THE SEXUAL POLITICS OF SNEAKERS:

“COMMON GROUND” AND ABSENT-REFERENT STORIES IN THE NIKE

DEBATE

David M. Boje*

New Mexico State University

Management Department 3DJ Box 30001

Las Cruces, NM 88011-5056

505-646-1201 (office)

505-532-1693 (home)

505-646-1372 (fax)

dboje@nmsu.edu

*The author would like to thank Carroll Stephens and Grace Ann Rosile for helpful comments and critiques. I am of course responsible for what now appears.

ABSTRACT

A recent debate between Nike and its critics was published in Organization and Environment (Wokutch, 2001), together with an introduction claiming four points of “common ground.” Agreement on four points is imputed regarding human-rights improvements at Nike’s subcontract facilities. I suggest that this “common ground” approach is problematic for four reasons: First, some “agreement” stories are open to alternative interpretations. Second, the privileging of a few areas of agreement is accomplished at the expense of much-larger areas of disagreement. Third, all the topic areas, on both sides of the debate, are in dire need of more research to verify the opinions of the debaters. Finally, I conclude that there is an “absent referent,” spoken about but missing from the debate—namely, the workers themselves.

INTRODUCTION

In every stitch of a Nike shoe or garment inheres the untold story of women workers’ human-rights struggle—what I call the sexual politics of sneakers (cf. Adams, 2000a). That summarizes my reaction to the debate between Amanda Tucker and Todd McKean, of Nike’s Labor Practices Department, and Jeff Ballinger, of the activist organization Press for Change. I felt compelled to respond to the debate because I conduct research on Nike from a critical stance (Boje, 2001a), and I have been on academic panels with one of the debaters (Boje, 2000, 2001b). When I watched the videotape of the debate at the International Association of Business and Society in March 2000, it seemed that much went unsaid; when I read session chair Rich Wokutch’s (2001) re-presentation of the debate in Organization and Environment, it seemed that much was claimed which did not take place. I am very pleased that O&E offers a forum in which lively exchange of ideas about significant issues such as Nike’s record on human rights can occur.1

In his introduction to the transcript of the videotaped debate, which was written ex post for O&E, Rich makes a number of claims about “common ground” between Nike opponents and proponents that I believe are not only unsubstantiated by the debate, but refuted by Rich’s chosen discussant, Jim Weber. Even if the asserted common ground had been achieved in the debate, I would argue that the consensus was based on inadequate evidence. And the voices that could provide evidence—the voices that are absent but perhaps matter most—are those of the approximately 700,000 women workers in Nike’s Southeast Asian and Latin American subcontract factories. Carol Adams (1994, 2000a) contends that the phenomenon of missing voices, or absent referents, is likely to occur when conditions involving marginalized females are under discussion: The women are not allowed to speak for themselves, but other parties may speak for them. In scrutinizing Rich’s introduction to the debate, and the statements of the debaters, I am questioning not the veracity of the participants, but the very processes of inquiry, synthesis and summary that are the foundations of academic knowledge; in particular, I am questioning epistemology and ontology as servants of practice.

COMMON GROUND OR CONTESTED TERRITORY?

“Common ground” between Nike and its critics is the overarching theme of Rich’s introduction to his (2001) O&E article. However, the term “common ground” appears nowhere in Rich’s videotaped opening remarks to the debate, nor in the text of the debate itself. “Common ground” is first mentioned by discussant Jim Weber, when he says he heard none in the debate. I agree with Jim: The two parties to the debate—Nike officials and Nike opponent—seem to me to represent highly disparate vantage points. Even when the parties do agree, the very convergence serves to gloss over major areas of dispute.

The common-ground theme, as articulated by Rich, is an after-the-fact reframing of the debate, but not at all a surprising one. Most of us who teach in business schools were trained to follow a positivist epistemological stance, in which the existence of value-neutral, empirically verifiable facts is assumed. Rich demonstrates his positivist training when he takes a “neutral” posture, claiming to offer neither “seal of approval” nor “condemnation of Nike’s labor practices.” His positivist bent becomes even more clear when he says, “I believe the text [of the debate] speaks for itself,” which can be construed to mean that all rational readers will derive the same meaning from the “neutral’ text. My thesis (which is as taken for granted within critical postmodernism as value neutrality and empirical verifiability are within positivism) is that all texts are open to multiple interpretations, depending upon the vantage point of the knowledge consumer, and that all texts are open to framing and reframing (e.g. Alvesson & Deetz, 1996). So, yes, as Rich says, the text of the debate certainly does speak, but its meaning is far from unequivocal. Rich’s editorial reframing, which shifts the debate from one that had the central purpose (as stated in his videotaped remarks prior to the debate) of determining whether Nike “(has) acted responsibly in monitoring and influencing labor practices in subcontractor plants in Southeast Asia,” to a “search for common ground between Nike and their critics,” exemplifies the illusory nature of “value-free” knowledge production.

Just as most of us were explicitly trained in positivist epistemology, many of us at least implicitly were taught to follow functionalist ontology (e.g. Parsons, 1951, 1956). Like positivism (of which it is a subset), functionalism takes as given value neutrality and empirical verifiability; further, functionalism assumes a unity of interest among members of social systems, including business organizations. In other words, functionalism is a consensus theory that assumes the common ground which Rich seeks. The critical postmodernist vantage-point perspective, in contrast, is a dissensus model, which emphasizes that different groups within social systems experience the systems in radically differing manners (Alvesson & Deetz, 1996). Critical postmodernists see divergent interests where functionalists see commonalities. I argue that by presuming “commonalities,” which actually represent the interests and vantage points of the powerful, functionalists ignore the voices of the marginalized.

Rich’s introduction posits four common-ground truth claims (i.e. claims that he believes the debaters agreed upon). I restate the claims in the form of questions, and query a.) whether substantive agreement between the debaters did occur, b.) whether such consensus would have occurred if the actual parties whom the debaters re-presented had been permitted to present their own views, and c.) whether the privileging of a few areas of consensus deflects attention from much-more-numerous areas of dissensus. The four common-ground questions are:

1.) Was there improvement in Nike’s subcontractor facilities as a result of external criticism?

2.) Did Nike become more responsive to external criticism over time?

3.) Was Nike’s behavior vis-à-vis its subcontractor labor force worse than that of peer organizations such as Reebok and Adidas?

4.) Is the employment of child labor by Nike subcontractors a widespread problem?

Since neither party to the debate made much reference to the two available empirical studies then available –Jeff’s briefly-cited Urban Community Mission (1999) study, and the Global Alliance study (CSDS 2001) that Amanda says she prefers--I will base my evaluation of their level of consensus primarily upon textual analysis (e.g. Habermas, 1984 and Derrida, 1976) of their videotaped dialogue as transcribed in O&E (Wokutch, 2001).

The first two questions, which are closely related, center around improvement and criticism—concepts that are evaluated quite distinctly by Todd and Amanda on the one hand, and Jeff on the other. Amanda cites “improvements” in factory conditions that occurred as a result of a safety-audit instrument implemented by management. Todd says that the workers with whom he spoke perceive the conditions at Nike (and peer organizations such as Reebok and Adidas) as an “improvement” over working conditions in companies that produce for the local economy. Amanda says that even if conditions “improved” to the point that they were “safe and hospitable,” opposition to Nike would still be strong by labor protectionists. (Never mind that protectionism is mentioned nowhere else in the debate and is not an issue of concern for those who oppose Nike on human-rights grounds.) Todd discusses efforts that Nike has made over time to bring in external critics such as Medea Benjamin and Dara O’Rourke. Amanda states that, when she joined Nike in August 1999, she saw workplaces that were “clean and healthy and provided good job opportunities.” Todd implies that Nike’s problems are in the past: “We have on occasion been criticized, and correctly in many cases, about our attitudes towards [workers’ rights] issues many years ago;” Todd goes on to claim that Nike has “tried to rectify” the problems, but he admits that some critics would still assert that the company hasn’t “gone quite far enough.” Jeff’s view is different. According to him, actual improvements did not take place even after a new contract was signed in Indonesia. “There were no improvements,” he states flatly. Moreover, in his off-site conversations with workers, he finds that “they (i.e. Nike) haven’t fixed it. …The workers want these contractors to sit down with them. I’m sorry it’s the one refrain I keep coming back to, but it’s what I keep hearing from the workers. They are alienated. They are going to remain in this state of alienation until somebody talks to them and you set these things out in a contract.”

From this text, Rich draws the conclusion in his introduction that “There were a couple of issues on which Todd, Amanda, and Jeff seem to have agreed. One was that conditions in Nike subcontractor facilities have improved as a result of criticisms that have been directed at Nike. Related to this, the speakers also seem to have agreed that Nike initially was not particularly adept at responding to criticisms but that they have gotten better over time.” In other words, Rich believes that both parties to the Nike debate have achieved common ground on questions 1.) and 2.). But my analysis of the text indicates divergences rather than convergences of opinion. Debaters are talking about workers in different countries, and talking to different workers, who see investigators as company or as union. Discussant Jim Weber is emphatic that he does not see common ground either. He says: “My general conclusion is…(ellipsis in original transcript) Have you been listening? I don’t know if there’s a common ground! And I don’t know, certainly, if each side has discovered a common ground yet. … I mentioned to…[a conference participant] that I did not see common ground. …If you listen to the language between the two groups, no, I don’t know of a common ground.” In fairness, I should point out that Rich by no means portrays the two parties to the Nike debate as having identical views. But he perceives their differences as quantitative rather than qualitative, as a matter of degree of improvement over time: “Todd and Amanda are clearly of the opinion,” Rich says, “that [improvement] has been significantly greater than Jeff believes is the case.” Despite this discrepancy of degree, Rich nonetheless thinks Nike and its opponents are on common ground with regards to questions 1.) and 2.).

In discussion of common-ground question 3.), issues of framing again arise. Todd and Amanda, in separate statements, conjoin Nike with Reebok and Adidas (all three companies, of course, produce for an international market). The question posed by Rich is whether Nike has a significantly worse human-rights record than its closest competitors in the sports-shoe and -apparel industry, or whether Nike has been singled out for activist targeting because of its especially visible consumer profile. Neither Jeff and Amanda nor Todd addresses this query. Instead, they compare the human-rights performance of international producers to that of an indigenous Indonesian producer, Bata shoe company. According to Amanda, Nike workers prize such company perks as the education programs that Nike offers and indigenous producers do not. Although Jeff does not address the Nike vs. Reebok/Adidas question directly, he does say that his interviews with the workers indicate that their key concerns are a living wage and humane working conditions rather than perks (Urban Community Mission, 1999). Jeff adds that the UCM study shows that conditions at Bata are superior to those at Nike. My own empirical analysis (Boje, 2001a), which compares the data presented in the study that Jeff refers to (Urban Community Alliance 1999) with the Global Alliance study (CSDS 2001), indicates that Bata’s wages for full-time employees are better than Nike’s, and that significantly fewer complaints about working conditions are expressed at Bata than at Nike. In my research (Boje 2001a) at the Korean-owned Kuk Dong Nike-subcontractor factory near Mexico City, where sports apparel is made for both Nike and Reebok, I asked workers the direct question, “ How does the Kuk Dong factory compare with other factories in the area?” The workers’ response was that conditions at Kuk Dong were not as good as conditions at other area manufacturers. In sum, Jeff might agree with Todd and Amanda that Nike is no worse than its peer companies, but given the reframing that took place on both sides, judgment was never passed on the question, so no common ground can be imputed: Common ground is lost within the broadened frame of reference.

The final area on which Rich asserts that Amanda and Todd agree with Jeff is that child labor is no longer much of a problem at Nike. This common ground between the debate parties does appear to be genuine. Even Jeff says that there “never was much to the charge,” except for some early problems Nike had in Pakistan that were subsequently corrected. I do not at all intend to minimize the gravity of child labor as a profound form of human-rights abuse when I say that concurrence on a single issue is insufficient to construct a broad claim of common ground. However, the opinion shared by the debaters that child labor no longer takes place at Nike begs the question of what constitutes childhood: It is true that employment of pre-teen children at Nike has almost stopped in some countries—particularly Pakistan and Indonesia. But there is a missing contextual lens through which the same data might be viewed: The employment of 14-to-16-year-olds in factories (notably those in Mexico and Cambodia) continues to be documented in numerous reports (Kenyon, 2000; Verite, 2001; Behind the Label, 2001) in Mexico. Most importantly, the consensus among the debaters on the child-labor issue deflects attention from their dissensus on the other three issues. Overall, the text of the debate reveals not common ground, but contested territory.

ABSENT-REFERENT STORIES AND THE SEXUAL POLITICS OF

SNEAKERS

It is an axiom of textual deconstruction that what is left unsaid--the silences—are at least as important to understanding as what is uttered (Derrida, 1976). So far, I have focused primarily on what was said and/or written by Rich, Amanda, Todd, Jeff and Jim. But the Nike workers, whose lives are the true subject of the debate, never tell their stories directly. They do not speak; they are spoken for. They do not present; they are re-presented. Rich’s common-ground frame itself silences the personal narratives of the women workers, since it assumes that their voices are essentially the same as those of Nike management.

According to Adams (2000a, 2000b) the determination of who is allowed to tell a story is a political decision. When women are not permitted to speak on their own behalf, they become “absent referents,” (Derrida, 1976; further explained in Fox, 2000) and sexual politics are operating. Hence I view the Nike debate as illustrating the sexual politics of sneakers. Adams (1994, 2000a) draws the analogy between “meat” eating, with animals the absent referents, and the oppression of women , who are often compared to or paired with animals sexually. Adams’ (1994, 1997, 2000a) feminist-vegetarian critical theory explores how scientists in the “meat” industry universalize referents of nonhuman animals as just “meat,” while constructing a political economy in which women also become “meat.”

The concept of absent referents raises the concern that we as social scientists universalize workingwomen’s narratives into a debate among academic panelists, industry spokespersons, and one activist. It is important to consider how our scientific language (and story) enable the construction of absent referents by avoiding use of their names, couching debate in terms of abstract codes of conduct, sanitizing language to assuage emotion, and construing women as factors of garment production (Adams 2000b). In the Nike debate, workingwomen are physically separate from the academic discourse; they become absent referents as each of the panelists re-presents the women’s stories by substituting his or her filtered, second-hand story. Both Amanda and Jeff claim that they have had intensive conversations with workers. Amanda, in particular, believes that she had special access to the women because, as a female, she was able to sleep in the workers’ dormitories. (Perhaps, implicitly, she is also claiming that the women confided in her because their gender commonality trumps their class differences). Jeff states that he encourages workers to speak freely by talking to them off of company property. But Amanda and Jeff hear different stories: Amanda says that “a lot of them want education and the kinds of programs we’re seeking to put into place.” Jeff, on the other hand, hears that the workers are alienated and unable to express their demands to management. However, nowhere in the text of the debate do either Amanda or Jeff ever quote a worker directly.

Would even the illusion of common ground have been achieved if the young Asian and Latin American women who work in Nike’s subcontract factories had been present at the debate, or if the women’s stories had been narrated verbatim? My field research (Boje 2001a) suggests not: The worker’ interests—a living wage, safe and humane working conditions, bargaining—are juxtaposed to those of management.

CONCLUSION:

INQUIRY, DUALITY, AND SYNTHESIS

The question around which the debate inquiry was originally structured, “Has Nike acted responsibly in monitoring and influencing labor practices in its Southeast Asian subcontract plants? ” represents a duality. Rich’s attempt to achieve common ground is a synthesis—one way of resolving a duality. However, the synthetic process by its nature elides or even erases differences. I believe that the differences among the parties to the debate, including its absent referents, are vastly more important than any convergences.

Stories that are taken by Rich as proof of common ground have alternative interpretations, and the voices of the subjects of the debate are absent altogether. This contested territory, along with the silenced voices of the workers, indicates to me the need for new research. Evidently neither party to the debate was satisfied with the research available to them at the time of the debate, for neither made much use of this data. Perhaps it is time to heed the advice of Mary Parker Follett (1941)—herself an underrepresented albeit not-wholly-silenced female voice in the organization-science literature—who called for action research conducted in the field jointly by management, workers, and unions. Follett (1941, p. 78) counseled: “The joint responsibility of management and labor is an interpenetrating responsibility, and is utterly different from responsibility divided into sections, management having some and labor having some.” The research now being conducted on labor practices and human-rights conditions in Southeast Asian and Latin American subcontract facilities that produce for multinational markets is very bifurcated. For instance, the UCM [david and grace ann-we need full cite] study of Indonesian factories is sponsored by labor, and the Global Alliance study {david and grace ann-we need full cite} of factories in the same area was contracted for by Nike. Both of these studies do collect workers’ stories, but both reduce them to a few summary quotes and statistics. No wonder Jeff says in the debate, “[Nike] has done its own studies, I’ve done my own studies, and… it is a ‘he said, she said’ kind of situation and it’s not very helpful.” There is danger in such methodology. Until women workers are allowed to speak their own stories, all sides—mine included---are complicit in the sexual politics of sneakers, for we narrate over absent referents and thus negate any possibility of achieving common understanding, let alone common ground.

Endnote

1 My own connection to the debate is as follows: I enter as an unnamed character/referent in Rich’s introduction to the debate transcript. I am one of the 25 people to whom Rich sent copies of the videotape of the debate; I am also one of the few who openly wondered whether Rich’s stipulation (negotiated with Nike) that the tape and the information contained therein be used only for classroom instructional purposes would keep discourse which ought to be public outside the arena of public review. In preparation for my own panel presentation with Nike representative Amanda Tucker at the Academy of Management, (Boje, 2000), I transcribed and rebutted portions of the tape, and posted this material on my website (http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje). By email, Rich questioned my ethics in violating his stipulation and his intellectual property rights. I then removed the transcription from the web, but I did not remove the critiques. Therefore, I also figure in the debate as “one of the reasons” that Rich made the transcript available for public review. I thank Rich for doing so, and O&E editor John Jermier for providing a publication outlet.

References

Adams, C. J. (1994). Neither man nor beast: Feminism and the defense of animals. New York: Continuum.

Adams, C. (1997). 'Mad Cow' Disease and the Animal Industrial Complex: An Ecofeminist Analysis. Organization and Environment, 10, No 1, March, pp. 26-51.

Adams, Carol J. (2000a). The Sexual Politics of Meat: A feminist-vegetarian critical theory. New York: Continuum.

Adams, Carol J. (2000b). A feeling for the language: Comments on ‘Dunayer's in the name of science. Organization & Environment. Vol 13 (4): 453-459.

Alvesson, Mats and Stanley Deetz (1996). Critical Theory and Postmodernism Approaches to Organizational Studies. In S. Clegg, C. Hardy and W. Nord, eds., Handbook of Organization Studies. London: Sage, 191-217.

Behind the Labor (2001). Video transcript of child worker. http://www.behindthelabel.org/nike0101/video/transcript1.html Video at http://www.behindthelabel.org/nike0101/video/index.htm

Boje, David M. (2001a). Several papers are posted to the following web site:

http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/AA/index.html .

Boje, D. M. (2001b). The Anti-Sweatshop Movement and Corporate Codes of Conduct. January 1 panel presentation, International Relations Research Association, New Orleans, Session S19 "" January 5^th.

Boje, D. M. (2000). Nike Just in Time. Panel presentation for Showcase Symposium Time and Nike. Academy of Management Meetings, August, Toronto.

CSDS Center for Societal Development Studies Atma Jaya Catholic University, Jakarta Indonesia (2001) prepared for Global Alliance for Workers and Communities; An interim report: workers’ needs and aspirations in nine Nike contract factories in Indonesia. Accessed March 9, 2001 http://www.nikebiz.com/labor/nike_gla_report.pdf

Derrida, Jacques (1976). Of Grammatology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Follett, M. P. (1941). Dynamic Administration: The Collected Papers of Mary Parker Follett. Metcalf, H.C. and Urwick, L. (Eds.). NY: Harper & Bros.

Fox, Michael A. (2000). The case against animal experimentation: Comments on Dunayer's ‘in the name of science.’ Organization & Environment. Vol. 13 (4): 463-467.

Habermas, Jurgen (1984). The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 1. T. McCarthy, tr. Boston: Beacon Press.

HKCIC (2000). Hong Kong Christian Industrial Committee. http://www.uniteunion.org/pressbox/nike-report2.html

Kenyon, Paul (2000). GAP Nike - No Sweat? BBC transcript of video interview with Todd McLean aired 15 October. http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/audio_video/programmes/panorama/transcripts/transcript_15_10_00.txt

Knight, Phil (1998). Speech to the National Press Club in Washington D.C. on May 12, 1998.

Myers-Spiers, Rebecca (1999). Not a piece of meat: Carol J Adams and the feminist - vegetarian connection Off Our Backs, Washington; Dec, Volume: 29 (11): 6-7.

Parsons, Talcott (1951). The Social System. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Parsons, Talcott (1956). Suggestions for a Sociological Approach to the Study of Organizations. Administrative Science Quarterly 1, 63-85 and 225-239.

UCM Urban Community Mission (1999) “Cruel Treatment Working for Nike in Indonesia” UCM Survey Report, December 1999. Accessed March 9, 2001

http://summersault.com/~agj/clr/alerts/crueltreatmentworkingfornikeinindonesia.html This is a partial summary. Download the complete document at http://summersault.com/~agj/clr/alerts/letters/survey.rtf

(Quotes in the present essay are from the download version).

Verité (2001). Comprehensive Factory Evaluation Report on Kukdong International Mexico, S. A. De C. V. Atlixco, Puebla, Mexico (Audit Date February 5-7, 2001). http://nikebiz.com/media/nike_verite_report.pdf

Wokutch, Richard E. (2000). Nike Debate Tape transcript – reply and action. Email dated August 31^st.

Wokutch, Richard E. (2001). Nike and its Critics: Beginning a Dialogue. Organization and Environment, 14, 207-237.

David M. Boje, professor of management, New Mexico State University, has published many articles on Nike, given a dozen conference presentations, debated Nike executives (http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje), and leads 45 scholars who also study Reebok, Adidas, and New Balance (http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/AA/). David is division-chair elect of the Research Methods Division of Academy of Management, edits Tamara: The Journal of Critical Postmodern Organization Science (http://www.zianet.com/boje/tamara) and Journal of Organizational Change Management. Books include Managing in the Postmodern World (1993) with Dennehy; Postmodern Management and Organizational Theory (1996), with Gephart & Thatchenkery; and Narrative Research Methods for Organization & Communication Studies (Sage, 2001).

ADDRESS:

David M. Boje, Ph.D.

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