Essay on New Balance Csr Case Study

New Balance is privately owned company, which is the second largest footwear manufacture in the United States and the fourth largest footwear manufacture in the world with annual sales in 2008 of $1.61 billion (Veleva, 2010).

As such, it applied cultural relativism to justify the use of child labor, unsafe labor practices, and near slave labor in its factories. Since then, Nike has been a driving force to ensure fair labor practices across the apparel industry. In 1999, Nike was a key contributor to the establishment of the Fair Labor Association, an organization that is “…dedicated to protecting workers’ rights around the world” (Fair Labor Association, 2016). Today, Nike continues efforts to ensure that contract factories comply with its Code of Conduct to improve labor standards in overseas factories (Nike, 2016). Because of Nike’s efforts to expand and enforce social responsibility at its factories and given the lessons learned from its sordid past, it is unlikely that Nike would resort to any of the straw men fallacies. However, given the pressure by investors to expect solid returns, one hopes the company continues its altruistic social responsibility efforts while veering away from the Friedman Doctrine and its assertion that “… the only social responsibility of business is to increase profits” (Hill, 2011).

New Balance has a significant opportunity to expand its operations in the western region. While the commitment to northeastern operations may have provided an early advantage, there is certainly an opportunity to capitalize on the explosive growth within the western market (Chang, 2012). It is important to balance growth across various markets, to ensure market share is captured, in order to get ahead of the expanding market culture before brand dominance is established by the competition.

The Dannon Company is a story of company that did not know what to do with itself. The company wanted to promote its corporate social responsibility (CSR), but did not know how or where to do so. Question arose on whether or not the company wanted to promote CSR communications. Dannon 's management team was at a precipice, but how should the company get across? Michael Neuwirth, senior director of public relations for Dannon, was considering what part the company 's CSR could act, if any, in the company 's advancement (Marquis et al, 2011). This paper 's intention is to analyze both the benefits and risks of communicating Dannon 's CSR to the public forum on a larger scale, as well as the role of the parent company, Danone. Additionally, this paper will suggest a communication strategy which, I would propose, would fall in line with the company 's vision and history of CSR.

The purpose of this essay is to research the notion of CSR and uncover its true framework and outline what social responsibility truly means to corporate organisations, and whether it should be seriously considered to be a legitimate addition to the corporate framework of an organisation.

The shared value creation framework theorizes that managers should focus their value creation efforts on both shareholder value and value to society (Rothaermel, 2015). There are two specific ways that Nike could utilize the shared value creation framework to serve societal needs are the world: inner city design and engineering schools and selling basic shoes in African markets. These tactics would allow the company to realize benefits while at the same time having a significant positive effect on communities around the

is a growth company. Over the last 10 years, we’ve more than doubled our revenue, and they have stated “we believe we’ll deliver $30 billion in revenue by FY15 and $36 billion by FY17.” Since we published our FY10/11 Sustainable Business Performance Summary, our overall employee base grew to approximately 48,000 at the end of FY13, an increase of 10,000 employees. We expect strong growth in Running, Basketball, Football, Men’s Training, Sportswear, Women’s Training and Direct to Consumer sales. As we look forward, we believe that sustainability is one of the key drivers that will catalyze innovation and lead us toward continued growth. NIKE, seeks to deliver shareholder value through sustainable growth. One of the ways we will achieve this goal is to find avenues to reach our long-term vision of decoupling profitable growth from constrained resources. The CEO shared that they are working to integrate sustainability into every aspect of our business. Our aim is to challenge, push and explore ways that change the game entirely for materials, design and manufacturing. We don’t grow just to get bigger. We grow to be better and do

Much of the strengths of New Balance lie in the quality of their product and the good relationships they have with their retailers/ distributers. Their weaknesses are in that they are too focussed on the functionality of product, whereas the market is constantly changing and they need to be evolving with the market. Opportunities lie in the diversification of the product and making it more contemporary. They also need to employ stronger marketing techniques.

Once a business realizes that it has gotten wrapped up in maximizing profit that it neglect ethics of care, the next step is to readjust and realign its core values internally and be more responsible to the environment in which they operate by showing societal care. Therefore, the aim of this report is to address the importance of realigning the business with ethics of care through involving in CSR activities, and as well as showing how these actions can impact on a company’s performance even if it may be demoralized in the society.

Similarly, Nike’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices were in question. Truly, their CSR was insufficient and lacked in moral obligation to the communities in which they operated. Conversely, supervisors in the overseas factories were just trying to ensure they met production goals and kept costs low so Nike would continue to do business with them (Nisen, 2013). As a result, Nike expanded their compliance staff, invested in the training of staff and overseas suppliers, developed additional auditing protocols, hired third-party auditors to check their internal audits, and spent millions of dollars to improving working conditions in overseas factories who made Nike products (Locke, 2013). According to a case study, “Nike auditors and compliance staff to be serious, hardworking, and moved by genuine concern for workers and their rights” (Locke, 2013, p.

New Balance (NB) had some great deeds and practices to flaunt on, specifically in the four categories of overall governance, community support, operations and products and services. New Balance was also an industry leader in many of the initiatives they took and were ranked fourth-largest footwear brand in the world. (2010, Dr. Veleva.V. “New Balance – Developing an Integrated CSR strategy.” Page 14.) However, they have been rather shy/reluctant about talking about their various initiatives they have implemented. In fact, their employees were also not completely aware of what the organization was doing from a CSR standpoint. If I headed public relations for the company, I would use tactics and strategies that targeted both internally and externally to promote the various good deeds/doings of the company. I have explained on them below:

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is something that affects all companies and should be an active factor in the company’s decision making. It is something all corporations need to care about. CSR is when business’ or corporations take part in an initiative or campaign for a cause that will benefit society and/or in some way make the world a better place (Taylor, 2015). Initially, Corporate Social Responsibility started to take shape around the 1950’s, but some say that it dates all the way back to the 1800s, the idea of CSR was seen (Carroll, 2007). One may think that because it is dated so long ago, it doesn’t have an important impact today nevertheless, it is proven that Corporate Social Responsibility is a pathway for entities to self benefit as they are in the process of benefitting society.

Twenty years ago and earlier, with rare exceptions, the only corporate charity was a bit of gifting by the CEO, perhaps to the arts. Ten years ago, corporate philanthropy and volunteerism became popular as an a la carte add on. In these posts from the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), I am turning the spotlight on the avant garde of CSR: companies that make community and global problem-solving part of their business platform, thus making "doing good" sustainable.

This recent reality, combined with globalization, is forcing companies to forge new kinds of relationships with buyers and countries. The financial valuation of companies are taking ever greater account of intangible elements, such as brands, patents and the company’s general image, with companies being bound to take account of these things in an effort to satisfy their shareholders. Environmental protection has become a highly motivating factor, and companies are being pressed to identify stakeholders with whom to team up. With brand value and reputation increasingly being seen as one of a company’s most valuable assets, CSR is now seen as building loyalty and trust amongst shareholders, employees and customers ( Tssa, (n.d.)).

Current approaches to CSR are fragmented and/or disconnected from business goals. Many firms still consider CSR as another generic public relations problem in which media campaigns and CSR reports are used to paint the company as a positive ethical, social and or environmental advocator and supporter. For example, the annual reports discuss a firm’s sensitivities to CSR issues, but completely lack the entire story and offer no further forward commitments from the firm. Further, the ratings and rankings measurements are self-appointed by the firm, not always accurate to validate the work and direct impact to what they are measuring, and the criteria base varies widely and weighed differently in the final scoring. Worst of all the data lacks impartial auditors for validating the data to ensure the ratings have been accurately met, and data is statistically significant and a good proxy for what it is supposed to reflect. This has resulted in reactive initiatives designed to appease vocal