In 1998 when Hannah Jones was considering joining Nike, friends told her she would be working for the devil. Jones became Nike’s head of corporate responsibility at the height of the bad publicity against the company surrounding labour issues in 1998. Now, after almost a decade at the company, Jones sees her role as making sustainability an overt business goal for the firm.

Jones says there has been a “mental shift” in Nike over the past two years about what it will take to succeed in the 21st century. “We’re really beginning to see what the business case for corporate responsibility is when we see it as a source for innovation and growth,” she says.

Nike’s overarching objective for 2007-09 is for “every part of the company to have corporate responsibility objectives and performance measurements embedded into their scorecards for evaluation”, says Jones. Not every employee currently has sustainability-related targets in their performance review, Jones admits. “We’re not there yet – we’re trying to pick our spots.”

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