Nike Sweatshops: Behind the Swoosh Should We Inflict Western Values On This Society? Concepts of Social Responsibility, Integrity, and Other Business Ethics Practices

Forcing Western values onto the society in question might not be required, but as corporate social responsibility (CSR) and ethical principles become increasingly recognized, businesses can govern behavior through their respective organizational cultures and ethical codes, thus doing away with the need to have additional laws, while also avoiding the issues of unfettered choice. CSR and ethics demand that Nike assume their responsibility of helping resolve social issues created by them or prevent potential social issues they might be responsible for, through imposed work ethics. Firms have special ethical obligations to all of their stakeholders. Also, stakeholders possess certain rights of making particular claims on a company. For instance, workers can expect fair pay and safe workplace conditions for their hard work and customers can demand safe, efficient, and affordable products.

Nike's Ethical Standpoint: An Assessment of their Ethical Standards

Nike's ethical challenges linked to its sweatshops, which the multinational corporation is facing, may be described as follows:

A key legal/ethical challenge for Nike is its sweatshop and child labor problem. Furthermore, its sweatshop workers receive...

A second challenge is the forced labor and poor, squalid work environment in Nike's manufacturing units. Lastly, the company is responsible for causing some degree of environmental damage, in the form of air, water, and noise pollution, as well as climate change arising from pollution.
Furthermore, the government plays a key role in Nike's challenges. It is a well-known fact that different national governments have different regulations and laws, which makes the activity of manufacturing products a rather big challenge for Nike and other multinational corporations. Host governments will have laws regarding consumer protection, employment, worker safety, labeling and information, and wages/salaries. Global companies have to take into account, and adhere to, these regulations and rules.

Nike's Initiatives since 2001

The company started by instituting a not-for-profit "Fair Labor Association," which aims at establishing a conduct code and independent monitoring, which includes minimum worker age and maximum weekly working hours (fixed at sixty hours), and convincing other companies to join, through collaboration between businesses and representatives of human rights agencies and labor unions. From 2002 to 2004, Nike undertook as many as 600 sweatshop audits, with repeat visitations to factories…