“Tim Cook reportedly sent an urgent memo yesterday addressing alleged violations of health and safety at factories of suppliers, following negative stories in NYT and elsewhere,” Rocco Pendola writes for Seeking Alpha. “Cook says Apple is ‘attacking problems aggressively’ and that the company is leading the industry by planning to open up to the Fair Labor Association for inspection of suppliers’ facilities.”
“This sort of response is not very Jobsian. Neither are all of the feel-good memos addressing the ‘team’ and actions such as encouraging members to make charitable donations that Apple would proudly match,” Pendola writes. “That’s very San Francisco of Cook. And that runs in stark contrast to Jobs, who, while born in San Francisco, ended up being, according to Lashinsky’s account, the farthest thing from a ‘do-good liberal,’ at least in the financial and business matters we think we know about via the media.”
“Let me be clear about a few things. As a human, I prefer the Cook style over the Jobs style any day of the week. I’ve learned from experience that you’ll lead a better life doing things the Cook way,” Pendola writes. “That said, I think Jobs would hammer Cook for what he’s doing. At some point, Cook is going to write a memo or do the right thing one too many times out of concern for Apple’s ‘values.”‘ One of these moves could end up harming the business and hurting the stock. Simply put, Jobs probably stayed much further away from this sort of thing than Cook does not because he was a bad guy with no ‘values,’ but because he did not want to wake sleeping dogs or tiptoe around land mines.”
Pendola writes, “I’m not saying Cook’s way of being provides a reason to sell or not buy Apple stock. I am, however, pointing to an area of legitimate concern. People close to the situation seem to think that the worst in Jobs is what brought out the best in Apple. If that was indeed the magic, it’s about to be gone.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Tim Cook is not going to “harm the business” because he believes in doing the right thing and communicating it with employees (and everyone else). If anything, he’ll only enhance the business.
Related article:
Apple CEO Tim Cook calls New York Times supplier report ‘patently false and offensive’ – January 27, 2012
