The Magazine of Corporate Responsibility

Tag Archive for ‘Apple’

By the Numbers: Life and Death at Foxconn

Recent media reports have put the spotlight on abusive working conditions at Foxconn, the Taiwanese company whose massive Chinese factories manufacture some of the world’s most popular consumer electronics. As well as working with companies like Dell, Motorola, Nokia and Hewlett-Packard, Foxconn assembles popular Apple products like the iPhone and iPad.

Manifesto for the Corporate Idealist

While daily news headlines can sometimes make it easy to assume that big business is incapable of doing good in the world, contributor Christine Bader argues that there exists a “global army” of Corporate Idealists hard at work on a host of environmental and social issues. She offers the beginnings of a Manifesto to help support that army – “an outline of the principles and actions that will help us better align the interests of business and society.”

Leadership, Common Purpose and Shared Values

Columnist Gael O’Brien speaks with Joel Kurtzman about corporate culture, CEO leadership and the concept of a common-purpose organization. “It is difficult for a company to keep a sense of common purpose for longer than a decade,” he says. “It has to be nurtured or it goes away.” One company that has succeeded: American Express.

Apple Expands Supplier Responsibility Program

Apple Inc.’s latest Supplier Responsibility report shows a 25% increase in audits of supplier facilities during 2010 to establish compliance with the company’s standards for hiring, training and worker safety. The company said a report by an independent team of suicide prevention experts about suicides last year at a supplier plant in Taiwan found the supplier’s response “had definitely saved lives.”

Proxy Season 2011: Progress or Procrastination?

Reporter James Hyatt says that depending on whom you ask, when it comes to shareholder activism and corporate governance issues this year’s proxy season is a glass half full, a glass half empty, or a glass completely shattered.

Apple Opposes Shareholder Successorship Proposal

The Central Laborers’ Pension Fund has proposed that the company “adopt and disclose a written and detailed succession planning policy.” Apple’s successorship plans are particularly sensitive because Apple CEO Steve Jobs underwent a liver transplant operation in 2009.

Is There a Culture of Secrecy Behind Corporate Responsibility?

Does a commitment to corporate responsibility provide cover for bad corporate behavior? Stories about companies behaving badly make commitments to CR look hollow at best. Neil Smith argues it is not just commitments that matter, but the corporate culture set by the person at the top of the organization and internal subcultures determined by the employees and managers which are important.

How to Find Information on Green Electronics

Now that many consumers are beginning to care about their own environmental footprints, manufacturers of electronic equipment are responding with loads of greener offerings.

Johnson & Johnson, Under Investigation, Tops CSR Index

Johnson & Johnson topped a list of companies perceived by American consumers as having the best reputations for corporate social responsibility practices. Months after research for the Index was conducted, the company admitted that it misled regulators and consumers by using contractors to buy defective Motrin painkiller products from store shelves rather than announce a recall.

Influential Voices in U.S. Board Rooms

Regulators and rulemakers led the list of 100 most influential people affecting corporate governance in America’s board rooms in 2010, according to the National Association of Corporate Directors. Sen. Christopher Dodd and Rep. Barney Frank, authors of the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Law, were re-elected to the list as was Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary L. Schapiro.