Marketing 301 Assignment: Nike's CSR and Puma Comparison

This report, prepared for a Marketing 301 course, delves into the organizational culture and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities of Nike, a leading athletic apparel and sports gear manufacturer. The analysis explores how Nike's culture, influenced by factors like Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions, contributes to its business resilience and employee satisfaction. The report highlights Nike's commitment to CSR, including environmental initiatives like reducing carbon emissions and waste, and ethical standards. It also provides a comparative perspective, drawing on the author's experience at Puma to suggest potential CSR strategies that Puma could adopt to achieve similar success. The report concludes by emphasizing the positive impact of Nike's CSR practices on its reputation and overall business performance, suggesting that Puma could benefit from similar initiatives. The report also touches upon the gender ratio in the workforce and its potential impact.

Running head: MARKETING 301
Marketing 301
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

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Introduction
The organizational culture of Nike supports the capability and the business resilience. It
can be said the organizational culture is the amalgamation of habits, traditions, ethics and the
behavioral expectations from the employees. The employees of Nike receive a set of instructions
in accordance to their relation with their colleagues and the customers. This particular approach
makes it sure that the organization maintains its corporate culture and the culture would
contribute to the success of the business organization (Soares 2016). Being one of the leading
manufacturers of athletic shoes, apparels and sports gears, Nike would continue to implement its
CSR policies and various strategies in order to promote the organizational culture that would
support the level of competence and business resilience (Park and Ghauri 2015). I have worked
in Puma as a professional and this study will provide the information regarding CSR activities
that our organization can consider to take up, so that the organization can flourish like Nike did
in the last few years.
Discussion
As the culture of Nike refers to numerous notions, beliefs and practices, it make the
organization unique than the other organizations operating in the market. With help of
Hofstede’s Cultural Dimension the organizational culture of Nike and how it influences the
employees of the organization is mentioned in this section.
The operations of Nike runs in a structure, where all the employees have the freedom to
provide inputs while completing a task and thus it can be said that a distribution of power is seen
in Nike (Newell 2015). As the power is distributed, the employees of Nike feel comfortable
within the workplace. The hierarchy is not steep so the workplace environment in most of the

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times is seen positive. Many employees have the decision taking authority and within the
organization all the employees work as a unit. Due to these factors the workplace ambience in
most of the times is seen positive for Nike. Puma can easily take these initiatives to operate the
business and I strongly believe that using these tactics Puma will be able to reach the desired
success in no time.
On the other hand it can be said that the ratio of male and female in the workforce of
Nike is quite concerning. This is something very serious in today’s world and this can potentially
harm the level of motivation of the female employees of Nike.
Within the organization, the employees of Nike work in a cheerful manner and the
atmosphere is positive for working (Lund-Thomsen and Coe 2013). This is a positive situation
that is influencing the productivity and the profitability of the organization in a positive manner.
In today’s world, Nike has become one of the leading organizations among the
companies who are manufacturing athletic shoes, sports gears and apparels. It is a matter of fact
that, the management of Nike has taken a few initiatives regarding CSR (Company Social
Responsibility) and it is seen how those activities helped to maintain a positive culture within the
organization (Ditlev-Simonsen 2014). The management of Nike has ensured that from their
factories the emission of carbon has been lowered than any other organization operating in the
same industry. The management has understood how inorganic waste products harm the
environment and thus the development team of Nike has ensured that they will generate lesser
waste products than any other organization. The management of the organization should
maintain the ethical standards so that they can ethically deal with all the internal and the external
stakeholders.

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Apart from those, the management of Nike engaged in various activities like
maintaining the workplace safety standards and gets engaged in other social activities so that the
workforce understands that the management is doing something for them (Dabas and Sternquist
2016). This will leave the workforce motivated and loyal towards the organization and this will
surely help to boost the level of productivity of the organization.
Conclusion
Thus to conclude, it can be said that the management of Nike is engaged in various
social activities that has earned them the reputation they have now and in the last few years they
have dramatically transformed the way of operations and the CEO of the organization himself
stated that they will continue to get engaged in achieving their ultimate vision of the future.
Thus, in short, it can be said that if the management of Puma can take initiatives like the
management of Nike did, in no time they will reach the height of success just like Nike did.

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References
Dabas, C.S. and Sternquist, B., 2016. Performance Outcome of CSR Behavior: Moderating Role
of Motivations to Engage. In Celebrating America’s Pastimes: Baseball, Hot Dogs, Apple Pie
and Marketing? (pp. 389-392). Springer International Publishing.
Ditlev-Simonsen, C.D., 2014. Are non-financial (CSR) reports trustworthy? A study of the
extent to which non-financial reports reflect the media’perception of the company’s
behaviour. Issues In Social And Environmental Accounting, 8(2), pp.116-133.
Lund-Thomsen, P. and Coe, N.M., 2013. Corporate social responsibility and labour agency: the
case of Nike in Pakistan. Journal of Economic Geography, 15(2), pp.275-296.
Newell, A., 2015. How Nike Embraced CSR and Went From Villain to Hero. Triple Pundit,
pp.1-2.
Park, B.I. and Ghauri, P.N., 2015. Determinants influencing CSR practices in small and medium
sized MNE subsidiaries: A stakeholder perspective. Journal of World Business, 50(1), pp.192-
204.
Soares, E.T.P., 2016. Closing the ‘CSR gap’through a successful CSR strategy: insights from
Nike Inc (Doctoral dissertation).