A corporate social responsibility strategy is a way for companies to manage how they affect society, requiring the executives to carefully consider the company’s future actions (Carroll & Buchholtz, 2014). Apple is one of the largest businesses in the U.S. in digital market, meaning its social image and responsibility needs to be held to a high standard.
Apple’s main focus of the social responsibility strategy relies on the reduced environmental impact. According to Koo and Cooper (2011), the company focuses on recycling and reducing gas emissions. Although, Apple has been involved in several environmental conflicts (Cedillo Torres et al., 2012). Besides that, the company’s workers are known to commit suicide at the worksite (Myers & Fellow, 2013). Apple produces a supplier’s report every year; however, the credibility of the document has undergone criticism due to the fact that the media constantly reveals news regarding found problems and inconsistency (Chan, 2014). Additionally, after the company was rumored to employ children, the CEO released a statement supporting the elimination of child labor (Cedillo Torres et al., 2012). Despite such an evidently low social responsibility level, Apple has not faced a high degree of public exposure in its record (Cedillo Torres et al., 2012).
As such, the Apple company can be seen to have had several environmental and social conflicts. They have been rumored to have broken the law by using child labor, as well as their transparency has been found to be falsified. However, due to its size and popularity, the company managed to avert severe damage by releasing statements supporting one or the other social or environmental problem solution, promising to assist in its implementation.
References
Carroll, A. B., & Buchholtz, A. K. (2014). Business and society: Ethics, sustainability, and stakeholder management. Cengage Learning.
Cedillo Torres, C., Garcia-French, M., Hordijk, R., Nguyen, K., & Olup, L. (2012). Four case studies on corporate social responsibility: Do conflicts affect a company’s corporate social responsibility policy? Utrecht Law Review, 8(3), 51-73.
Chan, L. Y. (2014). Corporate social responsibility of multinational corporations. University of Washington Tacoma.
Koo, Y., & Cooper, R. (2011). Managing corporate social responsibility through design. Design Management Review, 22(1), 68-79.
Myers, C., & Fellow, K. (2013). Corporate social responsibility in the consumer electronics industry: A case study of Apple Inc. Georgetown University.