Comparison of CSR Policies: Apple vs Huawei

This report compares the CSR policies of Apple and Huawei to determine their practice standards and impact on society and the environment.

Running head: BUSINESS SOCITY AND PLANET
Business Society and Planet
Name of the Student:
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Introduction
Corporate Social Responsibility is a best practice guideline that requires the business
organizations to act more responsibly towards the society and environment. This guideline
ensures that the organizations are aware of the impact that they are having on their
surrounding and are taking steps to ensure those impacts are reduced (Coombs & Holladay,
2015). Mitigation of risks and crisis, recycling, green products, responsible consumption of
resources are all part of that. In this report, the CSR policies of Apple and Huawei have been
compared in order to determine the practice standards and their impact.
Discussion
Apple Inc. and Huawei both belong to the same industry though located in different
countries. Apple is a US based company that makes premium smartphones. They focus in
relentless innovation and making the lives of the users better (Apple Inc., 2019). Huawei,
founded in 1987 is a private limited company. They too make technologies such as mobiles,
smartphones and many such services (Huawei Investment & Holding Co., Ltd., 2019). Both
the companies release yearly Corporate Social Responsibility Report to intimate the readers
with the positive impact that they are creating.
Rationale of choosing the companies
Both apple and Huawei are leaders in their own market. The have many centers for
business and engage a lot of people as workers and stakeholders. They have large supply
chains that facilitate their production and distribution. Thus, their operations have much
impact on the social and environmental aspects of a country (Kesavan, Bernacchi &
Mascarenhas, 2013). This is the reason that these companies have been chosen for
comparison.

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Apple has innovation and technology in the core of their business. Their products are
preferred all over the world for their unique features as well as security. Their pricing is
premium and these aspects sets apple apart from the other smartphone companies. They make
smartphones, PCs, laptops, tablets and many other smart devices and accessories (Myers &
Fellow, 2014). Huawei manufactures android smartphones and other cellular accessories.
They also provide broad band network, smart TVs, dongles, tablets, computers and related
accessories to provide their consumers a complete service. Both the companies have created
their business model and operation procedure in such a way that the impact on the
environment is minimal. The main purpose of releasing CSR is to owning up to the impacts
that they are aware of and making strategies to minimizing those impacts. Both the
companies share extensive CSR details and planning, future aims and expectations that need
to be compared in order to understand which of these two companies have better CSR
standards.
Comparison of the company’s social reports
The reports of CSR initiatives and achievements that Apple and Huawei have
produced have many commonalities between them while being substantially different than
each other. Through a close inspection of the reports of these two companies, it can be easily
determined that the CSR report that Apple has produced is much detailed. Their report
concentrates on doing overall good to the environment and its people. From the concepts of
the products and the social and environmental goals that they have followed as well as the
future goals are extremely people and planet oriented. They focus mainly on the reduction of
resource use, carbon footprint, and emissions. They also take responsibility of ensuring
recycling and reusing the materials that they use, mostly, aluminum and paper (Khan, Alam
& Alam, 2015). They are also reducing the use of non-bio-degradable materials like plastic
and e-waste so that they can leave the earth better than before. They have also invested

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significantly in creating sustainable energy and by 2018, they have opted for complete use of
solar and wind energy and lesser energy consumption in their production.
The CSR report of Huawei shows instances of Sustainability practices, though the
purpose that is generally projected in the report are company oriented. Their practice of CSR
though has some social and environmental considerations; these are essentially maintained
for creating organizational standard and value (Cisse, Grimm & Nolke, 2014). Their
satisfaction aim is distributed among the business environment, stakeholders and customers.
The claims and statements made by Huawei are not always true. For example, the company
CSR report claims that they have not been changed with collection of intelligence or
installing backdoor software, while in reality, not soon ago, USA banned Huawei from
America for the same reason. The government also decreed Google not to sell android license
to Huawei in future.
Sustainable Development Goals
The United Nations organization lists 17 goals that needs to be fulfilled for the
transformation of our planet (#Envision2030: 17 goals to transform the world for persons
with disabilities | United Nations Enable., 2019). Comparing the two companies CSR
activities it can be stated that both follow many of them. Apple has adopted many CSR goals
listed by United Nations. These are:
Goal 3: good health and well-being are continuously promoted and ensured by Apple. They
are working relentlessly in order to reduce the use of harmful materials and chemicals in their
product, creating a circular supply chain so that maximum recycling is possible. Huawei on
the other hand have adopted inclusion as their policy in this regard. They are aimed at
creating a inclusive community that is supported by powerful technology (Backer, 2013).

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Goal 7: this is concerned with affordable and clean energy. In this regard, the policies of
Apple are leading almost all the other companies. They have invested a large sum of money
in order to produce all the energy that they use by alternative methods. They are using, solar,
hydro and wing energy, depending on the location, to generate the necessary power. Huawei
has some policies regarding clean energy supply. The major centers use alternative source of
energy but it is nowhere as extensive as that (Mach, Atlason & Gerstlberger, 2017).
Goal 9: this includes industry, innovation and infrastructure. The company Apple is based on
innovation. They create the whole of their product, thus upholding this goal. Huawei
produces the smartphones and the software technology is produced by Google. Thus, their
operation has a lag in this matter.
Goal 11: both Apple and Huawei have committed themselves to this goal. Huawei’s CSR
shows that their motto is to create digitally transform cities. They are including the south
western countries in this trend. Apple also has such goals though are not focused that much.
When it comes to community inclusion, Apple believes in diversity and equal opportunity. It
is talent that matters to them.
Goal 12: in the aspect of responsible consumption and production, Apple is way ahead than
Huawei. The CSR policies that they have focused on clearly states that they are reducing the
use of earth’s resources, creating alternative products, recycling old materials and reusing
them. They are also creating forests so that they can use that wood to produce paper for their
packaging, thus ensuring that the environmental balance is not damaged due to their actions.
They are also ensuring that they have circular supply chain, zero waste and complete
recycling. Huawei too, have started recycling their products. They source their products from
green sources. They have targeted to increase the lifespan of their phones so that there are
lesser waste (Cremer, 2016).

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Goal 13: both the companies’ policies are aligned with climate action goals. Apple is
primarily focused on creating positive impact in the environment so that climate changes can
be stopped. Huawei too, through their CSR goals want to control the impacts of climate
change.
Goal 17: both the companies collaborate with green partners so that their sourcing and
distribution are all environmentally sustainable (Cave, 2014).
Evaluation of sustainability practice
The above discussion makes it clear that both the companies have come a long way
when it comes to sustainable business practice. In the sustainability phase model offered by
Dunphy, Griffiths & Benn has six stages. The very first two stages are rejection and non-
responsive. The companies that in no way follow CSR goals fall in this category. Thus,
neither Huawei nor Apple falls in this category. The third and fourth phases are compliance
and efficiency. These are average practice stage. Companies that have newly adopted CSR
policies fall in this stage. They are experimenting with the policies and trying to determine
which suit them the best. The last two stages are Proactivity and sustaining organizations.
Huawei falls in the proactive category as there are many of their policies that are in the
experimental phase. Moreover, there is a lack of initiative for clean energy, waste reduction
and reduction of harmful materials in their production. Apple falls in the sustainable
organization phase (Urbaniak, 2015). The sustainability model of Apple includes all the
aspects of the social and environmental aspects. They are reducing carbon footprint, resource
use, energy consumption, water usage, harmful chemical use, waste and deforestation. They
are also working for better community through diversity inclusion, gender equality and many
such initiatives. Their reports are transparent and they are brave enough to account for the
impact that they are still having, which basically defines the ideal CSR practice. Though they

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have not been able to eliminate the use of harmful materials completely, their CSR practices
are one of the most extensive, society and environment oriented and philanthropic in nature.
Integration of the CSR report and company value
In case of Apple, the values that they propagate are of innovation state of the art
experience. They earlier only applied that in their product, while now, it is applied to the
whole of the organization. The production, resource sourcing, logistics and distribution are
done in a sustainable way (Reinecke & Ansari, 2016). They have aligned their vision and
mission goals with the CSR goals. Their CSR goals require them to practice sustainably.
Thus, they are creating systems that will consume lesser power, run longer, made with
recycled materials and such. They also provide consumers the opportunity to sell their old
apple systems and exchange them through the organization so that they are able to collect
100% of the products for recycling. Along with that they are also building new technologies
so that they are able to deliver their promises to the consumers.
In case of Huawei, they are not much behind. Their vision states that they are
customer-centric, dedicated, improves continuously; open in interaction and values
teamwork. They have environmental and social goals in their policies. They are sourcing
from green stakeholders, recycling their products, including all the communities and cultures
into the world of technology (Tsui, 2016). These help them to reach their sustainability goals.
Still, there are much room for improvement, they might focus more on increasing the
receding forest cover, reducing the carbon and water footprint, recycle as well as sustainable
devices for lower power consumption.
Impact of group discussion on CSR perception of the company
While discussing about these two companies in our group there were many insights
that I gained. The most important aspect that was discussed was the CSR compliances of the

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different companies and its impact on their reputation and customer satisfaction. Apple’s
CSR policies create a positive impact on the users’ perception of the company. This is a
major reason of their success. Huawei too, has seen much success due to their practices (Xu,
Liu & Huang, 2015). earlier had thought that companies that use CSR policies faced
difficulties in maintaining their profit margin as they need to consider many aspects in their
production and distribution. Through the group discussion I realized that integrating CSR
practices actually helps them incur more profit. As it has been seen in the case of Apple, they
reuse their own materials thus reducing the costing of resource procurement. The new
smartphones by Huawei, Honor has become quite popular in the market, mainly in the
developing and underdeveloped countries due to their reasonable price. This changed my
perspective about CSR.
Conclusion
From the discussion, it is evident that the CSR policies and practices adopted by
Apple and Huawei have helped them create a best practice environment. Their disclosure also
helps other companies to follow their footsteps. This trend is becoming a practice and it is
expected that in the next few years all the large, medium and small industries would adopt
CSR policies into their business framework.

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