Corporate social advocacy as engagement: Nike's social justice communication

Abstract

Nike’s recent progressive yet controversial communicative actions around issues of social justice raise an important question. How does Nike’s blemished organizational history coupled with its current Corporate Social Advocacy (CSA) enhance our understanding of engagement in CSA contexts? This central question guides our critical essay. To address this question, we engage in a critical analysis of various Nike statements, campaigns, and actions which are situated as forms of CSA. Thus, we aim to uncover if or how Nike is engaging corporate social advocacy that challenges status quo gender, racial and cultural norms that attempt to circumscribe the human potential of women and people of color, and we analyze the role of engagement in the process. Our critical analysis of Nike’s statements, campaigns, and actions—draw upon the philosophical principles of the engagement literature in public relations. Uniting engagement literature with CSA in a critical essay allows us to not only explore the nature of Nike’s communicative action within the context of its troubled history, it also facilitates a deeper understanding of the connections between engagement and CSA in public relations. We argue that communicative actions engaged by Nike and analyzed in our critical essay push the boundaries on engagement and corporate advocacy through sport, shining an important light on CSA as a pivotal direction for further theorizing and research in public relations and engagement studies.