Ethical Crises

The topic that we will be discussing in senior seminar tomorrow night is ethics--how ethics plays an underlying role in both the cause of many major organizational crises and in the management of the crisis as it is occurring and as organizational learning and change occurs post-crisis. I will be leading the discussion along with two of my fellow classmates, Jillian and Todd.

I have discussed Nike's crisis related to its labor practices in factories and "sweatshops" around the globe--in fact, that crisis has been a model for many case studies on business ethics that are often used by students at colleges and universities around the world. An example of one can be found here.

For this blog entry I decided to take a look at what Nike has done as a corporation following their scandals for improve ethical practices in their business. I was pleased to find that on March 30, 2009 Nike implemented a Business Code of Ethics that applies to all employees. Nike refers to their Code of Ethics as "The Rules of the Game." From the Nike Web site, I viewed a presentation that was given to all employees at the time the Code was adopted and is shown to all new Nike employees moving forward.

The Code of Ethics covers topics such as respect, safety, heath, the environment, CSR, product safety, import/export laws, intellectual property, recording keeping, computing, privacy, fraud/theft, gifts and gratuities, conflicts of interest, inside trading, antitrust, political contributions and sportsmanship--seems to me to be a very extensive listing. They also established an "AlertLine" where employees can anonymously alert upper management if they see an ethical violation or potential ethical violation in their work area.

Since the Code of Ethics was only implemented a little more than a year ago, I am not surprised that there are not yet any reported results involving the effect the code has had on the corporation--but I'm sure it will be coming soon! I'll keep an eye out for case studies in the future!

Also, stay tuned within the next couple of weeks because I'm currently working on a YouTube video involving Nike and Crisis Management that I will be posting on here just like the Podcast that I posted last week--hope you enjoy it! :)