Governance and Sustainability at Nike

Case Description:  “Governance and Sustainability at Nike”

Two members of Nike's executive team must decide what sustainability targets to propose to Nike's CEO and to the corporate responsibility committee of Nike's board of directors. Set in 2012, the case traces the evolution of Nike's approach to environmental and social concerns from its origins in student protests against labor conditions in the supply chain in the 1990s through the development of a board-level corporate responsibility (CR) committee in 2001 to the creation of the Sustainable Business & Innovation (SB&I) strategy in 2009. In this context, Hannah Jones, Nike's VP of SB&I, and Eric Sprunk, VP of Merchandising & Product, are working to finalize the company's next round of sustainability targets for presentation to the CR committee. When Nike signs on to the Roadmap to Zero, a Greenpeace-inspired initiative to eliminate the discharge of toxic chemicals into the water supply by 2020, the company's target-setting process becomes more complex. Jones and Sprunk must decide whether to recommend that Nike dial back other sustainability goals to meet the zero toxics challenge, modify its commitment to zero toxics, or find another solution.

Learning Objectives:

1. To gain an understanding of the tools leaders can use to build a commitment to sustainability into their organization
2. The role of a board-level committee on corporate responsibility in this effort.
3. To explore the relationship between corporate responsibility and financial performance.
4. To examine various options and trade-offs in formulating a set of sustainability goals.

Case Questions:

1. What is Nike’s focus on corporate social responsibility and sustainability?  How did evolve?  How does it reflect who Nike purports to be as a company?
2. If you were Jones & Sprunk, how would you set your targets, and how would you present them to Nike’s leadership team?  How does their process reflect the importance of sustainability at Nike?
3. How does Nike ensure that its employees, customers and suppliers understand the importance & role that CSR play at Nike?

By establishing a board level corporate responsibility, Nike demonstrated its concern about this issue, expanding this idea to the whole company and integrating a “ committee” in the operation areas. It was super important to show to custommers that actions were being takein in order to better monitor their supploers and production process- Nike presented worshops explorting different themes such as population growth, water scarity,  energy shortages, climate change, among others and what was the impact of these major problems on Nike busisees.