In all four companies

In all four companies, there are fewer conflicts for senior
and middle managers in balancing social, environmental,
and financial performance because these conflicts are
resolved higher up in the organization and are well integrated
into the informal systems. Upper management has
bought in to the benefits relating to sustainability. Thus
people are able to make certain tradeoffs because they
know their leaders will be supportive.
Corporate responsibility is one of Nike’s nine strategic
priorities. The CEO and other company leaders support
CR intensively and consider it an enhancing element in
reaching strategic goals. In fact, leadership engagement is
number one.”Making a sustainable decision that negatively
impacts margins is not so wrong, but they have to
inform me because we can offset this somewhere else,”
one vice president explained. “I want to give guidance to
subordinates because I don’t want to have them struggle
with it the tradeoffs related to making social, environmental,
and financial decisions. And we need to teach
them because all these decisions cannot be done by me