The Ethical Dilemmas Of Nike

Like other large corporations, Nike looked to expand their operations outside North America. Many companies do this because of the law and wage demands of the United States making overseas operations very appealing. Employment laws are scarce and labor is cheap in most third world countries and can be easily become targeted by giant corporations such as Nike.

The ethics of businesses are under more scrutiny than ever before (Bones, 2014). Ethics can be considered as following a code of behaviour agreeable with the context of society and can also be defined as the application of moral and ethical considerations in a business environment (Hurn, 2008). Sport businesses have been targeted a lot more in recent years due to the conditions they place their workers in has become more apparent to the outside world. Nike are one of the world’s leading sports brands but have been faced with many allegations in recent years (Daily Mail, 2011) in regards to the conditions they put their workers in and their ethics and morals have been questioned. This report will critically evaluate the impact ethics has on the business operations of Nike and then analyse the reasons for why ethics impact the sport organisation. Finally, recommendations will be made to improve Nike’s business ethics.

The highly recognized name brand—Nike— fails to notice the faults that are happening in factories that are violating a few disturbing rules. The company’s reputation has decreased due to demands and claims Nike; implying that they utilize sweatshops to produce more products at a lower pay. The company has been sued numerous times for abusing and exploiting their employees in factories for years. Another problem that Nike has faced throughout the years was making employees work in poor environments that affected the health of many— which contributed to being abused by the manager for not going to work. Nike distributes and sells merchandise of high quality for a high value. The company is giving the satisfaction of quality service to their

One of the biggest and most popular brands in America, Nike, who targets athletes of all ages to be better athletes engages in unethical behavior by exploiting people from other countries by providing bad working conditions and low wages. Nike produces athletic equipment as well as apparel that is not only appealing to athletes, but also to the general public. However, the people that work for Nike and make these products are people being physically abused by supervisors and have to deal with horrible working conditions. According to an article written by Zaid Jilani, he said that thousands of women in Indonesia are being exploited by companies such as Nike where the wages being paid to these women are not enough to survive. Nike is well aware of what they are doing to these people in Indonesia, but still continue with it because the profits they receive at the end of the day is more valuable to them than the poor working conditions they offer to these Indonesian women. This shows that Nike uses the the Utilitarian approach because the company weighs out the pros and cons of the situation and still decides to produce products in Indonesia where it’s perfectly legal to pay low wages and have bad working conditions even though it is

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

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

For years, Nike has been sourcing from factories that seek to meet the company 's minimum standards for good labor performance. The policy of Nike is to evaluate potential contracted factories before they enter the supply chain. Throughout their business relationship with Nike to assess compliance with high standards of social and environmental performance, including country-related risk for issues including forced labor, human trafficking and slavery Nike (n.d).

Although Nike may be technically removed from responsibility in some areas, it clearly has the obligation to be certain that exploitation by subcontractors do not occur. Certainly the pay and working conditions that the workers of subcontractors receive is due in large part to the contract that has been negotiated by Nike. If Nike had chosen to make improved working conditions a part of the arrangement, them those benefits may have been passed on to the workers. Still, Nike is a publicly owned firm whose goal is to improve the wealth of its shareholders. The workers in these Asian countries were happy, even eager, to accept the conditions that were provided as a manufacturer of Nike. The reason is that those wages were probably equal or superior to wages available from other sources. If Nike were to leave the country because of the pressures placed upon it, the workers would undoubtedly suffer greatly.

Phil Knight and his track coach Bill Bowerman founded Blue Ribbon Sports in 1964. The company started as being a distributor of Onituska Tiger athletic shoes which were imported from Japan. In 1971 they broke away from Onituska and created their own of shoes. The company was renamed, Nike. It became the largest worldwide seller of athletic shoes. They branched out and created various products lines; shoes, clothing, sporting goods and digital devices. They used celebrities to promote their products. The first athlete to wear and promote their show was runner Steve Prefontaine. Their now well know swoosh was first seen in the 1972 US Track and Field Trials. Every basketball player in high school wanted a pair of Michael Jordan’s,

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.

The amount of wages they received is less than the minimum physical needs value, which the lowest possible wage a person can earn and still able to maintain their basic needs like buying food and clothes. Nike is omitting its commitment to pay workers a living wage based on purchasing power. The company is even taking advantage on the low time wage set by the local government that want to attract foreign investors. The brand of Nike has always been associated with low wages issue. Although the company is criticized to be compensating low wage to the labors, it remains still and take no appropriate action. The company has no serious discussion on the improvement or raising of the wage until this extent. In 1998, although Nike has promised to raise the pay particularly for the Indonesia labors, but there is no actions taken in China and Vietnam. The labors in these two nations are suffering from the low wage which is insufficient to meet their daily needs. ("The Nike Controversy", 2017). Although the Nike is said to be boosted the local economy, the wages are still yet to be

American business should not be permitted to claim it is an ethical firm if it ignores unethical practices by its international suppliers. For the purpose of this assignment I will use the Nike Company to highlight its unethical practices. Despite the popularity of Nike in the American market, it has been accused of exploiting employees abroad. The corporate social responsibility stipulates that a company should maximize its profit and minimizes its cost in operations and manufacturing, also at the same time benefit the community it operates in. This paper will further elaborate on the global strategy employed by Nike Company as it outsources its goods and the unethical issues its

Nike could have observed the ethical and social guidelines of how an organisation should be managed. They should not have hired minors under 16 to work. And instead of purchasing two shoe-manufacturing facilities in the United States, Nike could have just purchased one plant and see how their operations went before thinking about purchasing another plant. When the firm finally saw success in 1980, eight years after the company was founded, and became the largest athletic shoe company in the world, they could have finally purchased the shoe-manufacturing plants in the United States and it would probably have been a success, without having the need to subcontract factories and

Another perspective is to analyse based on the amount of good done as compared to the amount of bad. By subcontracting its operations in underdeveloped countries, Nike helps to create job and improve the lives of the employed. Then, we have to consider the poor working conditions, poor wages, and the constant violation of child labour laws. Now, the bad inevitably outweighs the good despite the lack of unit of measurement in the

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).