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and by the community for selling apparel that was produced in sweatshops. During this time,
Life Magazine published an article with a child stitching together a ball with the Nike logo on
the front of the magazine to discuss the issues surrounding the corporation during this time. They
attempted to spread awareness of the living conditions of these industries as it was a relatively
new claim during this decade. In addition to the magazine, a campaign called ‘TeamSweat’ led
by Jim Keady, who denied a multimillion-dollar endorsement deal to spread awareness of the
mistreatment of workers in Indonesia and created a video about the experience of living with the
workers called “Behind the Swoosh.” Nike’s CEO at the time, Phil Knight, and representatives
denied all claims and did not take responsibility for their malpractice until it was a global boycott
campaign towards the world’s best selling brand at the time (Timmus, 2013).
After the release of the video in 1998 and pressure from other executives in the
corporation, Phil Knight finally decided on publicly committing to changing the company’s
practices as he believed the brand had become synonymous with slave wages (Bain, 2017). Phil
Knight committed deeply enough to vow at Washington to root out child labor within his
corporation (Banjo, 2014). In an interview in 2001 with Nike’s director of compliance at the
time, Todd McKean, he stated that their initial attitude was that they do not own the factories so
they can not control what goes on (Heckel, 2001). Later in 1998, Nike took an initial step to
formally committing to sustainability by releasing the first Corporate Environmental Policy
(CSRwire, 2001). In 1999, Nike created a code of conduct to manage its suppliers to ensure they
are following strict regulations and rules to ensure no malpractice. In addition, they conducted
more than 600 factory audits over the next five years to assure the code of conducts were being
demonstrated correctly (Miller, 2014) Nike, Inc first demonstrated transparency by publishing a
complete list of its contracted factories and releasing the first version of a Corporate Social
