Business 104: Introduction to Business<\/p>\n
BMCC<\/p>\n
Brandon Becerril<\/p>\n
The first company that came to mind when thinking about this topic was Nike.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The second reason is because they can be such a polarizing company in terms of ethics because of their use of sweatshops overseas.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 The consensus was mixed with showing some progress in places but also found some bad spots where they even swindled consumers into purchasing \u201cgreen\u201d products.\u00a0 From being on the forefront of the \u201cUnited Against Sweatshops\u201d 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.\u00a0 Even Morgan Stanley ranked them, \u201cthe most sustainable apparel and footwear company in North America for environmental and social performance, including its labour record.\u201d\u00a0 Which is high praise for a company decades earlier was on the chopping block for being the worst.<\/p>\n
Regarding labor rights and employee empowerment Nike can use some work.\u00a0 In 2017 the Labor Rights Forum found the company stopped following the Workers Rights Consortium.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Another infraction was back in May 2023 Nike was hit with a lawsuit over alleged sustainability and \u201cgreen\u201d products.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
Nike has recently added female empowerment to their advertising campaign and products like the signature shoe deal with Sabrina Ionescu.\u00a0 They are also trying to be more ethnically conscious by offering Nike brand head coverings and hijabs for those who practice religions that don\u2019t expose their hair.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Finally working to become carbon neutral and implementing more \u201cgreen\u201d products can do very well for their PR.\u00a0 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 \u201cgreen\u201d products and for their image around the globe.<\/p>\n