Ashley Cates
Bus 220
Case 19

1. In the beginning, Nike was extremely focused on low cost manufacturing. In order to accomplish that goal, they contracted out to overseas companies. The labor laws in these oversea companies were less than favorable, or up to par with United States labor laws. They had child labor, unsafe working environments and extremely low unlivable wages. Nike, while only being concerned with their bottom dollar and turning over a profit, did not however pay close attention the way things were being ran in the factories. When the American public found out about this, needless to say they were more than outraged. Boycotting the company started to happen and Nike started to lose a lot of money and loyalties. In order to be at the top of the corporate food chain, you have to take care of things such as this. When all of these things started to happen, they started to pay a little closer attention to what was really going on the factories overseas.
2. In the response to the societal and consumer concerns that Nike faced, they seemed to less than favorably answer all the concerns. When it came to the labor laws, it seems they were more concerned with showing off their factories just to satisfy those that were questioning their practices more than fixing the real problem. You cannot cosmetically fix something on the outside and say it is fixed. They seemed to do more damage control than fixing the labor. Also, they failed to rely on the employee’s value systems. This can be very helpful when fixing legal and ethical issues within a company. Another issue that Nike faced was not properly training their contractors overseas. They did not establish an ethical code of conduct for their contractors. They were not concerned with the labor laws or for that matter the fairness of proper wages. One of the good things that Nike did do was to get rid of their toxic waste dumping overseas.