Cindy Fu

Nike’s corporate culture involves secrecy and mystery.

Many successful companies such as Apple, Google and Zappos have succeeded by creating a strong corporate culture. Nike depends on innovation, and being such an internationally known company with 44,000 employees, they continue to succeed because of its powerful culture that attracts employees who are loyal because of the sense of belonging to a goal-oriented organization.

If its employees were unsatisfied, Nike would fall apart because of its dependence on its workforce. A main component of Nike’s strong corporate culture comes from the secrecy of its company. Nike’s identity of having “the best-kept secrets” (Jackson) allows employees to feel important and key to the success of Nike. It makes them value all the work they put into Nike and how important it is to protect the company’s internal stories.

The Innovation Kitchen and the Winnebago are only a few of the company’s ‘secrets’ that keeps employees conscious of Nike’s history and story. These stories strengthen the corporate culture, as having a physical object will be a reminder of the huge secret that they take part in. There are other “secret” facilities like the ‘Zoo’, and employees internalize their own stories, that their work is so valuable it must be kept a secret.

References:

“Nike: The No. 1 Most Innovative Company Of 2013 | Fast Company | Business + Innovation.” Fast Company. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Nov. 2013. <http://www.fastcompany.com/most-innovative-companies/2013/nike>.

“Strong Organizational Culture: How Nike Drives Innovation.” Corporate Culture Pros. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Nov. 2013. <http://www.corporateculturepros.com/2013/06/strong-organizational-culture-how-nike-drives-innovation/>.