Leading and Controlling Functions at Nike: A Detailed Analysis

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the leading and controlling functions within Nike, a prominent Fortune 500 company. It examines Nike's global corporate leadership style, democratic leadership approach, and the importance of communication flow across different departments. The report delves into the role of the internet department in facilitating internal communication through various digital channels, including email, websites, and virtual meetings. It highlights Nike's social media priorities and their impact on customer engagement. Furthermore, the report explores Nike's human resource strategies, focusing on recruitment, training, and employee retention. The controlling function is analyzed through the lens of organizational and employee feedback mechanisms, including turnover rates, key performance indicators (KPIs), and employee surveys. Finally, the report discusses the tools used by Nike to measure organizational and employee performance, such as control charts, Pareto diagrams, and management by objectives (MBO), concluding with an overview of how these functions contribute to Nike's overall success. This report is formatted in APA style, including a title page, in-text citations, and a reference page with at least three scholarly references.

Running head: Management Principles
Management Principles
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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Leading Function of Nike............................................................................................................2
Leadership and Communication Flow.....................................................................................2
Internet Department and Its Impact.........................................................................................4
Social Media Priorities............................................................................................................5
Human Resource Strategy in Nike..........................................................................................5
Controlling Function in Nike.......................................................................................................6
Organizational and Employee Feedback.................................................................................6
Organizational Performance Tool............................................................................................6
Employee Performance Tools..................................................................................................7
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................8
Reference.........................................................................................................................................9

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Introduction
The current assignment focuses on critically analyzing the two functions of management
leading and controlling of Nike company. The management principles leading and controlling
are the two basic functions of management principles. Leading refers to the term where the
management tries to influence to motivate the employees in order to achieve the organizational
goal. The paper aims at describing the company leadership and their communication flow within
the organization. On the other hand the paper discusses on the other function that is controlling.
Controlling refers to the term where the management aids in seeking the planned results from the
subordinates. It helps to measures the progress of the organization towards reaching the goal.
The study aims at describing that how the company measure the employees and overall
organizational feedback and tools for measuring their performance.
Overview of the Company
Nike is a well-recognized brand in the sport market since 1990. The company was first
established in the year 1972. The company is headquartered in Beaverton in Oregon. The overall
revenue in the financial year of 2019 I $ 37.2 billion with marking a significant growth of over
1% over $36.4 billion in 2018 (Nixon, 2019). The success story of Nike Company lies in the way
the company operates and has made their organization competent enough to deal with the
external and internal obstacles. This results the company to achieve its organizational goals and
objectives.

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Leading Function of Nike
Leadership and Communication Flow
The company leadership style is global corporate leadership, the organizational structure
follows global corporate leadership. There is a competent team structure practiced within the
organization. The global corporate leadership at Nike involves corporate leaders who make sure
that they put right balance between handling the employees and the organization as well. The
head office of the mangers is at company’s headquarters in Oregon USA (Nixon, 2019). The
company decided to adapt global corporate leadership structure this enables the company to be
flexible and to lead the people generally who are based in the different regions of the world. For
example, the “Global Sports Marketing Group” when releases new athletic show marketing
campaign for the worldwide marketing (Pidun, 2019). The organizational feature the decisions of
Nike are easily implemented throughout the company. The leadership style adapted by the
managers in the organization is democratic leadership. The current CEO of Nike Mark Parker is
described as being very thoughtful and demanding leader.
The communication flow of Nike helps the organization to communicate about the
organizational change within the different departments of the company (Pidun, 2019).. The
communication flows when there is a change or there is a need for change.
Nike’s focus is more on the information, inspiration and the connection which accelerates
effective communication between the departments. The communicators of Nike are Change
Agent, Mangers, Supervisors and CEO.
The downward communication starts from managing director of the company to the employees.
The upward communication flows from employees to the managing director.

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The communication is done by face-to-face interaction that is through meetings with the
employees with all organizational levels.
Communication is also done with the use of technology that is through the use of company
intranet, video conference, blogs, and website and so on.
Figure1: (COMMUNICATION
Flow)
Internet Department and Its Impact
The internet department in Nike deals with all the internet websites, workshops, and use
of technological advances which helps to interlink with all the departments within the
organization. The internet department helps in overall communication within the organization.
This involves the concerned staff to receive and deliver the emails, websites, blogs, audio and
visual aids, online learning modules, web casts and online surveys. The internet department helps
the organization to perform internal communication (Nixon, 2019). The staff handles the
conference calls, virtual meeting within the organization of different regions. It puts a great

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impact on the internal communication since, the messages are filtered in this internet department
of the company and delivered to the respective staff members, managers or supervisors. Since,
the department is held responsible for to control all the messages and the message needs to be
clear. The internet department claims that the communication is consistent before it is delivered
further.
Social Media Priorities
It is evident that according to the social media blade, Nike is observed to be the fourth
largest following in the social media mainly in Instagram currently with 82.6 million followers.
The use of social media in Nike is enormous and it create a sense of bandage between the
consumers and the company. It creates lifestyle among the fans. Since, almost 70% of the total
population in almost 100 countries uses social media hence, the company uses social media in
order to reach to the customers and seek feedback as well.
The approach of social media helps the managers to share ideas, thoughts and creativity
rather than just being formal with each other. It order to drive creativity and innovation in the
organization. It is important for the manger to create connection between each other so as to
facilitate more productivity and effective connection between them in the organization.
Human Resource Strategy in Nike
Nike implements the best human resource strategy in the organization. They have
effective plans for recruitment and selection process with effective training to the employees
which helps them employee retention (Pidun, 2019). The organization believes in implementing
evaluation system of the overall organization.

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Since, Nike is one of the leading player in the sports industry, it plans out effective
business strategies to maintain regional variation (Stewart & Brown, 2019). The company
possess geographical divisional organization culture, this structure helps the organization to
adapt and make place in the global market. It also adapts global corporate leadership which
incorporates global leaders.
The company aims at recruiting right kind of people in the right position according to the job
description. It hires people with high competencies and skills in order to bring creativity and
innovation in the organization.
Controlling Function in Nike
Organizational and Employee Feedback
The organizational and employee feedback is measured to know the effectiveness of a
particular change in the organization or to evaluate the performance of the organization. This
helps the company to know the requirements of the company and what else the company needs
to do for the organization (Stewart & Brown, 2019). The organizational feedback can be
measured through turnover rate and KPI. Nike uses turnover rate and revenue rate of the
company could be a source to measure the feedback and how the organization is responding and
where the organization is lacking in order to achieve the desired targets goals and objectives.
In order to measure the feedback of the employee suggestion box is a good way of listing
out the feedbacks. Nike uses online platforms and suggestion box for feedback. The company is
also engaged in using the employee survey.

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Organizational Performance Tool
The organization performance is measured in order to identify the deficiencies in the
operation of the organization and to fill the gaps. The measuring of performance saves time and
cost of the company to avoid unnecessary obstacles (Stewart & Brown, 2019). The company will
come to know where to increase the performance level and to satisfy the customers. The
organization performance management tools used in Nike are:
Using control charts- The control charts enables the organization to provide tracking scientific
charts the way the organization is performing in particular period of time.
Pareto Diagram- The diagram works under the principle of Pareto principle, when the managers
are able to identify the almost 20% of defects then the organization performance is improved is
increased by 20%.
KPI- Key Performance Indicator is a tool which is used to demonstrate the organizational
performance and how effectively the organization is achieving the business set objectives. Nike
organization adapted key performance indicator to measure the organization performance.
Employee Performance Tools
Employee performance is measured in order to know how efficiently and effectively the
employees are working and is there any additional training required so as to improve their
performance. The employee performance tools used in Nike are:
MBO- Management by objective this is modern tools used by many organization. This generally
evaluate the performance in many areas such as interpersonal skills, their contribution and
technical skills (Stewart & Brown, 2019). It is measured in year wise by recording the
percentage of their overall productivity.

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360- Degree Feedback- This is totally an old practice where the organization seeks feedback
from each and every employee, supervisors and top management as well.

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Conclusion
It is concluded from the above discussion that Nike, a leading company in sports industry
is able to achieve its organizational goal and objective due to its effective management practices.
The leading and controlling function described in the above discussion helps the company to
effectively operate its organizational operations. The communication flow is well established in
the organization which helps each and every department to remain interconnected. On the other
hand the organizational and employee feedback helps the organization to effectively manage its
human resource and increase its productivity.

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Reference
Nixon, M. (2019). Fight, Flight, and Freeze: Human Responses in a Business Strategy
Environment.
Pidun, U. (2019). Corporate Growth Strategy. In Corporate Strategy (pp. 95-126). Springer
Gabler, Wiesbaden.
Stewart, G. L., & Brown, K. G. (2019). Human resource management. Wiley.
Yao, D. (2019). Nike inc.-footware and apparel (Doctoral dissertation).

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