Critically analyse a contemporary case study highlighting challenges and considerations brought about by the international nature of the case.?

Case Study Analysis: Nike         1
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Case Study Analysis: Nike
Introduction
Nike has grown to become one of the biggest companies in the world. Nike is an American organization that specializes in selling shoes, apparel, accessories, services as well as equipment. The company was founded in 1964, on January 25 (Merk, 2015). In the beginning, the company was called Blue Ribbon Sports, and changed its name to Nike, Inc., which is derived from the Greek goddess of victory. The company is headquartered in Washington County, Oregon, and has a revenue of $36.39 billion for 2018 (Picciotto, 2017). It had a net income of $1.93 billion in 2018, and has 73,100 employees working in the company.
Apart from just manufacturing sports equipment, shoes and apparels, the company has also been involved in sponsoring many sports teams, and high-profile athletes around the world. It has been ranked No 89 in the Fortune 500 list of companies. Nike’s logo and their trademark tagline, “Just Do It”, has become one of the most infamous logos around the world.
Nike has been known to have factories all around the world, but mostly in Asian countries such as China, Cambodia, Pakistan and Vietnam, where the labour laws and costs are cheap, and it is easier for the company to manufacture products that can increase revenue. However, a majority of the products are sold in the United States of America, and most of the marketing is done in the USA as well. Thus, the main challenge to the company would be to increase its global presence.
The following aims to look at some of the challenges and considerations that have been brought about by the international nature of the company, and how many of these challenges have been overcome by the company as well.
Challenges and Considerations
For any major international company, the labour that goes into the products is always from third-world countries. One of the major challenges that Nike faced, because of the international nature of business, had been the sweatshops that have been created due to demand, in countries such as China, Vietnam, Mexico and Indonesia. Many labour organizations have alleged that the sweatshops violate minimum wage laws, as well as violate overtime laws in countries such as Vietnam (Zhang, Kim, Mastromartino, Qian and Nauright, 2018). The company has been known for the exploitation of labour that is commonly seen in most organizations that operate in trade free zones. This has also caused significant issues for the company, since there has been a significant amount of publicity that has been dedicated to the company. This is not positive publicity in any way, and the company has been forced to admit that almost 2/3rds of the factories where the products are manufactured are not according to the standards of the company. In order to deal with the issue at hand, Nike promised to reduce the labour of sweatshops, and has become committed to ensuring that the products are sweat-free. However, there have been significant protest by students in Universities, such as in Georgetown University, wherein students protested the university’s contract with Nike. There have been factory investigations by advocacy groups. The investigations found that supervisors would often overstep on their duties. Importance was given to cutting costs, and optimizing production, and this was done by ensuring that the cost of production, and the health benefits that was often given to the workers.
The main response that was given by Nike to the allegations had been to monitor the working conditions in the factories. It was during the 1990s that Nike installed a code of conduct for their factories. It was called SHAPE or Safety, Health, Attitude, People, and Environment. The expenditure of the company in order to follow the code has been $10 million. It has also been involved in changing the solvents of the company, which had been petroleum based, and switched to water-based solvents, which were less harmful to the workers, and further helped in ensuring worker safety in the organization (Nes, 2018). The company also created a Global Alliance for Workers and Communities, whose main concern had been to improve the conditions of the factories.
Another main challenge that the company has faced due to the international nature has been publicity...