Week 3: Social & Ethical Responsible

     Air Jordans really are good basketball shoes. The reason Air Jordans were originally made was to provide a supportive but lightweight basketball shoe. Their fashion statement is not the only reason Air Jordans have remained so popular all these years. Novice and professional basketball players perform well when wearing these sneakers. Basketball teams all over the country outfit their players with these sneakers. They will not help a basketball player hit that three pointer or make that amazing block but they sure can provide great support for the feet as players run and jump on the basketball court. It is always interesting to look at a product that is so incredibly popular among consumers. Air Jordans have remained a best seller for decades now. Their excellent quality and timeless look are the reasons why they have remained so popular with both the young and old.


     Jordan's greatest responsibility as a global company is to play a role in bringing about positive systemic change for workers within their own supply chain and in the industry. When they look at our overall footprint in the world the needs of nearly 800,000 workers in their contract supply chain overshadow any other group.They run the course  from establishing codes of conduct and pulling together an internal team to enforce it to working external bodies to monitor factories and engaging with stakeholders. What they learned after nearly a decade is that monitoring alone hasn't solved the problems. And many of the problems are recurring in the industry. Their focus now is getting to the root of the problems. We're looking end to end from the first phase of our product creation process to the outcome in the lives of workers in the factory that bring our product to life. 

     

     Their Code of Conduct elevates the expectations we have of our factory suppliers and lays out the minimum standards we expect each factory to meet. They developed their Code in 1991 as a first step in their effort to improve working conditions in our contract factories. In 2010 their Code has evolved to provide additional consistency across the Jordan Brand and in the industry. It remains a straightforward statement of values, intentions and expectations meant to guide decisions in factories. They require factories to post the Code and have strengthened the standards by which they measure compliance. They share their Code and the accompanying standards to share their journey: keeping factories, workers, the industry and themselves focused on the high expectations they have set and allowing others to understand how they operate and how they can adopt refine or build on their experience.