Social Responsibilities Of Sports Associations In China

Sports associations shall be one of the principal governance bodies of society in China in future. While the current unfavorable legislative policy environment influences the ability of sports associations in undertaking social responsibilities. Huilongguan Football Association, Beijing Sport University Tennis Association, and Chinese Athletics Association taken as cases, this study adopts such methods as literature review, interview, inducing&deducing and comparison to probe the social responsibility status, environment, and governance measures of sports associations in China according to stakeholder theory and principal-agent theory.Some important conclusions are presented as follows:(1) Sports associations in China can be categorized as three types according to their legitimacy:social legitimacy, administrative legitimacy and law legitimacy.(2) The social responsibilities of sports associations are the requirement and expectation of society on them in respects of law, economy, ethic and charity in a given period and their response to the requirement and expectation.(3) Law system and social needs are prerequisites for social responsibilities of sport associations. The legitimacy degree affects the ability of sports associations to take social responsibilities, and they will take the requirements of their stakeholders awarding their legitimacy into consideration when taking social responsibilities. Under the condition of undeveloped law system, some "illegal" sports associations assume many responsibilities that government are unwilling or can not undertake, while unlawful characteristics make those associations weak social responsibilities and it is hard for them to meet the social needs. However most legal sports associations become the subsidiaries of the government, which benefits them in resource and make them take the place of government to undertake some functions rather than their own social responsibility.(4) Developed countries care about law system construction. In the governance of associations responsibilities, law’s system standard, and the construction of supervision and evaluation are emphasized. In dealing with government and sport associations, laws refering to Corporation Law are used to make functions clear and the policy scientific. Economically developed provinces care about the social responsibilities of sport associations and have established some regulations to ensure sport associations to take responsibilities. It still needs a long time for them to meet the social needs. And the reform of sport associations under the govenmental management system will make associations become governmental functions and limit the development of associations.