Apple: A Company to Praise or One to Fear Control; whether through blatant oppression or through

Mattel, Inc is a billion-dollar corporation that designs, manufactures and markets a broad variety of toy products. Like many before and several after, Mattel lost their way for a short time and was caught off-guard by an investigative report aired by NBC’s news program (Sethi, Veral, Shapiro, & Emelianova, 2011, p. 486). This interview concluded that an Indonesian factory of Mattel’s was employing underage workers, who were working long hours and doing an extreme amount of overtime. Even though Mattel disputed these finding, they found it among themselves to come up with some corrective actions to make sure these types of misunderstandings don’t ever happen again (Sethi et al., 2011).

Apple business environment is competitive and fast-paced. Apple suppliers must understand this dynamic and be agile and flexible in responding to changing business conditions. All over the world, people are building Apple products and Apple has a responsibility to make sure that each person is treated with dignity and respect. It’s a massive challenge where Apple work is never done, but each year they implement meaningful, lasting changes across their supply chain. Because of this around the globe, Apple employees are united in bringing equality, human rights, and respect for the environment to the deepest layers of their supply chain. Apple goes deep into their supply chain to enforce their social and environmental standards by empowering workers through education, demanding that suppliers treat workers fairly and ethically at all times, having safe and healthy facilities, and hold their products and processes to the highest

Apple Inc is an American multinational organization located in the middle of the Silicon Valley, California. It is focused on designing and developing the personal computers, related software products, and electronic products such as MP3 players and iPods. Apple Inc’s main products are iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad. Apple Inc was founded in 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne. Steve Jobs resigned as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Apple and was replaced by Tim Cook who was the Chief Operating Officer (COO) before he was named CEO. Apple has approximately 92,600 full-time equivalent employees and an additional 4,400 full-time equivalent temporary employees and contractors.

The corporate world has an unfavorable view of itself by being selfish, evil, and against the average American. Companies market themselves and their products in certain ways that makes them and their products appealing to everyone and if not everyone then a certain group of people. Every company has a mission to follow and values to go by, but some companies lack ethics and morals. In this paper I am going to talk about one company that engages in ethical behavior and another that doesn’t.

Apple is currently going through the court system a lot these days; being one of the biggest tech cases of 2016. The FBI and the U.S. government want to take over the control of the iPhone. They want Apple to override the encryption feature to be allowed to crack the password. Currently, the new features only allow the owner to crack the password. Apple is arguing that the request is a violation of Apple’s First Amendment rights.

When it comes to Apple products we think of the iPhone, iPad, mac, and countless other products. Apple is the number one seller in the world right now, so of course companies are going to do whatever it takes to compete. Even if that means stealing some of their layout, the way the phone operates, and even looks. That is exactly what Samsung did to Apple. They stole things from Apple and Apple sued for patent infringement. Apple won in the end and was rewarded $1 billon in the end from Samsung.

Big companies such as Apple Inc. focuses on ethical principles. They have a code of conduct that applies to their four main principles. Also, they have guidelines and codes of conduct that applies to all of their operations even their overseas operations. Even though Apple has different guidelines for their company and manufacturers to follow, doesn’t mean that they’re always going to be followed to the letter. Because of that many different issue has arose and occurred in America as well as in other countries that were associated with Apple Inc.

Apple is well known for its quality products such as iPhone, iPads and Laptops. Foxconn has been exploiting the labor in china by paying them less wages, and asking them to work in hazardous conditions ranging from health and safety violations to the use of underage workers (Nystedt, 2011). Unfortunately, Foxconn had a grim history of suicides at its factories in 2010, it made 18 workers throw themselves from the tops of the company's buildings, with 14 deaths and faced with strongly criticism from the public. After solving both physically and mentally for the victims' families, parallel with impaling HRM of company, the scandal of Apple was gradually

In 2013 Apple included two separate specialized audits, a process safety assessment and environmental audits. Violations were broken down to identify excessive working hours, discriminatory practices, protection of juvenile workers, and if the facility had been notified previously to correct any of the same discrepancies. There is zero tolerance for underage labor. For hiring any person underage, the company requires that the supplier make financial reparations, get them back into school, finance their education, and provide income as if they were an employee. Once the individual is legal, there is a job offer made available to them. Apple’s environmental practices had also come under a microscope. There was a focus on conflict minerals like tantalum, gold, tungsten, and tin. For the first time in the company’s history, a list of the smelters and refiners used by Apple were released. Steps are being taken to be conflict free through the aid of third party auditors like the FLA. Apple’s Supplier Employee Education and Development (SEED) program provides free education to employees. There is also an 18 month program to train workers in health and safety matters, as well as environmental issues. The numbers of people participating in these types of programs are expected to increase every year (Moren, 2014). SEED and other programs like it are created to educate and empower workers. Provide them with

Apple is committed to maintaining the highest standards, for both environmental responsibility and ethical conducts. They follow strict

The primary step of my project is raise awareness of child labor because although it is not seen in a place like America, it is relevant in other countries and we are unknowingly supporting it. For example, Nestle and Hershey’s attain their cocoa from farms that use child labor. Or H&M, which supplies clothes made from cotton picked by children (Lamarque). Mostly importantly Microsoft and Tesla, who use cobalt, a substance dangerously mined by children (Sanderson). All these companies have profited through products of child labor because they are cheap. In fact, the National Labor Committee states that a Microsoft supplier paid child workers “$.65 per hour to work 16.5 hour days.” (Carlson) With such a salary, a child would barely buy food. Unfortunately, we are unwittingly supporting child labor by consistently buying

The company started off as “Apple Computer,” best known for its Macintosh personal computers (PCs) in the 1980’s and 1990’s. Despite a strong brand, rapid growth, and high profits in the late 1980s, Apple almost went bankrupt in 1996 (Kim & Yoffie, 2010, p.1). This can be explained that Apple has become larger and more significant than other competitors put together in 1980. Because Apple failed to innovate in 1996, the company almost went bankruptcy but eventually Steve Jobs took Apple from bad situation to the company that can make billions of dollars through promoted itself as a hip alternative to other computer brands. Apple highlighted its computers as the world’s “greenest lineup of notebooks” that were energy efficient and used recyclable materials. The goal was to differentiate the Macintosh amid intense competition in the PC industry (Kim & Yoffie, p.4).

As an evolving technology company, Apple is one of the most successful companies in history. In today’s society, we cannot live without Apple products such as the Pad or IPhone. Apple 's success has come at a high cost with regards to safety to the workers of Foxconn, a supplier which makes products for Apple and plenty of other tech giants. As a result, some workers have committed suicide and many riots and fights have broken out.

Despite its global recognition and status, Apple Inc. has come under scrutiny in recent years. Criticism concerning Apple’s unethical labour conditions (causing both physical and emotional distress to employees) on a considerable number of occasions has led to this. Unethical labour conditions has not been an isolated incident, rather a disapprovingly common occurrence for such a well-regarded global brand.

Apple is being criticized in China for three main issues, including slave labor, guarantee scandal and underdeveloped infrastructure. However, China is a significant market for Apple. Apple’s market share in China is continuously growing while decreasing in mature countries. Issues related to human rights and labor protection in China are sensitive and of globally mutual concern. If we do not address these issues properly, we will lose Chinese customers as well as suppliers and sub-contractors. This may also seriously impact the reputation and sales of Apple products worldwide.