Nike: The Sweatshop Debate
Introduction
The goal and purpose of this paper is to introduce Nike Incorporated and to present the sweatshop debate. Nike is an international company that designs, develops, markets, and sells athletic footwear, equipment, apparel, and accessories worldwide; operating in Europe, China, North America, Japan, and developing markets. Nike was able to take its business overseas thanks to globalization, through which they were able to outsource in an attempt to save money, improve production costs, and increase profits; this however made it fairly easy and enticing for them to exploit their outsourced workers – such as with the sweatshop debate. Nike was suspect of manufacturing its goods in developing countries where
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Nike’s operational practices were not ethical or effective and were delaying its success by causing negative publicity which led to reduced sales and loss of profits forcing Nike to change its operational strategy drastically in order to be compliant with labor and civil rights unions. One of the many operational challenges Nike had to face was the addition of a stringent monitoring system in all of its international sweatshops. Another challenge was to hire a well-rounded firm to certify and guarantee ethical inspections and accurate data are consistently produced at all international …show more content…
Between 2002 and 2004 Nike performed approximately 600 factory inspections that included follow-up visits to sweatshops where problems were previously observed. Nike’s efforts to increase inspections and deal with its worst issues such as unsafe chemicals and locked factory doors were acknowledged by human rights activists in 2004. By 2005 Nike became the first company in its trade to broadcast a comprehensive report listing all of the sweatshops it conducts business with, shedding light on its issues and revealing the pay and working conditions of each. Nike continues to make public its promises, standards, inspection data, and obligations as part of its corporate social responsibility reports (Nisen,