Beyond the Profit: Nike and the Quadruple Bottom Line

Proposed Title: Beyond the Profit: Nike and the Quadruple Bottom Line Description of Project: The movement towards sustainable business is growing as the threat from civil wars, poverty and climate change becomes ever more real. No organization can sit back and do business as usual as doing so would be counterproductive. How can any business ignore the fact that its market is contracting as more and more people are losing their jobs? How can any organization ensure its long-term sustainability if the entire planet is on the verge of implosion? Faced with all these social problems, the boundaries between businesses and non-profits are blurring as “several streams of societal interests including financial investment, responsible business ethics and of course, environmental preservation” (Wibbeke & McArthur, 2013, p. 63). The stress is no longer on the profitability of a business but rather on its capacity to “meet today’s global economic, environmental, and social needs without compromising the same opportunity for future generations” (Wibbeke & McArthur, 2013, p. 63). The move towards sustainability is not only driven by changing morals in business, but also, by the increasing capacity of consumers to hurt the company’s bottom line through consumer boycotts. In a research on the impact of the opposition of the French in the war in Iraq in 2003 to the sales French wines in the United States (Chavis & Leslie, 2006), it was discovered that “the boycott resulted in 26% lower weekly sales at its peak and 13% lower sales over the six month period…the boycott lasted for” (Chavis & Leslie, 2006). Meanwhile, Marco Haan (2005) created models for consumer boycotts so as to guide firms on how much should they give in to consumer’s wishes. Towards the end of the study, he said, “Firms lose out when they do face a boycott, but they gain even more when their competitor does, since this gives them more market power. I also showed that the stronger a boycott will be, the more a firm will cater to the consumer’s wishes….an increase in competition may also induce firms to behave in a more responsible manner” (Haan, 2005, p. 19). Thanks to the internet, consumer boycotts not have lower transaction costs so that it has become even more powerful in pressuring businesses to adhere to strict operating standards that are beneficial to the society as a whole. In sum, societal sustainability is not just a moral business strategy, but a profitable one as well. The role of business to societal sustainability was explored in the John Elkington’s Cannibals with Forks: Triple Bottom Line of 21^st Century Business, the concept of profit, people and planet gained momentum, prompting the world’s top companies to publish reports express their new ways of value creation. But even the triple bottom line is no longer enough to represent the bigger role businesses have to play in their communities. As such a new label was born: the quadruple bottom line which “provides the means to measure, value and assess the addition of culture, spirituality and faith in reporting” (Sood & Tulchin, 2015). This is an important development as th...