Apple's CEO Tim Cook recently publicly announced that he is gay (Chen & Goel, 2014). This step was clearly a major personal landmark for him, but it caught attention in the business world as well, for several reasons. First, there few openly gay C-suiters, and even fewer as prominent as Cook. There may be some who are not out, but Cook's announcement was intended specifically to shift the mindset of people in the business world about gays. Cook is the first openly gay CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Second, LGBT people are one of the few minority groups against whom active, deliberate discrimination is allowed, by law, in the American workplace. The move does come on the heels of President Obama affording LGBT workers in the federal government protection from discrimination, but discrimination is still allowed in the private sector, barring passage of an act from Congress, which being Republican, is unlikely to do so (BBC, 2014).

The third reason that this is significant is that Apple itself is so prominent, being the company with the highest market cap in the world (Hum & Moreano, 2012). Apple is the world's most admired company, as surveyed by Fortune (2014), and has the world's second-most admired supply chain (Genco, 2014).

In essence, the world's first openly gay CEO isn't down at 497 on the Fortune 500, two steps above your local microbrewery, this is Apple. That means that Cook's decision will have repercussions that are felt throughout the business world, in America and beyond.

Background

This paper will examine how Cook's coming out affects the company itself. Cook inherited his role as CEO from company founder Steve Jobs, and after some slower growth in the first year, has guided the company successfully back to the point where it has the highest market cap, and where it continues to rack up record revenues and $50 billion a year net income (MSN Moneycentral, 2014). In some ways, Cook's coming out is facilitated by the fact that most of the people who actually work at Apple couldn't care less, but Cook as CEO also deals with suppliers in China, as well as customers and partners around the world, so this is not just an internal issue; Apple is now a change agent. The role of change agent is one that Apple has always embraced, but in general the company has not sought out the role of social change agent, and that is going to be an adjustment internally because nobody else in the organization asked for that role.

Apple is a differentiated player in the consumer products business. The company makes computers, smartphones, tablets, mp3 players and software. A string of hit products over the past 15 years has brought Apple to its position of leadership. While a niche player in its many categories, Apple is a design leader, and a status symbol for millions of consumers. Apple has sought out the positioning of being the technology leader and the 'coolest' company, when compared with its generally staid competitors. The leadership role is something that Apple is familiar with, but social leadership is leadership you cannot develop with engineers.

Organizational Changes

Apple might not experience any structural change with this decision. There isn't going to be a new "VP, LGBT Rights" post created. Nor will there be any new strategy, or a mandate to HR to stop hiring straight people. The change at Apple that will result from Cook coming out is more subtle, and nuanced, because it reflects in the organizational culture and the way that the company is going to exploit its status within the business world to spread values of tolerance and openness, where previously such values were confined to companies based in only the most tolerant pockets of the world. Affecting a change in organizational culture is not necessarily easy. There is clearly a need for such change, for Apple to take the role of ambassador of civility, given the sorry events in Russia following Cook's announcement (Golubkova, 2014).

Organizational Change Theory

It is never easy for a company to make changes to its organizational culture. In theory, an organizational culture should be in place to ensure that the people within the organization have a certain set of values, and many companies explicitly have a values statement for this purpose. Apple has not yet incorporated a fight for LGBT rights in its values statement, and it might not, but it is unusual that a company's overall culture will supersede all aspects of individual culture. Gay rights is one...

It is likely that the state of Apple's culture, given where the company is located, was always open for LGBT individuals, regardless of the CEO's announcement. The culture of the region and most of the employees in the company no doubt made Cook's decision easier. The corporate culture is therefore already aligned, for the most part, with Cook's decision.
That this is made official is a different dynamic now, though. It is one thing for a company to be open-minded, or just not care about a person's sexuality, but now Apple is representing something to the business world. The company is now being asked to extend its leadership is how people interact with electronics to encompass how they interact with each other.

In an organizational change, the leadership group must lead the change process. If there is not buy-in from the leadership group, then the change process will not work. For Apple employees to take this social leadership role will require not just the moral support of leadership, but perhaps stronger support as well, in terms of resources, or at least training with respect to what is expected of them in the new corporate culture. This critical precursor to successful organizational change is in place, obviously, with the company's CEO spearheading this initiative.

The big question, however, is whether Apple is going to require an implementation plan to achieve a higher level of buy-in. There is the temptation among people to not want to fight other people's battles. But in this way, Apple has done something strong. The company has a fairly strong hierarchical structure, with the CEO as spiritual leader (Cook not as much as Jobs, but still powerful) and with a lot of formal authority vested in the role. Thus, what the CEO says is what Apple does. Given that, and the prevailing social attitudes in Silicon Valley in general, one of the most powerful things that Apple will do is to not make this an issue. Instead of training its employees to become gay rights evangelists -- even though they are likely to be asked to discuss this issue when they conduct business outside of the company, Apple is taking the high road. The company is aware of its status and the statement it is making but does not want to frame this as an issue at all. The view is more than Apple corporate culture doesn't care, and neither should anyone else. It's a subtle approach, and one probably already aligned with the company's internal culture, but it bears repeating because this is a strategy that Apple is projecting to the world as well.

Cook's announcement basically put Apple at the fore of a new corporate discussion about gay rights, especially coming so soon after Obama introduced protections for federal workers, has changed the conversation. It was not long ago that people were talking about the homophobia of Bible-thumping chicken chains and that was the discourse in the corporate world. That is why Cook's announcement puts Apple in a leadership position for change in all of the corporate world -- the biggest culture change is going to occur at the cultural level across many organizations.

Any reasonable business understands that business is business, and nobody cares. But that does not make corporate America a great place to be gay -- it is usually anything but. The lack of job security and that discrimination in promotions, along with taunting, and other institutionalized discrimination, have a profound effect on the values that the corporate culture has. Apple is basically acting here as the transformational leader for all of corporate America, shifting the conversation back towards positivity, and focused on compassion and humanity for a change of pace. In this, Apple is essentially taking the leadership role and asking for buy-in from the rest of corporate America. Unlike with internal cultural change, there are no formal control mechanisms for Apple to exploit to ensure that the change works.

But it is calculated risk on the part of Tim Cook and Apple. To affect change, they are taking a risk, but doing so from a position of strength. They are leveraging their bargaining power -- their wealth, prestige and respect within the business community -- to affect this change. The sense is that…