Activity of German Sports (Football) Enterprises and Corporate Social Responsibility

Abstract

At the turn of the 1920s and 1930s a new economic doctrine called ordoliberalism was born in Germany. The foundations of this doctrine were values such as responsibility, solidarity, justice, and freedom. Classics of ordoliberalism formulated a number of recommendations and requirements for businesses in their writings. One of them was the public responsibility, which had the private-economic and socio-economic nature. In Germany sports’ (football) enterprises functioning in the form of companies and associations are participants in the sports-economic competition in the two professional leagues (1. Bundesliga and 2. Bundesliga). At the same time sports enterprises pursue different aims: among the economic goals, there are also the social goals. In the structures of sports enterprises there are several departments dealing with CSR and implementation of partnership projects. The article concludes that 1) the constitutive elements of ordoliberalism had an influence on the functioning of sports (football) enterprises in Germany, 2) the projects realized under the social responsibility rule that were undertaken by sports companies were strongly related to sports education, environmental protection, and social exclusion.