Nike: Public Relations

This paper talks about Nike, a successful company in the durables, clothes and sportswear world dealing with very high sales and a hugely earned household name. This paper takes on a public relation perspective by claiming that Nike’s workers and factory staff is not kept in proper conditions, leading on to the development of a human rights issue. It takes this topic by using sources like that of news accounts, industry data and consumer belief etc.

This paper then also analyses what can be done to prevent this scenario and how the image of Nike can improve when alternative feasible options are taken; along with the objective of making improvements in the short as well long-term and measuring its impact because of being corporate socially responsible. Even though these issues have been going on for years now, this paper focuses on what it’s last year expeditions have been in relevance to these issues and how has it’s response been like. Nike and Corporate Social Responsibility – A Quick Overview of the Public Relations Issue

Nike is one of the very few companies with its operations extending globally, to have been Non-Governmental organizations on its case. In the case of Nike, it is not about an environmental debate or high rip-off cost ambiguities, rather it is point blank about the way Nike treats its workers and the kind of conditions that the factory staff is kept in, in many developing countries. Facts In a study in Indonesia, conducted by the Global Alliance it was found out that more than half of Nike’s workers were between the ages twenty to twenty-four years and more than eighty percent of these were women.

Almost all the workers had acquired any skills including schooling, with the greater number being that of high school drop-outs. Nike has around seven hundred factories operating globally that are functioning on a contractual basis, with around twenty percent of these creating products for Nike only. “Commonplace harassment” and abuse have been a few of the many human rights issues that have been encircling the question over Nike’s dealings with its factory level workers. (Mallen Baker, n. d. )

What do statistics say about the issue? In Indonesia, around thirty percent of the factory level workers were recorded to have had personal experience of bad working conditions and abuse, with approximately sixty percent claiming to have seen verbal abuse in their whereabouts at Nike. Sexual harassment in the form of sexually pointing comments and remarks were reported by an eight percent of the workers, with approximately four percent saying that they were abused sexually through physical abuse.

The most disturbing of all facts was that half of the workers claimed that there was a lot of discrimination ad bias in the processes of recruitment and selection of workers, wherein sexual trade practices exist. Despite all these facts and reporting, it was also found out that as astonishing as it sounds, but almost all workers considered their relationship with the direct line supervisors as satisfactory; with a slightly lesser number stating the exact same thing with the management however. You may also be interested in reading Business and Society Relationship

The main issue, according to workers that remained was the issue of physical working conditions and how certain parameters absolutely were missing as far as the working environment as concerned. In specific, at a factory site in Mexico, physical abuse was reported of many workers on the part of Nike. There, many such serious problems have resulted into labour disputes. The main focus of the entire issue remains that of Nike using child labour at its factories which has greatly impacted its image worldwide in a negative way. (Mallen Baker, n. d. )