ACADEMY OF MANAGEMENT 2000 ALL-ACADEMY SYMPOSIUM PROPOSAL. Session took place on August 9th to an overflowing ball room of the York Hotel.

Our topic "Time and Nike" focuses on how Nike Corporation rearticulates and otherwise renarrates labor and ecological practices in novel and seemingly progressive ways, applying what we view as retrospective reconstructions of its past practices and opportune promises of exemplary future practices. For example, in 1992, Nike drafted the first Code of Conduct in its industry after being accused of child labor in the manufacture of its soccer balls, hired a wage study by Dartmouth after being accused of paying poverty wages, hired former Ambassador Andrew Young to inspect its Asian factories after frequent news accounts of alleged brutality and harassment in its subcontracting factories, and applied in 1999 for ISO14000 status and is implementing OSHA health and safety requirements in its 450 overseas subcontracting factories after a whistle blowing release of a 1997 Ernst and Young environmental audit report. In each case, Nike reinvents and renarrates its public image just in time. There is a need to research this process, because to most of the consumer public and to most students of organization, the issues are just too undecidable to draw any sound conclusions. Our symposium explores theories of time and narrative that hopefully gives some theoretical and empirical insight into Nike's practices.

Nike, labor practices, environmental practices

The symposium format will be two (2) hours. This time will be divided in the following way: (a) 10 minutes for introduction of the panel members and the symposium topic; (b) 65 minutes for presentations (three presentations @ 15 minutes and 1 presentation @ 20 minutes); (c) 15 minutes for the Nike response; (d) 10 minutes for the discussant; (e) 15 minutes for audience questions; and (e) 5 minutes for conclusion and closing.

Time and Nike

Overview Statement and Introductory Presentation

David Boje will introduce the panelists and will then briefly introduce kairos in relation to three themes on Time that transverse the six presentations. 

NIKE JUST IN TIME  - The Nike Narrative is Out of Time - by David Boje

For background see Nike Just In Time Gameboard 

And Paper Nike Just In Time by D. Boje

part of Boje's Second slide shown at the Toronto Meeting. For complete slide press here

Source: Adbusters

Play the Just In Time Nike Gameboard (Second Slide shown by Boje)

Boje: I would like to begin by introducing Ms. Amanda Tucker of Nike's Labor Practices Department. She will give a response after each presentation.

"Amanda Tucker – joined Nike as senior manager of labor practices in August 1999 [a year ago today (the date of today's Toronto Academy session)]. She overseas the independent monitoring of Nike overseas contract manufacturing globally and represents Nike’s Fair Labor Association. Prior to Nike Ms. Tucker worked for the International Labor Organization (ILO), was senior program manager for International Program for Elimination of Child Labor in Africa and a program in Southeast Asia and Africa to transition children from work to school. She has a B.A. in political science from Stanford and two graduate degrees form the Institute for Political Science in Paris and College of Rouge, Belgium" (Note this is word for word the same introduction as March 17, 2000 video transcript of  professor Richard Wokutch's intro of Tucker to the International Association of Business & Society (IABS meeting in Burlington, Vermont). 

Boje: "Rather than Just Do IT, Nike's new slogan should be "Just In Time." Nike is JUST IN TIME!  As Dusty Kidd, Nike's director of labor practices, puts it, "It's all about a process, an evolution to get better" (press here).  Nike has its own special phenomenology of time and the word "just," one that does not match this Adbusters spoof ad. I will argue that Nike JUST IN TIME has two meanings.  

First, it means moving toward being JUST, to having justice in its labor practices. 

Nike may be BEING JUST, but it is justice in NIKE TIME.  It is a slow capitulation to critique of Phil Knight's strategic plan in his 1962 term paper at Stanford University ("Can Japanese Sports Shoes do to German Sports Shoes what Japanese Cameras did to German Cameras? " It is my contention that Nike's basic strategy has changed very little since that term paper.  In Nike-time, it is a justice that is cautiously and narrowly implemented when the context of industry, economy and consumer fashion merit some new strategic posture. Herein lies the controversy. For according to its critics, Nike's justice is just too slow, moving at the speed of a glacier and in the area of living wages, frozen in time. For Example Yaju Dharmarajah, a member of Human Rights Alliance, says "they're reacting like presidential campaigns -- a lot of talk but little action." (Schwennesen, April 28, 1999).

Second, JUST can just be about the kairos of time.  Nike renarrates its corporate identity JUST IN TIME.  In this second meaning, Nike is not being JUST, Nike is JUST renarrating. Just is JUST just, and not about justice. Critics contend Nike advertising tells a new story of its self JUST IN TIME to avoid a collapse in consumer and investor confidence in the last decade. Critics argue that when the Nike focus group indicators say 12 year old girls are agreeing with the Adbusters 2000 ad suggesting Nike is no longer the hip brand, and that Nike is associated with in-justice, then it is just time to renarrate corporate identity, to communicate whatever consumers expect a MNC to be.  And to the critics of Nike, this means no change at all in justice, just a change in the $750 million dollar annual cover story; just a campaign to look just, or promise justice, without being just. At least not in OUR time!"  

Summary - I (Boje) introduced the JUST IN TIME Nike Gameboard cover page to the audience to give some into to the kind of discourse struggles that we as researchers face in sorting through the fact, myth, and spin control of Nike's public responses.  The game is a postmodernist's critique of the dark side of Nike's postmodern organization culture. The slide remained on the overhead during the first segment of Amanda's remarks to the Academy of Management. 

END OF BOJE INTRO.

THE FOLLOWING WAS NOT PRESENTED. It is background to Boje's and then Landrum's presentations. 

And, we can combine the two meanings. Nike surrenders to being just, one time fragment at a time, but not in every area.  Nike in terms of kairos appears to rearticulate its strategic posture at highly opportune moments that are just in time, by apparently retrospectively grasping together its public images in sequentially reinvented labor and ecological practices. Nike-time is a postponement of being just until the last possible moment. 

I think the two meanings of JUST IN TIME are merging. From a Herbert Marcuse perspective, the irony is that meaning number one happens, even if meaning number two is just corporate posture.  That is, over time --- time, the posture of just in time, the mimicking of justice in time and is being acted out; Nike slips into an identity Just In Time that is Justice In Time.  In time, Nike discovers it is just after all. I have argued that Nike has had six Just In Time shifts in strategic posture. 

• Response 1 (1962 to 1990--Denial-Head in Sand  "Not our problem" blame the subcontractors. "We don't make sneakers, we design and market them. These are just not our factories." 
• Response 2 (1990-1991)--Green Gloss (Green Wash) - Public relations Campaigns "Just Do it" by making sweatshops part of an Asian country's economic development and what any multinational corporation does to compete in the global economy.
• Response 3 (1992-1993)--Strategic awareness - Just Do It is Minimal Compliance with fleeting Internal managerial recognition of need for environmental and social change in labor practices. Nike invents its code of conduct just as U.S. Congress is holding hearings about sneaker manufacturing practices in Indonesia. Nike campaigns that it is good enough for now given the cultural differences between Beaverton and Jakarta.
• Response 4 (1994-1996)--Strategic Acquisition - Proactive --Voluntary environmental and social audit -- such as hiring Ernst & Young accounting firm to verify subcontractor compliance with code of conduct. There is no data that audits were being implemented. Saying they were being done was enough. 
• Response 5 (1997-1998)--Flagship Implementation - Understands Sustainability and Accountability with 1997 release of internal Ernst & Young audit report of Vietnam factory (Tae Kwang Vina). By 1998, Phil Knight publicly changes Nike's core mission to  include green goals (such as ISO 14000 certification for all subs) and social goals (such as OSHA and micro loans), and even retires "Just Do It" image in favor of the new "I Can" Nike identity. 
• Response 6 (1999-2000)--the New I CAN! replaces "Just Do IT" which has become tainted by accelerated activist culture jamming and campus protests that echo the 1960s, and an image of hyper-competitiveness in its sports marketing (at Olympics and in contracts to sports stars and universities) that is no longer fashionable to most consumers of the "I Can" generation.

Today we are concerned with the veracity and integrity of the I CAN! RESPONSE #6 (1999-2000). Nike must convince global citizens that its code of conduct prevents it from subcontracting with sweatshops. Nike positions two global campaigns: the Fair Labor Association (FLA) and the Global Alliance for Workers and Communities initiative. The WRC (Workers Rights Consortium) organizes its monitoring and through campus protests at over a hundred universities uses sit ins, debates, and street theater to get administrators to revoke FLA contracts in favor of WRC ones. Some universities adopt both. Phil Knight and Nike retaliate by canceling $50 million in funding to University of Oregon and Brown University.  With I CAN! Nike takes its campaign to academia. 

Have I got solutions?  Students and managers hate it when I critique Nike without offering solutions. For 10 Solutions to Time and Nike (Press here). 

References (other references appear in lists below).

Ballinger, Jeff (1997) "Introduction" (pp. 6-24). In Ballinger, Jeff & Claes Olsson (eds.) Behind the Swoosh: The Struggle of Indonesians Making Nike Shoes. Uppsala, Sweden: Global Publications Foundations and International Coalition for Development Action (IDDA). ISBN 91-973157-0-2. 

Boje, David M. (2000) Paper Nike Just In Time by D. Boje

Carty, Victoria (1999) Emerging post-industrial, postmodern trends and the implications for social change: A case-study of Nike Corporation. Unpublished Dissertation, The University of New Mexico, Sociology department (July). 

Clifford, Mark (1992) "Spring in Their Step." Far Eastern Economic Review, November 5, 1992. 

MNBC (2000) "Report criticizes Chinese ‘sweatshops’" May 9th. (press here). 

Summary of KEY RESOLUTIONS AT THE TORONTO ACADEMY OF MANAGEMENT.

1. Amanda Tucker of Nike Labor Practice asked the academics in the audience if there was anyone present who would tour China to determine the facts of the situation. David Boje did in fact volunteer before all present to pay his own way and to go their during the Christmas break at the end of this year. What remains is to obtain Nike's permission to visit its sub-contract factories (Please contact dboje@nmsu.edu if you would like to participate in this research). 

2. Amanda Tucker of Nike Labor Practices department asked the audience of the Academy of Management if anyone was willing to take up a collection of money to pay for independent auditing of Nike factories.  If not Nike would continue to utilize Price Waterhouse Coopers, Global Alliance, and Fair Labor Association. David Boje put ten Canadian Dollars in this collection (please contact dboje@nmsu.edu if you would like to make a contribution to this independent monitoring fund).

3. Amanda Tucker of the Nike Labor Practices department claimed that Phil Knight had met his 1998 promise to fund four major university studies that would research labor and wage practice issues in Nike subcontract factories. 

"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. " 

Tucker listed the Amos Tuck Business School wage study as one of three examples.  Boje replied that he had deconstructed the Tuck study and it was a 1997 study and therefore should not count as one of the four. Boje then requested the Phil Knight commit to funding the two outstanding university studies. Specifically that the Academy of Management Association, along with the Accounting and Political Science academy associations form a joint task force to administer two major research grants into this question. (Note: David Boje is chair-elect of the Research Methods Division of the Academy of Management and asked people to submit research methods proposals on these issues to that division).

4. Boje promised two special issues of journals would publish special issues on Nike and research methodology. See JOCM list of upcoming issues and JOCM list of articles -- (Note: to receive free of charge any article in JOCM list of articles, send request to jocm@nmsu.edu ).

5. Boje volunteered to travel to China during the Christmas break (or at any time soon) to verify the Sewon factory in Northern China to see if iron cages are still in place. Specifically iron cages over the windows could trap thousands of factory workers in a deadly fire. A fire already has taken place in this same factory in 1995. 

6. Boje invited people at the session to submit conference proposals to the Research Methods Division of the Washington D.C. meeting for 2001. "These are research methods issues. This group can measure things like living wage and whether or not a factory is a sweatshop" - Boje. The RMD division hosts the Organization Research Methods Journal, the best division newsletter, and an excellent list serve for method questions.

7. Amanda Tucker challenged the Academy of Management to bring the workers to the next meeting. She saw academic professors, a Nike representative, but not one worker. Where is the voice of the worker in these issues (Note: Boje would like to bring Lap Nguyen to the next meeting -- funding support is appreciated -- contact dboje@nmsu.edu ). For more background on this issue, see Boje paper on her story, 1st NGO coalition request, Students Against Sweatshops request to Nike, Nike's Dusty Kidd's response, and her personal testimony.  The research methods issue here, is what happens when interviews by CBS and ESPN or our own academic research gets someone dismissed from their job. 

Summary of Presentations (Note transcripts are being prepared of presenter remarks and Amanda Tucker's responses. Those with an * asterisk have given permission to have their remarks recorded and released.  Those without an asterisk did not give permission for a recording of their remarks.  The Academy of Management had wanted to video tape this session, but could not do so since all participants did not agree to being rerorded.

After each presentation, Ms. Amanda Tucker of Nike's Labor Practices Department gave a response and critique. As of August 11th, Boje is in process of transcribing the presentations and the counter-remarks. Stay tuned.

*i. Introduction to Just In Time by David Boje

*ii. Responses to Boje and to each of the other presenters below.

*1. "Attestation: Nike and the Role of Auditing in Decentering the Subject" by Leslie Oakes (University of New Mexico). We want to be interdisciplinary in this symposium. We therefore invited a colleague from Accounting to share her research on Nike. Leslie Oakes will focus on Time and Nike in terms of "agency indeterminacy." In the reflexive process of auditing, calculating, and attesting an account of others' time is constructed. In this analysis, Oakes notes how the accounts of Indonesian and other third-world women are partially silenced by the attestations of "professional" accounting firms. Accounting firms are asked to give testimony or to "attest" for workers and their treatment. For some time, the debate about Nike's Labor practices centered on discussions of fair labor codes and Nike's willingness to submit its labor practices to the scrutiny of accounting firms. Accounting firms such as Ernst and Young were asked in 1993 to "attest" to Nike's practices. This presentation will explore how the act of "attestation" moves Nike workers off center stage and/or deprivileges their claims by suggesting that the testimony of workers and labor advocates is "interested" and can not be trusted. Oakes will explore "attestation" as a particular form of narrative, and will discuss how that narrative is constructed and positioned.

*2. "Environmental Rhetoric of Nike" by Nancy Landrum (New Mexico State University). This presentation by Landrum highlights the "double characterization" of time. Nike is repeatedly caught in a conflict between linear and non-linear logics of time. NGO and Nike storytelling is possessed by a "double logic," presenting its plot as a linear sequence of events which is prior to and independent of the other non-linear perspective on the events, and, at the same time, asserting they have captured the other in a devious plot structure. Eco (1979) speaks of open and closed texts, much the same as open and closed systems. Open texts invite the interaction of the reader in understanding and rewriting the text, whereas closed texts ask the reader to unquestionably accept what is written. A review of Nike's texts will reveal whether they are open or closed. The qualitative analysis will trace the ascribed characterizations of Nike and its stakeholders in the narrative inclusions in its annual reports. Landrum will present a graph theory analysis of Nike's storytellings of its environmental practices over the past decade. Landrum's data consists of 10 years of annual reports, letters to the shareholders, and press releases. She will analyze what ways, if any, Nike began in a stage of "denial of ecological impact" restoried and rearticulated its strategies over time, and has emerged triumphantly to the current stage of "ISO 14000 Implementation" as they await certification.

*3. "Sweatshops and Business Citizenship" by Jeanne Logsdon (University of New Mexico) and Donna Wood (University of Pittsburgh). This presentation on Social Issues relates to the theme of the "Double Characterization of Time." Nike's newest OSHA standards, micro-loans to its female employees, and ISO 14000 certification efforts clearly signals a renewal, if not a new commitment, to human rights in the workplace. Logsdon and Wood hypothesize an historical perspective on cycles of time, including cycles of outrage by NGOs vs. acceptance of poor working conditions as a necessary condition of global capitalist reform. They also propose and explore retreat cycles, positing that Nike's human progress may be a retreat from earlier positions of social responsibility. They will analyze the cyclical shift in societal expectations of business performance that is represented by the term "business citizenship" as opposed to "corporate social responsibility." Logsdon and Wood's ongoing theoretical work focuses on the emergence of this term as a complement or substitute for the traditional concept of corporate social responsibility. Logsdon and Wood state that Nike executives appear to prefer the citizenship term to explain their motives and guiding principles for corporate social performance. It carries little of the liberal baggage of social responsibility, yet implies a concern for the collective welfare and fair treatment of individuals. Interestingly, the concept of citizenship may bring about higher standards and greater accountability of corporations for the consequences of their decisions than the traditional concept of social responsibility because "citizenship" has a baggage of its own. Logsdon and Wood's theory of business citizenship draws upon the analogy with human citizenship with appropriate modifications to account for organizational context. Frames of analogy are provided from political theory, law, and philosophy. The issue of sweatshops will be analyzed from these individual perspectives and then from an integrated theoretically consistent theory of business citizenship.

4. "Nike, the Fair Labor Association, and the Global Alliance for Workers and Communities: The New Private, Voluntary Regulation of Labor Rights and Standards in the Global Economy" by Don Wells and Josh Greenberg (McMaster University, Ontario Canada). This presentation relates to the theme of "Agency Indeterminacy" in multi-orgnizational relations. The comprehension of time is not limited to one corporation's temporal understanding and historical acts. There is a complicated relationship among many players each with their own experiences occurring in time but collectively acting to change how time is comprehended. Wells and Greenberg will analyze Nike Corporation's responses to transnational social movement campaigns to improve its labor practices in Indonesia, Vietnam and other low wage, high repression regimes. For example, Nike's adoption of its own corporate codes of labor, notably the 1992 Memorandum of Understanding and Code of Conduct, imply regulation of labor standards in its subcontracted factories. Multiple organizations interact in ways that change the comprehension of Time and Nike. Following on national and transnational social movement campaigns highlighting the inadequacy of these initiatives, Nike and other apparel firms joined the Clinton administration's Apparel Industry Partnership (AIP) task force and its sequel, the Fair Labor Association (FLA). Both the AIP and FLA are composed of industry, NGO and university representatives. Companies that are deemed to meet the FLA labour standards will be allowed to attach FLA labels to the garments they sell, thereby enhancing sales among customers who want to buy apparel made under certain minimum labour standards. From the perspective of transnational campaigns to improve Nike's labor standards (and hence global labor standards more generally) both the AIP and the FLA represent some measure of success. However, non-state mechanisms such as the AIP and the FLA, and Nike's participation in a more recent initiative, the Global Alliance for Workers and Communities, which focuses on local economic development (e.g. micro credit arrangements, workplace representation, corporate education programs, etc.) carry the potential to create new forms of transnational economic governance. They imply the substitution of corporate-dominated interest group regulation and local business-dominated coalitions for a stronger, inter-state mode of regulating transnational labor standards.

5. "Protest and Promotionalism: Nike PR and the Labor Rights Campaign" by Graham Knight and Josh Greenberg (McMaster University). The theme here is "Double Articulation." This is a study of Internet focused on how various NGOs have taken their social causes to the Web. In Time and Nike, there is a critical issue involving the order of "cause" versus "effect" (Nietzsche, 1956/1887: 209-210). Do the antics of various social reformers cause Nike's changed labor practices, or is Nike the agent of its own innovative labor practices? Does the effect of poor labor conditions lead to a search for cause by activists? Or are there chains of reinterpretation as cause-effect is invented to impose both Nike's and activists' will on time? Knight and Greenberg analyze Nike's response to widespread criticism by labor rights and other social activist groups of its labor relations practices in low wage countries such as Indonesia and Vietnam. This paper and presentation focuses on "Internet" activism as an increasingly important aspect of both social movement and corporate strategy and struggle. The object of this activism is the citizen-consumer, a hybrid social identity that has emerged with the politicization of consumption as a key area where relations between the political and economic system and the everyday life-world have been problematized. The strategy of the labor rights campaign to pressure Nike to improve labor rights, wages and working conditions through the implementation of corporate codes of conduct, independent monitoring, and public scrutiny has met with a counter-strategy in which Nike has attempted to manage the debate in the public sphere through a mixture of tactics that include partial acceptance of criticisms, rebuttal, and a public relations campaign of support for progressive causes such as environmentalism, community-building, and anti-racism coupled with the use of niche sports celebrities, such as U.S. soccer player Mia Hamm and U.S. cyclist Lance Armstrong, as promotional vehicles. Nike's response reflects the increasing integration of corporate PR and advertising that is characteristic of promotionalism and a shift to forms of social responsibility crucial to corporate legitimacy in the context of neo-liberal globalization.

*Nike representative, Amanda Tucker will respond to the panel presentations. 

*David Barry (1997, 1999; Barry and Elmes, 1997) and David Boje (1991, 1995, 1998 a to g; 1999a, b) will open the discussion to the audience with what they view as connective themes of Time and Nike in the five presentations.

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This paper employs Pierre Bourdieu’s work to analyze the uneven effects of modernity (in particular, accounting and other forms of calculation), and argue that this unevenness is often ignored by accounting researchers who do not consider issues of gender, race and ethnicity to be centrally embedded in social interactions. Accounting and other forms of calculation create symbolic capital in the form of linguistic or discursive competency, a process that distinguishes and marginalizes groups of people. This paper examines this by studying the role of accounting as testimony and attestation between Asian workers, community activists and Nike, Inc.

"Sweatshop": a small manufacturing establishment employing workers under unfair and unsanitary working conditions. The very word is synonymous with exploitation of the most vulnerable members of a community, especially immigrants, women, and children. Over the past five years, the media have increasingly brought attention to the foreign manufacturing practices for expensive U.S. products, such as Nike shoes and soccer balls. But the problem of sweatshops is, of course, not a new one. Substandard wages and working conditions have plagued the poor and unskilled workforce since at least the first industrial revolution in England. Marx and Dickens would not be surprised by the accusations against Nike and its subcontractors. Indeed, sweatshops have accompanied capitalism’s rise in every locale and period.

Why the current outrage directed at Nike? Undoubtedly there are many reasons, many of which will be explored in this symposium. Our contributions will be grounded in relevant concepts from the field of Business and Society and consist of two elements. The first is the application of conventional analytical tools from the field to issues related to sweatshops, with a particular focus on the temporal dimension. The second contribution is the application of emerging theories of "business citizenship" to issues related to labor conditions in foreign factories that make Nike products.

The field of Business and Society has developed since the 1970s in large part as a voice of critique and concern about traditional business decision making and corporate social performance (Wood, 1991). A number of analytical tools have been devised to structure the analysis of social issues and how firms respond to them. These tools include issue life-cycle analysis (Mahon & Waddock, 1992; Bigelow, Fahey, & Mahon, 1993), patterns of response over time (e.g., Post, 1978; Carroll, 1979), and stakeholder analysis (e.g., Freeman, 1984; Donaldson & Preston, 1995; Mitchell, Agle, & Wood, 1997).

In view of the conference theme, we will briefly apply the relevant concepts to Nike and the sweatshop issue with a particular emphasis on time and timing. We will also address the element of kairos in terms of analyzing whether Nike did perceive accurately the opportune moment to respond with the optimal response. For example, issue evolution and Nike’s responses will be mapped and categorized in terms of proactive and accommodative vs. reactive and defensive responses.

The second part of our presentation will focus on the shift in societal expectations of business performance that is represented by the term, "business citizenship." Our ongoing theoretical work has recently focused on the emergence of this term as either a complement to or substitute for the traditional concept of corporate social responsibility (Wood & Logsdon, 1999). Business executives appear to prefer the citizenship language to explain their motives and guiding principles for corporate social performance. The term carries little of the liberal baggage of "corporate social responsibility," yet it implies a concern for the collective welfare and fair treatment of individuals. Paradoxically, we argue that the concept of business citizenship may bring about higher expectations for corporate behavior and greater accountability for the consequences of their decisions than the traditional concept of corporate social responsibility because "citizenship" has a baggage of its own.

The theory of business citizenship that we are developing draws parallels with traditional notions of human citizenship and incorporates appropriate modifications to account for organizational context (e.g., Pocock, 1995; Bovens, 1998). Frames of analogy are provided from political theory, law, and business ethics.

Classic and contemporary political notions of "citizen" are based upon three alternative perspectives about human relationships with each other and with the state. These three perspectives are categorized as minimalist or libertarian, universal rights, and communitarian (Parry, 1991). One’s analysis of Nike and the sweatshop labor issue differs substantially depending upon which political theory of citizenship is being explicitly applied or implicitly assumed. For example, the minimalist perspective on the role and rights of citizens posits a very high value for individual freedom of action and responsibility for one’s economic welfare, while the universal rights perspective is much more concerned with social justice and the expectation that government will protect workers from inadequate wages and other conditions of employment.

Various legal theories about the constituencies and interests that managers must consider support different decisions about standards for hiring subcontractors and monitoring working conditions in their plants. The traditional U.S. legal standard rests upon the fiduciary duty of managers to the shareholders of the firm. This view is being increasingly challenged by a much broader stakeholder view that might even extend to the workers of Nike’s subcontractors (e.g., Millon, 1990).

The ethical arguments revolve around the question of whether the corporation is a moral agent, and, if so, what kind of moral agent compared to a human person. Supporters of the corporation as amoral machine take the view that organizations cannot reason and thus are not morally accountable for their actions. By contrast, corporations are held accountable under more organic and fiduciary views of collective and institutional theories of moral agency (e.g., Werhane, 1985).

Bigelow, B., Fahey, L., & Mahon, J. 1993. A typology of issue evolution. Business & Society, 32(1): 18-29.

Bovens, M. 1998. The corporate republic: Complex organizations and citizenship. In E. A. Christodoulidis (ed.), Communitarianism and Citizenship, pp. 158-176. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing.

Carroll, A. 1979. A three-dimensional conceptual model of corporate social performance. Academy of Management Review, 4(4): 497-505.

Donaldson, T. & Dunfee, T. 1999. When ethics travel: The promise and peril of global business ethics. California Management Review, 41 (4): 45-63.

Donaldson, T. & Preston, L. 1995. The stakeholder theory of the corporation: Concepts, evidence, implications. Academy of Management Review, 20(1): 65-91.

Freeman, R. 1984. Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach. Boston: Pitman Publishing.

Mahon, J. & Waddock, S. 1992. Strategic issues management: An integration of issue life cycle perspectives. Business & Society, 31(1): 19-32.

Millon, D. 1990. Frontiers of legal thought I: Theories of the corporation. Duke Law Journal, (April): 201-262.

Mitchell, R., Agle, B., & Wood, D. 1997. Toward a theory of stakeholder identification and salience: Defining the principle of who and what really counts. Academy of Management Review, 22(4): 853-886.

Parry, G. 1991. Paths of citizenship. In U. Vogel and M. Moran (eds.), The Frontiers of Citizenship, pp. 166-201. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Pocock, J. 1995. The ideal of citizenship since classical times. In R. Beiner (ed.), Theorizing Citizenship, pp. 29-52. Albany, NY: State University of New York.

Post, J. 1978. Corporate Behavior and Social Change. Reston, VA: Reston Publishing.

Werhane, P. 1985. Persons, Rights, and Corporations. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Wood, D. 1991. Corporate social performance revisited. Academy of Management Review, 16(4): 691-718.

Wood, D. & Logsdon, J. 1999. Toward a theory of business citizenship. Paper presented at the Ruffin Lectures in Business Ethics, Darden School, University of Virginia, October 1-3.

The increasing transnationalization of production through foreign direct investment, production contracting and other production linkages between high labour standard OECD regimes and low labour standard Third World regimes has contributed to a growing plurality and unevenness of industrial relations standards for production networks operating in multiple national and regional jurisdictions within the global economy. In response to this growing unevenness, there have been growing incentives and pressures to create government-sanctioned global labour standards (e.g. via the World Trade Organization, the International Labour Organization, etc.) An alternative (or parallel) response has been to create voluntaristic, non governmental industrial relations standards via international corporate codes of conduct. A significant variation has been the Fair Labour Association (FLA), created in November 1998 by President Clinton's Apparel Industry Partnership. The FLA is comprised of apparel firms and non-governmenal organizations. Numerous universities, purchasers of name brand athletic apparel, are affiliated. When fully operational, the FLA will be the first industry-wide system to hold US-based apparel and footwear companies accountable for the work of their contractors and suppliers around the world. Nike is the most prominent company working under this voluntary, non-governmental global labour code.

The first section of this paper provides an evaluation of the FLA with particular attention paid to:

a) the governance structure of the FLA.

b) the monitoring system set up to oversee the implementation of the FLA code of conduct.

c) information disclosure of monitoring information via the FLA.

d) the freedom of association provisions of the FLA.

e) the wage provisions of the FLA.

The second section of the paper analyses key implications of this new form of non-governmental transnational industrial relations. It focuses on the extent to which this kind of industrial relations regime is likely to reduce the unevenness and fragmentation of global labour standards both within low labour standard regimes and among high and low labour standard regimes. In addition to the implications of the FLA itself, consideration is given to the implications of a parallel initiative, the Global Alliance for Workers and Communities, which Nike has entered into along with Mattel, the World Bank, McArtrhur Foundation and a non-governmental organization, the International Youth Foundation.

Finally, the third section of the paper analyses counter-tendencies to the FLA that centre on a new wave of student labour activism centred in several universities in the US and also in Canada. This activism is organized loosely through the United Students Against Sweatshops which has been calling on universities to disaffiliate from the FLA and adhere to another voluntary, non-governmental labour code and monitoring mechanism, the Workers' Rights Consortium. The paper provides an assessment of the implications of this counter-FLA code for the future of international labour standards.

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On May 12, 1998 Nike CEO, Phil Knight, appeared at the National Press Club in Washington to announce "a series of new initiatives to further improve factory working conditions worldwide and provide increased opportunities for people who manufacture Nike Products" (www.nikebiz.com/labor/media speech.htm). Knight admitted that Nike products--and by implication its corporate persona and image--had become "synonymous with slave wages, forced overtime and arbitrary abuse" (www.nikebiz.com/otherssay/labor). The Washington Post described Knight’s remarks as "remarkably candid," and interpreted his announcement as a "breakthrough for American and international human rights campaigners who have argued that basic liberties shouldn’t stop at the factory door" (ibid). Other national media similarly attributed Knight’s statement--and the course of action it promised--to the effects of the ongoing criticisms and protests of Nike’s labour practices by various social advocacy and activism groups.

The high profile status of both the setting and the messenger of Nike’s announcement reflects more than the promise of a change in its labour practices in low-wage, developing countries such as China, Vietnam and Indonesia where it subcontracts the manufacture of its apparel and sports shoe products. It also signals a shift in Nike’s public relations strategy. Criticisms of Nike’s labour practices has been growing since the early 1990s when reports of extremely low wages, hazardous and stressful working conditions, abusive management and supervisory practices, and long working hours had begun to circulate publicly. Nike’s initial response to these criticisms had involved a mixture of denial, attempts to displace responsibility onto the largely Korean and Taiwanese subcontractors who technically own and operate the factories, indifference, secrecy, and token gestures of allowing outside inspection aimed at showing the problems were not as bad as being portrayed. In contrast to a large body of PR theory that argues for openness and candor as the best response for corporations to adopt when confronted with problematic circumstances, Nike had effectively tried to close itself off to, ignore, deny or play down its critics’ claims and protests. Knight’s appearance at the National Press Club represented a significant change in Nike’s PR strategy. While this was no doubt occasioned in large part a downturn in Nike’s sales and stock price due to the ‘Asian crisis,’ it also reflects the way that the persistence of criticism and protest had registered as a significant problem for Nike’s corporate persona and promotional image.

The labour process regime that is the target of Nike’s critics is at the heart of the export processing system of offshore manufacturing that is central to the current phase of neo-liberal globalization. What is key to the economic success of this model is low wage, flexible and compliant labour. It is not surprising, then, that the critics’ response to Knight’s speech was generally qualified and cautious since it did not touch on the crucial issue of wages. Despite assurances about plans to improve minimum age requirements, workplace health and safety measures, educational programmes, micro loans to foster local business enterprise, independent monitoring and oversight, and more open communication on the part of Nike, no direct or concrete commitment was made to raising wage levels for production workers. As the company itself acknowledges, the manufacturing cost of labour amounts to about 4% of the average $65.00 retail price paid by American consumers for the product, and 15% of the price Nike pays to the subcontractor. Moreover, Nike is in the bottom ranks of U.S. companies in countries such as Vietnam in terms of wage rates for lower skilled workers. While it is the case that workers in the textile and apparel industry make substantially less than the average for manufacturing generally, the differential is greater for Nike (and Reebok) workers in Vietnam (USA Today, Oct. 4, 1999).

Nike has attempted to justify its wage rates in different and somewhat contradictory ways, at times invoking the ‘natural’ laws of the marketplace and at other times claiming that it pays ‘fair’ wages in relation to both the skill level of its workforce and local economic conditions and standards. While the political economy of Nike’s wages is a complex issue, one of the factors that comes into play is that wages increases do not provide an opportunity for further promotional capital in the way that, for example, sponsoring health, educational or sports programmes and activities do. In this respect, Nike’s response to its critics has been informed partly by its established persona as a ‘virtual’ consumerist corporation whose fundamental product is its own brand image, and whose strategic goal is the enactment of that persona through the constant promotion of image. What had become troubling for Phil Knight was not the fact that Nike was paying "slave wages" etc., but that Nike’s products were acquiring the image of such. Nike’s commercial success is based on a strategy of comprehensive promotionalism in which the product serves simply as a transitory vehicle or signifier for the brand image whose definition relies on its association with other signifiers of success and value. As a recent report in the Denver Post put it, "(b)efore signing Michael Jordan...Nike was a relatively small sports-apparel company" (July 25, 1999).

Celebrity endorsement is the paradigmatic case of promotionalism inasmuch as it entails a blurring of the distinction between product and sign, signifier and signified. Each term becomes commutable into the other and this erases any hard and fast line differentiating what is being advertised and what is doing the advertising. Endorsements have been a major aspect of Nike’s promotional practices in the 1990s, and these have often been linked to the broader strategy of casting Nike as a socially responsible corporation. Endorsements, for example, have often foregrounded athletes from minority or socially disadvantaged backgrounds--African-Americans, women, those who have overcome or continue to live with physical disability, and, most recently, young Asian athletes. Social responsibility is also constructed through Nike’s promotion of health, education, sports, community development and environmental programmes in developing countries and among the socially excluded in the developed world.

This promotional strategy has to be seen in the context of the persistence of Nike’s critics. Yet rather than blunt the attacks on Nike’s image, this kind of promotionalism has made it more problematic. Promotionalism heightens public awareness of corporate rhetoric and expands corporate image. In doing so, however, it also opens up new areas where corporate claims-making can be criticized and contested as contradictory, misleading or untruthful--as Michael Jordan discovered when pressed by the media for his own response to Nike’s labour rights critics. Promoting a brand name and image rather than a particular product gives critics a larger target at which to take aim, and makes the implications of their criticisms and protests potentially more far-reaching. The post-utilitarian logic of promotionalism exposes the image-conscious corporation to forms of counter-promotionalism from social movements and advocacy groups operating outside the logic of self-interested market relations. The particular problem Nike faces is that established models of PR response to critical situations--crisis, risk and even issues management--are not designed to deal with antagonists who are not motivated by immediate self-interest, are not directly at risk, and are not organized centres of bureaucratic authority and binding decision-making.

The relationship between promotionalism and the attempt to construct a socially responsible corporate image draws from a long-standing tradition of corporate philanthropy that has marked liberal regimes of capital accumulation. The promotion of corporate image through social responsibility speaks to the way that the inequalities of market relations generate a continuous problem of legitimation whose identity is ethical and normative rather than simply economic. At the same time, this kind of promotionalism is more than simply an exercise in ideological hegemony. It is also a project of what Michel Foucault (1979) called liberal ‘governmentality,’ ie. an attempt to instill rationalized patterns of motivation, self-monitoring and self-regulation in the minutest interstices of social life, particularly among those excluded from the benefits of the market economy. Governmentality is about regulating the poor by instilling an ethic of social and self responsibility. What corporate philanthropy does is to promote the governmental project in ways that are, at the same time, mindful of the imperatives of accumulation and market survival, and in doing so it reproduces a contradictory space between responsibility and self-interest that social movement critics can easily occupy.

Reference:

M. Foucault "Governmentality," Ideology and Consciousness, 6, 1979: 5-21.