Problem
The National Basketball Association (NBA) is the premier basketball league in the world. It plays its games in North America but recruits players from all over the world. Because of this level of recruitment, the NBA has established a global market for its products- measured in viewership, advertising revenue, and the sale of trademarked merchandise.
The Corporate Social Responsibility of the NBA can be seen as operational on three separate levels - the league, its member teams, and its players and staff. In fact, the NBA prides itself in saying that it makes CSR a philosophy, not a department. Furthermore, the league has credited its players and management personnel as having really led the charge. The NBA has said that "social responsibility becomes a core tenet of who you are". As such, the NBA respects the concepts of truthfulness and transparency in its marketing and advertising strategies. The league and its partners have embraced both environmental sustainability and social sustainability as both moral and ethical imperatives. The NBA's CSR is clearly out there in public view and heavily promoted online.
In October 2019, an NBA Team Executive made comments on Twitter about the current political situation that has been unfolding in Hong Kong. The Chinese Government took offence to the comments. The comments were almost immediately withdrawn from the Twitter account, but the damage seemed to have been done and a crisis was quickly in the making.
At the time, the NBA was involved in a multi-billion-dollar deal in China in the continued promotion of its basketball game. China is the largest market outside of the United States that the league had targeted for development and expansion. The incident has placed in jeopardy the NBA/China business prospect.
The Government of China, a communist regime, has taken a hard line in others meddling in the country's social justice issues. The parties involved are at a stalemate. Economic issues are in jeopardy because of non-economic concerns. The business world is closely watched.
A. The NBA's belief in CSR is being challenged. If the NBA is truly and sincerely committed to all that it has previously said and done and perhaps even benefited from, should it cling to those expressed values even if that means the loss of the lucrative economic deal?
B. In the alternative, should the NBA instead back off on the social justice values advanced by one of its own in a recognized democratic way and salvage the economic deal?
C. Is there any real compromise here?
D. Would a compromise be seen as selling out on CSR in favour of pure economic choice? To date, a code of silence has descended over the episode.
E. How will it be resolved? How should it be resolved? If you were advising the NBA in overcoming this multibillion-dollar crisis, what logical proposal would you prefer that could make sense in the accommodation of all the stakeholders?