Global Business and Ethics: Nike

Global Business and Ethics: Nike

Businesses all over the world always want to thrive to be a business that produces quality products and service, while being efficient with resources. By doing so many companies move their production centers to other parts of the world to reduce costs of either labor, cost of materials or tariffs. One of the most known companies to do so is athletic icon, Nike Corporation. However, over the past decade their overseas manufacturing has become an ethical dilemma in the eyes of many people from the United States and to those across the world.

For many years, companies like Nike were manufacturing products from overseas and selling its name in the United States and many other countries as well. Manufacturing goods outside of the United States was, and still is, beneficial for them because they manage to get their goods produced at lower costs and then purchase these goods only to retail items at higher prices in the United States. Nike hired impoverished locals that compensated with anything they were offered, even what would now be around thirty dollars a month. These laborers are working twice as hard for cheaper labor. Moving from country to country, Nike moved facilities to find the most sufficient labor for the cheapest wages. Presently, Nike has almost a third of productions in Indonesia with the minimum wage set at $2.50, and also has moved to Vietnam having a daily minimum wage at $1.50 (Stabile, pg 197). This clearly indicates that to reduce costs, an indestructible company, such as Nike Corporation, will even go as far as creating these sweatshops where workers are forced to labor for minimum wages. In order to keep Nike products selling, the items still have to have a baseline of quality to the shoe, soccer ball, or t-shirt that is being sold. Therefore, they cannot reduce their investments on cheaper materials; however, they can reduce their investments on lower labor costs. To enforce the minimum labor wages, they...