Governance and Sustainability at Nike

Claudia Paoli Martinez

EMBA 78

Governance and Sustainability at Nike / Case Assignment

• What stimulated the engagement of NIKE Corporate Social Responsibility?

The main point was the concern about protecting the brand against customer’s pressure over slavery and child labor in the contract factories producing Nike products. The idea was embracing sustainability as part of the strategy of Nike’s future growth.

• What change did this make in the company’s attitudes and actions?

Around 1990’s, Nike leadership board decided to create a team exclusively focused on corporate sustainability, but in the beginning the response was mostly in a defensive way. In 1998, they hired a new VP and they started acting differently and implemented new activities: Monitoring, raise minimum age requirement, strengthen environmental, health and safety standards, expand worker education programs and increase the corporate responsibility awareness among the community.

• How did Nike insert CSR governance in its management structure? How is this structure?

As mentioned above, Nike created a high level board focused on corporate sustainability, hiring Maria Eitel as vice president. She usually turned to Nike board member Jill Ker Conway, for counsel. Jill is an expertise on women and student´s issues. Together, they established several NGOs partnerships.

• Why and how did this action help to disseminate CSR through the company?

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 customers that actions were being taken in order to better monitor their suppliers and production processes – Nike presented workshops exploring different themes such as population growth, water scarcity, energy shortages, climate changes, among others, and what was the impact of these major problems on Nike businesses.

• Why is it important to incorporate CSR in the operations?

It is mainly important due to one major reason: we all depend on the natural resources to live, and so the companies as well. During the workshops Nike noticed how a shortage of energy, for i.e., would impact its production process and so, Nike needed to create new ideas and new business models for its future development.

• How did Nike do this? Which role did innovation play regarding this matter?

Nike incorporated CSR in all areas - by integrating environment, people and community groups, and sharing and communicating all taken actions clearly. The role of innovation is allowing Nike to create more sustainable products, restructure and make more efficient the production process building new capabilities.