Corporate Culture and Ethics in Business: Case Studies of Apple, Adidas, Starbucks, and Toyota

Running head: LEADERSHIP
Leadership

LEADERSHIP 1
Question 1
Culture is a set of beliefs, values, attitudes and norms that must been followed in the
organisation. The corporate culture of the Apple Inc. is one of the standardised cultures in the
world. However, the culture is used to change from the few years due to the changes in the
leadership from time to time but the values of the companies are used to be same (Guiso,
Sapienza and Zingales, 2015).
The values of the company that is basically established by the Steve Jobs when he took over
the charge as a CEO in 1997 that time the company was going from a bad time. The first
value that to creating the best product in the market. It is the campaign for creating a brand
image of the Apple. The Apple has a core value of thinking different from others by creating
a unique and innovative product and marketing strategies. These core values of the Apple
have helped the company to make so consistently providing excellent products. The top
executives to the sales executives have been united by a common culture. The customers of
apple can experience whenever they interact with the Apple. The other value of the
companies believes that they are the face of the earth to make the great products. The
companies believe in the simple and not the complex. The company believes that they have to
own and control over the technologies of the products they make. The company has a belief
to concentrate on the markets where they can make the significant contribution. The markets
choose by the making where they can make a significant contribution. The company does not
take thousands of the projects but they focus on the few projects that are meaningful and
important for the company. The company followed the cross-pollination and deep
collaboration that has allowed the company to innovate as other cannot. In a support of vision
the core values are an important or an organisation (Apple, 2017).
Apple corporate culture is a key factor of the success of the organisation. Apple is known to
maintain its secrecy that is considered the pinnacle of the Apple strategic marketing culture.
Apple is also known to value and appreciate its employees that have helped to maintain the
corporate culture in the company. Many theorists have described the Apple culture in relation
to the motivation by rewarding the employees. Apple corporate culture enables the company
to enables the human resource that helps or supports to achieve various strategic objectives.
For example, the company’s culture traits are associated with the drive for innovation. These
are the main factor that determines the competitiveness of the company in the online services,

LEADERSHIP 2
information technology and the consumer electronics industries. The corporate mission and
vision statement has been based on the organisation culture. The human resource
management has been continued to be maximised in the leadership of Steve Jobs and now
though the leadership of Tim Cook for the business relevance in the various markets around
the World. Apple uses its corporate culture as a tool for the strategic management and the
success of the company. Apple corporate culture has benefitted the company to compete
against the other companies like Google, Samsung, LG, Intel, Sony, Lenovo and the
companies like IBM (Van and Fine, 2018).
Susan L. Wagner. Co-founder and Director of the Apple has exemplifies that the organisation
culture for creative innovation. The company focussed on the high level of innovation that
includes creativity and mind-set that challenges standards and conventions. The main
characteristics of the corporate culture have been described the Apple director and co-founder
is that the company that are:
 To provide excellence at the high level
 The creativity is an important factor of an organisation
 Innovation is the key factor
 The company maintain secrecy at all level
 Moderate combativeness (Carlos, Rodrigues and Dibb, 2014)
It can be analysed that the Apple corporate governance has helped the company to achieve its
vision and mission. The Apple cultural and values easily been seen by the apple customers
who has been linked with the products of the Apple. Currently apple is one of the biggest
companies that due to its creativity and innovations.
Question 4
The communication channel is an important part of any organisation. Organisations that are
globally established have been depended on the various types of communications. Adidas is
one of the companies whose operations have been widely expanded all over the globe.
Adidas is the multinational company that manufacture and design shoes, clothes and other
accessories. The Adidas is famous for its sportswear items and other sport related items.
There are numerous channels of communications used by Adidas for the communication. In
this number of channels, it will be seen that how Adidas use each channel in a number of
times a day in a below table of channels (Karjaluoto, Mustonen, and Ulkuniemi, 2015).

LEADERSHIP 3
Communication Channel Number of times used
in the day
Individual face-to-face 10
Meeting 2
Presentation 1
Telephone calls (Including mobile) 7
Video-conferences 1
Reports 2
Memos 1
Letters 3
Emails 15
SMS 3
Others 2
It can be seen from the above table that the communication of the Adidas has been a quite
similar from the other companies. It can be also noted that the email and face-to-face
communication in the organisation has been widely been used. The emails are the best source
to do the communication because it has been used to do the resource management and it can
be said that the email has been companies preferred communication channel (Wang, and Fan,
2016).
Adidas used emails because the emails are the safest source to communicate. In emails all
data has been put safe and secure. Emails are used for evidence for proving the
communication. The other communication cannot be proved easily as compared to email
because emails are in the written form in the digital platforms. These days it is the very
common type of communication used by the companies and therefore can be said to have the
most preferred communication channel (Fiordelisi, and Ricci, 2014).
Adidas has the view on why they most preferred on emails rather than any other
communication channels. Adidas has stated that due to Adidas has global reach and it
becomes easy for the company to reach every aspect by emailing. Adidas believes using the
communication and the email is the best communication channel for the easy sharing. It is
easy to measure the email from the other communication channel. The emails has the very
easy process just login with your email id and password you can login, compose the email
and easy to send. The emails are used by the executive to the top management and it becomes
easy for the management to communicate with all (Storey, and German, 2017).