What Are The Ethical Ethics Of Nike

Unfortunately, the same factor that contributed to Nike’s exponential growth (low-cost labor and production) also contributed to hurting Nike’s public image as a leader in “athleticism, health and fitness, and innovative marketing and design” (Locke, 2002). Nike was criticized for unethical practices by their subcontractors, which included underpaid workers, poor working conditions, child labor, and abuse (Locke, 2002).

Since the 1990s, Nike has been embroiled in controversy over its use of sweatshops. Including numerous media reports of workers earning very little an hour (14 cents per hour), and even workers abused by sub-contractor (Allarey, 2015). Incidents such as these are ingrained in Nike’s history and not quickly forgotten. However, as CEO I would like to attempt to correct wrongs.

1. Discussion: What factors drive Nike’s decision to stick with some form of network organizational structure rather than own its manufacturing operations?

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.

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.

Conclusively Nike should be held responsible for its subcontractors. They are not completely responsible for this but they should be aware of it and as a influencial company they should impose what they call basic rights to their subcontractors and make sure that their rules are followed.

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).

If I were dealing with the same issues that Nike experienced, I would have probably done the same thing that they did. The need to get the suppliers and factories to adhere to save and fair treatment of the employees along with a decent wage would be my first priority. To openly talk to the press, customers or whoever would listen and inform then that yes, the ball was dropped and we have problems, but we are working on correcting the problems and then outline the steps that were being taken to resolve the issues. I grew up in Oregon and have heard numerous times how the company started. I know people who work in the corporate office and Nike treats their employees in the United States very good.

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.

Nike places more importance on choosing the right local partners, not just the right ports. Nike doesn’t own any of its facilities, and local partners make important logistics decisions (Field, 2003a). To manage relationships, Nike has both a global and regional vendor management team – as output volume increases, Nike don’t expand the number of suppliers, but increase the volume of business they do with each supplier (Field, 2003a).

Enderle, K., Hirsch, D., Micka, L., Saving, B., Shah, S., Szerwinski, T. (2000, March 14). Strategic Analysis of Nike, Inc. Retrieved on December 14, 2005, from

Apparel and shoe manufacturers continued to offload the more costly yet easily replicated part so their business models to concentrate on brand building, marketing, sales and attaining greater distribution channels globally. These are the pressures all apparel and shoe manufacturers face, and it is particularly challenging in the athletic show industry (Kynge, 2009). Adidas, Converse, Nike and Reebok have been outsourcing production of their shoes for in some cases nearly three decades. Nike was one of the leaders in this strategy, seeing to create a more efficient supply chain and also drop the labor and union costs of manufacturing in the U.S. (Boje, Khan, 2009). Adidas, Converse and Reebok have all followed Nike's lead, with Adidas benefitting from the fall-out generated when investigate reports showed Nike using child labor throughout Pakistan and Vietnam (Boje, Khan, 2009). All four of these companies share a common prioritization of manufacturing operations, yet none of them with the exception of Nike has a comprehensive Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program in place to ensure ethical compliance to global standards of outsourcing in their industry (Nike Investor Relations, 2012). The intent of this analysis is to compare and contrast the four companies mentioned and their outsourcing practices. Their reasons for choosing to outsource are very much the same; the industry is shrinking

Nike should not be allowed to claim they are an ethical company especially when they are still outsourcing to impoverished countries in Asian. The company takes advantage of low living standards and lack of democracy in those countries. There was nonexistence of labor movements in countries like Indonesia. The government never allowed

Nike business model has always been contracting underdeveloped countries, mainly in Asia, to produce its athletic shoes at a much lower cost as compared to its competitors. As it is simple to manufacture an athletic shoe, Nike’s contractors are often able to capitalize on the abundance of unskilled and low-wage workers in their home country to cut down on production costs.

Nike took advantage of that and disregarded that the people making their products at an extremely low price were actually humans. It was ethically wrong for Nike to not see those employees as actual people but saw them as a machine that produced products. They did not care to see how being underpaid affected a person’s family. They also did not see that children were working to support families and continued to work in terrible health conditions because they needed the money no matter the environment. The biggest issue was that the company had a total disregard for human life.