Some can say that Nike is one of the most current, established, and notable brands of all time. After the recent SWOT analysis performed on the article  concerning the $300.00 shoe by Lebron James, I will delve into the drastic turnaround Nike achieved after their image was tarnished.

As an avid female athlete, I was stunned to witness reports on Nike’s use of unethical labour and manufacturing of their merchandise. Of all the abuses the company committed, the brutal maltreatment of women in Dong Nai, Vietnam, was most shocking to me. As this NY Times article reports, the women were ordered to run under the hot sun until they collapsed, as punishment for not wearing regulation shoes to work. Ironically enough, this occurred on International Women’s Day.

To recover the company’s name after such an injustice to humanity makes me ask: How did Nike just do it? 

To reference Freeman’s Stakeholder Theory , it states that customers, employees, shareholders, financiers, communities, etc. are encouraged to align their interests in a similar direction to make a business successful.

As exemplified in the timeline on Business Insider, Nike managed to focus their sectors into a single stream, in order to be more ethical. This business model for the company proved to be effective. For example, they appealed to better conditions in the workplace by significantly increasing monitoring, and had their factories adhere to the air standards set by the US O.H.S.A. Other stakeholders, such as financiers, are reassured as the company performs approximately 600 factory audits through 2002 to 2004. With a speedy recovery process, plus the appeal of their aggressive advertising campaigns, did Nike ever really leave the competition?

Sources:

http://www.nytimes.com/1997/03/28/opinion/brutality-in-vietnam.html

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-nike-solved-its-sweatshop-problem-2013-5

http://ellistration.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/nike.gif