Business 104: Introduction to Business

BMCC

Brandon Becerril

The first company that came to mind when thinking about this topic was Nike.  I chose Nike for a couple reasons with the first being I recently was at the outlet store and bought a few shirts and a sweatshirt.  The second reason is because they can be such a polarizing company in terms of ethics because of their use of sweatshops overseas.  For that I wanted to do a deeper dive into Nike to find out how socially and ethically responsible they are and if they have made progress since the sweatshop scandal in recent past.

Nike is well known for its unethical manufacturing and employee exploitation, so I did some research and found some articles on Nike and its performance in those areas.  The consensus was mixed with showing some progress in places but also found some bad spots where they even swindled consumers into purchasing “green” products.  From being on the forefront of the “United Against Sweatshops” Nike made great progress since the 90s by changing their business practices, allowing transparency into their overseas warehouses, raising wages and age limit to work in factories.  Even Morgan Stanley ranked them, “the most sustainable apparel and footwear company in North America for environmental and social performance, including its labour record.”  Which is high praise for a company decades earlier was on the chopping block for being the worst.

Regarding labor rights and employee empowerment Nike can use some work.  In 2017 the Labor Rights Forum found the company stopped following the Workers Rights Consortium.  This stopped activist from labor rights communities auditing their warehouses and factories. The Workers Rights Consortium or WRC for short effectively monitors companies and their working conditions in factories, labor conditions, and empowers workers.  Another infraction was back in May 2023 Nike was hit with a lawsuit over alleged sustainability and “green” products.  Nike made claims that certain items were being broadcasted as green but in reality was not which is completely unethical and caused a huge hit to their green stock with consumers.

Nike has recently added female empowerment to their advertising campaign and products like the signature shoe deal with Sabrina Ionescu.  They are also trying to be more ethnically conscious by offering Nike brand head coverings and hijabs for those who practice religions that don’t expose their hair.

If I could give Nike advice, I would tell them to piggy back off of many of their signature athletes and what social and ethical battles they continue to fight.  The Lebron more than an athlete was a nice campaign and using more of their athletes to combat issues of racial, sex, and religious discrimination would do well in many different communities.  Nike should also focus more on becoming more transparent when it comes to their factories overseas as they have been the forefront of that topic before, making a switch and shoring up their factories and making them better for their employees.  Finally working to become carbon neutral and implementing more “green” products can do very well for their PR.  Nike can surely afford to implement these changes and with doing them will likely pay dividends for themselves in the future if legislation changes regarding “green” products and for their image around the globe.

https://goodonyou.eco/how-ethical-is-nike/

https://www.workersrights.org/about/