The Relationship Between Ethics and the Law

Introduction 

Apple Inc. is a technology multinational firm in America that has its headquarters in California. The company creates, designs and sells computer software and electronics. Its main products include iPhone, Apple TV, iPad, personal computers (mac), iPod, Apple watch, and HomePod speaker. Steve Jobs, Ronald Wayne and Steve Wozniak founded the company in the year 1977. The mission statement of the company is as follows: “ Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App store, and is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices with iPad,” (Singh and Kaur, 2016) 

Ethics 

Apple offers employee training and development programs freely. The company has also expanded the benefits of its employees to a considerable extent. For example, the expectant mothers are given one month before they deliver and three months after they deliver. Fathers are also eligible to a six weeks parental leave (Smith and Feldman, 2017). The company also has a program which aims at improving the health of the company’s employees. There are over 230, 000 direct employees who have benefited from the program. It makes the employees feel cared for and important and hence reduces employee turnover.

Apple provides programs of recycling in 99% of the areas it operates. Also, the company has been able to divert very 500 million pounds of waste from landfills since the year 2010. Apple has formed alliances with over 150 companies delaying with recycling in the world. In the year 2015, the company collected around 85 million pounds of electronic waste through the recycling programs it has put in place (Pederses & Andersen, 2016). Apple Inc also participates in sustainable sourcing. In the year 2015, over 55% of the paper that was used to package the company’s products was made from recycled fiber of wood.

Apple understands the needs of its customers. The customers are the number one focus when the company is making its products. It offers great customer experience even in its marketing and customer engagement.

Laws 

Stakeholders are expected to make appropriate use of information and safeguard it to make sure that intellectual property and all business partners are protected. Suppliers should offer the means for employees to give reports of unlawful activities and concerns in their place of work (Smith and Feldman, 2017). Reports should be handled in a manner that is confidential.

All employees have to be treated equally. Discriminatory treatment considers irrelevant employees characteristics like gender, origin, race, age, union membership, physical characteristics, pregnancy, family status or any other criterion that is unlawful and the applicable regulations. Suppliers are expected to make sure that the employees are not harassed (Singh and kaur, 2016). The company does encourage the suppliers to offer a supportive and inclusive environment of working and diversify when it comes to making decisions and their employees.

Suppliers have to comply with all laws that are applicable, contractual agreements, recognized standards and regulations. Suppliers will make sure that the goods they supply to Apple Inc. do not have ingredients which are derived from conflict regions that indirectly or directly benefit or finance armed groups. The company does not tolerate child labor in its supply chain. It is the responsibility of suppliers to avoid any type of child labor in the operations of the business as per the international organization of labor core standards and the global principles of the United Nations (Pederses & Andersen, 2016).

Conclusion 

As much as the company states these laws and code of ethics on its website and everywhere they can be accessed, it sometimes does not follow them. The company has been involved in a number of lawsuits. One of them is where a case was filed in the year 2005 as a class action claiming that the company had violated the antitrust statutes of the US through the operation of a music downloading monopoly. The company changed the software design such that the music files of other vendors were incompatible with the iPod.

References

Singh, B. J. R., & Kaur, M. P. (2016). Corporate social responsibility in India. International 

Journal of Higher Education Research & Development , 1 (1).

Pedersen, E. R., & Andersen, M. (2016). Safeguarding corporate social responsibility (CSR) in global supply chains: how codes of conduct are managed in buyer‐supplier relationships. Journal of Public Affairs , 6 (3‐4), 228-240.

Smith, G., & Feldman, D. (2017). Company codes of conduct and international standards: An analytical comparison . World Bank.