Apples approach to its suppliers responsibility: 2015 = 9 th report

The company tries to show that, despite tough criticism, CSR issues and the
supplier responsibility have been fully taken into account by the group over the
past few years. The aim is to improve Apples ambivalent reputation: as a
powerful multinational leading the current global economic changes, there is no
doubt that the corporation cannot but feel responsible for all the stakeholders
around the group, especially their suppliers in order to improve their
working/living conditions. Jeff Williams, the The Vice President of Operations
Reporting, recognized with some humility that the company had not always been
perfect but that a lot of progress had been made to lead responsible changes.
Apple has actually tried to create an opened and transparent system with its
suppliers by focusing on quality, rigorous standards and core commitments such
as education for its employees. They also implemented different programs in
order to share some fundamental values such as ethics, dignity, and the respect
of human rights. Indeed, Apple decided to improve its employees standard of
living through different ways to address environmental and social issues :

Apple created a Code of Conduct for its suppliers : the aim is to ensure that
the different facilities across the planet might respect some essential
working and safety standards.

The company recognizes some abuses and manages to solve them by

leading corrective actions ( Ex : $900,000 paid for unpaid overtime in
2014)

The group engaged in a huge auditing camping to control the supply chain
better and to gain in openness as audits have been realized in roughly
twenty countries

Apple massively invested in order to provide its employee with a decent

access to education : Supplier Employee Education and Development
Program with 48 classrooms created and more than 850 000 workers
trained since 2008; Apple Supplier, Environment and Safety Academy : free
training to discover and use best practices (safety, ethics) in the facilities

The corporation is used to establishing a global ranking of its top 200

suppliers regarding the way the employees are treated, safety standards
are respected and the Code of Conduct is taken into account.

The environment is also a issue faced by Apple : Thanks to a Clean Water

Program, the group attempts to help suppliers limit the use of freshwater
to save millions of gallons

What does such a report highlight?

This reports highlights different elements about the corporation:

The efforts that have been made by the company to defend strong values
such as dignity or human rights

The proofs of these commitments by showing first that programs have

been created to help address CSR issues (Ex: About 92% of its facilities
have now managed to respect the 60 hour workweek, more than 2.3
million workers have been trained since 2007)

The fact that these engagements might be really recent as educational

programs were created less than 10 years ago, which can be explained by
the rapid success of a company that has doubtlessly entered a new
dimension over the past decade

Some honesty by showing the different issues highly criticized concerning

the companys working practices, even if the truth can be sometimes
shown as rosier (To balance this reports statements, one may refer to
some articles in the New York Times who actually described some poor
working conditions, especially in Asia where most of the suppliers may be
likely not to fully respect the code of conduct)