Female Employment in Global Supply Chains: A Multilevel Analysis of Nike’s Supplier Factories

Shi, Wanying, Karatzas, Antonios and Mena, Carlos (2026) Female Employment in Global Supply Chains: A Multilevel Analysis of Nike’s Supplier Factories. Journal of Business Ethics. ISSN 0167-4544

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Abstract

Fostering gender equality is a fundamental pillar of ethical business conduct and corporate social responsibility. Yet, the structural architecture of production in global supply chains, and the institutional contexts in which factories are embedded, can create moral distance between “lead” firms and female workers, constrain the exercise of moral agency across network nodes, and impede distributive justice regarding women’s access to employment. In this work, we investigate gender diversity at over 800 production units of Nike’s supply base by leveraging factory-level data published by Nike, and uncover organizational and institutional drivers of female participation in the workforce. We apply a multilevel lens and theoretically motivate the relevance of six factors spanning three levels (i.e., factory, supplier and country) in increasing female employment. We construct a longitudinal dataset of complex structure by merging Nike’s published data with data from secondary sources. Our analysis reveals that factories producing relatively less complex products and belonging to suppliers with a strong network presence but limited geographical dispersion, employ a higher proportion of females. The same holds for factories in countries characterized by a more individualistic and long-term-oriented culture. Theoretically, this study contributes to business ethics by demonstrating how supply chains influence ethical outcomes, illustrating how factory, supplier, and country-level conditions jointly shape female labor participation. Practically, the findings identify actionable interventions to enhance ethical governance and gender diversity across the supply base.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Data availability: The data used in this study were obtained from publicly available sources. Details of the data sources used to construct the study variables are provided in the manuscript.
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Norwich Business School
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Innovation, Technology and Operations Management
Related URLs:	https://link.springer.com/article/10.100...
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	22 Sep 2026 15:55
Last Modified:	22 Sep 2026 19:04
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/104617
DOI:

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