The influence of corporate sponsorship on the sponsor's employees

Abstract

This thesis examines how corporate sponsorship influences organisation-related attitudes and behaviours of employees of a sponsoring firm. A review of the sponsorship and organisational behaviour literature helped in shaping four research questions: 1. How does corporate sponsorship influence employee attitudes? 2. How does corporate sponsorship influence employee behaviour? 3. Do employees' sponsorship-linked attitudes and behaviours vary with the size of their organisation? 4. Do employees' information sources regarding their firms' sponsorship programs vary with the size of their organisation? To investigate these questions, and drawing on the available literature, a model is developed that helps explain how employees' general beliefs and attitudes towards corporate sponsorship influences organisational citizenship behaviours. The research design used a mixed methods approach. The first research stage was exploratory, involving fourteen interviews with experts to obtain background information on the sponsorship industry in Australia. Analysis of the transcribed data was used to refine the survey research approach. In the second stage, a survey methodology was used. Initially, a pilot study was undertaken with 105 respondents. Results from the pilot study were used to revise and rephrase items. Additional constructs were also introduced to the model with a view to comprehensively examine employee attitudes and behaviours. After the pilot study, the main study was undertaken by recruiting an online panel in Australia. Data was analysed and hypotheses were tested using structural equation modelling techniques. The findings of this research address the four research questions. Answering the first research question, several forms of sponsorship-linked employee attitudes were found to be positively influenced by an organisation's sponsorship program. The findings for the second research question found that, employees' organisational citizenship behaviours (OCBs) are influenced by both employee intentions to perform OCBs as well as by sponsorship-linked organisational identification with the sponsoring firm. With the third research question, except in the case of sponsorship-linked organisational identification no significant differences were found between large organisational employees and SME employees. Finally, it was found that small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) employees learn about their firms' sponsorship programs primarily through personal sources of information while employees of large organisations receive their sponsorship-related information either through mass media or through the internal, company-controlled media (e.g. newsletters and emails). The primary contribution arising from this study is support for the argument that employees of a corporate sponsor constitute a non-external audience whose attitudes and behaviours are influenced by the sponsorship activity. Another contribution relates to the testing of the proposed model for both SMEs as well as large organisations. Only a handful of studies (e.g. Lamont and Dowell 2008; Webb and Carter 2001; Mack 1999; Polonsky et al. 1996; Gardner and Shuman 1988) have examined corporate sponsorship from the SME perspective. An online panel was used to collect data for this study. This involved the identification and explanation of all steps to ensure the quality of the data collected. Therefore, another contribution of this study is the provision of guidelines for future researchers who might be interested in using online methods for data collection. The guidelines provide a framework for the validity and reliability of the responses. The findings of this study suggest that assessment of sponsorship benefits should not just be limited to consumer audiences. An accurate value of sponsorship may only be realized if the impact on internal audiences is also taken into account.

Date of Award	2012
Original language	English