Apple's Ethics Case Study

Introduction:

From Apple 1, the first Apple's product designed by Steve Jobs and Wozniak in 1976, until nowadays, when I phones and I pads become most popular electronic devices

in the world. Apple's prestigious outstanding Company and its twists and turns history has always attracted the whole world's attentions. In this case study, first we will discuss about Apple's philosophy and organization culture, and discover the relationship between its culture and Apple Company's ethical decisions in two aspects. Secondly, by looking at Apple's competitive operations in the industry, and ethical risks they have been through, to find our how they related to each other. And the last, we will review some ethical issues Apple had been faced and how company has handled those problems.

1. How Apple handles ethical decisions with the influence of its philosophy and organization culture.

Strong company culture created a great company, Steve Jobs, the man who had legendary life himself, also created a unique corporate culture for the Apple Company.

After Steve jobs returned, he innovated in business, and created an unprecedented achievement, and make his employees have a strong believe in him and in Apple Company. The sense of loyalty among employees at Apple, make them very proud of their products, and their company culture. These makes Apple never want to admit its defeat. So when there are ethical issues occurred to Apple, for example, the privacy issues with Apple and Google, when the problem knew by the world, Apple did not amend it straight away, but stopped the complaint by telling customers it can be controlled which is not true. Apple did not stop the unethical process, because they still want to make the largest profit break the record and they believe their unique products will still attract large amount of Apple fans to purchase. The other example, is about the antenna problem of IPhone 4, when customers found out the problem, they did not handled properly, instead of remedy the problem, they chose to just minimize it by sending free cases. Though these problems did not stop its fans' love of its products, but in the long run, if more problems occurred, it will finally influence its business.

Apple's another unique company culture is the way they train their employees to make the largest profitability as they can. Apple aim to inspire employees potentials, and ask employees to be motivated, creative and customer focused, these features has helped the company receive lots of exciting and good ideas from its employees to deal with some of the ethical issues, such as in order to solve sustainable problems, they came up a brilliant idea that ask customers to trade the old Apple product, get benefits or discount for the new upgrade product, the idea not only bring Apple company more profit, but also solved the recycle problem of its old products. Apple also eliminated the use of few materials that may harmful to customers, these ideas has not only improved Apple's service and products, but also helped the company to solve some of the ethical issues.

2. How Apple's competitive strategy put the company on the ethical risk.

Apple inc., the world's largest mobile phone maker, the world's largest PC maker and the world's largest listed company by market value. Its core business are electronic technology products, include hardware ( IPhone, Ipod, MacBood, IPad, etc.), software ( Mac OS), and some other products ( Pippin game station, LaserWriter, Airport, etc). As a leading company, there must be lots of competitors try to beat you. From the first Apple computer until today, Apple has lots of strong competitors, such as IBM, GOOGLE, SUMSUN, SONY and MICROSOFT. With seeing the great success that Apple created, other company start to develop and produce similar or even better and cheaper products to beat Apple. For example, after IPhone made a great success on sales, Apple found out a lot of companies put similar features on their new cell phones, with a cheaper price or bigger screen to attract consumers.

Although they are a big threat to Apple, there are still lots of weakness. For example, the Company like Microsoft, no doubt that Microsoft is a great company, but the problem is there are too many products they want to produce, witch includes the development of software, office software,