Apple should be free to hire whomever it wants, and without regard to what its critics think. The previous assertion is about private property and freedom, but it’s worth adding that depending on the day, Apple is the most valuable company in the world.
It’s something to keep in mind as the DEI police continue to criticize Apple, and in particular call for government force to restrain Apple from its embrace of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) policies. Regarding the criticism, what’s the basis for pundits, policy types and politicians criticizing Apple’s diversity programs, including Apple’s brag that “Over the past year, we filled more open leadership roles than ever with women globally and Black candidates in the United States. We remain committed to continuing to grow leadership representation”?
About Apple’s race and gender-based hiring policies, the question about who is positioned to criticize DEI policies should not be construed as an endorsement of them. Not even close.
Except that to endorse or criticize Apple for embracing DEI or not is to completely miss the point. It’s the equivalent of criticizing a business for “excessively” paying its CEO. The shareholders of said company, as in the owners, signed off on the CEO’s pay package. Which is all that matters. It’s their business.
Whom businesses hire is no different from CEO pay. So long as shareholders are ok with it, that’s all that matters. And it’s no reach to say that Apple’s shareholders would tend to embrace the hiring practices of a management team that has overseen an 1,800 percent increase in the company’s valuation since August of 2011; August of 2011 when present CEO Tim Cook took over. Would it that all companies could do for their shareholders what Apple and Cook have done for theirs.
Is the race-and-gender based hiring associated with the returns? Who knows? It’s certainly possible that it’s unrelated on the not unreasonable belief that corporations, like professional sports teams, don’t elevate their success by overlooking the best and brightest in favor of those who check certain race and gender boxes. Except that there could be more at work. Think about it.
In thinking about it, let’s acknowledge the obvious: Apple has some remarkably talented employees. See its valuation but also see its products. Is it possible that its brilliant employees in total prefer to work for a corporation that factors in race and gender when making hiring decisions? If so, it can then be suggested that DEI is part of a much bigger strategy to attract the best and brightest. It’s certainly possible, but the mere speculation once again misses the point. And the point is that companies have a right to be wrong, or in Apple’s case they have a right to perhaps be right. See it’s $3.74 trillion valuation once again.
Applying the above to its DEI programs, at present members of the right are thrilled by a January executive order from President Trump that’s titled “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity.” It’s rooted in ending “Illegal DEI Discrimination and Preferences,” and eerily calls for “the Attorney General, within 120 days of this order, in consultation with the heads of relevant agencies” to “identify up to nine potential civil compliance investigations of publicly traded corporations.” This doesn’t sound Republican, or conservative for that matter.
Love or hate DEI, the way to discredit it isn’t through governmental harassment or force, but by exposing its demerits in the marketplace. The problem, it seems, is that markets aren’t acting as conservatives wish.
Which is the point, or should be. At least for now, and realistically in the future (market prices are a look into the future), what Apple is doing is working. How odd then, for Republicans to be calling for government to meddle in Apple’s operations.
