Sustainability in Italian Sport Federations. Managing strategic human resources in achieving the sustainable competitive advantage

This research focuses on exploring the role of human resources in order to develop a sustainable approach in organizations to address the challenges of the environmental sustainability. In particular, the research analyses the role of the human resources management in sports organizations - and more specifically sport federations – in order to achieve the sustainable competitive advantage. In addressing this aim, the research adopted the Natural Resource-Based View perspective (hereafter, NRBV) (Hart, 1995; Hart and Dowell, 2011) that draws attention to environmental practices regarding sustainable competitive advantage. According to the NRBV, sustainable competitive advantage is achieved when a firm’s resources are associated to specific strategic capabilities, such as pollution prevention, product stewardship and sustainable development (Hart, 1995). To develop these strategic capabilities, employees should get strategically involved – at different levels -, and organizations should highlight how environmental issues are taken as a strategic value. Consequently, human resources policies and practices should be considered critical to organizations in order to achieve sustainable competitive advantage, because organizations would be able to incorporate sustainable habits into their routine and processes through HR policies and practices (Dubois and Dubois, 2012). Environmental strategies are strictly connected with each other and they are sequential processes: 1) pollution prevention represents the first step, subsequently 2) product stewardship can be developed, and, last, 3) sustainable development can occur (Hart, 1995; Hart and Dowell, 2011). The sport sector is not free from environmental concerns and sport organizations (in particular the National Sports Federations) are called to play an important role in using resources and adopting a sustainable approach for the sake of the environment. The increased societal focus on issues of sustainability and the drive by many organizations to implement environmental issues has stimulated scholars also within the field of sport management. However, there is less focus on the issues of environmental strategies and the sustainable competitive advantage in National Sports Federations (hereafter, NSFs). Given this premises the study analyzed sport federations in relation to their important role within the Italian sport system. Due to the heterogeneous frameworks of NSFs, our study divided the 44 Italian Sports Federations into three clusters in relation to the size related to the number of individual members that each federation counted (CONI, 2017). A purposive sampling was carried out: the Italian Motorcycling Federation (IMF), the Italian Golf Federation (IGF), the Italian Cycling Federation (ICF), Italian Winter Sports Federation (IWSF). Semi-structured interviews were carried out. The interviewees represented the NSFs’ senior executives responsible for creating and implementing their organization’s environmental strategies and NSFs’ HR managers. Results demonstrated how the federations analyzed in this study, have adopted different sustainable strategic approaches in managing human resources. The pollution prevention and product stewardship are considered important strategic capabilities. For instance, two NSFs created a specific team or internal unit, dedicated to environmental sustainability. A “sustainability team” represents a primary driver for strategic changes to an organization’s environmental practices. The cross functional sustainability team is often comprised of internal organizational members from across the organization. They are charged with developing and conducting a variety of operational changes, organizational policies, and daily/strategic practices. “Their position allows them to act as the leaders of strategic environmental changes” (Pfhali, 2010, p. 44). In addition, the sustainability team stimulates a multi- stakeholder approach to the federation’s partners (and consequently it pursues sustainable and lasting growth). In this vein, the Italian Golf Federation has set up a scientific technical committee made up of professional experts belonging to internal (and external resources) which support sports associations in their environmental activities. At the same time the Italian Motorcycling Federation established the “Environment Committee” in order to develop specific programs and strategies on environmental sustainability in 2017. Its activity is aimed at increasing the environmental sustainability level in motorcycle sports associations during the races, regarding different areas: soil protection, chemical contaminations of soil, cleaning of motorcycling equipment, atmospheric emissions, energy consumption, the use of fuel, protection of natural habitats. It was an important organizational change within the federation, testifying to increased sensitivity on the part of management with respect to environmental sustainability issues as well as awareness that only with an ad hoc team the environmental pressure of motorcycling activity could be better managed. The effective action of the strategic dimension in some federation has been completed with the establishment of a specific figure aimed at supervising the sustainable compliance. This person has specific skills, training and experience as well as a specific personal interest in the management of environmental issues. In order to improve their strategic asset, the federations focused on the staff knowledge and education by organizing educational and training programs addressed to internal (staff federation) and external resources (staff sports associations and others). This is important because the competence acquired through the involvement of employees to prevent pollution is a resource that cannot be acquired or imitated by competitors. In sum, results demonstrated that the main NSFs’ reasons for implementing environmental strategies and policies are linked to awareness of the importance of developing sustainable programs for increasing the value of the environmental dimension of their action. For instance, the adoption of specific green technologies in the sports facilities related to the federations, has being demonstrating useful for several years in order to contribute to a low carbon economy through the installation of on-site renewable energy (this means substantial cost savings as well as important reductions in GHG emissions). But the acquisition of green technologies by themselves is not enough to guarantee a sustainable competitive advantage (Hart, 1995) and for this reason, NSFs implemented strategic and effective solutions managing human resources, by planning and implementing practices and policies that increase the federation’s scope of skills and capabilities aligned with strategic goals. Sustainability presents a significant and growing challenge to the sport industry, especially outdoor sports (Orr & Inoue, 2019) and sports federations could offer a significant contribution in enhancing environmental concern within the community.