Unit 37 Understanding Business Ethics Case Study

BTEC LEVEL 3 DIPLOMA IN BUSINESS

UNIT 37: Understanding Business Ethics

Assignment Title: A Study of a selected company

Learner’s Name: Maha Fatima

Learner’s ID : 20156341

Submission Date: 16/3/2016

Task 1: This gives evidence for P1, M1 and D1

P1: The ethical issues a business needs to consider in its operational activities &

M1: Asses how the business could improve the ethics of their operation (Merged)

My selected company is NIKE.

Nike came into action on 25th January; 1964. It started off a $500 investment from both of its founders Phill Knight an athletic competitor and Bill Bowerman being his coach. It is one of the world’s largest and well known provider of footwear, general sportswear and related

Environment

To minimize waste and expenditure on purchasing new materials the company uses a revolutionary style of manufacturing its sports shoes. They call it NIKE FLYKNIT. This technology offers to produce a featherweight, fitting and seamless part of a shoe (upper part). Earlier, there were multiple layers in the upper and traditional cutting method was used. Now after the introduction of FLYKNIT the shoe doesn’t just weigh 19% less but it has reduced waste up to 80% compared to the traditional shoes that were produced at Nike.

Another environmentally friendly project was launched in the early 1990’s named Reuse-A-Shoe. In this program Nike reclaimed materials from old and worn out shoes and recycled them to give a shoe a second life. The benefit gained from this introduction was that the corporation collected approximately more than 28 million pairs of shoes and recycled more than 40,ooo tons of scrap. Protecting the environment and reducing the possibility of increasing potential dump and scrap material.

For instance, Customers will prefer to purchase Nike’s shoes as they are much lighter and comfortable compared to their previously produced shoes that resulted in toxic chemical involvement. With the introduction of new technologies such as NIKE FLYKNIT that produces 80% less waste and 19% lighter shoes, customers will feel safe and convinced to purchase their goods now.

Not only customers but even pressure groups like Greenpeace and Nike’s investors would also feel comfortable to engage with an ethically operating company.

If Nike did not make amendments because of its previous mistake, it wouldn’t have gotten better suppliers or support from investors. And to make things worse, customers would have boycotted Nike or spread a negative image about the company.

Employees are another main key stakeholder. If treated badly, Nike will lose its employees. And gradually production will come to a halt. When there is no production taking place, then the company will gradually close