Apple Csr

1. Lack of stakeholder engagement strategy – Apple simply doesn’t believe it needs to engage stakeholders, not to mention having an engagement strategy. We can see it every time, from not sharing information with Greenpeace about why Greenpeace got it wrong about the power consumption of Apple’s North Carolina data center to not responding at first to Chinese environmental groups investigating pollution issues in Apple’s supply chain in China. Another example is Apple’s tendency to reply to questions from the media about working conditions issues in its supply chain with a generic reply, such as: “Apple is committed to driving the highest standards of social responsibility throughout our supply base.“
These examples show that Apple is very reluctant to engage with any stakeholder that has a critical point of view of the company. The thing is that in all of these cases Apple had to change course eventually, revealing to everyone the information it didn’t want to share with Greenpeace in the first place, talking with the Chinese organizations and even providing more meaningful information to the media. If Apple will establish a strategic way to engage with stakeholders, just like Gap did successfully couple of years ago, it can save itself a lot of trouble.
2. Lack of triple bottom line thinking – Apple hasn’t really adopted the triple bottom line. For Apple it has usually been about maximizing its profits and addressing environmental and social issues as long as they didn’t make a significant impact on Apple’s income. Now, even when Apple claims to promote one of the other elements of the triple bottom line, like people for example, its practices show that it’s still really about the profits.
Take its supply chain – while Apple has a very progressive code of conduct, it also, as the New York Times reported, allows suppliers only the slimmest of profits, which often results in suppliers trying to cut corners, replacing expensive chemicals with less costly