Ethics at Apple

A recent NY Times article, "On Wall Street, a Rise in Dismissals Over Ethics" had this to say about companies.

But with regulatory scrutiny heightened after the collapse of Enron and other companies, corporations and their boards are adopting zero-tolerance policies. Increasingly, they are holding their employees to lofty standards of business and personal behavior. The result is a wave of abrupt firings as corporations move to stop perceived breaches of ethics by their employees that could result in law enforcement action or public relations disasters.

"We are in a regulatory frenzy," said Ira Lee Sorkin, a senior white-collar crime lawyer at Carter Ledyard & Milburn in Manhattan. "Corporations are acting out of fear and they don't want to take a chance that employees did something wrong under their watch, so they are basically cleaning house. Someone has to say enough."

As is often the case, Apple thinks different.  I only have to go back to my own experience last year at Apple.  I asked for an investigation about clearly unethical treatment for the team that worked for me.  I also relayed a conversation in which I had been told by another Apple employee that an Apple executive had suggested that Apple might be doing some unusual things with their quarterly results.  Instead of being rewarded for being concerned about potentially dangerous situations, I ended up being shown the door.  The way that I and the people who worked for me were treated in FY03 and FY04 was clearly unethical.

Of course Apple has a different standard of ethics.  The gold standard at Apple is that if it is good for the executives, then it must be good for the employees, the company, and the country.  Of course there will be no public relations disaster for Apple since a wall of secrecy protects the executives and keeps the employees in line.  Somehow I doubt that this is going to change.  This type of behavior is ingrained at Apple and as long as the stock price is fine, the board and the executives will enjoy their riches while a different kind of ethics rules at Apple.

Comments

[An Infinite Loop insider]

Want another example? Take a look at what's going on with Developer Relations. Ron Okamoto is simply running interference for Phil Schiller and his oh-so-obvious use of WWDR as a farm system for future Apple iApps. Bet no developer has a kind word to say about Ron and his method of communicating (rather non-communicating). And his staff are all deemed off-limits to others in Apple so they have no choice but to work for Ron on his terms or seek employment outside the company. How does that engender loyalty? And don't even look at what he's done with outside consultants and sole-source non-competitive bids that even Apple Finance doesn't know about!