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The company Nike is committed to attracting athletes and non-athletes to buy their products through innovative thinking. They want athletes to reach their potential and Nike helps them get there by selling products for sports such as soccer, basketball, football, and baseball to this target group. Nike’s mission is to implement business strategies that set Nike apart from its competitors. There are over one million Nike employees both directly and indirectly. They employ over
36,000 people globally. The Nike campus decided to name 17 of their buildings after famous athletes to show their loyalty and respect for them. Diversity is very important to Nike in order to get different people to buy their products. They want to continue to grow as a company (“Nikebiz,”2011). Nike can become the company it wants to be by continuing to produce products that are better than competitors, implementing key corporate social responsibility initiatives, and also recognizing the company’s strengths and weaknesses.
The US footwear industry has 100 manufacturers and sales of $2 billion.
There are a wide variety of footwear companies in this industry. Some examples of footwear companies are Nike, Sketchers USA, and Timberland (“Footwear, “2011).
According to the USA market footwear industry report, the global footwear industry has changed by being a utility product to a hardcore fashion product. Also the footwear industry in the US is affected by the decrease in prices of shoes. This occurs because of the cheaper products from overseas and retail discount, which is created in order to generate more sales. People are still willing to purchase at least one foot wear item at the high end of the market despite the economic crisis that has

O’Connor 2 occurred in the United States in 2008 ("Sweatshops and child," 2004-2006).
The industry faces many social issues that affect workers in factories and society as a whole.
The company Nike got in trouble for their employees work in sweatshops. A sweatshop is a workplace where workers face getting paid minimum wage, poor working conditions, and verbal and physical abuse. In the late 1990’s Nike was in trouble for treating their workers horribly. In Asia, Nike was said to have violated minimum wage, overtime laws, abuse of workers, poor working conditions, and child labor use. Nike had over 700 footwear and clothing factories that forced its workers to work overtime and also would not let them get water if they were thirsty. ( Teaher, 2005). Teaher, the writer of the article “Nike lists abuses at Asians Factories” talks about the poor treatment of workers in factories when he says, “In more than half of Nike's factories, the report said, employees worked more than 60 hours a week. In up to 25%, workers refusing to do overtime were punished” (Teaher, 2005). Nike has made change and is now very much committed to workers needs. Nike works to improve factory conditions by making different codes of conduct and code leadership standards. The corporate social responsibility website for Nike called Nikebiz discusses the expectations it has for its factories and this is exemplified in the following quote, “Our Code of Conduct clarifies and elevates the expectations we have of our factory suppliers and lays out the minimum standards we expect each factory to meet, reflecting much of what we have learned along our corporate responsibility journey”(“Nikebiz, “2011). The code of conduct was created to make working conditions in factories better. Sweatshops still exist over the world in places such as Asia and the United States. Many people don’t realize sweatshops still

O’Connor 3 exist in our own country and Nike can provide awareness to people in order to stop this lasting social issue.
The next social issue that Nike focuses on is AIDS also known as HIV. AIDS is an immune deficiency syndrome that causes severe damage to the immune system. Aids is the sixth leading cause of death among people ages 25-44 in the United States. The virus attacks the immune system and leaves the body more likely to suffer lifethreatening infections and develop different types of cancers. Bacteria, yeast, parasites, and viruses can cause fatal illnesses in people who are affected by aids. AIDS can be spread through sexual contact, blood, and from mother to child. According to the World
Health Organization over 25 million people in the world have died from AIDS since the start of the epidemic. People that are at the highest risk for HIV are injection drug users who share needles, infants born to mothers with HIV, and people that have unprotected sex with a partner who is HIV positive or has AIDS. Some symptoms of AIDS are chills, fever, sweats, swollen lymph glands, weakness, and weight loss. AIDS cannot be cured but however can be treated by taking antiretroviral pills that help reduce the number of
HIV particles in the blood stream (“Aids, “2011). Researchers are continuing to find a cure for this horrific epidemic that takes so many people’s lives. Nike is very active in trying to help this disease in every way the company can.
A corporate social responsibility initiative that Nike created is the Nike
PRODUCT RED campaign. The Nike PRODUCT RED campaign helps people in Africa fight AIDS and also educates the population learn how to prevent themselves from being affected by the epidemic. RED works with brands American express, Apple, Bugaboo,
Converse, Dell, and many more. All of the funds from purchasing RED products

O’Connor 4 including the Nike Red laces go directly to the Global Fund. A total of 50 percent of the
RED profits go to the Global Fund (“(red),”2011). The Global Fund supports programs in Africa that give ARV medicine for free to those who cannot afford it. RED started in
2006 and partners and events have raised more than 118, 880,047.46 dollars that goes directly toward the Global Fund. Statistics say that one hundred percent of this money goes to AIDS grants in Africa and has already supported programs that have helped 4 million people with counseling, testing, and ARV treatment. Another CSR initiative that is part of the Nike and Red Partnership to help fight HIV/AIDS is the Grass root soccer program in Africa. The programs use the language and soccer, which is one of the world’s most popular sports to help educate people about HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention. The mission of this initiative is to help educate young people about the disease and also to open up different ideas to help prevent the spread of HIV (“Nike soccer, “2008). The Nike RED campaign can continue to be successful by coming up with new CSR strategies to help stop the spread of AIDS in Africa.
One of the many community investments Nike has implemented into their CSR practices is the Bowerman Track Program. Bowerman was a member of the board of directors at Nike and was appointed to that position in 1968. He stepped down from this position in June of 1999 and in honor of Bowerman’s lifetime contributions to running;
Nike created the Bowerman Track Renovation Program. Nike has supported the
Bowerman Track Program for the past 10 years and gave $2 million in grants to help support the building, maintenance, and refurbishment of running tracks throughout the
United States. This program has come to an end but Nike still continues to allow youth in communities around the world use these tracks. The commitment is made possible by

O’Connor 5 grants that help young runners on the track and off become role models and athletes. Nike is dedicated to giving back to the company’s key stakeholders like the community.
The primary stakeholders of Nike are the owners, employees, customers, and suppliers. The secondary stakeholders are the community, government, and competitors.
(See appendix at the end of paper).
The stakeholders that are the most important to Nike are the owners, employees, and the community. They all have a high level of power within the corporation. The owners, employees, and the community of Nike have a high level of legitimacy. The owners and employees of Nike are able to help produce different products and are also a major part of the growth and development of the company. The community helps donate money and support social issues such as AIDS by buying any of the Nike RED products.
They community is a stakeholder that is in return helped by Nike through the building of tracks in the United States and grass root soccer programs in Africa. The urgency for the employees and the owners is high and medium-high for the community. These stakeholders are the first ones to respond when something goes wrong with the company and they are there to help fix whatever happened.
Nike maintains a strong relationship with its stakeholders especially the environment and its consumers. The company partnered with GreenXchange, which is a
Web-based marketplace in which companies are able to collaborate and share intellectual property, and this can help discover new sustainability business models and innovation.
The environmentally friendly rubber that Nike uses is an example of an intellectual property that could have cross-industry benefits. Nike footwear is made out of rubber that contains 96 percent fewer toxins than its original formulation. Nike’s World

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Headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon was awarded the 2010 Innovation and Sustainability award from Waste Management. Nike has taken steps in the right direction to become more sustainable with the products it uses in order to help save the environment.
Diversity is also very important to Nike in order to attract people to buy their products. The company sincerely cares about the connection it has with its consumers.
Nike’s mission is to diversify their company and come up with new ideas to spark innovation. The diversity and inclusion team developed steps to achieve this mission.
These steps include using diversity and inclusion to carry out new ideas, build awareness and an understanding of diversity and inclusion. The company also connects with people that it doesn’t usually connect with. Many different types of people are drawn to Nike because of the wide variety of products it creates to make the company unique from rival companies.
Nike has dealt with weaknesses with trying to maintain a stable relationship with its workers. Nike got in trouble for making their employees work overtime and paying them less than minimum wage. Also after the Economic crisis in 2008 many workers in the apparel and footwear industry have lost their jobs. Many of the employees that kept their jobs during this difficult time face pay cuts. (“Nikebiz, “2011). However, Nike has a better relationship with its employees today and makes sure to treat their workers fairly in workplaces and factories.
Adidas is a major competitor to Nike. Adidas’s corporate social responsibility initiatives include SOS-Children’s Villages International and Marie Stopes International.
Adidas partnered with the SOS Children’s Villages National. The village SOS works to help children live a life filled with motherly love, family security, and a good education.

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SOS helps children feel confident in them self by playing different sports. SOS knew about South Africa’s problems for 30 years. Adidas helped open the SOS Children’s
Village in South Africa, Rustenburg and the village was created under the “6 villages for
2006”. Ten family houses in the village were filled with 39 boys and 41 girls with their
SOS-Mothers after the football World Cup in Germany and this amazing charity initiative took place. Adidas also helped pay for the construction of family house 29 and the living and education for the children in that place. Adidas implemented a CSR strategy to help the environment when it launched the Green Company Initiative in October 2008. The initiative was created to reduce the environmental impact of their operations in the offices, warehouses, local site, and Adidas’s production sites. Adidas wants to become a zero-emissions company and brings environmental practice to everything that they do.
The company also maximizes environmental efficiency gains and supports the people in the world’s love for a greener planet (“Adidas-group”, 2011). I think that Adidas does not have that many initiatives and I feel as if they should focus their initiatives more on promoting an active lifestyle for children. The company is an athletic shoe and apparel company therefore it should focus more on partnering with companies and Non Profit organizations to stop obesity in children all over the world.
Reebok is another competitor to Nike. Reebok has less CSR initiatives then Nike and Adidas combined. One initiative that the company created is the Reebok Foundation.
The Reebok Foundation was founded in 1986 and since then has partnered with 500 nonprofit organizations. The Reebok Global Corporate Citizenship Platform thinks that it is important to focus on the company’s philanthropy in communities where Reebok’s offices are located. The foundation thrives on promoting social and economic equality

O’Connor 8 and does this by funding non-profit organizations. The organizations provide programs to inner city youth that help them to have healthy, happy, and active lives. The Reebok foundation attempts to get U.S employees to make charitable contributions by taking part in the Foundation’s Matching Gift Program. This program doubles employee’s charitable gifts up to $1,500 per employee every year. Reebok also started a recognition program on
October 15 th
, 2007. The program invites select individuals that work with youth in
Massachusetts to visit Reebok World Headquarters for one week to shop at its Corporate
Store and receive a 50% discount (“Reebok international”). Reebok’s strengths are that it allows youth in the community to wear Reebok products even if they cannot afford them.
However, the company should implement more initiatives that help a variety of people not just youth. The company should focus more on developing programs for youth that could make them more active and engage in physical activity. For example Reebok could build a soccer field for youth in a country that is not that financially stable.
I ranked Nike’s corporate social responsibility performance at the top compared to Adidas and Reebok. Nike has a plethora of Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives that help the environment, community, and different social causes. Nike’s CSR initiatives have a direct relation to the company as a whole. The company focuses on promoting sports in Africa including for youth with lower income. I ranked Adidas’s corporate social responsibility performance next because it has less initiatives then Nike but more then Reebok. Reebok helps the community and also the environment. However, the company should do more to promote sports in youth and also needs to support more social causes. The company does not support many social causes. I would rank Reebok

O’Connor 9 last because it only has a few social initiatives and they do not have a strong relationship to the company.
The company Nike focuses on the social issues such as sweatshops, Aids, and having an active lifestyle. I think that Nike should also focus more on heart disease and obesity because these issues also have a direct relation with the company. Obesity is an issue that many youth struggle with and this needs to be fixed so that they can live active healthy lives. Heart disease is the number one killer of death in women therefore Nike needs to do something to stop this. Men are also affected by heart disease and the company could create initiatives to help support this cause.
A corporate social initiative for Nike to propose that I came up with is to partner with Disney to make a new sneaker for children. All the proceeds can go to funding
Physical Education in schools. Many physical education classes are being cut in schools all over the country and this restricts kids from having a healthy and active life. This initiative can cut down on the obesity rates of children in the United States. The target market for the new shoe is children. The sales for the shoe will boost by having a target market. Also the sneaker should not only be promoted to children but also to their parents who purchase the shoe for their kids. One example of promoting the shoes to parents to buy the shoes for their kids is to advertise the shoe in commercials on television or in magazines. Parents could receive catalogs from the Disney Store or other stores that try and get them to buy the shoe. The kids could also see the characters on the Disney channel wearing the shoe and this could drive them to want the shoe. The shoe that Nike and Disney will make is a shoe with Minnie and Mickey Mouse on it because that way both young girls and boys can wear the product. The sneaker will be distributed in all

O’Connor 10 kids footwear stores such as Stride Rite, Kids Footlocker, Kids Gap, and the Disney
Store. The first fifty customers to buy the shoe will get half off of their purchase. The sneaker costs $32.00 and half of the proceeds go to Physical Education classes in the
United States. This will help not only Nike and Disney draw in customers. This will also help keep Physical Education classes in the United States.
Another corporate social responsibility initiative that Nike should do is to build basketball courts in neighborhoods with families of lower income in the United States.
The basketball courts will be constructed in parks in cities such as Boston, Detroit, and
New York City around the lower income neighborhoods. The courts will be placed in nine different parks dispersed over three cities. Every park will have three basketball courts. Nike will assign its workers to go to these areas on October 5, 2012. They will have three days to create the basketball courts. Nike will send a total of 450 workers in all of these cities to create the basketball courts. This initiative will help Nike to have a good reputation with its consumers. Also many people will decide to buy their products because of this good deed done for the communities. A marketing and promotional strategy that Nike could carry out on the day that they build the basketball courts is to give away free Nike products to the local communities. The employees for Nike that volunteered to build these basketball courts will receive an extra vacation day. The park directors in these cities that allow Nike to build the courts in local parks may decide to partner with the company more often. They could ask Nike to hold other events in these parks and this also helps them gain respect. After Nike workers created these basketball courts they held a party the following weekend to celebrate the finish with the local communities. Nike invited the communities to play in 3 vs. 3 tournaments on the courts.

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The tournament consists of eight teams all together. Following the tournament, prizes are given away to select players and teams that participated in the tournament. The prizes that are distributed are plaques that have the tournaments most valuable player, best defensive player, and the winning team written on each. The conclusion of the projects and the tournaments in the different cities end with a barbeque and a picture is also taken with the Nike workers and the communities. The picture of everyone is put on Nike’s
CSR website. The photograph is placed in Nike magazines to show consumers what Nike is doing to help people.
The next corporate social responsibility initiative that the company Nike will focus on is supporting the social issue Heart Disease. Nike creates a clothing line that has a heart with a Nike swoosh in the heart on all of their products. The clothes that are in the clothing line consist of pants, sweatshirts, and t-shirts. All of the proceeds from the clothing line go to the American Heart Association. The American Heart Association teaches people different steps they can take to keep their heart healthy. Some of the ways that people can keep their hearts healthy is by going to nutrition centers, participating in physical activity, weight management, teaching kids healthy habits, practicing stress management, cutting back on the fats & oils intake, and quitting smoking (American
Heart Association, 2010). The goal of this new CSR initiative is to provide awareness of the dangers of heart disease and also to prevent people from suffering from this disease.
5% of the profits of the clothing line will go to The American Heart Association. Nike can add to their website a page where people can donate money to the American Heart
Disease through mail or directly on the website itself. The clothing line also has mini hearts that consumers can Nike stores or website can give to their customers free with

O’Connor 12 and purchase of the heart products. The heart is a symbol of a person’s healthy heart. The clothing line’s target market is consumers who want to support Heart Disease. Nike consumers that have heart disease and people that are not affected by the disease will undoubtedly help this important social issue.
Overall, I learned through my research of Nike that it is a widely supported company because of the many corporate social responsibility initiatives that it has to support social issues. Nike provides ways to better the environment, improve living conditions for lower income communities throughout the world, and also implements strategies to prevent and raise awareness of AIDS. I don’t believe that people should stop supporting Nike because of the sweatshops that it had in the 1990’s. Nike has changed as a company by creating a Code of conduct for workers in factories and also by treating workers better today. I believe that if Nike comes up with more social initiatives to support different social issues they will continue to grow and become more successful as a company in the future.

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