Prof. Roger Levermore at GSU

ESG:  the evolution of CSR in sport?

After in total 180 minutes of lecture still not all questions of the students were answered. The line that build up before Roger Levermore symbolized the huge interest of the auditory in the lecturers work on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and development through sport – or more exactly on the strength, weaknesses and alternatives to CSR.

Levermore claimed already in the beginning of his lecture that the term CSR is ubiquitous and partly derided. He described the roots of the concept and pointed out the reasons of the increase of the CSR activities in the sports industry. At the same time, he admitted that he ‘was always critical with CSR in sport.’ That fact is proven by his scientific publications of the last years. Levermore named the short-term strategy, the lack of monitoring and evaluation and the top down approaches that manifest the north-south dominance as critical points of the CSR work in sports industry.

Instead of CSR activities that seem like a `fig leaf’ Levermore promotes a new approach called “ESG” which stands for environmental, social and governance. The common CSR projects related to sport are accordingly often “only” philanthropical, short term and therefore some sort of greenwashing and are used to launder money. In the concept of ESG the focus is less on philanthropy and more on the other parts of Carroll`s pyramid of CSR (2006) like the economic, legal and ethical responsibility. A lot of companies use nowadays the term ESG instead of CSR but still stick to their (criticised) CSR-practices.

To gain a better reputation and to benefit also in terms of financial performance from the social engagement more than just a switch of the name is needed. Levermore suggests that ESG of companies should include the following aspects:

-          Proximity: The industry of the company should be connected to sport.

-          Long-term policies

-          Active managing of stakeholder concerns; involvement of senior management

-          Sophisticated measurement and evaluation

-          Payment of managers related to ESG satisfaction metric

Referring to these criteria Levermore had a closer look on the ESG engagement of Nike, Adidas, VF Corp and Under Armour. By the use of data from Sustainalytics and CSR Hub he is ranking Adidas as number one, Nike and VF Corp following at the same level and Under Armour with comparatively poorest results in terms of environmental, social and governance activities. By just looking at one type of financial data he could not find a strong correlation of a good ESG and financial benefit. Therefore, Levermore recommended more research and refered to the bad reputation of CSR projects.

About Roger Levermore:

His interest for his research topic derives from his personal background. Levermore is a long time fan of the Cameroon football team and was always interested in development policies. Nonetheless he let himself got ‘hijacked’ by the business world and concentrates as the director of the Management institute at the Hong Kong University his research on the company perspective. Besides his research Levermore  is still teaching and also had some advices for the group at the German Sport University: besides experiential learning always foster the observational skills (e.g. by playing chess) and staying  curious.