Why Nike Kicks Butt in Sustainability

The analysis will focus on some key aspects such as; the overall plan, products/services sustainability, human resource relations, customer’s relations, environmental concerns, and the company social responsibility to the company. Descriptive analysis will help appraise of the company’s sustainability strategy. The critical analysis of the company’s sustainability will help in coming up with conclusions about sustainability of the strategy, and give insights on how the company can improve its sustainability strategy. There are also various recommendations based on these conclusions (Heslin and Ochoa 2008).

Sustainability from a strategic business perspective is the potential for the long-term well-being of the natural environment, including all biological entities, as mutually beneficial interactions among nature and individuals, organizations, and business strategies. (O.C Ferrell, Fraedrich, Ferrell, 2015). Business sustainably is often defined as managing the triple bottom line – a process by which companies manage their financial, social and environmental risks, obligations and opportunities. These three impacts are sometimes referred to as profits, people and planet. (Business sustainability definition from financial times lexicon, no date). This essay will discuss the idea of sustainability being an important element within a businesses and its core strategies and the importance of it within different businesses. Secondly, this study will look at how different stakeholders are affected and influenced by sustainability as this could be seen as a catalyst to improving the environment as a whole and. Then this study will look at how businesses not focusing

subsidies. With such a grand scale of suppliers, Nike has achieved economies of scale. Nike ensures that their suppliers perform at the most competitive levels by implementing a performance measurement system known as the Manufacturing Index (MI). (Appendix) This index monitors quality, cost, delivery time and sustainability, and is frequently monitored each period. Suppliers who fall below a certain threshold – which they call the bronze level – have their contracts nullified.

Nowadays, businesses must think big. It is not enough to be the best in the city or even the country. The goal should be to go global and take advantage of the opportunities offered by the phenomenon of globalization and be part of the “global market”. This is rather ambitious but some companies have stepped out their country’s borders and have gained global recognition.

I chose this book after reading a little on the Author’s background. Bob Willard worked for IBM Canada for 34 years and his business and leadership experience is vast. His passion for sustainability and helping businesses create overall sustainable cultures that are profitable as they can be was inspiring in itself. After his career with IBM, he pursued Sustainability in a way that he could effectively create and help implement these systems into large and small businesses alike. An author of this and three other books, his company Sustainable Advantage is a B Corporation product, a new type of registered business whose goals largely align with social and environmental efforts as a company. He also gives monetary donations equaling 10% of his company’s annual revenue each year to other organizations dedicated to people and planet concerns.

“Just Do It.”. Do you feel like products don’t live up to their advertisement? did you know that on average pharmaceutical companies spend twice as much on advertising as they do on product research? This lead me to most products do not measure up to the claim of their advertisement, such as, Nike and Adidas.

Nike, Inc. is a world’s leading supplier and a major manufacturer of athletic shoes and sports apparel. It was founded on January 25th, 1964 as Blue Ribbon Sports by Philip Knight and Bill Bowerman. It officially became Nike, Inc. in 1978. Currently their brands include Nike Golf, Nike Pro, Nike+, Air Jordan and Nike Skateboarding, while their subsidiaries are Cole Haan, Hurley International, Umbro and Converse. During this stage, the Nike brand has become so strong as to place it in the list of recession-proof consumer branded giants, in the company of Coca-Cola, Gillette and Proctor & Gamble.

He came with a vision of environmental sustainability.” Tyler explained that the company was wasting so much and was not an environmentally friendly corporation (para.1). Elm is now vice president of corporate and business sustainability. He stated, “Sustainability is strategy” (para.2). “Under the banner of corporate social responsibility (CSR)- the notion that business should have a moral conscience on social issues, and a concern for the needs of future generations when it comes to the environment” (para. 4).

In today’s business world, sustainability can make all the difference in the world. According to Tomson (2015), “sustainability has become an economic and strategic imperative with the potential to create opportunities and risks for businesses by creating new customer relationships, and inspiring new products and business models that drive growth. Consequently, companies that are, or aspire to be, leaders in sustainability are often challenged by rising public expectations, increasing technological innovation, continuous quality improvement, effective governance measures, high standards of ethics and integrity, and heightened social and environmental challenges” (p.1).

Sustainable Capitalism in short is a method in order to maximize long-term growth and protect the stakeholder’s needs, all while considering all costs associated (Huffington Business, 2013). Taking into consideration the environmental factors associated with doing business along with the economic, social and governance criteria is believed to be a driving force to long-term sustainability (Bethel University, 2015). Within the environmental category, the manifesto released by GenerationIM proposes that companies identify the risks of their business and record the footprint being generated by their processes.

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,

Distribution – to make certain they are getting the latest most innovative products to customers quickly

This case was about the struggles with sustainability with in Nike as well as the fashion industry. Greenpeace came out and slandered Nike, Adidas, Puma, and several other fashion designers for pollution resulting in the manufacturing process of their products. There are several chemicals used in the process of manufacturing clothing and shoes. Several chemicals are also used in the Dying process. Although these facility are 3rd parties and these locations are not used by Nike it has fallen on them along with their competitors to reduce pollution with in the manufacturing process.

With the rapid development of modern life which is promoted by science and technology, and the improvement of living standards nowadays, people have become more conscious of the necessity of environmental protection and are currently taking a preferred concentration on it. Under this circumstance, companies can no longer only focus on themselves, instead, they are supposed to take on considerable responsibilities related to environment, especially for those multinational companies since their massive scale of production may have a prodigious impact on environment. Nike and Unilever are both multinational companies which do great CSR and come from quite different commercial realm. Nike is an outstanding brand worldwide which produces varieties of sneakers, athletic apparel and accessories (Nike, 2012). And Unilever is the world’s well-known manufacturer of cleaning products and foodstuff, moreover, it has plenty of famous sub-brands such as Lux, Dove, Lipton, Wall’s and so on. This

Sustainability when we try to understand in the context of corporate is recognizing that the corporation’s long