About the company
Apple is a well-known company I the field of consumer electronics, computer software and other technology related products. The company has its headquarters in California. The company sells and designs various products including personal computers, laptops, smart watches, iPad, iPod, smartphones and other devices like portable media players. The company is known for its quality and commitment to latest technology. The company also sells software’s and online services to its consumers. The company was founded in 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne. The company initially produced personal computer. In 1977 the company was known as Apple Computer Inc. the sales of personal computers designed by the company spurred up in those times. The company was able to earn huge revenues due to rising demand and sales. Later the company started hiring software designers to design software’s for the company. The company sells its products worldwide. Major segments include China, Japan, Asia Pacific, Europe and Americas. The company has a huge customer’s base located across the globe. The company sells its products to customers through retailers. The company has an online store too. The company also owns some direct sales outlets. Products of the company are sold around the world that are mainly delivered by some third party wholesales. The customers’ base of the company include general consumers, business, educational institutes, enterprises and government.
Ethics
Apple is highly committed to ethical standards and social responsibility. The company makes sure that its employees work with honesty and commitment. They avoid conflicts and internal competition. The employees are required to show full dedication without indulging themselves in organizational politics. The company makes surer that all employees provide excellent services to clients. Apple also makes sure that all its partners follow ethical guidelines no matter where they are located. The company makes sure that it does not harm the society where the company operates its operations.
Culture
The culture of apple revolves around top notch excellence, creativity, secrecy, innovation and moderate combativeness. The cultural of the company is evident in the ambiance, the way employees work and behave and the way company chooses and executes its strategies.
Top notch excellence: the company makes sure that it hires best candidates from the market that fit with organizational culture and can deliver high quality standards as demanded by the company.
Creativity: Apple tries its best to hire employees who are creative and can demonstrate creativity through their work. The company encourages new ideas from its employees
Innovation: Apple is known for its innovation and for creative ideas. The company always tries to bring the new technology in the market. Employees are trained in a way so that they bring innovative ideas to work.
Secrecy: when employees are hired they sign a secrecy agreement. In the agreement, all employees agree to keep information of the company secure and free from thefts. The company has taken all possible measures to protect its important information and data and to ensure full secrecy and confidentiality.
Moderate combativeness: Steve Jobs had a unique style of leadership that demonstrates moderate combativeness. Steve jobs used to give challenging tasks to its employees to polish their skills to do variety of tasks. Moderate combativeness was reflected in the leadership style of Steve Jobs. However when the new CEO took over a change in the leadership style has been seen to less combativeness and a more social approach.
Ethical issues faced by the Apple:
Apple is a well-known company among consumers. Consumers believe that the company must have had an ethical environment and must be socially responsible. But few issues in the past has questioned the ethical responsibilities of the company. A factory in China owned by Apple that produces i-toys has been charged with child labor, overtime work and low pay. On the other side a news was published by New York Times declaring that the company pays low wages to its workers located in America. Such issues have put the reputation of the company on stake. Working conditions at California headquarters are ideal. Yet the company is charged of poor working conditions at factories in China. Various competitors are also operating their factories from places like China. Such outsourcing allows companies to minimize their production cost. But conditions at factories owned by Apple clearly violate ethical standards where employees are paid less, they are made to work overtime and child labor prevails in those factories. Such charges need appropriate attention before the company lose its repute and worldwide customers.
The new CEO took the matter seriously. He hired a third party to investigate the issue and to present complete details about the matter. The CEO made sure that factory conditions have improved and its workers are benefited with the best environment, pay scale and benefits. The CEO publically published the fair labor report about conditions at Chinese factory that showed improved working conditions. The new CEO, Cook responded to the issue quickly and announced it publically that working conditions at Chinese factories have been improved (Hawthorne, 2012).
Stakeholders that were impacted by charges included consumers of the company, the company itself and its partners. Since the company is known to be ethically responsible, such charges may affect the trust among consumers and partners and repute of the company.
Another ethical issue that the company faces is about quality. Since the company is known to deliver excellence and quality, quality issues can alienate consumers and can greatly impact the repute of the company regarding its commitment to quality and innovation. Consumers complained about reception problems they faced with new products of the company. Consumers also believed that the company is intentionally slowing down the performance of older models when new models arrived in the market. The CEO of the company responded to both these issues. The company took serious steps to deal with reception problems so that such problems d not occur in the future. The company also told its customers to replace batteries of older models to optimize their performances (RSM, 2016)
Conclusion:
After completion of the case study I believe that company should take care of ethical; issues before its stakeholders are impacted. Company that violate ethical issues suffer from lawsuits, bad repute, low revenues and loss of customers.
References
Hawthorne, F., 2012. Apple’s Appalling Ethics. [Online]
Available at: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/fran-hawthorne/apples-appalling-ethics_b_1651264.html
[Accessed 9 April 2018].
RSM, 2016. What are the ethical issues of apple company and future of the apple company?. [Online]
Available at: http://www.winstudent.com/what-are-the-ethical-issues-of-apple-company-and-future-of-the-apple-company/
[Accessed 9 April 2018].
