Introduction
The traditional business dictum “everything that undergoes measurement matters” has been of great application in concerns of ethics and social responsibility. If information and metrics become combined with innovation and intelligibility, ethics and social responsibility on concerns of the community can be rapidly replaced with fact-anchored study and argument.
Like Apple Inc., Nike Inc. is a good example of a company that is committed to ethics and social responsibility (Jones and George 212-215). Actually, Nike stated that an independent board of policymaker advisers once affirmed that the volume of data contained in an ethics and social responsibility report of more than 170 pages was very devastating and necessitated being rewritten.
Importance of Ethics and Social Responsibility
It is commonly believed that ethics and social responsibility can raise a company’s income thus a lot of big companies are aggressively involved in it (Connor par. 2-5). Nevertheless, a number of managers and stakeholders are not conscious of the study concerning this vital topic.
The majority of managers and stakeholders consider that ethics and social responsibility can enhance reverence for their companies in the market, and this can lead to increased sales, upheld loyalty of workers, and attracted excellent human resources to the companies.
In addition, ethics and social responsibility concentrating on sustainability concerns can reduce costs and boost efficiency. An additional gain for public companies is that insistent ethics and social responsibility operations might assist the companies in building reputation.
As evident in the case of Nike Inc., ethics and social responsibility is important to managers and other stakeholders since it demands that partners’ management performances revere the rights of personnel, reduce the influence on the surroundings, offer a secure and healthy place of work, and support the welfare of every worker.
When given the chance, each member of the Nike team has accountability to support conformity with the Code of Conduct, in addition to reporting every case of non-conformity witnessed (Connor par. 3-7).
Corporate citizenship is employed in ethics and social responsibility contexts to address the manner in which companies handle their social and ecological influences, in addition to their economic involvement. In this regard, corporate citizens are responsible not only to managers, but also to stakeholders like workers, clients, suppliers, and the community.
Challenges
A number of the challenges that Nike Inc. has encountered encompass issues of ecological sustainability with the company standing by its vision of attaining a closed-loop production sculpt that aims at creating no waste in its supply chain by having products and substances that can be endlessly reused.
The case of Nike is a good representation of what can arise if a company starts reporting frequently and profoundly, and with a clear dedication to intellectual sincerity, concerning critical matters. For Nike, industry and human rights persist as an utmost priority and societal concern.
Nike’s three major products, equipment, shoes, and attire are manufactured in over 500 contract factories that hire more than 700,000 employees in 47 nations across the globe (Connor par. 4-9). The challenges that contract attire plants encounter include making multiple brands that make it hard for them to sustain value.
It has been very challenging for Nike to supervise contract factories and ensure that they retain excellent working environments, salaries, and overtime just to mention a few. In assessing where they erred, the managers and stakeholders of Nike Inc. found a constant pattern.
A concentration on inspection against some guidelines created success in employees’ operations, but seldom brought total modification in ethics and social responsibility. To enable sustainable advancement, the managers of Nike Inc. found that they needed to adjust the manner in which they interrelated with the entire supply chain.
As the managers reported, a potential solution would entail joining hands with other products on factory inspection and, perhaps very critical, operating with their business rivals concerning searching for a solution to their difficulties (Connor par. 4-10).
Nevertheless, some calls for advancements could demand that Nike act unaccompanied. For instance, demanding that factories make a lot of styles is among the greatest subscribers to overtime in the attire factories.
Nike had to employ ethics and social responsibility to lessen such pressures through decreasing the quantity of apparel designs and collaborating with factories to boost efficiency via lean manufacturing techniques.
Conclusion
A number of critics of ethics and social responsibility consider that it does not play a key role in the success of companies. Nevertheless, from cases of companies like Nike and Apple, it is evident that commitment to ethics and social responsibility lead to attainments of set goals (Jones and George 124-135).
Nike’s endeavors offer an excellent instance of the manner in which ethics and social responsibility can create excellent gathering of information, development of systems of measurement, and setting of benchmarks.
The improvements witnessed in Nike Inc. after its commitment to ethics and social responsibility made the managers and stakeholders learn that transparency is a positive feature rather than a risk.
To sum it up, corporate citizenship is turning out to be highly significant for the sustained well-being of companies although the majority of them struggle to get a return on invested capital from socially responsible operations.
Works Cited
Connor, Michael. Business Ethics: The Magazine of Corporate Responsibility. 2010. Web.
Jones, Gareth, and Jennifer George. Contemporary management. 8th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill Irwin, 2014. Print.