Apple Corporate Governance
Apple is a business that has done very well for itself over the recent years. There have been some corporate struggles from time to time and they recently lost their transformative leader in the form of Steve Jobs. However, they have mostly weathered the storms quite well. However, there have also been some missteps and many of them center on some form of corporate governance. At the same time, they have done quite well in some matters relating to corporate governance. Some of the good things are bad to some and the others are vice versa or otherwise different. The author of this report will get to the bottom of what is meant by that as the report goes on. While Apple has mostly kept its proverbial nose clean when it comes to corporate governance, there are some things that they should probably pay more attention to.
Analysis
The proverbial elephant in the room right now when it comes to corporate governance is the encryption of Apple's phones as juxtaposed against the recent terrorist shooting in San Bernardino, California. At issue is one of the two terrorists out of that couple had a phone that was manufactured and otherwise created by Apple. As with most phones today, the phone is encrypted. There has been a warrant issued for the contents of the phone and this would require the cooperation of Apple since the only other party who could answer the phone, that being one of the terrorists, is dead. Rather than comply, Apple has asserted that they have not given themselves a backdoor that would allow them to get into the phone and that the creation of such a backdoor would make them "too powerful" and thus able to compromise their ethics. Some people have balked at this given the fact that there is a righteous warrant to access the phone's contents and the person who owned the phone was absolutely a terrorist. However, Apple asserts that breaking the encryption on the phone would be a proverbial slippery slope and that they cannot do so. Many have come to Apple defense and asserted that their stand is a good one while others state that Apple should cooperate given the circumstances and probably cause involved.
The author of this report would say that Apple is generally doing a good thing here but the author would say that the overall results are a mixed bad. First, the author of this report does not believe for a second that Apple does not have a back door for their encryption (Apple). It is interesting that they are using a situation where the assailant is dead because there could absolutely be cooperation between the authorities and Apple and there would be no court case to prove otherwise given that the suspects are dead. Second of all, this is absolutely a situation where cooperation with the government is called for. Whenever there is a righteous warrant issued by a valid court, then Apple or any other company in Apple's position should cooperate. If there is no warrant or other legal means to access the phone's contents, then Apple's stand is entirely warranted and ethical. In general, Apple is making the right stand from a corporate governance standpoint because they are ostensibly trying to protect the privacy of their customers but they need to make exceptions to that stand and a terrorist attack that left many dead would certainly be one of those exceptions.
Another corporate governance situation where Apple has received mixed feedback is its use of factories that are not their own and those factories ending being unsafe to the workers for one or more reasons. Indeed, Apple is not the ultimate party responsible if the factories are unsafe but Apple should also not turn a blind eye to factories that are hurting workers in one way or another. When it comes to facilities that are completely under control of Apple, Apple is surely on the hook for anything and everything that goes on in that factory and that is the way it should be. For factories that are not owned and operated by Apple, there should be the ability to check up on what is going on and how things are being done and this should include "surprise" inspections that are not known about by the factory ahead of time. If it is found that the Apple contractor is not doing right by their workers or what they agreed to do for Apple, then...
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