How Socially Responsible is Nike?

Has Nike's effort since the mid 1990s made the company more socially responsible?  Certainly Nike would like you to believe so.

For Jeffrey Ballinger, he's a bit more skeptical.  Check out his article:

http://www.counterpunch.org/ballinger02082006.html

Now a few words of caution: The source is Counterpunch, which appears to be a pretty left-leaning newspaper.  This is from their internet site.  I found this link after I saw Jeffrey Ballinger's name linked to some other high-profile criticism of Nike.  So this argument is probably a bit one-sided, to put it mildly.

But it does have an interesting point: why has the CSR world suddenly done a U-turn on Nike and accepted the company as a leader in social responsibility, especially after so many years of criticising the company for its unfair practices.  Mr. Ballinger would argue it's because Nike is an expert in branding, both of its shoes and its corporate image.

Why do we care?  Because this links with Bullet Point 2: the importance of social responsibility relative to other objectives.  If we assume that Nike is a company that has CSR as an objective but actually has other objectives which are more important, some of the arguments in this article could well be rolled into why Nike includes CSR as an objective, even if other objectives are clearly more important for the company.