Question

Use the website GRI’s Sustainability Disclosure Database to obtain a company’s most recent sustainability report. Once you get to the site, click home and then click Search, at the top.

Select an industry that you are interested in, and a US company. Once you find a company report that you’re interested in, open and read the introduction to the report. Scan through the report, as needed, in order to answer the following questions.

• What is the name of your company? What industry is it in? What is your pathway.
• Why did you select his company?
• Describe one initiative that this company is working on in the area of CSR.
• What do you think the impact of this company’s policy will be on their short-term and long-term profits?
• Discuss what your knowledge of CSR was before this assignment and how this assignment has impacted your view of CSR. Include any personal experience you have had with CSR as an employee or other stakeholder.

Please site the source of your information. You may use other sites in addition to the one provided above.

Answer 1

Name of the Company : Nike

Industry : Textiles and Apparel

Pathway: https://sdd-pdf.s3.amazonaws.com/report-pdfs/2020/fa15f51986fd30a66003daf234780d4d.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJZQ4KYD2D35QKCDA&Expires=1600275321&Signature=07%2BBahzJepgJlxk4cfn0yv3K3ns%3D - This is the PDF Report

Why did I select this company?

Nike is known to advertise itself as a sustainable venture and upholds highest standards of quality. Furthermore it is one of the largest sporting apparel companies in the world. Although there have been reports in the media of gender inequity in the company treatment of the female athletes it sponsors. Keeping all the contradictory messaging in mind, I wanted to know what a professional body such as GRI reflects NIKE as.

Initiative:

In its GRI report Nike has detailed several targets in the 2020 report contains "community impact" as a part of their "unleash human potential" segment to invest a minimum of 1.5% of pre-tax income in driving positive impact in communities. This would include getting kids especially girls between the age of 7-15 involved in sports and also invest in more female coaches.

Impact : Short - Term

As per their overall targets NIKE aspires to increase diversity. In its higher levels it has managed to done that to the extent of increase in female representation by 3 p.ps. In the previous year NIKE spent about 1.9% of pre tax income on community impact and in 2020, the targeted expenditure is about 1.5% so I am not expecting a huge discrepancy between 2020 and 2019. However this was based on Pre Covid realities and since the pandemic hit, there hasn't been any other GRI report that would reflect ground realties.

Impact : Long - Term

For the long term impact, if NIKE is able to commit in the mentorship of young girls and female coaches like it aspires to then I do not see any net fall in their profits just because of their targets. Rather the increase in girls playing in sports will result in a higher future customer base.

Views on CSR:

An organisation has to be extremly responsible to have a long term impact through CSR. While personally it still is a very diluted situation. In the event of any kind of rapid change like the kind we are seeing during the pandemic can force companies to pull funding from the impact projects if they are not statutorily guaranteed.

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