SOCIAL CAPITAL AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY IN DENMARK

SOCIAL CAPITAL AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY IN DENMARK

Strong focus on the promotion of health and social integration aspects in society means the
state has increased pressure on sport associations to deliver its social policy agenda. The building of
(corporate) social responsibility is offered as a possible progressive response to changes in Danish
state sport policy and as a way to increase its social capital. A correlation between (corporate) social
responsibility and social capital is established and visualized in the official stand on social responsibility
of individual and umbrella sport governing bodies, and Danish state policy. Ness’s definition of
corporate social responsibility as the necessity and the duty of companies to behave responsibly, ethically
and sustainably, and to be transparently accountable to their stakeholders, is transferred to sport
associations. Social capital could be defined as the relational resources that we as individuals or as part
of a collective, such as a sport association, inherit or intentionally construct to achieve our own goals.
Depending on the structural and normative characteristics of the social system in which it operates, it
can facilitate but also limit individual and collective action. Development of a contemporary grounded
social responsibility by the sport governing bodies suggests a gain in social capital, new memberships
and future assurance of financial and social support.