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University of Cincinnati

PACE within Apple Inc.

Business Profile Group 14

Ryan Nance, Tobin Kashdan-Combs, Chandu Manne, Kyle Apshago

Business Pathways Section 11

Professor Lyon

12 October 2016
The Carl H. Lindner College of Business curriculum has been built around the acronym

PACE. PACE stands for professionalism, academics, character, and engagement. PACE

ensures students can successfully pursue their personal and career goals that business students

are passionate about. One company where we can see PACE evident in is Apple Inc. Apple

ensures the success of both its customers and employees by building professionalism, enhancing

education opportunities, striving for the best in teamwork through diverse teams, and by

engaging itself throughout the community.

In order to successfully complete this midterm assignment, communication with the

entire group was imperative. The group included Ryan Nance, Kyle Apshago, Chandu Manne,

and Tobin Kashdan-Combs. As a group we created a plan on when to meet, and even made

deadlines on when we wanted tasks to be completed. We considered various different ways on

how we wanted to approach the project and we finally decided to divide and conquer. Each

member of the group would take a letter in the acronym PACE to research and comprehend to

bring back to the entire team. Tobin researched how Apple employs character throughout the

entire company, Chandu researched how Apple employs professionalism when engaging with

employees and customers, Kyle researched how Apple allocates the power of education to

employees, and finally Ryan researched how Apple is engaged throughout the community. The

entire team worked very well together to get the project accomplished. In addition, instead of

simply delegating tasks and copying and pasting, the team collaborated to share our new

knowledge with everyone involved.

Apple employs professionalism throughout the company as a means to captivate its

customers. The company has always set increasing standards in the market. It has grown in the
past few years, especially with the release of its new flagship phone models every year. 57%

percent of the companys revenue comes from iPhone sales, and experts believe the trajectories

will take a similar path this year. The company has shown overall growth in the last decade,

mainly due to its iPhone sales, despite occasional slumps in the recent years in revenue due to the

questionable success of products like the Apple Watch and the 12-inch MacBook being the latest

on the list.

Furthermore, Apple claims to be an equal opportunity employer that includes a lot of

diversity in the people they employ. Apple also has strong stance on being a company that gives

everyone an equal chance. This means that a person who takes up a job at Apple Inc. has the

opportunity to work with a wide variety of people and learn new things and broaden his exposure

from colleagues at company. The global company is always open to new ideas and innovation.

Apple Inc. have stated that they are willing to offer employment and advancement opportunities

to a wide variety of applicants, which include minorities, women, protected veterans and

individuals with disabilities. This high level of character develops professionalism in its

employees as the employees have opportunities to work in diverse teams. Apple strongly stresses

on the fact that they will not discriminate between any two people, even if one of them has a

criminal history. According to many current and ex- employees, working for this company is an

experience of a lifetime. However, many did mention the fact that the company has sixty-hour

weeks for employees, which maybe a little stressful.

In addition, the senior management also has a reputation of keeping tabs on the talented

and the hard working employees, which is a major part of the companys success. This suggests

that they have a great working environment, despite its long working hours, which seems to be
the only issue with some employees. This type of hiring process encourages professionalism,

focuses on academics, and also proves that the company has strong values in character and

engagement.

One of Apple's main values is education. Apple works very hard to make an education

accessible to both its employees and underserved schools that need technology. To work in apple

retail stores, the only education required is to have a GED. Moving into the corporate sector of

apple, they do not require any initial degrees for business type jobs but do recommend 5-7 years

of experience. For higher positions in the company, certain degrees are mostly required. An

example of this is obtaining a bachelor's degree for corporate operations management or a

business sciences degree for a hardware engineer. Although the business side of the company

does not require all employees to have degrees in every respective sector, every corporate

engineering position requires you to have a degree.

Apple provides Educational opportunities that can help employees finish their college

path, while also working. Apple offers a debt relief program in which students who work either

full time or part time can be reimbursed up to $5,500 a year. However, students must maintain a

2.0 GPA or C average to receive aid, and only receive aid after the semester is over. It is called

the reimbursement program because students must first pay tuition themselves, but then are

reimbursed via check after the payment process is over.

Although apple is very good with helping employees continue their success in higher

education, they have no affiliation or partnerships with any specific institutions. Every single

accredited university nationwide that a student may attend can be involved and paid for by this

program.
Apple is constantly innovating and discovering new ways to improve their business.

Denise Smith, the VP of worldwide human resources at Apple, perfectly captures the company's

holistic view of diversity with this quote on their webpage: Diversity is more than any one

gender, race or ethnicity. Its richly representative of all people, all backgrounds and all

perspectives. It is the entire human experience (Apple.com/diversity). Apple is also leading the

way with their equal pay for women and minorities. In 2016 they closed all the gaps in salaries,

bonuses and annual stock grants between men and women because they believe equal work

deserves equal pay.

Although Apple is trying its best to be an equal opportunity employer the trend still seems

to show white males are still the majority, especially in leadership roles. Looking at the data

from the past three years that they provide on their site Apple is slowly increasing the number of

women and underrepresented minorities in each field of work. Although there is a majority of

white males, it does not mean they are not a diverse company. They want diversity of ideas not a

diverse group of people who all think the same.

Since 2008, our suppliers have trained over 9.25 million workers to understand local

laws, health and safety regulations, and the Apple Code of Conduct (Apple.com/supplier-

responsibility/empowering-workers/). Apple also requires the supervisors at all of their factories

to have good communication skills with their workers and be able to keep the factory a safe and

functioning working environment. Apple goes above and beyond with its education of workers

in their factories. They have set up classrooms in their supplier factories with the hope to teach

their workers valuable skills by providing them teaching professionals and Apple products to

complete their course work. They named this program the Supplier Employee Education and
Development program aka SEED and 1.4 million people have participated since 2008.

Participants are able to earn a bachelor's or associate's degree through a local university in the

program. This will help them in the long run because the more educated their workers are, the

more innovative they will become due to their more diversified thinking atmosphere.

Apple Inc. has established values for which the company has evolved around. Apple has

established values based on accessibility, education, the environment, inclusion and diversity,

privacy, and finally through holding their suppliers responsible. At the University of Cincinnati

Carl H. Lindner College of Business, the curriculum was established using the PACE acronym;

Professionalism, Academics, Character, and Engagement. Apple has definitely engaged itself to

be a part of the community with values that truly have influenced the global community.

One major value that Apple has made a tremendous impact in is education. Apple is

giving products, support, and opportunities to schools that need them most. Apple joined the

ConnectED initiative and pledged $100 million of teaching and learning solutions to 114

underserved schools around the country. Throughout these 114 schools, Apple donates an iPad to

every student, a Mac and iPad to every teacher, and an Apple TV to every classroom. These

donations are allocating the power of technology to teachers and students. Furthermore, Apple

does not simply donate electronics to schools and forget about them. Apple evaluates and

analyzes the schools network, makes improvements to any network errors, and teaches the users

that are involved in the program. In addition, Apple implements workshops for teachers and

students to maximize the learning potential. Finally, what Apple is doing in the education

industry is truly amazing. Apple is not simply granting money to the school to buy subpar

technology. Apple is granting top of the line equipment to schools that do not have any
alternative means of obtaining this technology. According to multiple testimonials, the

technology used in the classroom from Apple has truly improved graduation rates, attendance

statistics, along with improving grades; because who doesn't want to learn from an iPad.

In addition, Apple supports social responsibility by holding suppliers responsible, along

with creating initiatives to protect our environment. Apple is creating solar energy projects to

reduce the carbon footprint, switching to greener materials, along with creating safer

manufacturing processes. Apple is protecting forests and creating more mindful ways to recycle

devices using robots. Recently Apple created a goal of using one-hundred percent renewable

energy. In addition, Apple also uses over 99 percent of packing resulting from recycling and is

removing toxins like Mercury from products, amongst many more initiatives to protect our

environment. Finally, Apple also is mandating its core values to its suppliers. Suppliers have

been mandated to treat employees with dignity and respect, along with helping to protect the

environment.

Under the new direction of Apple CEO, Tim Cook, Apple has been more conscientious of

social responsibility. When the intuitive company was handed over to Tim Cook`s realm, the

company established increasing values that would protect its employees, the environment, aid the

community, along with values that would support social responsibility in general. According to

one article, Apple added new levels of transparency that would have been anathema to Jobs

(Mallenbaker.net). However, like anything in life, there are always improvements that r` could

be made. Apple could be more involved at the collegiate level. Unfortunately, Apple does not

have many programs that lower the cost of a laptop for college students. While financing options

are available, there aren't really many discounts that are significant enough to make much of a
difference. Apple could definitely implement more programs for the collegiate level that would

enhance learning and aid in the transformation process of college.

Apple ensures the success of both its customers and employees by building

professionalism, enhancing education opportunities, striving for the best in teamwork through

diverse teams, and by engaging itself throughout the community. Apple should be considered a

role model for emerging companies in this modern era. Apple has definitely made an impact on

our community at large.


Works Cited

"Apple." Apple. N.p., n.d. Web. 6 Oct. 2016.

Baker, Mallen. "How Tim Cook Brought Corporate Social Responsibility to Apple." Mallen

Baker's Respectful Business Blog. N.p., 09 Mar. 2016. Web. 8 Oct. 2016.

"Empowering Workers - Supplier Responsibility - Apple." Apple. N.p., n.d. Web. 8 Oct. 2016.

Journal, Wall Street. "The Wall Street Journal & Breaking News, Business, Financial and

Economic News, World News and Video." The Wall Street Journal. N.p., n.d. Web. 6 Oct.

2016.

"The Mac Observer." The Mac Observer. N.p., n.d. Web. 8 Oct. 2016.

"PACE Curriculum." University of Cincinnati. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Oct. 2016.

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