Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote are used as narrative metaphors to analyze how activist entrepreneurial strategies involve setting off chaos effects. Dozens of small entrepreneurs have been using their web sites in activist ways to change Nike Corporation's labor and environmental practices. Activists, engage in Roadrunner small change (ad)ventures to trip Nike, a Wile Coyote, multi-billion dollar company and even the entire sneaker industry into a chaos event chain that may well change the labor and environment practices in Third World countries. The entrepreneurial activist strategies include: telling the local story of individual worker's life experience to poke holes in Nike PR story lines about bringing the good life to Third World workers, setting up web site libraries of counter-stories to Nike's grand narratives of utopian economic progress, and using spectacles such as protests on campuses and boycotts at Nike outlets to seduce Nike consumers away from the allure of Nike's consumer culture spectacles. Each of these entrepreneurial strategies is analyzed using both postmodern and chaos theory.

This is a story of David and Goliath: how small, under-financed activists have been using entrepreneurial strategies to bring chaos into the life of one of the most famous and financially successful entrepreneurs, the founder of the Nike Corporation, Philip Knight. Nike is the paragon of rags to riches entrepreneurial success. As Nike Chairman and CEO Philip H. Knight said, "By any standard of measure, fiscal 1997 was the greatest performance in our 25-year history." According to Nike press releases (1997b), for the fiscal year ended May 31, 1997, net income grew to a record $795.8 million, world wide revenues increased 42% to a record $9.19 billion, compared with $6.47 billion in fiscal 1996. But, as we shall explore, by May, 1998, the Nike behemoth would respond to constant activist pummeling by making major concessions in its overseas labor and environmental practices (Campaign for Labor Rights, 1998a, b).

Relevance to Entrepreneurship. The fact that web site activists, such as Mr. Thuyen Nguyen of Vietnam Labor Watch and Ms. Benjamin Medea of Global Exchange, are not typically cited as entrepreneurs, while Philip Knight exemplifies the American fiction hero figure of Horatio Alger, who by hard work made good speaks directly to the relevance of this paper. Several entrepreneur writers (Dana, 1961; Gasse, 1977; Kets de Vries, 1977; Brockhaus, 1982; Begley & Boyd, 1987; Sexton & Upton, 1990; Black, 1997) argue that particular personality traits enable entrepreneurs to achieve success. Philip Knight fits the stereotype of an entrepreneur in ways that activists do not: controls a virtual and global enterprise, sets up autonomous sub-contract relations with overseas suppliers, assertively exploits ever cheaper labor pools in Asia, anticipates which Asian country to move production to next, domination in the face of hard competition from Reebok and Adidas, and idiosyncratic PR strategies and eccentric behaviors --- while successfully reaping billions in assets. As Ogbo (1998: 14), in his review of the entrepreneurial literature, puts it:

The reification of this ideology in contemporary entrepreneurship discourses is seen as a response to the notion of an idealized universal being to whom the western notion of a self-contained, autonomous, and independent entity applies: control, assertive, domination, and idiosyncratic.

Ogbor (1998) argues that female and non-white entrepreneurs do not fit stereotypes for achievement, autonomy, aggression, and idiosyncrasy. Asian females, for example, are noted for their subjugation, submissiveness, support, cooperation, dependence, and conformity. I assume that activists, while they exhibit entrepreneurial character traits such as assertiveness, aggression, autonomy, and idiosyncrasy, are also not usually listed as entrepreneurs. This may be because entrepreneurial activists seek to change the way global capitalism is conducted. I contend that looking at how Philip Knight's, white male, Horatio Alger image, is more entrepreneurial than activists who confront Nike colonization of cheap, Asian, female labor as a way to harvest billion dollar capital accumulations --- speaks to the ideological shortcomings of contemporary entrepreneurship discourses. According to Geertz (1973), ideology refers to how culture establishes, legitimates, and defends patterns of assumptions, beliefs and values that define social order. Beyond entrepreneurship, Mills and Simmons (1995: 157) point out that most organization theory texts : "make little or no reference to non-White, non-Anglophile individuals, or to individuals whose national origins are different from the mainstream White Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture." The entrepreneurial activists challenge Nike's ideological achievements by questioning wealth-accumulation by subjugation, domination by female submission, and aggressive exploitation through Darwinian labor practices, and environmental misbehaviors.

My purpose, therefore, is to point out how Philip Knight uses his entrepreneurial image in a public relations discourse of entrepreneurship, while delegitimating what I contend are the entrepreneurial activities of Nike activists. Entrepreneurial discourse is a medium by which Nike constitutes global business ideologies that perpetuate gender and racial stereotypes of 500,000 Asian Nike workers and through advertising marginalizes the plight U.S. minority athletes and inner city youth. Nike has commodified its success story of Phil Knight, the entrepreneur, selling Japan's Tiger shoes out of the back of his station wagon at track meets, bringing economic vitality to starving Asian employees, and fashioning the Swoosh symbol into a multibillion dollar apparel industry. In short Philip Knight's Nike is a storytelling organization (Boje, 1991, 1995; Boyce, 1995, 1997; Gephart, 1991; Kaye, 1995; 1996) that propagates entrepreneurial ideology to mask Asian labor practice.

Boje (1991a: 106) defines the "storytelling organization" as "a collective storytelling system in which the performance of stories is a key part of members' sense making and a means to allow them to supplement individual memories with institutional memory." The Nike storytelling organization constructs through sense make story practices its legitimacy to dominate and exploit female Asian workers. Nike activists seek to unravel the dominant ideology and institutional memory of Nike entrepreneurial global capitalism stories as a fiction that covers stories of corporal punishment of females, violations of wage laws, racial subordination, child subjugation, labor colonization and environmental pollution.

Storytelling Organizations from a Postmodern Perspective. This is a continuing saga of spin control in a postmodern organization. Nike Inc. is a leading edge in consumer culture creation and a role model of the virtual corporation (Hodge, Anthony, & Gales, 1996), and even a postmodern corporation (Cole, 1997).

Nike is presented by Hodge, Anthony, and Gales (1996: 224-225) as a prime example of the "evolving design" for the "twenty-first century:" the "virtual organization." The virtual organization maintains a core organizations with CEO and full-time people to carry out critical functions, while setting up temporary alliances with subcontractors to do the non-essential functions. Nike as a virtual organization, has a CEO and core staff to perform the marketing, design and PR functions, while subcontracting manufacturing is to Korean and Taiwanese firms who manage and own 350 factories in 30 countries, and employ 500,000 unskilled, eight-five percent female, Asian contract workers. With regard to entrepreneurial traits, Hodge, Anthony and Gales (1996) characterize Philip Knight in ways that fit Ogbor's (1998: 14) entrepreneurial stereotypes: self-contained, autonomous, independent White male, exhibiting control, assertive, domination, and idiosyncratic. Knight is described as a "strong culture" heroic CEO, full of "mystique" crafting the "virtual" and "innovative" organization in which more committed employees tattoo the "Swoosh" to their body (p. 280-281).

Few employees ever see the inside of Knight's private office. Instead, most Nike executives interact with Knight in an outer office. This office configuration perpetuates the mystery and mystique that surround[s] Knight (p. 278).

Phil Knight embodies "antiestablishment and antitraditional business values" (p. 275). Nike as a company s characterized in entrepreneurial terms, like "swiftness, creativity, durability!" with an image of "free spirit, sport, fun, passion, innovation, athleticism, competition, and hard work." Asian Nike workers, when spoken of at all by Hodge, Anthony and Gales (1996), are portrayed ethnocentrically and stereotypically as having problematic "work ethics" and the "real" cause of Nike problems is not female, Asian, factory workers, but how to get enough highly educated and committed U.S. workers in its "high tech" workplace in Beaverton, Oregon. In another ethnocentric construction of cause and effect, Nike shoes cost over a hundred dollars because of the labor unrest among U.S. sports teams, and not because of the widely reported labor unrest (slow downs, walk outs, a few strikes) in Nike plants in third world countries due to Nike's poverty wages, corporal punishment, child labor, forced overtime, and sexual abuse (Athreya, 1995; Ballinger, 1996; Chan, 1996; Connor & Atkinson, 1996; Nguyen 1997a to 1997g). For example, Chan's (1996) research gave a report of Chinese Nike females being locked in cages in the factory compound as a form of corporal punishment.

Nike is also an example of what postmodern theorist Frederick Jameson (1984) calls the postmodern and global logic of "late capitalism." Cole (1997) argues, for example, that Nike parades itself as a postmodern corporation: "... a technologically hip and innovative corporation that prioritizes public issues and cares about public well-being." Nike also uses popular sports and media stars to tell stories that construct what is "hip" and "chic" in popular culture. Nike skillfully stories itself as a champion of women and minorities with re-cycled inner-city slogans like "just do it," images of successful minority athletes such as Michael Jordan, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, and Tiger Woods. Nike aligns the Swoosh with visions of social justice in ads with Jackie Robinson and Martin Luther King Jr. Activists point out the irony as Nike passes itself off as a postmodern virtual organization, offering itself as a solution to youth-violence, while operating female and child labor work camps in Asian countries.

Advertising is the main storyteller in our society in ways that shapes social life. Nike spends 10 million a year to call for its own form of social activism, in its P.L.A.Y. (Participate in the Lives of America's Youth) campaign, a war on inner city violence, in order to be popular with the capitalist consumer and to divert attention away from subcontractor labor practices (Cole, 1997).

Activists also use storytelling to reframe the image of Philip Knight and the Swoosh empire in order to force changes in labor practices for Asian women toiling in Nike factories. Their strategy is to keep the spotlight on Nike labor and environmental practices, in the hopes that consumers and regulators will pressure Nike changes, and the rest of the Sneaker and sports apparel industry will follow along with any positive changes Nike implements.

This is an uphill campaign. According to activists, Nike circulates dis-information and fantasy to mask their "real" labor practices (Nguyen, 1997c, 1997f). Even consumers who know the negative social and ecological impact of Nike's overseas shoe factories will continue to buy products. For example, an MBA team surveyed 200 students only to find that the 56.9 percent would continue to purchase Nike even when they are made aware of abusive overseas labor practices (Marquez et al., 1998). Despite scores of activist web sites and press exposés, 61 percent had not heard any "bad press" about Nike. The fashion and status image of wearing the "Swoosh" is more important to most consumers than issues of worker physical abuse, worker safety, and violations of environmental laws in far away countries.

Wile Coyote Meets Roadrunner. The dark side of the postmodern corporation is that the line between fantasy and "real," as well as linear and non-linear story gets blurred. A metaphor to understand this blurring process, is the Roadrunner cartoon. In his sixty year career at Warner Brothers, Animator Chuck Jones created the interplay of linear and non-linear story plots for his characters, Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner. In the Roadrunner story, Roadrunner is a linear character, a romantic hero who runs a straight line from point A to point B, simply stepping to one side, to observe chaos engulfing his pursuer and nemesis, Wile Coyote. "The moral of the Road Runner cartoons is simple: non-linear ideas and methods will fail and are a waste of effort, and it is best to put your nose to the grindstone and operate in a linear fashion, young man" (Bulhak, 1997: 1). The devious and egotistic Wile E. Coyote is the non-linear character, caught in his tragic plots of non-linearity, where no matter what Rube-Goldberg contraption he purchases from the Acme corporation, how much his ego and superior intelligence designs the perfect trap, or how much assertive and aggressive super-effort he employs, chaos is always unleashed.

There is also a more literal link between Nike and the Roadrunner cartoon. Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley, the Nike icons of "Just Do It," appear in an animated film, Space Jam (Farley & Sandler, 1996), with Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner. In the movie, as Jordan's kids watch a Road Runner cartoon, they see Porky Pig announce that all the Warner Brothers cartoon characters are to attend a Cartoon Character Union meeting. Stan, a publicist while Jordan is doing baseball instead of basketball pokes fun and Jordan's commercialism:

Stan - "Comon Michael. It's game time. Get your Haines on. Lace up your Nikes. Grab your Wheatties and your Gator Aide. And we'll pick up a Big Mac on the way to the ball park."

But, there are more important metaphoric applications of the Roadrunner story. I would like to use the roadrunner cartoon to develop insights into the postmodern relationships between global capitalism and popular culture. Nike is like the character Wile E. Coyote, forever using technology purchased from the Acme company as well as trickery to trap the Roadrunner. Roadrunner is like the activist, using simple tactics to let the effects of chaos unravel the plans and schemes of Wile Coyote. Each time Wile Coyote chases Roadrunner, the result is the same: the trickster is trapped in his own trick. To the activist, Nike is Wile E. Coyote, using deceptive means that backfire, triggering chance events, which Wile and Roadrunner can observe, as Roadrunner is released and Wile is the inevitable chaos victim.

Wile Coyote and Roadrunner play out the relationship between linearity and non-linearity, as well as deviation-amplifying and counteracting loops. Wile E. Coyote observes a deviation amplifying loop of one misfortune, chance break-down, and unanticipated consequence leading to another, and another. The inevitable result is coming, yet Wile Coyote keeps going back to Acme to buy another product, and another. Nike keeps buying another PR campaign, and another celebrity study.

Chaos theory and non-linearity introduces new language, images, and alternative reality claims into our organization studies discourse. Stacy (1995: 487), for, example, looks at chaos systems as a Boolean network that "changes from moment to moment according to the information or energy it receives and the rules it follows for converting these to action or outputs." Nike re-authors itself from moment to moment in its own press releases, brochures, and web pages as the (Wile Coyote) hero on the stage of world economic history, a master of the virtual high technology, bringing about economic development, progress, and proper work ethics to the impoverished Third World. Nike, with its vast media savvy and technology, responds quickly to new charges (information and energy) it receives from activist campaigns. Nike is powerful and rich enough to change the rules of the game, construct consumer demand, and re-historicize itself with high profile media stories, which become scripts for consumers and workers to live within. Nike has been actively campaigning against the activists who utilize the web site to critique Nike and coordinate worldwide consumer boycotts. Yet, as in the case of Road Runner, there are deviation amplifying cycles in which the activist by chance and accident is sprung loose from whatever trap Nike Inc. sets. Activists, like Global Exchange (1997a, b c; 1998), Anti-Nike (1998), Boycott Nike (1998), Campaign for Labor Rights (1996a, b, 1997), Nguyen (1997a to g), Press for Change (1998), Sweatshop Watch (1998), Corporate Watch (1998), etc. invoke deviation counteracting loops to expose inconsistency after inconsistency between Nike's talk and walk. To the activists, no matter what scheme that Nike concocts, chance events and occurrences lead to the PR trap breaking down its potential grip on activists, while resetting it to ensnare Nike. The two loops (deviation amplifying and deviation counter acting) are part of the same chaos system. Nike is actively non-linear, preferring to invoke PR spectacles and counter spin stories rather than just changing overseas labor and environment practices. As the two loops set of chaos effects, the system may provoke major changes.

Historically, Nike has responded to activist exposé stories in four phases: 1) avoidance of all labor abuse questions by claiming as a "virtual" corporation, the sub-contractors, not Nike, were responsible (1960s through 1993), 2) to denying that any problems existed in Nike-sub contract plants (1993-1996), 3) to a PR campaign where Nike claimed that audits of its Code of Conduct, studies by former UN Ambassador Andrew Young, and controls by its owns sub-contract monitoring department were containing any problem (1996-1997), and 4) to the recent announcement by Phil Knight that there would be major changes such as imposing OSHA health and safety standards in Asian plants, micro-enterprise loans for a 1,000 women in several Asian countries, raising the age limit to 16 in all Nike factories and 18 in Nike sneaker factories, etc. (1998)

We will examine three types of entrepreneurial activist strategies that countered Nike's $870 advertising campaigns to promote the Swoosh as the symbol of social justice, and provoked Nike to move from avoid, denial, and PR spectacles to major (proposed) changes in labor practices. These include:

1 Micro and Macro Storytelling. Activists tell local stories of a worker's abusive life experience on the world wide web to poke holes in Nike's macro, grand narratives of the good life for workers in the Third World.

2 Counter-Stories of Utopian Progress. Activists have set up web site libraries with counter-stories of Nike's stories of utopian and economic progress.

3 Spectacles. Activists use spectacles such as boycotts and protests on campuses and at Footlocker stores to seduce Nike consumers away from Nike spectacles.

Part I: Micro and Macro Storytelling. Unlike Lyotard (1984) who rejects grand narratives, Iggers (1997) favors the micro story (microstoria) practitioners, who while skeptical of the grand narrative, also seek to supplement the macro-story with many different local stories that are outside the macro script. Similar to Foucault (1975) microstoria researchers "seek to show how 'hegemonic institutions have excluded certain ways of thinking as demonic, irrational, heretical, or criminal'" (Iggers, 1997: 109). Microstoria practitioners focus on individual stories in local settings to contrast their many differences with the macro story. In hyperreality terms, the storied image of Nike sports heroes is more real than the reality of Third World workers to millions of postmodern consumers. Activists use micro stories of labor practices in the Third World to point out the fantasy and irony of Nike's grand stories (Anti-Nike, 1998; Boycott Nike, 1998; Campaign for Labor Rights, 1996a, b, 1997; Global Exchange, 1997; Nguyen, 1997 a to g; Sweatshop Watch, 1998; Corporate Watch, 1998). Activists contend that since Asian female workers have no voice on Nike advertising, their stories are masked behind glittery media fantasies of sports stars and other celebrities who being hip enough to wear the Swoosh achieve fame.

On March 15, 1996, 15 Vietnamese women were reportedly hit on the head and neck with a Nike sneaker, for their poor sewing, by Nike-contract factory, Sam Yang Co, Korean manager, Madame Baeck. This local story was widely covered in the Vietnam press, but would take some six months of activist promotion on the web before it was featured in the CBS 48 hours segment that aired October 17^th, 1996 in the United States press (Baskins, 1996). Activist sites such as Boycott Nike, Anit-Nike, Global Exchange, and others carry full transcripts of these local stories of corporal punishment.

Baskin: (Voiceover) Thuy and 14 other team leaders were singled out and punished by their Korean supervisor, Madame Baeck, seen here sitting at a table with the Nike shoe she used to hit the women. It was in retaliation for some poor sewing. Madame Baeck's reply? Quote, "It's not a big deal. It's just a method of managing workers."

Baskin: Did she hurt you?

Thuy: (Through Translator) The physical pain didn't last long, but the pain I feel in my heart will never disappear (excerpts from CBS 48 Hours segment, October 17, 1996).

Activist groups such as Boycott Nike (1998), promote the story on their web site as a "scratch on the surface of a far more horrendous reality:"

However disturbing those comments might have been, they turned out to be but a scratch on the surface of a far more horrendous reality -- confirmed, quantified, and fully documented in a March '97 report by Vietnam Labour Watch during its visit to Vietnam. Similar horrible conditions are confirmed in Nike factories in China as documented in a Sep '97 report from Hong Kong Christian Industrial Committee and Asian Monitor Resource Centre (Boycott Nike web site document, 1998).

Thuyen Nguyen directs Vietnam Labor Watch, an activist group that circulates web reports (1997 a to g) of Nike labor practices in Vietnam. Here, he reports how Phil Knight reframes the story as an incident involving only one of Nike's 500,000 workers (1997c): By September last year, many Vietnamese newspapers had published articles about 15 women workers who were hit on the head by a Nike factory supervisor. But at a shareholders meeting at Nike's headquarters, its chairman Phil Knight minimized the story into an incident involving only one worker who was hit on the arm by a supervisor.

In an interview with Ms Sukaesih, Herbert (1996a) includes reports of beatings of women by their Korean supervisors.

"We were not treated with respect," she said. "Many of the supervisors were from Korea. They yelled at us. There were some that liked to hit people, slap people. There were some who would kick the Muslim workers when they were praying during their lunch break." Ms. Sukaesih has no money of her own and her prospects are dim. She is already considered old for factory work. "They want young girls," she said. "At my age you have to pay a bribe to a security guard just to apply for a job."

Running Laps as Corporal Punishment Story. As a result of Phil Knight's concession to the Methodist Church pension fund stockholder's initiative demanding independent monitoring, on September 16^th, on March 2^nd, 1997 Thuyen Nguyen, a Vietnamese-American businessman who left Vietnam in 1975 and now runs a financial-services company in Hoboken, New Jersey, received approval from Nike to inspect plants in Vietnam (Bergen Record, 1997). He also makes surprise visits to four plants, interviews workers outside the company gate, and collects pay stubs to document violations of Vietnamese wage and overtime laws. He confirms more reports of physical punishment (i.e. 56 women running laps as punishment), sexual harassment by foreign supervisors, poor safety conditions in a report he put on a web site (Nguyen, 1997a). "At one Nike contractor's plant, workers could go to the bathroom only once and take two drinks of water during an eight-hour shift" (Bergen News, April 6, 1997). What spin does Nike put on the incident?

A Nike spokeswoman says that workers get paid the minimum wage and that Nike is doing what it can to root out bad supervisors. She says Nike's own monitors had notified the company immediately about the incident in which the supervisor forced the employees to run laps in the hot sun, and he was promptly suspended. She says the company wants to hear about problems, no matter how isolated, so it can correct them, and points out that Mr. Nguyen was inspecting the factories at Nike's invitation (Bergen News, 1997).

The Andrew Young Story. On March 27^th, 1997, Nike announces that Andrew Young will investigate subcontractors in partial response to the Thuyen Nguyen VLW findings that are beginning to be released. Mr. Nguyen's conclusion: "Nike is clearly not controlling its contractors, and the company has known about this for a long time" (Bergen Record, 1997). On June 24^th, 1997, former ambassador Andrew Young released a "glowing" report (with Hamilton Jordan) about Nike subcontractor labor practices (see more complete story below). Nike takes out full page adds in major metropolitan newspapers claiming vindication. On June 29^th, the floor manager who forced 56 workers to run around the plant until 12 dropped in the heat, was sentenced to six months in jail. Stephen Glass (Sept. 15, 1997) in New Republic, is critical of Young's photos and commentary about the incident:

about Young's examination of the factories. On page thirty-four appears a picture--also taken by Young--of several female workers, many with their arms crossed, sitting at a table. The caption says that these are the women who were "forced to run around Vietnamese factory." The reference is to a well-publicized event in which factory supervisors forced fifty-six Vietnamese factory workers to run laps around the factory because they had not worn proper shoes to work or had not met production quotas. The run was so strenuous that twelve of the women had to be hospitalized. After a wire story reported the incident, Vietnamese police arrested the supervisor. At the time, the event was widely condemned in the media. But, in an interview with The Atlanta Journal and Constitution earlier this summer, Young said the women were "laughing and joking about it" and were "pretty easy with the experience." Young added that he felt most sorry for the supervisor, who did not speak Vietnamese and who was facing court charges.

Knight contends that news stories are reporting exceptions to the rule that miss the story that Nike is a good global citizen:

Ambassador Young Independent Assessment of NIKE

We pledged in our meeting that we had with you last year, if you were here, to have a review of our foreign factory practices by an independent monitor other than a certified public accountant. Essentially our first and only and best choice was Goodworks (GoodWorks) out of Atlanta, headed up by Ambassador Andrew Young, who we felt at the time, and feel even more so today is a man of great intellect, enormous accomplishment, and unquestioned integrity.

Basically, Ambassador Young took on this assignment, and did in fact prepare for the assignment over the course of the winter, visited factories in China and Indonesia and Vietnam over the course of March and issued his report in April. It found, as we believe any truly independent monitor will find, that basically NIKE is acting as a good citizen in those communities and is running essentially good factories; that the incidences that you hear about and have gotten so many headlines are just that. They are basically exceptions to what goes on in those factories

During July, August, and September, 1997, there are major stories breaking about the inaccuracies in the Andrew Young findings. Young's study is widely critiqued (Herbert, 1997, Global Exchange, 1998; Keown, 1997). Keown (1997) for example provided a critique of Nike's power as a story maker: Does it belong on the sports page when that same report, conducted by Ernst and Young, reveals that 77 percent of the workers in one Ho Chi Minh City shoe-manufacturing plant suffer from respiratory problems because their workplaces are insufficiently ventilated and filled with carcinogens?

Of course it does. Nike is more powerful than any individual sports franchise, more powerful than any individual league, even. Nike knows athletes are as loyal to their shoe company as they are to their teams.

Besides, Nike's hypocrisy knows no bounds. It aligns itself with just causes -- the courage of Jackie Robinson, racism in country clubs, the plight of inner-city kids -- then indignantly wonders why anybody gives a damn about the respiratory problems of a few thousand young women in Vietnam.

Nike accuses the activists, particularly Global Exchange of disinformation and sends out its own teams of public relations spokespersons to counter the charges that might damage Nike's reputation with its most treasured market, the youth of America. In a story in New Republic titled "The Young and the Feckless" Stephen Glass (September 15, 1997) critiques the Andrew Young for using Nike translators, listing people as interviewed and participating in the report who were either not interviewed or contacted by fax or in a brief phone call.

Settlement House Youth Story. As the Andrew Young study drew more critical review, micro story by Hentoff (1997) and Gonzales (1997) is constructed. It addresses the role of consumers in perpetuating labor practices abroad. The story begins with a "coalition of young people from 11 settlement houses [who] let it be known that they would discard their old Nike sneakers at a Fifth Avenue shoe store, The Sultanate of Swoosh" (Hentoff, 1997). As Hentoff (1997) tells his two liner story of Dulani Balke he links it to breaking stories critical of the Andrew Young (and Hamilton Jordan, 1997) report commissioned by Nike Inc. to investigate their subcontracting factories in Indonesia, Vietnam, and China. In the third paragraph, a Nike spokesperson becomes part of the story.

As one of the protesters, Dulani Blake, explained: "Nike goes to different countries so people can work for cheap."

Meanwhile, Andrew Young, a hero of the civil rights movement and former ambassador to the United Nations, has completed a report -- commissioned by Nike -- that does say there is room for improvement in the working conditions at factories manufacturing Nike footwear. But his overall findings are so positive that Nike has celebrated the result of Andrew Young's Asian journey in newspaper ads.

When I called a publicity manager for Nike, she said, "Why, who could possibly question Andrew Young's integrity?"

Hentoff (1997) knows who critiqued Andrew Young's credibility in two September stories (See Appendix A) as well as the widely circulate Doonesbury cartoon series that ran earlier in the year. Hentoff (1977) continues to link stories to other stories, but concludes by reconnecting to the story of the youth in the settlement house in the Bronx.

In the Sept. 8 and 15 New Republic, Stephen Glass -- a journalist whose work I have respected since his college days -- did considerable damage to Mr. Young's credibility ("The Young and the Feckless").

Among the many carefully detailed omissions and distortions in the Young report is the highly embarrassing fact that Young, in talking with Vietnamese workers, used Nike translators. As Stephen Glass notes, Garry Trudeau -- in his widely syndicated comic strip, Doonesbury -- presented a Nike translator rendering "the [Asian] workers' pleas of mistreatment into joyous reports of a labor paradise."
 

Lest this growing disrespect for Nike become a ground swell, a Nike spokesman visited a New York neighborhood center where the local sneaker protest among kids began. The public relations professional declared: "Nobody has done more than Nike in terms of leadership." He said this without benefit of translation.

On September 19^th and 22^nd, Dara O'Rourke publishes highly critical reports in New Republic. On September 27^th, the New York Times runs a story that is negative about the study (Gonzales, 1997). On October 3^rd, the AMRC/KHCIC issues a press release about their own three year study of labor practices in China and they are also critical of the Andrew Young study for only spending 3 days in China. There are reports of wage, health, and safety violations. On October 26^th a coalition of women's groups and congress women issue a letter to CEO Phillip Knight calling Nike ads featuring empowered women athletics as hypocritical (Greenhouse, 1997a).

In sum, rallying the resources of the world wide web to (re)tell these and other micro stories has led to unforeseen, turbulent, and even chaotic events for Nike. The stories are picked up by the print and wire media (Dobnik, 1997; Greenhouse, 1997a, b, c; Hentoff, 1997; Herbert 1996a, b, 1997 a to e; Keown, 1997; King, 1996; Manning, 1997; Reuters, 1997a to f), becomes the butt of late-night comedians' jokes, cartoon humor (Trudeau, 1997), provokes feminist groups (Alexander, 1997; Greenhouse, 1997a; Reuters, 1997e) and environmental groups to join Nike activism (Corporate Watch, 1998), and ignites members of Congress (Greenhouse, 1997a) to join in the fracas. Nike responds by developing its own web sites (Nike, 1997a to c) and media campaigns (Nike Press Releases, 1996 a to d, 1997 a, b) to discredit the activist stories.

Part II: Counter Stories of Utopian Progress. The postmodern narrative turn (Best & Kellner, 1997) is being lived out by entrepreneurial activists as they seek to expose the dualistic deterministic, uni-causal-effect scenarios, and plot structure of progress and evolution in Nike's story spin machine. This example puts an anti-democracy spin on Nike's economic development story (Silverstein and Cockburn, 1997):

The Jardine and Fleming [one of Hong Kong's largest investment houses] report is titled "Tracking Nike's Footprints Across Asia." The Jardine and Fleming report emphasizes: "If we delve deeper into where Nike has produced sneakers and its comments about political stability, we notice that Nike tends to favor strong governments. For example, Nike was a major producer in both Korea and Taiwan when these countries were largely under military rule. It currently favors China, where the Communists and only two men have led the country since 1949, and Indonesia where President Suharto has been in charge since 1967... Likewise, Nike never did move to the Philippines in a big way in the 1980s, a period when democracy there flourished. Thailand's democracy movement of 1992 also corresponded to Nike's downgrading of production in that country." When democracy rears its head, Nike takes a hike.

Thuyen Nguyen (July 2 4, 1997g) points out how the micro stories of worker abuse are rationalized-away by "bottom line" macro accounts:

The main reason can be found in the industry's business structure. The current relationship between buyers, contractors, subcontractors and inspectors often ignores the interest of workers. This might be the most profitable way to organize the industry but this structure gives no voice to workers. At each link on the manufacturing chain, there is always some other factors that are more important than the worker's interests i.e. profit, production, quality, shipping deadline or monthly quota. It becomes too easy for a company on this chain to pay attention to the bottom line rather than to worry about some poor women. Especially in an under-developed country, it is always easy to rationalize away the fact that she might be slapped occasionally, but without a job she would be hungry.

Philip Knight (1997) by the September, 1997 stockholders meeting has also restoried micro stories of corporal punishment into a more macro story of how developing countries are "growing up" with Nike's leadership.

The process of having managers from foreign countries overseeing those 500,000 workers is somewhat difficult for all of us, but over the next two or three years, you will see that process change as the knowledge of the workers gets better, the management talents grow up, and they come to be managed by countries of their own nation--by citizens of their own nation.

These stories and counter-stories set off chaos patterns. Philip Knight releases counter-spin stories to the media, consumers, and stockholders portraying activists as well financed and misinformed fringe groups who misuse the freedom of the internet (Knight, 1997; Nike Press Releases 1997 a, b). At Nike's (1997a to c; Knight, 1997) September 22, 1997 stockholders meeting, Philip Knight recognized Global Exchange by name:

But there are certain extremist organizations that we simply cannot have reasonable dialogue with, and one of those extremist organizations is Global Exchange which had a press conference today where they announced that they were issuing some report. I would suggest to you the timing is not a coincidence and it's not really a report--what it really is is a publicity stunt (emphasis, mine).

The local stories of worker abuse are embedded in a more macro story about the workings of global enterprise and economic development (Silverstein and Cockburn, 1997): Nike factory, Knight argues, should be viewed as a kind of internship, the skimpy paycheck a passport for a better future. "We give people a chance to work themselves out of poverty," Knight professed. "When their bellies are full and they've got a roof over their heads, only then can they think about changing their government." (As a lesson in the new global economy, Knight's company charges its workers for drinking water.) "Nike is US foreign policy in action," Knight wrote in Nike's 1996 annual report.

Nike is postmodern, since from one day to the next, Nike "morphs" - changing from corporation to an inspirational and educational storytelling space. Table One summaries the main story spin practices of Nike and the activists.

Part III: Spectacles. NikeTown is the ultimate in postmodern spectacle. Debord (1970) believed that the ideological and hegemonic aspects of the spectacle as it makes the illusion and image realer-than-real can be unmasked and demystified with deconstruction, radical critique, and re-contextualization.

Spectacle has two meanings:

In one sense, it refers to a media and consumer society, organized around the consumption of images, commodities, and spectacles. But the concept also refers to the vast institutional and technical apparatus of contemporary capitalism, to all the means and methods power employs, outside of direct force, which subject individuals to societal manipulation, while obscuring the nature and effects of capitalism's power and deprivations (Best & Kellner, 1997: 84).

One such force, and the focus of this study, is how Nike and activists use media spectacle to change the import and meaning of labor practice stories. For example, on November 1^st, 1996 Nike Inc. opened its most ambitious NikeTown store at 10 A.M. As celebrities paraded into the store they stepped over the picket lines of a hundred angry activists with signs reading "Just Don't Do It" and "Boycott Nike." In the October 31, 1996 press release the postmodern aspects of NikeTown are apparent.

Conceived and built as a building within a building - a "ship in a bottle" - the exterior building (the "bottle") is reminiscent of a classic New York school gymnasium. Inside NIKE has built a completely free-standing, modern second building (the ship") that houses five retail floors and includes 66,520-suare-feet of retail selling space. NikeTown show[s] the breadth of NIKE's footwear, apparel and accessory lines like no other retailer can.

The two buildings come together in a central, open atrium where the store goes through an architectural metamorphosis. Every twenty minutes, through interactive architecture, the store interior "morphs" -- changing from retail space to an inspirational/educational storytelling space (p. 1).

A computer-generated head shot endlessly transforms all the world's races, cultures and genders into one generic human. Stop. A futuristic atomic energy symbol morphs into the Nike swoosh Yeah, I get it. We are all one world with nothing to keep us apart. Technology is liberation. Individual achievement is the greatest rush ever. Just do it! Buy some sneakers, and do it fast (Sinclair, 1997).

Unsell (1998) adds to the postmodern description of NikeTown:

Nearby, a Lazy Susan of sneakers is rotating around another globe. (Nike rules the world?) Juxtaposed right next to these globes is a life-sized photo of Kenya's Running Team outfitted completely in Nike wear: the powers that be at Nike probably cannot even fathom the imperialist/vaguely racist aspect of this depiction.

NikeTown viewed as postmodern spectacle, also includes sports heritage, interactive media displays, sports score boards, satellite broadcasts of ongoing sporting events, and product innovation displays including sports archives and memorabilia such as eight of Carl Lewis' nine Olympic gold medals. The store is promoted as a "central meeting point for local athletes seeking to get involved in grassroots sports clubs, local events and clinics."

The Ernst & Young Story. There is one event that stands out as moving Nike from avoidance, denial and PR to change. On November 6^th, 1997, a report commissioned by Nike and conducted by Nike's sub-contracted auditors, Ernst & Young (1997) (they had been doing Nike factory audits since 1994), prepared on January 6^th, 1996, for the company's internal use only, was leaked by a "concerned" Nike employee to Dara O'Rourke (1997), an environmental consultant for the United Nations' Industrial Development Organization whose job involves inspecting factories in Vietnam. O'Rourke is also an activist for AMRC/HKCIC (1997a, b). I emphasize "concerned" employee, since Nike will recast this person as a "disgruntled" employee. The Ernst & Young audit contradicted Nike's public declarations to the stockholders and the media over the past five years (Knight, 1997). For example, Nike's own audit had shown seemingly undeniable violations of wage laws, overtime hours, safety, poor ventilation, exposure to toxic glues and solvents and violations of Vietnam environmental laws. Ernst & Young found that toluene, a carcinogen, was in the air at different sites in the factory studied, six to 177 times the amount allowed by Vietnamese regulations, which itself is about four times as strict as American toluene standards. Extended exposure to the carcinogen toluene is known to cause damage to the liver, kidneys, and central nervous system, and can lead to birth defects. Ernst & Young (1997) was also, for the first time, revealed to be "sub-contracted" by Nike and not acting as an "independent auditor or monitor" of Nike operations, as publicly claimed by Nike. This is contrary to how Philip Knight (1997) described the relationship to Ernst & Young in his 1997 speech to the stockholders.

In 1992, NIKE became the first company in our industry to have a Code of Conduct--in 1994, we became the first company, I believe in any industry, to have that Code of Conduct monitored by an independent third party. The party that we picked was a certified public accountant, Ernst & Young (Knight, September 22, 1997, emphasis mine).

As a sub-contractor, Nike dictates what is looked at, how it is measured, and controls the dissemination of the results of any legal violations. In its web documents (Nike, FAQ, 1997) Nike explains in some detail how its "independent monitoring system" works and re-asserts that Ernst & Young is an "independent monitor."

Independent auditors like Ernst and Young are trusted to judge company performance for shareholders, securities brokers and financial regulators in governments all over the world. Their most important asset is a reputation for independent and accurate assessment of corporate performance, which is precisely what NIKE demands and receives in every audit done. The auditing teams are comprised of local, host-country nationals who speak and live in the culture of the worker (1997 NikeWorkers web site).

Ernst & Young (1997) reported that employees do not read Nike's Code of Conduct and do not know exactly what "Nike" is. Another startling revelation is that 77 percent of the workers in this Bien Hoa City (Industrial Zone II near Ho Chi Minh City), South Vietnam shoe factory, suffered from respiratory problems because the Nike workplace is insufficiently ventilated and filled with carcinogens (Ernst & Young, 1997; Keown, 1997; O'Rourke, 1997; Greenhouse, 1997b). This includes the use of toxic and illegal (both in the U.S. and Vietnam) chemicals such as Benzene, a glue that has been linked to leukemia. A month earlier, on October 3^rd, 1997, AMRC/KHCIC (1997b) released a report that in two Nike factories (Yue Yuen and Wellco) in China, the toxic glue banned in the U.S. was being used by Nike employees who had no clue to its health hazards.

Nike's Response to Entrepreneurial Activism. On May 12^th, 1998, Phil Knight announced a new Nike global initiative at a National Press Conference in Washington D.C. As Campaign for Labor Rights (1998a) reported the event "Nike's promises represent a breakthrough and demonstrate the enormous power of grassroots activism:"

1) Nike committed to "expanding its current independent monitoring programs to include non-governmental organizations (NGOs), foundations and educational institutions and making summaries of the findings public."

2) Nike committed to "increasing the minimum age of footwear factory workers to 18, and the minimum age for all other light-manufacturing workers (apparel, accessories, equipment) to 16."

3) Nike committed to "adopting U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) indoor air quality standards for all footwear factories."

4) Nike commits to "expanding education programs, including middle and high school equivalency courses, for workers in all Nike footwear factories; increasing support of its current micro-enterprise loan program to 1,000 families each in Vietnam, Indonesia, Pakistan and Thailand; and funding university research and open forums to explore issues related to global manufacturing and responsible business practices such as independent monitoring and air quality standards."

Is this an activist victory? While admitting problems in Nike plants takes Phil Knight beyond avoidance and denial, it remains to be seen, in Nike's actions, if this will go beyond PR tactics to constitute a change in labor and environmental practices. While Knight's commitments may represent change in strategy that will affect the entire sports apparel industry, he had nothing new to say about paying poverty wages to 500,000 Asian workers. Global Exchange had this reaction (Campaign for Labor Rights, 1998b):

Substandard wages keep factory workers in poverty and force them to work excessive amounts of overtime to fulfill their basic needs. Nike refused to acknowledge its responsibility  to pay workers a living wage. Right now, Nike has only committed itself to paying the local minimum wage, which is too often set below subsistence needs as countries compete to attract foreign investment.

Conclusions

In this paper, I have presented stories and examples of spectacle to show the spin behavior of Nike and activists. While activists are not generally considered in the entrepreneurial literature to be entrepreneurs, they do appear to engage en entrepreneurial strategies. They have used the web to organize media spectacles (web sites and boycotts) that have invited media reporters, academics, students, consumers, and investors to pressure Nike into response patterns that would not have been predictable a few years earlier. It is not whose story is best, mine or others in organizations, "but who has the power to make his story stick as one that others will choose to live by or in" (White, 1987: 167). Indeed, up until 1996, Nike seemed to easily side-step the antics of activists. But, by 1997, Nike had felt the pinch, and had begun to take on activists, such as berating Ms. Medea Bejamin and the Global Exchange in Phil Knight's speeches, press releases, and even set up a web site critiquing activists as mere fringe groups exploiting the freedom afforded by the worldwide web. But, with the April 18^th,1996 and 1997 world wide boycotts, pressure from investors, the release of the Ernst and Young audit on the web, and the expanded big time press media coverage, Nike's CEO Phil Knight made major concessions in May, 1998. To explain these events, I have used both postmodern and chaos theories. While I along with other activists are skeptical about Nike claims for change, I think it is possible that out of the disorder, there may emerge a new order of labor and environmental practices in Nike sub-contract factories.

Space Jam's juxtaposition of Michael Jordan with the Warner Brothers toon characters, Bugs Bunny and Wile Coyote, as well as the ever-morphing NikeTown, are examples of postmodern fiction and architecture. Nike is also postmodern because of the use of media spectacles. But, Nike is also a modernist organization in the most, turn of the century, Victorian capitalist sense of domination and exploitation of labor. Nike uses spin control stories and media spectacle to change the import and meaning of labor practice stories advanced by activists.

In contrast to much of the writing about postmodern organization, I have tried to look into the abyss at the dark side of postmodern management. Hern and Parkin (1993: 154) for example, argue that "much postmodernism ignores or plays down oppression." Power and oppression gets reduced to the play of differences, relativism, or nihilism. From a critical postmodern perspective, Nike's ideology accumulates capital for privileged white males such as Philip Knight, while de-privileging low-paid working-class women and children in Third World countries, by invoking linguistic resources. I think that the way that Nike is storying itself as a romantic, entrepreneurial hero, living the history of Western capitalism and single-handedly responsible for the economic development of the third world economym can not be sustained in the face of increasingly circulated stories of Third World labor camps for women workers. Yet, like Wile Coyote, with each revelation of the tragic accounts of Nike workers released by activists onto the web and into the media, Nike rebounds by putting a more romantic spin on such stories. Activists are presenting Nike and Phil Knight as tragic characters, like Wile Coyote and the Acme corporation, whose promises of genius and ingenuity result in crisis.

In sum, I suggest that postmodern and chaos theories can help illuminate the hyperreal media image of Nike heroism and unmask the devastating reality-effects of sweatshop practices on Asian women and children. But, this exposure may not be enough to change consumer tastes. Nike is the poster boy of global market capitalism and "Marx's nightmare of a totally commodified society" now more real than reality-itself (Best & Kellner, 1997: 107).

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¹ Terms at the end of some references refer to web sites where these documents can be found.

• GE= Global Exchange http://www.geocitieslis/5232
• BN = Boycott Nike http://www.saigon.com/~nike/
• BN2 = a second Boycott Nike site