“APPLE SUPPLIER IN THE SPOTLIGHT AGAIN”

This blog post is commenting and expanding on the idea’s presented in Bei Yuan (Bob) Zhang’s blog post entitled “Apple Supplier In The Spotlight Again”.

Owning a multitude of Apple products myself, I was surprised to hear that one of Apple’s suppliers has declared Bankruptcy. While reading Bob’s blog post, I found it hard to fathom that a supplier for a company that’s net worth is estimated to be over 500 billion dollars could go bankrupt. Reading on to discover that Apple’s none-negotiable dealings with GT Advanced Technologies was the main driving factor of their economic struggles provided me with some perspective of Apple from an internal view.

Bob made a point towards the end of his blog post that

“The way Apple treats their suppliers must change if Apple wishes to retain good business partnerships to maintain success long run for both companies.”

I agree with this observation, and think this case has a lot to do with what we’ve learned in regards to Organizational Culture and Corporate Social Responsibility.

We’ve recently learned that organizational culture is crucial for the image of a company, retaining employees and getting return business. Right now I think apple does a good job on creating a quality products but after hearing this story, I think they need to re-evaluate how they handle supplier relations.

I think Apple should be more conscious of the welfare of it’s suppliers because it is ethically just and I also believe it will benefit them further down the road. If Apple were to allow for negotiation with its suppliers, they could create a shared value between companies like GT. I think creating shared value will not only ensure the economic well being of suppliers but will also strengthen the foundation of Apple.

However, I am by no means implying that Apple has a weak foundation because I acknowledge they are a innovative a successful firm who leads their industry. But , I still think this move would be advantageous because being in the competitive market that they are in, a new technology could be released at anytime. Thus, creating good supplier relations would benefit Apple if for example a disruptive innovator was introduced to the market.