Nike: The Sweatshop Debate Essay

Nike, Inc. is an American multinational corporation that is engaged in the design, development and worldwide marketing and selling of footwear, apparel, equipment, accessories and services. The company is headquartered near Beaverton, Oregon, in the Portland metropolitan area. It is the world 's leading supplier of athletic shoes and apparel and a major manufacturer of sports equipment, with revenue in excess of US$24.1 billion in its fiscal year 2012 (ending May 31, 2012). As of 2012, it employed more than 44,000 people worldwide. The brand alone is valued at $10.7 Billion making it the most valuable brand among sports businesses. Nike and Precision Castparts are the only Fortune

In America, Nike's owners see the abuse much differently. In front of hundreds of shareholders, after announcing record earnings and another stock split, Nike's president and CEO, Phil Knight minimized the problems in Asia as simply an incident in which a single worker was hit over the head by a supervisor. Nike spokesperson Jim Small, while knowing that the conditions in the sixteen Indonesian plants are not ideal, said, "The bottom line is: Do we abuse our workers? Absolutely not." (Levy, "Working conditions protested at the opening of a new store). Roberta Baskin of CBS News commented that, "It turns out Nike has a great deal to learn about what goes on inside these factories."

Nike is one of the biggest footwear and apparel manufacturing companies in the word. The company came into existence in 1964 by Bill Boweman and Phil Knight and named it as the Blue Ribbon Sports. The company changed the name to Nike, which is Greek word meaning victory, in 1972 after producing a good brand of shoes that became popular among the athletes (NIKE, Inc., 2001). Since then, the company has been successful, dominating the world market of athletic shoes. The company’s products are sold in more than 170 countries across the world. The company also sponsors various sports events at national and international levels. The company slogan “just do it” is catchy and attract many people tom

This paper describes the legal, cultural, and ethical challenges that confronted the global business presented in the Nike sweatshop debate case study. The paper determines the various roles that the Vietnamese government played in this global business operation. This paper summarizes the strategic and operational challenges facing global managers illustrated in the Nike sweatshop case.

However, Nike has long been eluding allegations of employing people in the developing and under-developed economies, at low wages and poor working conditions for a long time. Nike tried many different measures of correcting

The company Nike operates in over 50 different companies. This makes them a very large global company. Nike makes all kinds of products including gym shoes, clothing and apparel, equipment and accessories. “In 2004, Nike products were manufactured by more than 800 suppliers, employing over 600,000 workers in 51 countries” (Locke, Kochan, Romis & Qin, 2007, p. 6). Nike came under fire because of their workers that work outside the United States. In other countries, labor laws are unlike those within the United States. Large corporations often exploit the fact that they can pay laborers significantly less outside of the United States. Companies may also provide less than favorable working conditions to its labor force outside of the United States.

In many ways, it seems obvious to me that Nike should be held responsible for working conditions in foreign companies where products for Nike are made. In my opinion a company is not only responsible for itsʼ own employees but also for the employees that produce for them even though theyʼre not in their own company. I think that every part of the supply chain is partially responsible for the entire supply chain. As Nike is the

In this video I learned incredible amounts of information about the Nike brand and how they run their factories. The video itself contained information about how two people, Jim Keady and Leslie Kretzu, flew to Indonesia to live off a factory worker’s wages in an attempt to inform people how inhumane the workers are forced to live. They experienced the physical as well as the mental issues involved with living on a worker’s wages. After paying for fee such as housing, water, and basic human amenities they were left with barely enough food for two meals and a drink. If they wanted or needed anything aside from the two meals and a drink then they would have to sacrifice one or more of their meals in order to attain such objects. The two people themselves had experienced such an issue when Leslie Kretzu became ill and in need of medicine as well as when Jim Keady decided to buy a small amount of shaving cream and one razor. Leslie Kretzu would have had to starve for the rest of the day if she was to buy an aspirin and a small juice in order to gain some nutrients. Jim Keady had to sacrifice three meals throughout his week due to the fact that he decided to buy the shaving cream and the individual razor. Throughout the experience, the two individuals lost a tremendous amount of weight as well as been depleted of energy and motivation. Eventually they tried to enter into a Nike factory and they were denied

Nike has suffered attacks from a number of agencies and organizations throughout the world that claim that the workers who manufacture Nike shoes are denied the basic essentials of living—a fair wage and decent benefits. All

The purpose and intent of this paper is to describe the legal, cultural, and ethical challenges that face the Nike Corporation in their global business ventures. This paper will also touch on the roles of the host government and countries where Nike manufactures their products and the author will summarize the strategic and operational challenges that Nike managers face in globalization of the Nike product.

Many of us know Nike for the clever maketing campaigns, celebrity athelets, "swoosh" logo, and "Just Do It!" slogan. In 1963 the world's largest athletic shoe company was founded by Philip Kight and Bill Bowerman for $500 apiece and a handshake, and today has over $9 billion in revenues.

During the late 80s and early 90s Nike was faced with a series of labor strike back at home due to unethical labor practices by its independent countries in third world countries. It is well known for Nike to outsource almost all its production from third world countries at cheap prices and sell them in U.S. market at an abnormal profit. The company began outsourcing its products from Japan where labor was competent and wages were very low. The living standards were raised which prompted Nike to outsource its products from Thailand, Pakistan and Indonesia since wages in these countries were extremely low and labor for these products were competent due to rapid development of the Japanese economy. The outsourcing of footwear products from Asian countries enables Nike to earn high profits and enjoy a competitive advantage over its rivals in the footwear industry. The company invests the high profits realized in marketing its products through celebrities. For instance, Michael Jordan was used to advertise the positive image of Nike Company (Lipschutz and James, pp. 87-96).

They should be responsible for the legal, social and philanthropic aspects of its subcontracted factories. They are not paying their employees the legal minimum wage, caring about the working conditions and welfare of these employees and just not taking into consideration the well-being of others. Ten years ago, the company had been subjected to negative press, lawsuits, and demonstrations on college campuses alleging that the firm’s overseas contractors’ subject employees to work in inhumane conditions for low wages. With the introduction of the fair labour association and worker rights consortium, Nike is slowly trying to improve the working conditions on subcontracted factories and hopefully in 10 years, they would be able to re-establish themselves as a morally acceptable company.

Nike’s CEO’s and management made a decision to begin using sweatshop labor in order to save money and begin aggressive marketing. They used this aggressive marketing to have a one up on their competitors, in fact, Nike spent 280 million dollars alone on advertising in 1994 (Schwartz, 2000). Nike would give great athletes million dollar contracts to endorse and wear their clothing. For an example, Andre Agassi received 70 million dollars to endorse Nike's tennis clothing line. The choice to start aggressive marketing is the reason why Nike entered into this crisis and started making unethical decisions. Once the top management of Nike realized the profitability and popularity of hiring professional athletes to wear and endorse their clothes, regular advertising would not suffice. The company became greedy and were willing to use cheap abusive labor so that they could pay professional athletes millions of dollars (Schwartz, 2000).

With a slogan of “Just Do It,” Nike is known all over the world for its products ranging from apparel to shoes. Receiving recognition and sponsorship from various celebrities and athletes including Michael Jordan, Nike’s brand is generally associated in a positive light. However, the brand itself, variety of products, and numerous sponsors exist as only a few aspects of this continuously expanding brand. Another aspect to consider when addressing the overall existence of a product as well as the constant introduction of new products is the production process itself: how the product came to be, who is involved in creating the product, and where the product is produced.