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BUSINESS
Bloomberg Businessweek
May 14, 2018
23
ILLUSTRATION BY VIKTOR HACHMANG. DATA: WORKPLACE BULLYING INSTITUTE
THE BOTTOM LINE Nike’s marketing positioned the company as
a promoter of self-expression and equality. But former employees
say it allowed a culture of workplace bullying to flourish.
statement. “Whenwe discover issues, we take action.”
Nike also provided Bloomberg with the tran-
script of a town hall Parker held on May 3, in which
he vowed the environment will change. “We all
have an obligation—and it’s non-negotiable—to cre-
ate and cultivate an environment of respect and
inclusion,” he told employees. “And that starts
with me. I apologize to the people on our team
who were excluded.…We’re going to move from a
place where the loudest voices carry the conversa-
tion to [one where] every voice is heard.”
The company declined to make Edwards avail-
able for an interview. He’s acting as an adviser to
Parker until he retires in August, when he’ll receive
a $525,000 payout, according to public ilings.
Nike says it’s reviewing how it deals with com-
plaints, redesigning management training, and
beginning unconscious bias awareness education
for employees this year. It’s also vowed to promote
more women and minorities into leadership roles.
Currently, managers are 38 percent women and
23 percent nonwhite.
Workplace bullying is often deined as behavior—
including verbal abuse, derogatory remarks, humil-
iation, and undermining work performance—that
results in physical or mental harm. About 1 in 5
Americans say they’ve been the target of it, accord-
ing to a 2017 survey by Zogby Analytics that was
commissioned by the Workplace Bullying Institute.
Men make up 70 percent of the perpetrators and
34 percent of the targets. “It’s a signiicant and still
underreported problem,” Yamada says. Surveys
have shown such behavior is four times more prev-
alent than legally actionable sexual harassment, he
says. “Bullying looms large.”
Ironically, Nike is one of the minority of compa-
nies that has a formal antiharassment policy that
calls out bullying behavior such as verbal abuse,
intimidation, humiliation, and retaliation, accord-
ing to a copy obtained by Bloomberg. It also notes
that harassment not based on a legally protected
characteristic, such as gender or race, can still vio-
late company rules.
One reason few companies have speciic anti-
bullying policies is that there aren’t federal or state
laws in the U.S. outlawing the behavior, which
makes America a laggard when compared with
Western Europe, Canada, and Australia.
A lack of legal protections greatly reduces the
possibility of liability for employers. It’s diicult to
bring a lawsuit based on bullying, and businesses
have worked to keep it that way. Over the past
decade, antibullying bills were introduced in about
30 states, but they’ve all been defeated after oppo-
sition from corporate lobbying groups, Yamada
says. A workplace bullying bill is gaining sponsors
in Massachusetts’ legislature, but its future is uncer-
tain. If there were antibullying laws, companies
would be liable and do more to deter the practice,
according to Namie. “It’s the only form of abuse
that hasn’t been addressed by law,” he says. “It goes
beyond gender to ‘I’m powerful, I can do any damn
thing I want.’ ”
When executives feel entitled or untouchable,
that often leads to bullying and then to other inap-
propriate behavior, Yamada says. In many of the
workplace environments that resulted in some of
the high-proile #MeToo moments, such as that at
Weinstein Co., an “undercurrent” of bullying cre-
ated a belief that mistreatment would go unpun-
ished, he says. “It’s that bullying atmosphere that
helps to enable and empower sexual harassment.”
According to the former Nike employees, the lack
of a fear of reprisal created an environment where
male executives, many married, could pursue and
have sexual relationships with subordinates and
assistants—behavior Nike says it tries to prevent but
doesn’t prohibit. Many times the careers of those
involved were unafected, which only normalized
the behavior, they say. And when there were reper-
cussions, the men received little if any punishment,
while women often faced consequences. In one
instance several years ago, they say, an executive
was caught having sex with his assistant on a confer-
ence table. He wasn’t disciplined, some of the peo-
ple say, but the woman was reassigned.
Several former female employees describe simi-
lar experiences of encountering several slights and
ofenses—not one egregious incident—that increased
as they moved up the ladder. One woman says her
boss, a senior director, had derogatory nicknames
for female stafers and would overtly favor men
on the team with better opportunities. A former
female manager says a male colleague had multiple
complaints of bullying made against him to human
resources, but the only punishment meted out was
a delayed promotion. Eventually, frustration with
Nike’s handling of such incidents persuaded several
women to leave the company, they say.
The situation was particularly galling to employ-
ees who’d been drawn to Nike because of its cool
and progressive reputation, burnished by such
advertising slogans as “If You Let Me Play” and its
T-shirts adorned simply with the word “equality.”
“We always wished the company would live up to
its marketing,” says one former female executive.
“But it didn’t.”
—Matt Townsend and Esmé E. Deprez
○ Share of respondents
to a 2017 survey of
workplace bullying
who report:
37%
Unaware of bullying
at their workplace
25%
Aware of bullying at
their workplace but
haven’t experienced
or witnessed it
19%
Witnessed bullying
10%
Have been bullied
9%
Currently bullied