Yang Gu's Blog

Oscar Lai’s blog entry “Steve Jobs’ Rotten Apple” noted how Steve Jobs’ unfavourable personal characteristics, namely the lack of philantropy, might have leaked into Apple’s culture and attributed to its lack of explicit social responsiblity agenda. To answer the question in Oscar’s blog: no, I don’t think Apple cares. Apple successfully positioned itself as an innovative, technological company and this is what it delivers.

However, in Austin Smith’s entry “Bombardier Bombarded By Thieves,” he arguess that Bombardier has to take action against the damage stolen cables has on its company. I agree with Austin on his view; the stolen cables affected the safety and performance of Bombardier’s rails, and safety is one of the qualities Bombardier, a builder for transportation devices, positioned itself to have.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/international-news/global-exchange/globe-correspondents/south-africas-ignominious-new-statistic-the-theft-index/article2194249/

Factors other than its product/service may affect a company’s performance if these factors are relevant to how the company positions itself. Bombardier needs to prevent against thefts that aren’t the company’s responsibility, but are ruining its positioned image as a reliable manufacturer. Meanwhile, Tech giant Apple’s lack of CSR is no secret and it is still doing well because it isn’t how Apple positioned itself; it can do without the competitive advantage from CSR.