Nike in speech-language pathology practice

¶ … organization's lobbyist, what would you like to see done by the Federal government that would be of help to your organization? This could be what the government could do or what they could stop doing. It can be all fiscal, all monetary, or a mix of each type of policy. As a lobbyist it is not your job to be concerned with the deficit, or the environment, or the general health of the financial system (unless, of course, you are lobbying for an environmental, financial, or deficit reduction group). Your answer to this question can give an interesting perspective as to how lobbying can distort economic policy and decisions

As a lobbyist for Nike Inc., the focus would fall on the elimination, or at least reduction, of the quotas imposed on imports. Nike Inc. collaborates with partners across the globe and provides employment opportunities for the people in less economically advantaged regions.

From a business perspective, the organization has outsourced all of its manufacturing processes, only conducting in the United States the management, marketing and design operations. This strategic measure has allowed the company to drastically reduce costs and as such increase its profitability levels.

Still, it has also materialized in drastic criticism from parties accusing the company of stealing the jobs away from the Americans. Additionally, Nike has also been accused on running sweatshops in the third world countries (Carroll and Buchholtz, 2011). In other words, the organization was accused of asking the employees in its foreign plants to work long hours, in difficult and sometimes even unsanitary conditions, and paying them minimum wage. The organizational counter agued that it did offer its employees fair wages and it created employment opportunities that would otherwise be unavailable within the respective regions.

The moral dimension of Nike's outsourcing efforts is not however to be further debated here, but what is of importance now is the fact that upon reentering the United States, the company is forced to pay tariffs on its goods. This further increases the retail price of the sports shoes and apparel. In such a setting then, the lobbying would be centered on the elimination of these quotas in order to make the Nike products more competitive in the American and foreign markets.

2. The majority of lobbying efforts centers around fiscal policy so we will stick with that area. Please discuss your opinions on lobbying regarding if it is useful and should continue as is, if it should continue but with constraints to limit how much is done, or if it should be eliminated.

The area of lobbying is highly complex and this is due to the involvement of politics and business interests. Lobbying is the unification of political power and financial support from the private sector and the results could be worrying.

An important example in this sense is represented by the oil extracting companies, which possess tremendous financial resources and use them to continue to guarantee for their success. Such an effort materializes in the perpetuated demise of the environmental stability in an attempt to drill for more fossil fuel.

In their pursuits of financial gains, the oil companies were met with complaints by the environmentalists that their methods were unhealthy for the environment. Still, the environmentalists did not have enough power to stop the oil companies and it even happened that these oil companies used their tremendous resources to deny any claims of environmental jeopardy. ExxonMobil for instance, spent millions of dollar each year to try and prove that global warming was a make-belief phenomenon (Mandia).