Free Social Performance Of Apple Inc. Essay Sample

Based in Cupertino, California USA, Apple Inc is certainly a tech giant in the market today. The company offers plenty of electronic products and software to meet the growing demands of the digital world. This essay will review the business model of Apple in the light of the following aspects.

Nature, Structure, and Types of Products and Services of Apple

External Factors Affecting Apple’s Success
Ways in Which Primary Stakeholders Affect Organization’s Financial Performance
Corporate Social Responsibility Concern for Apple
Nature, Structure, and Types of Products and Services of Apple
Apple Inc. crafts, integrates, develops and sells computer software, consumer electronics, online services, PCs, mobiles, and tablets. Apple is renowned for its hardware products like Mac, iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. The company maintains unique design elements in hardware products that contain elements of aesthetics, evolving hardware components, and brilliant software.
Apple’s software products include operating systems OS X (for Mac) and iOS (for mobile devices). Apple also offers some amazing online services such as iCloud for data storage on central servers and syncing on various devices, iTunes, and App Store. The list doesn’t end here. iTunes media browser, Safari web browser, iLife, and iWork add to a huge list of services and products of Apple.
Recently released revenues statistics of Apple for the last quarter of 2014 clearly reveal that Apple excels most of the tech companies in terms of generating revenues by selling products and services.
External Factors Affecting Apple’s Success
Purchasing Power of People: The sale of Apple’s products is directly linked with the purchasing power of people. As the currency devalues or unemployment rate increases, the purchasing power of people reduces. As a result, the sales of Apple products also decrease. The products should be sold according to the economic conditions of the country.
Modern Lifestyle: In the world of today, people love to automate as many things as possible so that they don’t have to do anything on their own. As a result, we see development of all sorts of gadgets and smart devices. Apple reaps rewards from this situation and provides products and services to ease out our lives. The luxurious lifestyle has aided tech companies like Apple to grow in market.
Ways in Which Primary Stakeholders Affect Organization’s Financial Performance
The business strategies deal with industry structures, social trends, and environment for achieving the desired financial performance or sustainable growth . Stake holders influence the business strategies directly or indirectly. Primary stake holders are directly affected by the business strategies. As a result, they must also directly influence organizations policies and tactics to protect their interests. Consider the ways in which primary stakeholders influence the financial performance of a business, and especially Apple Inc.

Shaping Management Decisions

Primary stakeholders directly influence the decisions related to financial policies. For example, the stakeholders will be more concerned with the revenues and profits. They will prefer the organization to have least number of employees for performing the tasks so as to minimize the cost in terms of wages. They would force management to optimize the projects with minimum manpower. In a similar way, primary stakeholders can shape management decisions related to investing money in different market niches. Apple’s management decisions are influenced by the users of its products. The higher the purchasing power of people, the greater the popularity of Apple, higher will be Apple’s investment on its products, and hence, the financial performance will receive a great boost.

Core Part of Business Model

Primary stakeholders affect financial performance of organizations by influencing business models. The methods used by business for crafting strategies, delivering products and services, and drawing attention of end users, directly involve primary stakeholders. Hence, they can be considered to be heart of a business model that dictates all business strategies including its financial performance.

Investment on Projects

Primary stakeholders are concerned with profit maximization to a high extent. Hence, they would like to achieve this objective by increasing their investment in business. In return, they desire more revenues. The shareholders of Apple may increase their investment for popular products like iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus.

Strong Intimate Relationship with Management

Primary stakeholders flourish their interests by maintaining good relations with management of business. The management will always consult them before making important financial decisions. The thinking and strategizing will broaden with the involvement of primary stakeholders. The relationship building between primary stakeholders and management is a key element in improving the financial performance of organization.
Apple always tries to motivate the primary stakeholders to provide feedback regarding products and services. Their strategies always protect the desires of primary stakeholders to flourish relationship with them.

Experienced Feedback to Management

Primary stakeholders can play the role of brain for management of a business. They carry good enough market experience and situation to provide valuable feedback to management for taking important financial decisions. The issues related to finance, liabilities, wages for employees, outsourcing work to others, may be supervised by stakeholders to improve the overall financial performance of the business.
Apple’s users are quite experienced in terms of using digital gadgets. They provide great reviews and feedback about products that help Apple optimize the performance in terms of quality and finance.
Corporate Social Responsibility Concern for Apple
Supplier Responsibility Progress Report suggests some deep concerns for Apple in relation to its Corporate Social Responsibility. The report highlights many areas in which Apple doesn’t meet the required CSR standards.
One of the biggest CSR concerns is the violation of labor rules. In Chinese factories, child labor rules are not followed. The Guardian report found violations in other areas also such as confiscation of salaries of workers to pay off agencies of recruitment, mandatory pregnancy tests, and holding wages of workers as punishment. Apple denied having any information about violation of labor laws.
Apple claims that the company doesn’t tolerate any kind of violations related to social or environmental norms. However, it is clearly involved in environmental violations which go against the claims. Apple is rectifying the situation to save its reputation in the global market.

Works Cited

Apple. (2013). Supplier Responsibility Progress Report.
Dentchev, N. A. (2004). Corporate social performance as a business strategy. Journal of Business Ethics, 395--410.
Garside. (2013). Child labour uncovered in Apple's supply chain. Theguardian.com.
Wheelen, T. L. (2008). Concepts in strategic management and business policy. Pearson Education India.