Corporate Governance and Ethical Issues in Apple Inc.

BUSINESS ETHICS

Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
PART 1............................................................................................................................................1
Corporate Governance with respect to Apple Inc........................................................................1
PART 2............................................................................................................................................3
Normative and descriptive theories of business ethics................................................................3
PART 3............................................................................................................................................5
Consideration of different stakeholder’s perspectives.................................................................5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
Corporate governance refers to the system of practices, rules and processes which help in
direction and controlling of a business firm. It is extremely important to include a provision of
business ethics into corporate governance which help the organisation to be ethical in its conduct
and operations. In this project report, a case study of one of the biggest corporate scandal of 2017
of Apple’s slowed down iPhone has been taken up with respect to its corporate governance and
an attempt has been made to understand the ethical issues faced by the company along with the
company’s response to those ethical problems (DesJardins and McCall, 2014). This report aims
at application of some of the most relevant theories of business ethics to the selected business
case scenario. At last, this report aims at evaluation of the effect of ethical and unethical business
practices of the selected company on its internal as well as external stakeholders.
PART 1
Corporate Governance with respect to Apple Inc.
There has been a recent theory around Apple’s users that allegedly reported Apple of
slowing down the performance of some models of iPhone. According to this conspiracy theory,
Apple does so to force the users to change their previous models of iPhone and upgrade to the
latest ones. All the allegations by these users came to life when in December 2017, Apple
admitted to the allegations and confessed that it has been intentionally slowing down the
performance of the iPhone by a software update (Hermalin and Weisbach, 2012). It reported that
the company launches new software update which slows down the performance of the previous
models of iPhone do decrease the big power demand on the batteries and increase the prolonged
life of the battery but the company rejected the claims that it slowed down the performances of
the older models to force users into buying newer versions.
Ethical issues and how company responded in handling those issues:
The issue which Apple faced in this business situation was more of an ethical issue rather
than a technical or a business issue. Even if Apple was technically right and correct in slowing
down the performances of the older models by a software update and even if it does prolong the
life of the phone and the battery and protects the process of the phone, Apple has no right to
modify or alter the device without the permission of the user and their consent. It is ethically
bounded to let the user know and decide for himself whether he wants to keep the old software or
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