Li
Ning Corporate Social Responsability
Describe the company, including its
revenues, employees, and geographic presence.
Name Li-Ning Company Limited
Revenue $1.35 billion
Employees 3,380
Main market Asia
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Li Ning Company Limited is
one of the leading sport brand companies in China. It has an extensive supply
chain system and a retailed distribution. They are growing very fast in
emerging markets and since 2011 merging with the Chicago based Acquity Group and
expanding their brand awareness to the US market. Li Ning Company also manufactures
and develops other specific brands that are licensed or operated thought joint
ventures, including Double happiness for tennis, AIGLE for outdoors and Lotto
for sports fashion. As march 2007, there were 4,297 Li-Ning retail stores. The
company directly owns some of the retail stores while others are franchised.1
Give
a sense of the company’s vision/values. Have they signed onto the UNGC, or any
other CSR-type standard?
Mr. Li Ning a former Chinese
Olympic gymnast idol in China better know as “The little prince of gymnastic”
founded Li Ning Company in 1990. His hard work can be clearly seen on the
vision and values of his company. Mr. Li Ning remains the Chairman of the
company’s board of directors.
Vision: World’s leading brand
in the Sports goods industry.
Values: Live for dream,
integrity and commitment. We culture, achieving excellence. Consumer oriented,
breakthrough.
There are 21 publicly
business participants signed onto the UNGC from China in different industries.
Non-from textile industry. Some of the Chinese participants are; Lenovo and
Shangri-La International.
CSR Vision Created 2004
CSR Vision Approved 2004
Senior Involvement CEO
Depth of Implementation Reactive
Major CSR Issues 2011 Dirty Laundry
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Review the company according to the
various industry issues and the scale. Are they
proactive or reactive, merely complaint
or setting new standards? Are they myopic or
Visionary, seeing how CSR can be a source of competitive
advantage?
Li Ning
company CSR has an evolution on the last 10 years from being labor oriented to
environmental oriented. On the different issues the environmental is the
one that they are putting more attention since the Greenpeace scandal on 2011,
all the big players involved have react and on the same month of the scandal Mr.
Li Ning made a commitment to zero discharge of hazardous chemicals by 2020. On Labor
rights the company place great emphasis on the communities especially in
China and during 2012, the Group issued “Li Ning Supplier Social Compliance
Code of Conduct” to address issues including labourii. Corporate
governance same as CSR has been supported from top management and its one
of the pillars to create value on the decision-making process for the company
and maximize returns to the shareholders.
How
does what they say about their CSR efforts compare to what external resources
(e.g.,
media,
indices like Dow Jones Sustainability Index or FSTE4Good, or any other external
CSR
reports?) may say? Do you
think their efforts are genuine, or just ‘green washing”?
Li Ning company is seen as an
active company on setting new standards on the Asia textile industry supply
chain. In January 2009, the company chairman, Mr. Li Ning was named the “2008
CCTV Businessman of the year”. The criteria of the award which were based on
the principles of “responsibility, exploration, vision and cohesion” went
beyond the realm of business”iii. In 2012 the company signed
investment agreement with Hang Seng Corporate sustainability index series,
which monitors the biggest companies listed on Hong Kong and support
sustainability.
Any recommendations for
how the company should address the issues?
Li ning is addressing this issue focusing on the 2020 Goal
for no chemical hazard assessment, in order to do this they teach suppliers on
the best practices for a better environment. The consistency of the company on
this issue has created a climate of credibility between customers and
suppliers. The recommendation that we have for the Li Ning company is to keep
being consistent in this issue and considering that new tools of communication
and the demand for instantaneous information have enhanced the power of media
conglomeratesiv they should use this a tool to communicate their
progress to stakeholders and NGO’s.
Appendix : Search for one idea.
References;
i
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ii
–
page 4
iii
- 7- Annual Report 2009 CSR Li-ning Company – Page 5
iv
– Strategic Corporate Social responsibility, page 101.