Nike and its Approach to Corporate Responsibility - Essay Example

Nevertheless, large and multinational enterprises face major distrust by the broad public perhaps due to that the expectations of society regarding business has tremendously changed in recent years. The business of business shouldn’t be just ‘business’, but it has to extend its contribution to social justice, community welfare, economic development and quality of social life as well. This piece of paper discusses the corporate social responsibility of Nike and provides an in-depth analysis of Nike’s social responsibility initiatives in recent years by using strategic analysis tools. 1.1- Nike’s Corporate Social Responsibility Nike Inc, world’s number-one shoe and apparel company, designs and develops athletic footwear, apparel, equipments and accessories to market them worldwide.

It sells its athletics products to its customers through its own retails stores and internet apart from independent distributors and retailers (Reuters.com, 2013). Nike Inc. headquartered in Beaverton, USA, has been ranked #126 by Fortune 500 Companies (Hoovers.com, 2013). Amid some issues related to employees poor working conditions in Nike’s manufacturing centers including Indonesia and that media as well as NGOs have recently given greater importance about Nike’s issues of responsibility towards its stakeholders, the company took a very positive strategic way to its corporate social responsibility.

It explored new sustainable business model to prepare the company a different operating environment. In recent years, Nike has changed the way it operated and it developed focus for its social responsibility on improving employees’ working conditions in its contracted factories aiming for carbon neutrality with a view to maintain sustainable business by making sports available to youngsters across the world (mallenbaker.net, 2013). 1.2- Corporate Social Responsibility The significance of CSR has been continuously increasing in the business contexts for the last few years and this can be very evident from the fact that more than 90 percent of the Fortune-500 companies do have explicit social responsibility initiatives (Bueble, 2009, p. 1). As this term is discerned from Corporate, Social and Responsibility, it is very clear that it refers to the responsibilities that are inherent in the relationship between corporate and the society (Werther and Chandler, 2006, p. 6). Kotler and Lee (2005, p. 3) elucidate the concept of CSR that it is a commitment of an enterprise to improve community well-being through discretionary management activities.

The social responsibility of an enterprise involves society’s economic, legal, ethical and other discretionary expectations from that enterprise (Sims, 2003, p. 43). The basic four elements of CSR are economical, legal, ethical and discretionary responsibilities a business is expected to fulfill (Pearson and Robinson, 2004, p. 50). Hence, it is expected that a business need to protect human rights (Banerjee, 2009, p. 94), sustain natural environment (Banerjee, 2009,