David Stern, the recently retired former commissioner of the National Basketball Association, was awarded the Columbia Business School’s 2014 Botwinick Prize in Business Ethics during a ceremony on Tuesday, September 9 at Uris Hall.
This prize is given annually to a business leader who has displayed exceptional professional and ethical conduct. It is organized by the Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Center for Leadership and Ethics, the umbrella for leadership and ethics research and activities at Columbia Business School.
“Under David’s leadership for the last 36 years, the NBA has grown from a small, rather parochial organization to become one of the most successful, diversified entertainment entities in the world,” Ed Botwinick, a graduate of Columbia and the son of Benjamin Botwinick, the prize’s namesake, said. During Stern’s time as commissioner, “the NBA… also made major societal contributions, most notably in the area of race relations.”
While commissioners of some other high-profile professional sports leagues have recently taken flack for mishandling social issues, Stern’s tenure was marked by dedication to social causes. He was the driving force behind the creation of NBA Cares, the league’s global social responsibility arm. Other major achievements during his career included the launch of the Women’s National Basketball Association and the NBA Development League. It’s also important to mention that during his tenure the NBA expanded to new levels, adding seven franchises and a 30-fold increase in revenue.
“If you want to engage the entire world in conversation, you can do it with sports,” Stern told an audience of Columbia MBA students. During the fall of apartheid in South Africa, Stern says he was “caught up with the idea that we could really make a difference,” despite the fact that “nobody believed it.”
Previous recipients of The Botwinick Prize in Business Ethics include: Michael Hershman, president and CEO of the Fairfax Group, Barbara Krumsiek, chair, president, and CEO of Calvert Investments; Mikael Ohlsson, president and CEO for the IKEA Group; Peter Blom, CEO of Triodos Bank; Craig R. Barrett, retired CEO and chair of Intel Corporation; Jeffrey Immelt, CEO and chair of General Electric; Patrick Cescau, group chief executive of Unilever; James Sinegal, president and CEO of Costco; and Joan Bavaria, founding president and CEO of Trillium Asset Management.