport, Ed. PUF, 1997, p. 9
8
M. Kessous, Les 100 histoires des Jeux Olympiques, PUF, 2012, p. 9

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important is to participate”9
. The original version of this expression is “The important thing
in life is not the triumph but the struggle, the essential thing is not to have conquered but to
have fought well” (Pierre de Coubertin, 1895). To him, the Olympic Games were a means to
message a philosophical ideal: that the effort and the work of overcoming the opponent
were more important that winning the contest itself.
We probably owe the most important values of sport to him, as his idyllic vision of the
Olympic Games was to promote peace. This role was the soul of his belief, and his point of
view was that athletic competition would have a tendency to promote cross-cultural
understanding, which would in turn lessen the threats of conflicts.
More than just peace and transcendence, sports are now synonymous of respect (of the
rules, the opponent, and the others in general, and later of the environment), solidarity, self-
control, friendship, humility, team spirit, fair-play, loyalty, perseverance, courage, esteem,
and pleasure, among others.
Elements of modern sports
Even though there are several definitions of sports, but none on which everybody really
agrees on10
, a convention is to define modern sport through four essential elements: an
institutionalized activity, with identical rules for the whole planet, making use of one or
several physical qualities (strength, coordination, endurance, resistance, flexibility, dexterity,
etc.), mainly oriented toward competition, and a federation.
b. Growing sport industry as a business – importance and weight
Sport has become a major social phenomenon. It is enough to watch the news and consider
just how much sport appears on the media. But it is also obvious in the daily lives of citizens:
34 million French people say they practice at least one sport once a week11
(2011), and 17.5
9
Original quote in French: “L’important, c’est de participer”, Coubertin (1895)
10
Coubertin’s definition for sports was (in French) : « Culte volontaire et habituel de l’effort musculaire intensif
appuyé sur le désir de progrès et pouvant aller jusqu’au risque » according to R. Thomas in Histoire du sport,
1997. After that, several authors proposed their own definition, like Marcel Prévost, Georges Hébert, Michel
Bouet, Dauvin, Garcin, Bernard Gillet, Joffre Dumazedier, Georges Magnane, Jean-Marie Brohm etc... p.19-21
11
http://www.lefigaro.fr/flash-actu/2011/03/29/97001-20110329FILWWW00618-34-millions-de-francais-font-
du-sport.php

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million are registered at a sport federation12
(2012). Moreover, French people are keen on
watching sports on TV and on the Internet. Yet, we have to make a difference between
competition and leisure, professional sport versus amateurism. We will here mainly focus on
professional sports for the purpose of this thesis.
Evolution of sport institutions
As we know, modern sports come from England during the industrial revolution. Golf,
cricket, horse-riding, and soccer were the first sports to be organized into clubs and
associations. From the 1850s to the 2000s, the number of national sport associations went
from 5 to 50 approximately in the UK, while during 1750 and 1850 it stayed under the
number of 5.13
Moreover, the first organizations and federations were born for several
sports in a few countries around the world, inspired by the English role model. Sport evolves
from a local to national level, before expanding internationally. (see figures 1 to 3 in
annexes)
Development of a new business
Between 1896 and 1999, the number of international sport events went from 3 to 800,
almost 300 times more in one century (Bourg & Gouguet, 2001, Economie du sport, p 47). In
some developed countries, the economic weight of sport is between 0.5 and 2% of the
national economy14
(Andreff & Nys, 2001). It accounts for 1.8% of France’s GDP according to
the French Ministry of Sports, Youth, and Education15
(Ministère des Sports, 2013).
According to the same study, the budget 2013 for sports in France is 272.5 million €
(including sporting bets). The number of employees in the sport sector almost doubled since
1993, increasing from 60,000 workers to almost 120,000 in 2009. More than 15,100 top
athletes were identified in 2012 (youth “hopes” and adult elites together, but only the 7,000
of the elite athletes actually can make a living out of their sport), and around 13,400 sports
diplomas were delivered in that same year, against 10,100 in 2007. In 2009, the turnover of
the sport sector was $114 billion16
.
12
http://www.lefigaro.fr/supplement-partenaire/2012/11/19/06006-20121119ARTWWW00622-89-des-
francais-font-du-sport-au-moins-une-fois-par-an.php?cmtpage=0
13
R. Thomas, Histoire du sport, tables p. 61 & 62, 82 & 84
14
Economie du sport, Andreff & Nys, p3
15
Rapport des Chiffes clés du sport, 2013
16
http://www.latribune.fr/journal/edition-du-1206/technos-et-medias/434103/le-marche-mondial-du-sport-
sur-la-bonne-pente..html

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* Sports Media
Sports started being a real business only since 1984-1986, when the Olympic Games from
Los Angeles were privately financed and that numerous TV channels started diffusing the
images of this new “commercial” event (Bourg & Gouguet, 2001)17
. Players can easily
transfer from one club to another for a high amount of money, and companies are starting
to sponsor clubs, athletes, and/or competitions. The demand for watching the major sport
events on TV increased rapidly, from 989 hours in 1984 to 33,000 in 199914
, and to 100,000
in 2010, according to a report of the CSA18
. The Olympic Games, the Soccer (football*19
)
competitions (World and Europe Cups), National Football League (NFL) and the Superbowl,
Basketball and Baseball competitions, Grand Prix formula 1 (F1), Tour de France, Roland-
Garros … People want to be able to see those major sport events if they can’t assist to them.
Already in 1999, 206 countries diffused the images of the F1 and 57 billion people watched
them on TV16
.
* Pays in sport
No surprise, soccer is the most common and widely sport practiced in France: around 2
million people are registered at the FFF (French Football Federation), by far the number 1
sport in France, as Tennis is clearly second with 1.1 million tennis players (as of 2011)20
, and
horse-riding is third with “only” 705 000 official practitioners. And as it isn’t hard to believe,
soccer is also the main sport in Europe, and probably in the whole world, according to the
press. But what we want to focus on here are the salaries: everybody knows that they are
very high for soccer professional players. But it is not only the case for soccer: according to
Forbes and to other online journals, the 100 highest earners made $2.6 billion collectively
during the past 12 months21
. According to Bourg and Gouguet (Economie du sport, 2001, p.
28), six sports disciplines represent 95 out of the 100 most well paid athlete salaries: boxing,
basketball, Auto-racing, NFL, golf, and soccer22
(tennis according to Bourg & Gouguet).
Around half of the 10 richest athletes in the world get endorsed by companies and sponsors
17
Economie du sport, p. 8 & 10, table p. 44
18
Conseil supérieur de l’Audiovisuel, report on Sport et télévision, p4
19
* Soccer in American English, football in British English
20
According to the French Ministry of Sports, Youth, and Education, Ministère des Sports, 2013 – Rapport des
chiffres clés du sport 2013
21
http://www.businessinsider.com/highest-paid-athletes-2012-6?op=1#ixzz2V3Aoghqj;
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2012/06/18/mayweather-tops-list-of-the-worlds-100-highest-
paid-athletes/
22
http://www.topendsports.com/world/lists/earnings/athletes-paid-sports.htm

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more money that they actually win while competing23
. Knowing this, we can understand that
there are some comments and critics about these extraordinary salaries (#1: boxer Floyd
Mayweather has a total earning of $85 million in a year, #3: golfer Tiger Woods earns $4.4
million and gets $55 million from Nike for example).
Critic of modern sport: loss of original values?
Coubertin’s utopia was “too good to be true”, and as everything does, sports and
competition evolved and Coubertin’s ideal of amateurism soon vanished to make room for
other values and standards, morals and ethics. Competition nowadays, and especially
professional sport, can be criticized and associated with individualism, quest for
performance at any price, and financial contribution. Some critics say these reflect today’s
society and its values. Money has indeed taken a major role in the practice of sports, and
sport became a business, an industry. And as we saw, the pecuniary implication of this
evolution is quite important. A major challenge for this industry is that the change of
mentality and switch in primordial values has had an impact on the morale of sport as a
whole. We will see in the C. Ethics applied in the Sport Industry that the threat of this shift
has to be countered. Nonetheless, it would be wrong to believe that professional sport
accounts only for negative externalities (like dominated by money and profit for example),
which is obviously not the case; and amateur sport also have detriments (and not only
virtues), and sometimes go against the “sport spirit”.
But before engaging in the relation between ethics and the sport sector, we will first
seek to understand and define the concept of ethics, and be aware of its place in our society
as a subject that matters today.
B. Ethics – Place in our society
The frequency of business scandals (Enron, Foxconn, Arthur Andersen …) in the last few
years has driven an increasing for society’s interest in business ethics. Here, we will focus
more on business ethics specifically rather than on ethics, as the debate surrounding well-
known corporations have clearly shown a need for businesses to better integrate ethics and
responsibility in their decisions. Indeed, “public trust in companies has eroded and dropped
23
http://www.therichest.org/sports/forbes-highest-paid-athletes/

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significantly over the last few years. Public trust in national governments and the United
Nations has fallen significantly too”24
. According to a leading polling organization –
Yankelovich Partners, Inc. – 80% of Americans consider that businesses are too concerned
about profits and not enough about responsibilities to others. Furthermore, 70% believe that
if they had the opportunity and were quite sure not to be caught, companies would take
advantage of the citizens. At last, 61% feels that even well-known companies cannot be
trusted. In order to promote and bolster higher ethical standards, new legislation and
regulations has been put in place (Ferrell, Fraedrich & Ferrell, 2008, p. 5). We will see more
in depth what the definition of business ethics is; how it differs from ethics and moral, and
its evolution to become a subject of importance today.
a. History of Ethics – definition, explanation, and evolution
As for sports, there is no one definition every scholar agrees on, but there are little
variations: ethics are based on making the distinction between good and bad, right and
wrong, and is an ensemble of behavior rules shared by a society. Mercier (2004) makes the
distinction with the moral, which is an ensemble of universal principals25
. Ethics is a branch
of philosophy helping people to make decisions and behave; the field of business ethics
deals with questions about whether specific business practices are acceptable. According to
the BBC, “our concepts of ethics have been derived from religions, philosophies and
cultures. They infuse debates on topics like abortion, human rights and professional
conduct”. 26
In other words, ethics propose guidelines to use in daily life in order to respect and enhance
human well-being. Ethics thus refer to values, standards and rules and social conditions
people ought to embrace and follow. 27
“One difference between an ordinary decision and
an ethical one lies in the point where the accepted rules no longer serve, and the decision
maker is faced with the responsibility for weighing values and reaching a judgment in a
situation which is not quite the same as anything faced before. Another difference relates to
24
Business ethics : ethical decision making and cases, Ferrell, Freadrich, & Ferrell, 2008, p. 4 & table p. 5
25
L’éthique dans les entreprises, Mercier, 2004, p. 5
26
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/introduction/intro_1.shtml
27
http://www.ethicalsociety.org/article/19/about-wes/ethical-culture-our-religious-heritage/faqs-about-
ethical-culture/what-does-ethics-mean

~ 17 ~
the amount of emphasis that decision makers place on their own values and accepted
practices within their company. Consequently, values and judgments play a critical role
when we make ethical decisions” (Ferrell, Fraedrich & Ferrell, 2008, p. 6).
Definition of ethics versus business ethics
According to businessdictionary.com, ethics give us “basic concepts and fundamental
principles of decent human conduct. It includes study of universal values such as the
essential equality of all men and women, human or natural rights, obedience to the law of
land, concern for health and safety and, increasingly, also for the natural environment.”28
The Santa Clara University29
makes a difference between business ethics and ethics; ethics
being the study of standards of behavior which promotes human welfare and “the good” (it
can be animal welfare, care about the environment, etc.), and business ethics is the study of
standards of business behavior, which promotes the same things. The same way, ethics and
business ethics can be though about at three different levels: how we act as individuals/as a
company, how we structure our organization/business and work, and how we structure our
society/business and system. Broadly, ethics is about how we behave (as individuals or as a
company) about the standards we hold ourselves to, it is what we do in our day-to-day life in
our relationships, how we treat others (even those we don’t know).
But we have to be careful when applying ethics to business, because there are some set of
specific rules about corporations and businesses we can’t omit or neglect: in order to
survive, businesses need to earn profits, and at the same time corporations have to balance
their “desires for profits against the needs and desires of society”, which often leads to
making compromises. In a nutshell, companies have to “earn profits without harming
individuals or society as a whole” (Ferrell, 2008). This is why business ethics and the way
companies behave matter: we can’t ignore that making profit is a company’s first mission
and reasons to exist, but acting in a socially acceptable way (we will explain the notion of
legitimacy linked to this necessity later on) can be considered as essential too, as the
“judgment of stakeholders influence society’s acceptance or rejection or a business and its
activities”. (Ferrell, 2008)
28
http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/ethics.html
29
Santa Clara University website http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/focusareas/business/introduction.html

~ 18 ~
What does it mean to act ethically?
An example of guidelines or best practices to ethical behavior could be: acting so as to
“achieve your own full and unique potential” and so as to draw out people’s best qualities;
and perform with a “sense of interdependence with humanity and nature”. 25
Businesses
need to establish ethical standards with high requirements, and people in these businesses
need to act in consistency with the moral principles set up by the corporations. Companies
need to make clear to stakeholders what are its ethical policies and organization culture like,
and what philosophy, values and beliefs it will act upon. Stakeholders in turn need to be
aware of the fact that ethical decision making processes deal with complex environments: in
order to make appropriate conduct prevail at all levels in a company, top management
needs to plan and institute purposeful actions, bearing in mind that individuals (and all kinds
of stakeholders) have different values and points of view, each of which would like to be
more than just one factor in the procedure of decision making. For Jonas for example, what
really matters in ethical behavior is thinking about the future generations and the fact that
“a world suitable for human habitation should be preserved for all future times”30
.
Development of business ethics
According to McMahon31
, there are six stages that were identified to explain the history of
(American) business ethics:
30
L’éthique dans les entreprises, Mercier (2004), p. 73
31
A brief history of American business ethics¸ A companion to business ethics, 2002, p. 342
1. Religious
ideologies of
English origins
(1700-1776)
2. Development of
American business
ethics (1777-
1890)
3. Maturity of
the business
ethics concept
(1891-1963)
4. Rise of social
issues in
business ethics
(1962-1970)
5. Business
ethics as a
specific
discipline ans as
global

~ 19 ~
However, Ferrell, Fraedrich and Ferrell (2008) break down business ethics from the 1960s to
the 2000s: before 1960, the 1960s and the rise of social issues in business, the 70s and the
emergence of business ethics as a field, the 80s and the consolidation of business ethics, and
the 90s with the institutionalization of it. According to Mercier (2004), business ethics
experienced a shift from personal responsibility to corporate responsibility during the 60s
and 70s, which led to a contested concept admitting a wide range of conceptions since then.
Ferrell and Fraedrich also give an idea about the 21st
century and the focus made on
business ethics. To synthesize, they drew a table of ethical and social concerns during those
years32
, of which is a timeline below.
32
Business ethics : ethical decision making and cases, Ferrell, Fraedrich & Ferrell, 2008, p. 11
Before
1960
• Religious questions about morality of capitalism
1960s
• Interest in causes of ecological problems and civil and human right issues
• Rise of consumerism and modern consumer movement
• Government's responsibility is to provide citizens with economic stability, equality
and social justice
1970s
• First texts about corporate social responsibility
• More concern about public image
• Rise of social demand about addressing ethical issues (after Watergate scandal)
• Foreign Corrupt Practices Act was passed and "business ethics" is a common term
1980s
• Bribery, deceptive advertising, price collusion, product safety and the environment
are major ethical issues
• Business ethics organizations are tought in colleges
• Prominent concern within leading companies because of transparency issues
1990s
• Restrictions on cigarette advertising and sales
• Development of internal legal and ethical compliance programs, like code of ethics
• Sweatshop and unsafe working condiitons in third world countries
2000s
• Conviction of Arthur Andersen & Enron, WorldCom, Sunbeam in the US, and other
accounting misconducts: Royal Ahold in the Netherlands and Parmalat in Italy
• International corruption and trust in global companies declines significantly
• Congress passes Sarbanes-Oxley Act about corporate fraud and financial reporting

~ 20 ~
Benefits of business ethics
More and more companies manage to realize the benefits of acting ethically and the link
with financial results and profits. Indeed, having an ethical reputation and culture often
leads to a higher commitment and trust from employees, higher customer satisfaction and
thus more investments from shareholders for example, which in turns leads to more
profits33
. Business ethics play a role in workers commitment because “the more a company
is dedicated to taking care of its employees, the more likely it is that the employees will take
care of the organization” (Ferrell, Fraedrich & Ferrell, 2008). It seems that “79% of
employees agree that ethics is important in continuing to work for their employer”. We can
explain this through the fact that an ethical culture usually bans immoral behaviors like
abusive conduct and bolsters a safe work place environment. And as we can easily
understand, a satisfied employee works better and makes happier customers, and a culture
of trust within a department bolsters good team and individual performances for example.
Respect, honesty and consideration help build trusting relationships and increase the
efficiency and impact of decision-making. Furthermore, “according to a report on employee
loyalty and work practices, companies viewed as highly ethical by their employees were six
times more likely to keep their workers”. It is about the same logic for investor loyalty and
customer satisfaction, and is linked to a better communication with stakeholders too i.e.,
because consumers and shareholders care about values.
b. Ethics: a subject that matters today in management
The faculty of identifying and coping with multifaceted business ethics challenges has
become a main concern in this century. All the recent scandals about frauds and deception
provoked public indignation and led to an intense demand for better corporate
responsibility and enhanced ethical practices. After seeing what ethics and business ethics
are about, we will talk about management ethics and international ethics management.
33
Figure 1-3 ”The Role of Organizational Ethics in Performance”, p. 18 of Business ethics: ethical decision
making and cases, Ferrell, Fraedrich & Ferrell, 2008, and p. 19

~ 21 ~
Ethics are involved in all activities and departments of a company as it implies a critical
thinking process. Ethical preoccupations touch all management areas and making ethical
choices for managers is very hard because they often face dilemmas. Indeed, ethics is a field
of tensions involving self-interest, companies’ interests and public interest (Mercier, 2004).
This leads us to talk about management ethics and how ethics apply to managers.
Management ethics
According to Carroll34
, management ethics are a broad subject that discusses the situations
managers have to face at work. Indeed, leaders and managers in firms encounter ethical
issues quite often, and it doesn’t matter what level in a company we consider: managers of
all departments, levels and functions face ethical dilemmas when in the need of taking a
decision. “By ethical content, we are referring to issues, decisions or actions which contain
matters of right versus wrong, fair versus unfair, or justice versus injustice. That is, these
situations are one with which there may be some disagreement about what is the correct –
or ethical – course of action or decision.” (Carroll, 2008) Carroll believes that there are four
social responsibilities businesses are to follow: “be profitable, obey the law, engage in
ethical practices, and be philanthropic”, or in a nutshell: “be a good citizen”. People feel that
companies “owe something to their workers and the communities in which they operate,
and that they should sometimes sacrifice some profits for the sake of making things better
for their workers and communities”, according to a Business Week survey mentioned by
Carroll. There are several ways to find out when managers face ethical challenges, but an
easy way Carroll proposes in echoing Josephson to recognize one of these situations is to
identify when “dishonesty, hypocrisy, disloyalty, unfairness, illegality, injurious acts, or
unaccountability” are involved in the circumstances. Another way to find out if there is an
ethical dimension to the decision to take according to Ferrell and Fraedrich is to identify
when there are “several actions that must be evaluated as right or wrong”.
International ethics management
First, we would like to make clear that there are two different traditions scholars and writers
range themselves onto regarding the nature of business, and which one we agree to here.
There are writings from Aristotle and Marx stating that business is inherently an unethical
activity, and that engaging in business is something unethical by nature: to them, ethics is a
34
“Ethics in management”, A. B. Carroll, p. 141 of A Companion to Business Ethics, R. E. Frederick (2002)

~ 22 ~
tool that influential people and companies use in order to make sure that their interests
prevail.35
The second way of thinking, and the one we consent with and adopt for this thesis,
is the one of thinkers like Kant and Mill36
: they don’t think that dong business is unethical by
nature, but that the individuals making business are the one responsible for choosing
whether to engage in deceptive practices. They have control over their decisions and have
the choice.
Ethical relativism
When working internationally, there are always issues rising from intercultural differences,
in particular linked to ethics and moral. What is not ethical for the Western cultures isn’t
necessarily unethical for the East or developing countries. Most ethical dilemmas come from
the fact that the values of the societies are different one from another, and this can lead to
ethical issues. For example, child labor is badly seen in WEIRD37
countries, while is it normal
and a necessity for some countries in Asia. Can we say that they are wrong and we are right?
Based on what? On values? Whose? Is it unethical for Asian parents to send their children to
work instead of selling them or starving? Is it ethical for European companies to completely
ban child labor, knowing that if they are dismissed they might prostitute themselves? Who’s
to judge what’s right or wrong? "Differences in moral practices across cultures raise an
important issue in ethics, [hence] the concept of "ethical relativism."38
Indeed, this is what the theory of ethical relativism is about: the moral rightness or
wrongness of actions varies from society to society. There are no absolute universal moral
standards binding all people. This theory assumes that there are no moral principles
accepted by all societies, and that what is morally right or wrong varies with society’s
culture. There is no single code or standards, but many. Relativists say there is no single
truth, and that there is a difference between what people think and what is true. For the
purpose of this research, we will acknowledge this point of view and theory.
35
Preface of Frederick’s A Companion to Business Ethics (2002)
36
N. E.Bowie, “A Kantian approach to business ethics”, in A Companion to Business Ethics (2002), p. 4
37
Western Educated Industrialized Rich Democratic countries, according to J. Henrich, S. J. Heine and A.
Norenzayan article “Most people are not WEIRD” where they state that Westerners and Americans are “some
of the most psychologically unusual people on Earth”, and yet that most studies are done based on them
38
http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/decision/ethicalrelativism.html. R. E. Frederick also exposes these
theories in his chapter “An outline of ethical relativism and ethical absolutism” in A companion to business
ethics, p. 65

~ 23 ~
Ethical absolutism
The theory of absolutism is opposed to the relativist one: there are some principles that
should always be respected, independent of the situation and the context, because morality
is dependent on individuals and not on society. According to Kant, noting is relative, a crime
is a crime. Some philosophers claim that “while the moral practices of societies may differ;
the fundamental moral principles underlying these practices do not”35
.
New developments in business ethics
There are obviously other ethical theories available to managers, but for understandable
reasons we won’t be able to expose them all here. Indeed, according to Buchholz &
Rosenthal39
, there has been a sudden increase of new developments in ethical theories in
recent years to show the dissatisfaction about the traditional theories exposed earlier. These
newer approaches try to propose more relevant theories to business institutions. The
upcoming list is not exhaustive, but we found several authors writing about these theories40
:
Utilitarianism theory - M. Snoeyenbos & J. Humber (p. 17) – stating that an “act’s rightness
or wrongness is determined solely by the act’s consequences and not by any feature of the
act itself”; Social contract theory – T. W. Dunfee & T. Donaldson (p. 38) - a contract between
business and society should involve the reduction of the social costs of business through
impressing upon business the idea that it has an obligation to work for social as well as
economic betterment. This idea was also expressed by the CED (1971, p.12). The Feminist
ethical theories – according to R. Derry (p. 81) – “focus on the construction of ethical
systems which reflect the experiences of women and address the moral issues confronting
women in society”; Human Nature ethics – W. C. Frederick (p. 100) – “describes the natural
forces, processes, and scientific laws that influence human conceptions of morality and
ethics, and their operationalization in the business firm”; and the basic idea of the
Pragmatism and Postmodernism theories – R. E. Freeman & R. A. Phillips (p. 128) – is that
“humans can use their reason to dominate and control the world”.
We made the choices about which theories to explain more thoroughly because we
estimated that this basic knowledge of these theories was most important for managers to
master, in order to understand how to work in an intercultural environment. We understood
39
“Social responsibility and business ethics”, R. A. Buchholz & S. B. Rosenhtal, in A companion to business
ethics, Frederick (2002), p. 314
40
All these theories are exposed in different chapters of Frederick’s Companion to Business Ethics

~ 24 ~
through all these theories that there are a lot of different valuable points of view, and that
philosophy offers many approaches to answer several ways of identifying what is right and
what is wrong, depending on the values taken into account, and on the definition of moral
and ethics according to each society and to the era. These theories are tools to analyze
ethical issues in business, and all could be accepted and used by managers, as none is said to
be “wrong”, because, again, who has the entitlement to say what is right and what is
wrong… All of them are a way of approaching business ethics that some scholars agree with,
and others criticize and reject.
The formalization of ethics for a better communication
Formalizing ethics usually means redacting a document stating the values, believes,
principles and ideas according to which it will act and take decisions (Mercier, 2004). The
firm also exposes its purpose and the obligations and rights of its stakeholders. When ethical
questioning focuses upon consequences of organizational activities for others, the notion of
Corporate Social Responsibility appears, which we will study more in-depth in a next
chapter.
Ethics as a competitive advantage
For several authors, moral is the key of success. Salomon & Hanson, Gélinier and Jones
believe that, without ethics, it is possible to be successful on the short term only.41
They all
believe that establishing a relationship with stakeholders based on trust and cooperation can
be considered as a competitive advantage compared to the companies who don’t. But this
point of view seems to reduce the use of ethics to a tool. This leads to the critic of the use of
ethics, which can be considered as a means to manage the company’s image and brand.
People criticize the fact that ethics are seen as an instrument instead of being the objective.
Critic of ethics in management
Some scholars question the fact that we should talk about ethics in management: as ethics is
based on an individualistic way of thinking, they wonder if this concept should be transposed
to companies and to the business world. Mercier (2004) wonders if a company should be
evaluated in terms of ethics as if it was a moral agent. Some writers believe that companies
should be considered as responsible of the consequences of their actions, that they have
41
Economie du sport, Mercier (2004), p. 99 & 100

~ 25 ~
obligations and responsibilities toward the different stakeholders; while others believe a
company’s only goal is to make profits. These are the theories of Freeman versus Friedman,
stakeholder versus stockholder theory, which we are going to analyze in the CSR part of this
thesis.
It is sometimes through scandal that citizens manage to make out what is unethical –
scandal sometimes is positive in the sense that people improve and change dishonorable
practices for the better. When an unethical behavior goes public, the exposure of it can
affect the wrongdoer immediately in which case he will have no other choice but to change.
C. Ethics applied to the Sport industry
The introduction of sports as a business jeopardizes traditional ethical values as we saw,
which are the soul and the essence of this sport. Financial objectives become more
important than the purpose of doing sports, the whole system is reversed and results in its
own negation: as technology and science improve, there are more and more scandals about
doping, corruption, cheating…(Bourg & Gouguet, 2001)42
In all kind of sport competition, the
will to win can lead to excess (doping) and to unethical behaviors43
because of all the money
implicated by private interest. The risk is that the appeal for money in the professional field
of sports changes the moral and the original values and purpose of doings sports.
In this chapter, we will talk essentially about the news, and how ethics are involved in
the sport industry. We identified two main topics that are often subject to scandals: the
behavior of sport professionals; and the behavior of sport companies (selling sports
equipments, apparel, accessories and shoes) - such as Nike, Adidas and Puma - towards their
production factories with which they are sub contracting, in Asia mostly. We will then
discuss the different type of ethical issues managers might confront in the sport industry.
42
Economie du sport, p. 4 et 5
43
ditto, p 6

~ 26 ~
a. Ethics in athletes’ behavior – no longer role models
Doping, cheating, and corruption…
Since a while now, sport doping has become a critical issue internationally. This is not only a
health concern, but there is also a moral dimension in cheating and doping: the basic sport
spirit and values of honesty and respect has faded away. This affects competitions all around
the world because it is a universally shared interest and occupation. Obviously, sporting
governing organizations established anti-doping policies and regulations, but unfortunately,
because of scientific advances, nowadays there a several ways of using drugs without leaving
traces to be detected by drug tests. A war against doping has started after the last well-
known scandals of Festina during the Tour de France (1998), and the Armstrong case more
recently (2012) among others.
Regrettably, it seems that the sport entities have only managed to reach their goals of
development (international competitions, universal practices and rules, profitability of
professional sports) while sacrificing its founding principles. From now on, doping and affairs
are well established in sports (Bourg & Gouguet, 2001, p.56). It seems to be the end of
educative sports, which has become a major and international economic activity. Indeed,
investors expect results, so do sponsors and the media for example. The ethical issue of
doping is that it reduces the hazard of competition, which is what people pay to see: a fair
competition with athletes trying to show who the best is, and not who has the most
effective drugs.
The same thing goes for corruption: there is no more fair competition when money is
considered having more value than being ethical. There can be several reasons to cheating
and corrupting in sports except wining, and an illustration of this was published in the news
on the 5th
of February, 2013 in the Sud-Ouest newspaper44
: Laurent Vidal, specialist in sports
ethics, analyzed poll results from Europol stating that 680 soccer games were distorted
because Asian criminals engaged in money laundering. France even introduced sports
corruption in the Penal Code as an infraction, (February 1st
, 2012). Laurent Vidal believes it is
only the beginning of such stories, and that all countries and disciplines will be touched:
tennis, boxing, cricket… But obviously, the most evident example of doping and unethical
44
http://www.sudouest.fr/2013/02/05/matchs-et-paris-truques-ce-n-est-que-le-debut-956700-766.php

~ 27 ~
athlete behavior is the case of Lance Armstrong who had to give back his seven medals won
at the Tour de France after he admitted having used performance enhancers, and was then
banned from sports competitions for life.
We remember of other sport scandals linked to lack of ethics in athletes’ behaviors: Mike
Tyson biting off his opponent’s ear during a box round, in 1997. Another scandal, more
recent, linked to Oscar Pistorius, the first handicapped to ever participate and win a medal at
the Olympics with the “valid” runners, and charged for shooting at this girlfriend. Even in
chess, which is not a usual sport but more of a “mind sport” according to legal institutions, a
French Grand Master45
cheated at the chess Olympiads in Russia in 2010. This was the first
big scandal in the Chess world, but not the only one.
We all remember other scandals linked to sports, because they are widely talked about and
broadcasted. This is the case because of the importance athletes and sports have in our
society and to people’s eyes: an athlete is often considered as an icon, a role model,
especially for the younger generations, and especially when they take part in a competition
to represent a country. As we saw earlier, these athletes are so extensively under the
spotlights, that their behaviors can have a broader impact on society and on its values.
Athletes are like messengers of sports to the whole world, and especially to children, and
they therefore ought to behave ethically, as role models. Indeed, this is a subject the
Association for Applied Sport Psychology, the association Livestrong46
and others try to
emphasize: in many instances, sport serves as a microcosm of society, and athletes as role
models. The Association for Applied Sport Psychology insists on the fact that watching
sporting events “can be a valuable learning experience for young people”47
Moreover,
according to several specialist48
, sporting behavior is the term used to reflect sportsmanship,
as it pertains to ethical behavior, fair play, following the rules, and respect for the sport, the
participants, the opponents, the referee, and the spectators. These are golden rules taught
to all children around the world, in order to help them shape their moral, ethical
45
Sebastien Feller cheated with the help of Arnaud Hauchard and Cyril Marzolo, with whom he had a secret
code through which they were giving him advice, after having asked the computer about what was best to play
46
http://www.livestrong.com/article/402590-are-athletes-good-role-models-for-kids/
47
“Learning guide #1 : For Watching the Summer Olympics Games/Sporting Event with Children, Importance of
Good Sporting Behavior” Association of Applied Sport Psychology (2012)
48
Researchers Michael Atkinson and Kevin Young in their new book "Deviance and Social Control in Sport" i.e.
according to http://www.livescience.com/3123-bad-sports-behavior-starts-youth.html

~ 28 ~
understanding and development, and behavior. Sports help build character and personal
qualities. As we mentioned, elite athletes have become societal role models, ambassadors,
whether they wish to carry this burden or not. Winning the Rugby world Cup 2003 saw a
substantial growth in junior participation for example (Frawley et al, 2011)
… the perverse effects of professionalization
Everything seems to be buyable now in the professional sports field: athletes are transferred
and “bought” by opponents, games are being lost for amounts of money, material or
financial compensations are offered to referees, etc… Sporting issues seem more and more
controlled by economical factors. But the perverse effects extent even outwards from the
field: accountability issues, game tickets sold in the black market, fiscal evasion, loans never
reimbursed, money laundering, all these hurt sports ethics. The notion of game even starts
disappearing from the sport vocabulary (Bourg & Gouguet).
“Ethical issues confronting managers in the sport industry”
We saw that the industry is progressing a lot in terms of development and expansion as a
business. But as this happens, managers within the sport industry are facing new challenges
linked to ethical issues. The Journal of Business Ethics49
states that “the business of sport has
not been immune or isolated from ethical problems” and that managers have the task and
duty of addressing ethical questions linked to “professionalism, equity, legal management,
personal issues, team ownership, responsibilities of professional team franchises, and the
social justice associated with all levels of sport” (using the words of DeSensi and Rosenberg,
1996). According to the authors, the sport industry can be divided into major segments that
are: “professional sports, intercollegiate athletes, recreational sport, health and fitness club
management and facility management”. It is said that each segment has very different
ethical issues than the other one: ticket prices for fans, control over players, student
athletes’ salaries, and regulation of player agents… But it appeared to them that one of the
most important issues in intercollegiate athletics for examples was discrimination about
gender equity, and equity in scholarships and recruitments. Companies’ top management
have to be aware of the ethical decision making issues managers encounter if they wish to
improve thoroughly and throughout their organization.
49
The Ethical issues confronting managers in the sport industry, M. Hums, C. Barr & L. Gullion (1999)

~ 29 ~
b. Ethics in production/outsourcing from sport companies
This topic is very present-day regarding the recent events that happened in Bangladesh in
2012 and 2013: factories collapsed on hundreds of workers, which made it the world’s
deadliest industrial disaster. This tragedy highlighted the poor working conditions from local
employees, producing apparel for western companies. Despite concerns about the
conditions of the building, workers were asked to enter the factory made of extreme poor-
quality construction materials50
. Workers operating under these significant unsafe
conditions were also paid extremely low wages. Since 2005, fires or building collapses killed
around 1800 employees in Bangladesh. We also all remember the scandal Nike had to go
through because a picture of a kid was shown sewing a soccer ball in 1997 in Pakistan. Nike
has undergone a huge decrease in sales after this was publicly known, and Nike was the
symbol of child labor and slavery for quite a while. It was only after activist and groups for
the protection of human rights attacked Nike about their practices, after a movie was made
(The Big One from well known Michael Moore) that Nike started acting in reaction to what
had happened, and instituted regulations against child labor (set a minimum age limit) and
increased the wages of their employees, who were paid a pittance.
Outsourcing and sub-producing
It is usual for apparel and textile industries to outsource their production in 3rd
world
countries were labor costs are significantly lower, laws not so strict and people in urgent
search for a job, in order not to starve. Since the scandal of Nike, regulations and standards
were set by the International Labor Organization51
. Unfortunately, in many countries still,
the government doesn’t enforce the laws and if the companies sub-producing don’t verify
the safety of the buildings they use as factories, disasters like the last one in Bangladesh
might continue to happen.
But things aren’t that easy of course. There is a huge ethical dilemma behind these news:
consumer always want cheaper products as the economy and the inflation go on, which is
what companies try to do: unfortunately, these are the consequences of trying to satisfying
50
http://globalnews.ca/news/605996/100s-of-bodies-pulled-from-rubble-of-bangladesh-garment-factory-still-
unidentified-report/
51
http://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/lang--en/index.htm
“The main aims of the ILO are to promote rights at work, encourage decent employment opportunities,
enhance social protection and strengthen dialogue on work-related issues”

~ 30 ~
to customers’ needs and expectations. And the jobs companies are sending across the globe,
aren’t they missing in the local market? On the other hand, can we really say that offshore
outsourcing is really bad, when we know that they offer thousands of people a job and a
salary (even extremely low)? How many lives these jobs have they saved because of their
simple existence? These questions are widely discussed and debated among academics,
weighting the pros and cons, the benefits and advantages, and the drawbacks and
weaknesses of this process. Some are afraid that outsourcing is synonymous of a loss in
quality; others believe it is the opportunity for companies in developed countries to get
access to skilled labor force not available on the local market. The defenders of outsourcing
even believe that “outsourcing makes the world a better place”52
, while those who are
opposed to it are concerned about by security issues and cultural differences53
. Again, we
can only observe that ethics are everywhere, and that no ethical issue is easily solved.
Companies are getting more and more used to adopting the standards and norms issues by
international instances, for their own interest as well as the one of their employees. One of
these norms is the SA 8000 (which we will detail more later on, in the CSR part, as SA stands
for Social Accountability), and 1200 factories respected the standards imposed by this norm
in 200754
. Many companies nowadays have also codes of ethics and of conduct, like Puma
and Oxylane/Décathlon for example, to make their sub contracting factories respect their
corporate culture. We will also talk about social audits, helping respect the ethics in
production, in a later chapter.
Notion of fair trade
According to Mercier (2004), the products issued from fair trade have to respect specific
production and distribution rules. Developing countries producing in fair trade agreement
will have a minimum price much higher than if they didn’t produce under fair trade
agreement. The end products (mostly issued from agriculture or handicraft ones) are
generally 5 to 10% more expensive. Fair Trade is also an organized social movement: the
organization Fair Trade International (FLO) is setting fair trade standards (labels and
certificates i.e.), supporting fair-trade producers (usually from third world countries),
52
Martin Conboy, on http://outsourcemagazine.co.uk/ethics-and-outsourcing-time-to-talk/
53
http://www.outsource2india.com/why_outsource/articles/ethics_outsourcing.asp
http://www.flatworldsolutions.com/articles/ethical-questions-regarding-outsourcing.php
54
http://www.rsenews.com/public/dossier_eco/norme-social.php?rub=1

~ 31 ~
promoting trade justice, and coordinating a fair trade strategy, according to their website55
.
The mission of fair trade is to “connect disadvantaged producers and consumers, promote
fairer trading conditions and empower producers to combat poverty, strengthen their
position and take more control over their lives”.
This is their way to solve some of the ethical issues challenging our world today, and helping
businesses to achieve have higher objectives in terms of ethics and humanity. It can be seen
as teaching ethics to companies who need it.
After having seen how sports became a business and how ethics apply to and
influence business, it was logical to show the importance and weight of business ethics in
the sport industry. However, we didn’t look into the concrete actions a company could
undertake in order to be more ethical, and thus appear socially more responsible. This is
what we will see in the next chapter: corporate social responsibility, and what it really
means and does for businesses. Just as ethics, we will see that it is a concern for companies
today, and that it leads to a better and easier legitimization of corporation’s actions. This
legitimacy, or social acceptability, in turn is linked with profits, and we will try to analyze and
understand how these concepts and notions all work together in a crisis situation, like the
one we are facing in all industries since 2008, but applied to the specific industry of sports.
55
http://www.fairtrade.net/what-we-do.html where we can find Fairtrade’s vision: “a world in which all
producers can enjoy secure and sustainable livelihoods, fulfill their potential and decide on their future” and
their main mission to achieve this vision.

~ 32 ~
II. CSR and Legitimacy
Few people still doubt that companies are at the heart of economical and social
change. The concept of Corporate Social Responsibility offers a wider representation of
firms’ environment: not only economical and financial, but also social, human, cultural,
political and ecological; and at the same time questions the ability of companies to
simultaneously manage all those dimensions. According to Gond & Igalens (2008), the notion
of CSR strives to report the responsible actions of companies to its stakeholders – various
groups companies interact with and have an impact on – and that go beyond their strict
technical, legal and economical obligations. This definition suffices to show the ambiguous
and complex nature of CSR as a concept and as a corporative practice: where do these wide
responsibilities start and end? Isn’t the main objective of CSR to maximize profit? Is
corporate commitment to CSR sincere or is it part of a company’s strategy as new marketing
and communication tool? Could it be a way of regaining lost legitimacy in the past? Do
companies use it only as a way of being socially acceptable in society’s eyes?
All those questions bring us to analyze more in-depth a notion who won a considerable
revival of attention and interest in the last decade in France and in the world. Put aside in
the late 1990s, CSR practices are back quite quickly in France and since the beginning of the
century: almost all CAC 40 companies include a CSR department, in charge of the business’s
social development strategy.
We will thus define CSR and examine what main theories this concept is based upon.
We will also see that Corporate Social Corporation is part of a more comprehensive
development approach: sustainability. Sustainable development has also been an issue for
corporations for quite some times, and we will briefly define this concept before introducing
the last key notion of our thesis: legitimacy. After exposing the opposing theories about CSR
– the stakeholder and stockholder theories, Freeman against Friedman –, we will explain
how CSR and SD can be seen as legitimizing tools, or in other words, how they can serve
legitimacy. We will talk about communication and reputation, and see that legitimacy is a
condition sine qua non for the existence of corporations. At last, we will analyze how these
notions affect and are involved in the sports industry during this time of crisis.

~ 33 ~
A. CSR and sustainable development
Corporate Social Responsibility and sustainability are subjects of interest that have been
growing since the end of the 80s. This tendency shows and proves the evolution of
stakeholders’ thinking about the role of companies in our society. Customers, investors,
employees, and more broadly citizens, ask for a better integration of ethics and responsible
behaviors in corporations’ strategy and actions (Mercier, 2004).
CSR and SD are intertwined: basically, sustainability is the “big picture” of ethical behavior,
applicable by governments and States, which are in turn promoting the concept and pushing
companies to undertake actions and operations of CSR. We will explore this notion and see
what issues it raises. Then we will see how it relates to SD and what the link to legitimacy is,
and at last we will analyze how the concepts of CSR and SD evolve in the sports industry and
how they can be legitimacy tools.
a. Corporate Social Responsibility
In the beginning, CSR was often considered to be a management trend. However, Howard R.
Bowen wrote in 1953 already that CSR was an idea accepted by most American leaders and
CEOs of major corporations, and that it even had become a “trend”. On the contrary to a
popular belief, CSR is not a new idea and concept, but is the continuation of old
corporations’ practices and has been quite often the subject of debates since the 1920
(Gond & Igalens, 2008). A historical approach of CSR is therefore needed in order to fully
understand this notion and its issues.
Definitions
For Mercier (2004), the transition from ethics to CSR translates a shift in the way companies
meet social expectations from their stakeholders, and reflects a questioning about the role
of business. A company has to assume responsibilities going beyond its legal and financial
obligations. The European Commission has put forward a simple definition of CSR as “the
responsibility of enterprises for their impacts on society “, and outlines what an enterprise
should do to meet that responsibility. Although for most small and medium-sized
enterprises, the CSR process remains informal (98% of SMEs don’t have formalized
documents about ethics for example according to Mercier, 2004, p. 19), complying with

~ 34 ~
legislation and collective agreements negotiated between social partners is the basic
requirement for an enterprise to meet its social responsibility (Mercier, 2004). Beyond that,
enterprises should, in the Commission's view, have a process in place to integrate social,
environmental, ethical human rights and consumer concerns into their business operations
and core strategy in close cooperation with their stakeholders. (Mercier, 2004)
There are many definitions of social responsibility but, in general, it means that a private
corporation has responsibilities to society that go beyond the production of goods and
services at a profit. It involves the idea that a corporation has a broader constituency to
serve than that of stockholders alone, and in more recent years, the term stakeholders has
been widely used to express this broader set of responsibilities. Corporations are more than
economic institutions: they have a responsibility to help society to solve pressing social
problems, many of which corporations helped to cause, by devoting resources to the
solution of these problems.56
The European Commission’s Green Paper defined CSR in 2001 as: “a concept whereby
companies integrate social and environmental concerns in their businesses and interactions
with stakeholders on a voluntary basis”. “The main characteristics of this European approach
to “Corporate Social Responsibility” are: going over and above legal requirements by
adopting voluntary measures; linking to the European Union “sustainable development”
concept; and changing management approaches” (according to Thomas’ Speech, 2011, p2).
The concept of CSR asserts that a company’s obligations to the society go beyond its legal
and economic obligations, according to Capron & Quairel (2010) using Bowen’s definition of
CSR. It is a voluntary approach, and management has to try his best to answer to
stakeholders’ expectations. Carroll [1979], one of the most famous authors writing about
CSR, elaborated a model of a pyramid with 4 levels (Capron, 2010):
56
“Social Responsibility and business ethics”, Buchholz &Rosenthal in A companion to business ethics,
Frederick, 2002, p. 303

~ 35 ~
Source : Carroll [1979] in La responsabilité sociale d’entreprise¸ Capron & Quairel, 2010
Each of these levels depends on the one preceding it: satisfaction of the two first levels is
required by society, the third one is expected, and the fourth one is desired.
History and evolution of CSR: what is CSR? A concern for business
As said earlier, it is a widespread belief that CSR is a new management mode, but in
reality, CSR is quite old and was founded by old companies. Yet, CSR’s development as an
academic concept is more recent, and is generally awarded to Howard R. Bowen, as being
the “founder” of CSR. The work he wrote in 1953 (“Social Responsibilities of the
Businessman”) is one of the first analysis of behaviors and position-taking about social
responsibility. Since then, CSR stimulated diverse controversies because of companies’
engagement beyond its due economical prerogative, and is thus a challenged concept by
nature (Gond & Igalens, 2008).
If it is becoming more common, it is because CSR answers lots of preoccupations at the same
time, might they be quite old or newer ones: in this beginning of the 21st
century, there is
more and more to be concerned about. Indeed, according to Lépineux (2010, p. 2-5), the
main factors of concern about the future are numerous: climatic change, peak oil (meaning
that the production of oil will be at his maximum soon, and the decrease after the peak will
be synonymous of an increase in prices), demographic augmentation leading to increase
social inequalities even more, risk diversification (terrorism, nuclear threat, sanitary issues
with expansion of viruses, informatics risks like cyber criminality, biotechnologies, etc…
Moreover, Capron & Quairel (2010) noticed that companies became more and more risk
Level 4: philantropic
responsibility: be good
Level 3: ethical responsibility:
be fair
Level 2: juridical responsibility:
be legal
Level 1: the basis of economic
responsibility: be profitable

~ 36 ~
intolerant, and companies, as much as shareholders and employees, tried to avoid risks.
Financial scandals, ecological catastrophes, changes in the political structure, social
insecurity, increasing precariousness and job cuts, are factors that considerably tarnished
the brand image of important groups who had a favorable public opinion until the 70s
(Capron & Quairel, 2010). This led to a loss in legitimacy and trust in these companies. We
will delve into this conception of legitimacy later in this chapter.
The important size of some corporations reinforced the mistrust of citizens who had no
control on their activities. Today, according to Capron and Quairel, opinion polls revealed
that citizens care much more about companies’ behaviors about the environment and their
staff, than about their proper economic activities and financial results. It is in this context
that we come to wonder about corporate social responsibilities: “the largest companies have
become such major actors in the economy that most turnovers exceed the GDP of most
states” (Lépineux, 2010). In other terms, people and Humanity wonder about the final goal
of economical activities, on their effects on our planet, and on its long term consequences
for the future generations. We said that the companies are the main actors of these
activities, and all eyes are on them: citizens and States are not only asking for financial
results, but also good conduct.
Triple Bottom Line
Nowadays, we consider that the success of a company depends on the attention given to
stakeholders, meaning the people and entities it has an influence on. But this crisis of trust
came with a profound crisis of legitimacy about big companies. Their social utility being
questioned, they have to justify their existence through a vision of the world in adequacy
with the current social values. The use of CSR is likely to bring this “soul” that is needed to
justify the activities of corporations, and make it socially acceptable to the world. Eklington57
vulgarized the term of triple bottom line, according to which the result of a company
shouldn’t be only measured through specific financial and economic criteria in order to give
legitimacy back to large corporations. Indeed, the triple bottom line (TBL, consisting of the
three Ps: profit, people and planet) aims at measuring the “financial, social and
environmental performance of the corporation over a period of time. Only a company that
produces a TBL is taking account of the full cost involved in doing business”2
.
57
http://www.economist.com/node/14301663

~ 37 ~
Here are two ways of picturing and symbolizing the Triple-Bottom Line58
.
Some tools are also used to ensure the credibility of the communication: codes of conducts,
codes of ethics, social and environmental certificates, reporting and audits by third parties to
evaluate the veracity of their sayings.
Communication tools of CSR
Audits
The organization of annual audits is a way of verifying if the values and rules dictated are
actually in place and respected in the day-to-day operations. According to Mercier (2004, p.
30), it is the occasion to examine in-depth the practices of companies and identify factors
that could lead to potential non-ethical behaviors. Large companies – and especially
distributors – audit their providers in order to confirm that they respect the codes of
conduct and of ethics. In case of an issue, it seems preferable to ask for corrective actions,
rather than stopping the collaboration, which would be against progress and wouldn’t solve
the problem that would only move to other activities. Yet, a strict control of the entire
supply-chain is complex, despite the apparition of new international norms, like the SA 8000
standard.
58
http://sustainability.maricopa.edu/what-is-the-triple-bottom-line/
http://www.examiner.com/article/green-companies-save-money-and-help-the-planet-with-a-triple-bottom-
line-approach

~ 38 ~
The SA 8000 norm
An independent American organism, the CEPAA (Council on Economic Priorities
Accreditation Agency), instituted in 1997 an international norm: the SA 8000 (SA stands for
Social Accountability), which defines the social standards based on the convention with the
ILO on labor in companies, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and other conventions of
the UN. The norm covers nine topics59
: Child labor, Forced labor, Hygiene and security,
Syndicate liberty and the right to collective negotiation, discrimination, Disciplinary
practices, Labor time/hours, Remunerations, and Management systems to comply with the
norm.
This program tends to improve work conditions and inform buyers that the company
respects production regulations. (Mercier, 2004) Complying with this norm is voluntary
Code of conduct / code of ethics
Most companies also write their own code of conduct, which describes the rules,
responsibilities and practices the company engages itself to respect. The code of ethics,
which is aimed at helping employees to take decisions and differentiate what is “right” and
“wrong”, and the code of conduct are unique to each company.
ISO 26000
The International Organization for Standardization has created a guidance standard on
socially responsible behaviors and actions. It encourages companies to have a transparent
and ethical behavior contributing to sustainable development, taking into account
stakeholders’ expectations, respecting the law and the international norms, and integrate
this in a corporate strategy. (Mercier, 2004)
Differences between CSR and ethics
As R. Thomas researched, CSR and ethics are sometimes misused as synonyms. But they are
nonetheless not the same, “although there is some common ground between the two, such
as the need to combat corruption, which involves unethical behavior of greed and self-
interest”60
. To differentiate these two concept, Thomas (2011) contrasts the definitions of
both: “Corporate Social Responsibility focuses on social, environmental and labor
59
http://ifme.org/sa8000/la-norme-sa8000
60
Thomas, 2011, Speech about Corporate Social Responsibility and Business Ethics

~ 39 ~
responsibilities of businesses”, while “Business Ethics, as a term and a movement, is based
not so much on social and environmental values, as is CSR, but on ethical values, such as
honesty, trust, and integrity”. To give an example of antithesis to the ethical values, she uses
“unethical conduct, as witnessed, for example, by some leaders in financial institutions
during the recent crisis of 2007-2010”. Another way to put is, is to explain that ethics is “the
very broad field of study concerning good ethical decision-making. CSR is about the extent to
which companies owe something to society at large61
”. Basically, CSR could be used as a tool
for companies to act ethically.
Buchholz & Rosenthal (2002) explain that the concept of social responsibility is in essence an
ethical concept because it involves “changing notions of human welfare, and emphasizes a
concern with the social dimensions of business activity that have to do with improving the
quality of life”. The debate about social responsibility reflected many ethical or moral
dimensions. 62
Critic and limits of CSR
There are obviously opponents to the concept of corporate social responsibility, as for
everything. Some of their arguments for this are: “The social responsibility concept provides
no mechanism for accountability as to the use of corporate resources”; “Managers are
legally and ethically bound to earn the highest possible rate of return on the stakeholder’s
investment”; “Business executives have little experience, and little or no incentive to solve
social problems” according to Buchholz and Rosenthal (2002). Moreover, some advocate
that using CSR is not beneficial enough compared to the cost of its implementation. These
opponents believe that lots of major companies develop greenwashing strategies to appear
responsible without really modifying their decisions (Capron, 2010). At last, most small and
medium enterprises don’t even feel concerned about CSR: it is true that it is quite
dependant on the size of the company. Very few SMEs incorporate institutionalized CSR
actions in their strategies.
61
http://businessethicsblog.com/2005/12/31/business-ethics-vs-csr/
62
“Social Responsibility and business ethics”, Buchholz & Rosenthal, 2002, in A companion to business ethics,
Frederick, p. 303

~ 40 ~
Corporate Social Responsibility is part of a more comprehensive development
approach: sustainability, or sustainable development (SD). But before going into SD, we will
analyze CSR from Freeman’s and Friedman’s perspectives.
b. Stakeholder versus Stockholder theories
Freeman (1948) is usually given credit for doing the seminal work on the stakeholder
concept and since his work, the stakeholder concept has been widely employed to describe
and analyze the corporation’s relationship to society. (Capron & Quairel, 2010)
While each scholar may define the concept somewhat differently, as usual, the same
principles generally stand through: corporations should heed the needs, interests and
influence of those affected by their policies and operations (Frederick, 1992). A typical
definition is that of Carroll (1996) which states that a stakeholder may be thought of as “any
individual or group who can affect or is affected by the actions, decisions, policies, practices,
or goals of the organization.” A stakeholder then is an individual or group that has some kind
of stake in what business does, and may also affect the organization in some fashion. The
typical stakeholders are considered to be consumers, suppliers, government, competitors,
communities, employees, and of course, stockholders, although the stakeholder map of any
given corporation with respect to a given issue can become quite complicated. Stakeholder
management involved taking the interests and concerns of these various groups and
individuals into account in arriving at a management decision, so that they are all satisfied,
at least to some extent, or that at least the most important stakeholders with regard to any
given issue are satisfied (Capron & Quairel, 2010).
This theory originally assumed that stakeholders are isolatable, individual entities that are
clearly identifiable by management, and that their interests can be taken into account in the
decision-making process. Stakeholders are usually affecting or being affected by the
companies’ actions and results. Thus, the stakeholder theory’s problem is to define what or
who is or is not a stakeholder. Indeed, what will count as stakeholder is context dependent.
To Friedman’s point of view though, it is absolutely not corporations’ role or
responsibility to care about the environment or others than stockholders. Companies don’t

~ 41 ~
have other responsibilities than making profit and, when they are animated by a surge of
benevolence and goodwill, they try to assume extra responsibilities, which often results in
something more harmful than good.63
Other writers criticize the stakeholder theory: even though the stakeholder theory often
serves as a reference, Pesqueux64
(2006) basically believes it is “too easy” to use the word
stakeholder when there is no clear definition of it. He recalls that Donaldson & Preston
wrote in 1995 that stakeholders are defined by their legitimate interest in the organization,
while Mercier65
explained that the fact of affecting or being affected didn’t imply that the
company was accountable for anything, didn’t owe them anything in particular, and that
taking into account their interest didn’t give them any governance right [Sternberg, 2001].
Their claims weren’t necessarily legitimate thus.
c. Sustainable development
According to Capron & Quairel-Lanoizelée66
, the concept of sustainable development was
expanded in the 1980s by scientists to maintain and preserve the nature. It started being
popular in 1987, thanks to the Brundtland report of the World Commission on Environment
and Development, called Our Common Future. According to the UNECE67
, this new concept
of sustainable development “became one of the most successful approaches to be
introduced in many years. It helped to shape the international agenda and the international
community's attitude towards economic, social and environmental development”68
. The
Brundtland Commission's report defined sustainable development as "development which
meets the needs of current generations without compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their own needs". The concept supports strong economic and social
development, in particular for people with a low standard of living. At the same time, it
63
Translated from Responsabilité sociale et environnementale et légitimité des entreprises : Vers de nouveau
mode de gouvernance ?, Cadiou & Gabriel, 2005, p. 132
64
Introduction of Décider avec les parties prenantes, Bonnafous & Presqueux, 2006
65
“La théorie des parties prenantes : une synthèse de la literature”, in Décider avec les parties prenantes,
Bonnafous & Pesqeux (2006), p. 168
66
La responsabilité sociale d’entreprise, 2010, p. 12
67
World Commission on Environment and Development (1987), Our Common Future. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. p. 27. ISBN 019282080X; and United Nations Economic Commission for Europe:
http://www.unece.org/oes/nutshell/2004-2005/focus_sustainable_development.html
68
Our Common Future, Brundtland report, 1987

~ 42 ~
underlines the importance of protecting the natural resource base and the environment.
Economic and social well-being cannot be improved with measures that destroy the
environment. Intergenerational solidarity is also crucial: “all development has to take into
account its impact on the opportunities for future generations.”2
Levinas [1974] states that
we should pay more attention to the risks we all pose to one another and to the collectivity.1
Today, it is widely accepted that sustainable development lies on three main dimensions, or
pillars, which are: economical efficiency, social welfare, and the preservation of the
environment. The role of sustainable development is to help the entire humanity (role of the
economy), while preserving natural reproduction conditions (ecological preoccupations) and
enhance equity in social relationships to ensure peace and social cohesion (social and
societal expectations). The main objective is thus to improve quality of life and render the
pursuit of progress sharable by everyone. In other words, we need to guarantee a livable
world, on a viable planet, and an equitable society69
. The issue lies in the fact that these
three dimensions are constantly in confrontation, nay contradiction, depending on what
type of logic we look at, and which preoccupation from the three pillars is most cared about.
There usually are negotiations and compromises done before agreeing on which dimension
is the objective, which one is the tool, and which one the condition (or constraint),
depending on external factors. Thus, there are six different types of position when looking at
sustainable development, depending on the approach, if the reasoning is socio-centered,
ecological-centered or economical-centered, and to what dimension priority is given70
:
69
Translated from French from Capron & Quairel-Lanoizelée
70
Source from Capron & Quairel-Lanoizelée, La responsabilité d’entreprise, 2010

~ 43 ~
Relation CSR/Sustainable development
Companies in Europe are invited to act upon the principles of sustainable development and
integrate them in their strategy. There is often confusion upon the terms of CSR and
sustainable development though, which we will try to clarify here. (Capron & Quairel-
Lanoizelée, 2010)
Sustainable development is a macroeconomic concept, applicable to the whole planet and
not on one special entity. There is quite necessarily a link with politics: all countries within
the European Union for example, have to have a sustainable development strategy which
aim is to encourage and motivate best practices, like consultations between actors to take
decisions about rules and regulations restricting companies’ activities. And here is the link to
CSR: the concept of sustainable development interacts with companies’ purpose in their
conception of their organization, by giving the principles it has to base its activities on. CSR
gives companies the modalities on how to answer these requests, like strategies,
management tools, a methodology to change, and control and performance evaluation
techniques and methods. Companies can also engage in CSR while acting in unethical ways
on other actions (i.e. Walmart, Enron…). CSR activities are unfortunately not a guarantee of
ethical behavior.
Since the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio in
1992 and the Johannesburg Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002, the
institutionalization of sustainable development became significant in France, and NGOs, like
other institutions, widely accept the authority given by the OCDE to sustainable
development (Capron & Quairel-Lanoizelée, 2010). Moreover, “the Brundtland concept of
the three pillars has been further elaborated on”, and sustainable development was defined
as “a model of triple-bottom-line”. The concept of triple-bottom-line “believes in an equal
consideration of ecological, social and economic aspects to meet present and future
needs”.71
Transposed to business, sustainable development is exploited by the search for
triple performance: economical, social and environmental (Capron & Quairel-Lanoizelée,
2010).
71
Corporate Responsibility Research Conference, 2006

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