Nike Town Hall meeting

1. Nike Town Hall meeting

2. Nike debate • A ‘Town Hall’ meeting • One group of people at front are Nike executives • Second group is activists critical of Nike • The question: Should Nike change its approach to global sourcing? • Audience plays roles of stakeholders

3. Your group should pick one or two of the following roles • Nike employees • Stockholders • U.S. labor leaders (or ordinary union members) • Human rights activists (maybe rivals of the debaters) • Asian workers flown to the U.S. by human rights activists • Economic development officials of Asian countries • Ordinary concerned citizens • In this role, it’s fine to just be yourself

4. 4 people on each team (executives and activists) • Extra credit – up to 7 extra points on final exam midterm • The rest of us will prepare questions for the debate

6. Preference given to people whose essays have shown good critical thinking

9. “The treatment of workers in Nike’s factories has significantly improved over the past few years” • True or false?

10. From the Fortune article you read… • “Richard Locke, a professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management, released findings in 2006. They were stark: Despite "significant efforts and investments by Nike ... workplace conditions in almost 80% of its suppliers have either remained the same or worsened over time.

11. Nike rates its factories on a scale of A to D; in a fiscal 2006 audit of 42 factories, seven got A's, and 13 got D's because of multiple transgressions, like • failing to pay the local minimum wage or • making employees work more than 14 days in a row without a break.

12. When writing papers… • Evaluate the evidence on whether what your source says is really true • Nike says suppliers are required to treat employees fairly and well. • But does the evidence enable us to tell whether the suppliers really treat employees well? • When writing about ethics, you especially need to get your facts right!! • People are likely to tell you self-interested stories