Employee engagement and corporate sponsorship: a case study of an employee engagement initiative at the London 2012 Olympics

The summer of 2012 was host to the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games (‘The Games’) in the UK. This research sought to utilise this major sporting event in order to address a gap in the literature tying corporate sponsorship (CS) initiatives to the employee engagement of sponsoring organisations (Rogan, 2008). This gap is significant considering the often very substantial financial endorsement made by sponsors in major global events such as the games without investigating the impact on employee engagement within their own company as to whether this has an impact or is effective (Hyams, 2012).