Hancock Prospecting: Stakeholder Tensions with Netball Australia

Clare Burns

Product #:W37308

Supplier:Ivey/Bond

Discipline:General Management, Organizational Behaviour/Leadership

Setting:Australia, 2022

Details:Case (PDF) • 12 pages • 2024-07-03

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In October 2022, the chair of Hancock Prospecting Pty. Ltd. was negotiating a sponsorship partnership worth AU$15 million with Netball Australia, which was $7 million in debt. Netball Australia had just announced that Donnell Wallam would join the national team as the third ever Indigenous Australian player on the Diamonds team. However, in 1984, the founder of Hancock Prospecting Pty. Ltd. had stated on national television, “I would dope the water up so that they [Indigenous Australians] were sterile and would breed themselves out in the future.” This made the proposed partnership particularly controversial. Wallam and other players raised concerns about the proposed sponsor, considering the founder’s racist statement. In addition, some players wondered publicly if taking money from a fossil fuel mining organization would be consistent with the association’s environmental values. The sponsorship deal raised a considerable amount of media and public attention. Wallam stated she was only interested in playing netball at the elite level to make her Indigenous community proud, but some observers were accusing her of putting the critical $15 million sponsorship deal at risk. What would be the best way forward for the partnership between Hancock Prospecting Pty. Ltd. and Netball Australia?

Learning Objectives

This case is best suited for undergraduate and postgraduate courses in sustainability and ethics, strategy, negotiation, communication, or sports management. Ideally, the case is best positioned in the mid to late stages of the course, where there is an established level of trust and psychological safety for students to engage in a robust and respectful discussion. The case discusses what approach an organization should use to carefully consider stakeholders, when facing complex partnership or sponsorship issues. Students are asked to identify key stakeholders and analyze communication strategies and relationships to evaluate power distances and imbalances. Specifically, after completion of this case, students will be able to

complete a comprehensive analysis of the key stakeholders, including the power distance between organizations and individuals;
analyze the application of traditional economic theory and finance logic in a not-for-profit sports setting;
demonstrate an awareness of Indigenous considerations (i.e., cultural competency) when engaging in business decisions;
apply normative stakeholder theory, which holds the underlying moral principle to “do the right thing;” and
analyze the ethical decision-making process of an organization to determine whether all key stakeholders are viewed as legitimate partners.

Hancock Prospecting: Stakeholder Tensions with Netball Australia

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Learning Objectives