Apple is responsible to enhance the cityscape irrelevant of their boardmemmbers. NYC Gov't and city planning has ordinances and rules for the installation of art or entrances or something that is supposedly both. I am sure community boards, local council members, etc. were involved in the approval of the piece. Sorry, the city doesn't hand over the keys to make an Apple board pleased. .
I think it's a mixed bag. A community board did stop Apple from building a store near the Flatiron building because they didn't like Apple's architecture. On the other hand, there are tons of incredibly ugly storefronts and office buildings throughout New York City and many of those are also near the Flatiron building. So community boards and the like sometimes get involved and sometimes not and I don't know why. For example, did a community board actually approve the faux Unisphere on the Trump building on Broadway and 60th street (formerly the Gulf & Western building, I think)? Did a community board approve the Toys R Us storefront on the east side of Madison Square Park? And yet, when Apple tries to build something remarkable, everyone wants to be involved. I can understand a community board being involved when someone wants to build in a landmarked building, but other than that, they should stay out of it. After all, almost every neighborhood in the City has tons of stores with ugly, primary colored, plastic signs - especially the big chains. If they really wanted to make the City beautiful, they would ban those.
Apple's first responsibility is to their shareholders. Spending millions of dollars on frivolous crap ignores that responsibility.
That's the mantra that is going to kill American companies. And in spite of the fact that Apple is very profitable and the stock has done very well (although down from its peak), I can practically guarantee you that Steve would tell you that he absolutely does not manage the company to the stock price - that he manages the company to produce the best products that they can. That's not to say that Apple ignores profit, but I don't think they think much about the stock price.
IMO, this "first responsibility to the shareholder" crap actually hurts shareholders because executives manage only for the next quarter instead of the long term. In addition, this mantra of ignoring consumers, employees and everything else (like the environment) is unethical and immoral, IMO.
I've worked for several giant companies and in at least one, each time I wanted to invest in a new product, service or acquisition, I'd get, "well does it increase shareholder value?" And so the company rarely invested in new products (because it was impossible to prove that it would increase shareholder value) and in the end, they wound up selling off the pieces.
There should be a balanced responsibility to shareholders, consumers, employees and the community. If shareholders don't like the returns a company is providing, they should simply sell the stock.
And as per my earlier post, that "frivolous crap" is one of the factors that attracts customers to the Apple store in the first place, making it a destination. Do you think the Apple stores would do as well if they looked like an AT&T store or a Costco? If you do, you obviously understand little about marketing or Apple's retail strategy.
That's the mantra that is going to kill American companies. And in spite of the fact that Apple is very profitable and the stock has done very well (although down from its peak), I can practically guarantee you that Steve would tell you that he absolutely does not manage the company to the stock price - that he manages the company to produce the best products that they can. That's not to say that Apple ignores profit, but I don't think they think much about the stock price.
Ok I kinda agree, but I think there's a distinct difference between acting in the best interest of the shareholders and acting in the best interest of the shareprice. The former is a legal obligation in the USA, and I'm sure Steve Jobs does his best to do so. That doesn't mean you have to do what your shareholders want RIGHT NOW whenever they ask for it, anymore than a parent acting in his kids best interests has to buy them an icecream whenever they demand one. It doesn't mean you have to put every single purchase down to a 'will it directly drive the shareprice this quarter' question.
So Steve Jobs is entirely entitled to invest in crazy stuff like Giant Glass Cubes over retail stores so long as he is doing so in the best interests of the shareholders, but if he was to set aside a billion dollars of corporate cash for a giant glass mausoleum that would be uncool (and illegal).
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There should be a balanced responsibility to shareholders, consumers, employees and the community. If shareholders don't like the returns a company is providing, they should simply sell the stock.
Ok this is a really difficult thing to argue against, because it seems so prima facie reasonable, but I'm going to try. Let me give you an analogy I could say that the US government cannot only consider US voters but has a balanced responsibility to people all round the world. On the one hand that's clearly true - it's not acceptable for the US to randomly kidnap french people and torture them for their cheesemaking secrets, even if US voters might benefit from superior brie as a result. However ultimately the US voters get to decide what the US government can and cannot do, and US voters are (mostly) intelligent enough to realize that the US as a country has obligations to its allies and to the world community.
In the same fashion a corporation is ultimately beholden to its shareholders and its obligation is to do everything it can within the law to benefit them. However the shareholders value itself is preserved most of the time by respecting the broader more nebulous responsibilities to consumers, employees and the community.
You can't mess with the primary fiduciary duty to the shareholders though, anymore than you can make the US gov directly responsible to anybody but US voters - if only because there's no mechanism by which other groups can enforce that without risking a situation where the entity becomes effectively responsible to nobody.
Comments
My inside sources say they're going to replace it with a pyramid like at the Louvre.
Apple sure has a thing for pyramids and Stargates.
Apple is responsible to enhance the cityscape irrelevant of their boardmemmbers. NYC Gov't and city planning has ordinances and rules for the installation of art or entrances or something that is supposedly both. I am sure community boards, local council members, etc. were involved in the approval of the piece. Sorry, the city doesn't hand over the keys to make an Apple board pleased. .
I think it's a mixed bag. A community board did stop Apple from building a store near the Flatiron building because they didn't like Apple's architecture. On the other hand, there are tons of incredibly ugly storefronts and office buildings throughout New York City and many of those are also near the Flatiron building. So community boards and the like sometimes get involved and sometimes not and I don't know why. For example, did a community board actually approve the faux Unisphere on the Trump building on Broadway and 60th street (formerly the Gulf & Western building, I think)? Did a community board approve the Toys R Us storefront on the east side of Madison Square Park? And yet, when Apple tries to build something remarkable, everyone wants to be involved. I can understand a community board being involved when someone wants to build in a landmarked building, but other than that, they should stay out of it. After all, almost every neighborhood in the City has tons of stores with ugly, primary colored, plastic signs - especially the big chains. If they really wanted to make the City beautiful, they would ban those.
Apple's first responsibility is to their shareholders. Spending millions of dollars on frivolous crap ignores that responsibility.
That's the mantra that is going to kill American companies. And in spite of the fact that Apple is very profitable and the stock has done very well (although down from its peak), I can practically guarantee you that Steve would tell you that he absolutely does not manage the company to the stock price - that he manages the company to produce the best products that they can. That's not to say that Apple ignores profit, but I don't think they think much about the stock price.
IMO, this "first responsibility to the shareholder" crap actually hurts shareholders because executives manage only for the next quarter instead of the long term. In addition, this mantra of ignoring consumers, employees and everything else (like the environment) is unethical and immoral, IMO.
I've worked for several giant companies and in at least one, each time I wanted to invest in a new product, service or acquisition, I'd get, "well does it increase shareholder value?" And so the company rarely invested in new products (because it was impossible to prove that it would increase shareholder value) and in the end, they wound up selling off the pieces.
There should be a balanced responsibility to shareholders, consumers, employees and the community. If shareholders don't like the returns a company is providing, they should simply sell the stock.
And as per my earlier post, that "frivolous crap" is one of the factors that attracts customers to the Apple store in the first place, making it a destination. Do you think the Apple stores would do as well if they looked like an AT&T store or a Costco? If you do, you obviously understand little about marketing or Apple's retail strategy.
That's the mantra that is going to kill American companies. And in spite of the fact that Apple is very profitable and the stock has done very well (although down from its peak), I can practically guarantee you that Steve would tell you that he absolutely does not manage the company to the stock price - that he manages the company to produce the best products that they can. That's not to say that Apple ignores profit, but I don't think they think much about the stock price.
Ok I kinda agree, but I think there's a distinct difference between acting in the best interest of the shareholders and acting in the best interest of the shareprice. The former is a legal obligation in the USA, and I'm sure Steve Jobs does his best to do so. That doesn't mean you have to do what your shareholders want RIGHT NOW whenever they ask for it, anymore than a parent acting in his kids best interests has to buy them an icecream whenever they demand one. It doesn't mean you have to put every single purchase down to a 'will it directly drive the shareprice this quarter' question.
So Steve Jobs is entirely entitled to invest in crazy stuff like Giant Glass Cubes over retail stores so long as he is doing so in the best interests of the shareholders, but if he was to set aside a billion dollars of corporate cash for a giant glass mausoleum that would be uncool (and illegal).
There should be a balanced responsibility to shareholders, consumers, employees and the community. If shareholders don't like the returns a company is providing, they should simply sell the stock.
Ok this is a really difficult thing to argue against, because it seems so prima facie reasonable, but I'm going to try. Let me give you an analogy I could say that the US government cannot only consider US voters but has a balanced responsibility to people all round the world. On the one hand that's clearly true - it's not acceptable for the US to randomly kidnap french people and torture them for their cheesemaking secrets, even if US voters might benefit from superior brie as a result. However ultimately the US voters get to decide what the US government can and cannot do, and US voters are (mostly) intelligent enough to realize that the US as a country has obligations to its allies and to the world community.
In the same fashion a corporation is ultimately beholden to its shareholders and its obligation is to do everything it can within the law to benefit them. However the shareholders value itself is preserved most of the time by respecting the broader more nebulous responsibilities to consumers, employees and the community.
You can't mess with the primary fiduciary duty to the shareholders though, anymore than you can make the US gov directly responsible to anybody but US voters - if only because there's no mechanism by which other groups can enforce that without risking a situation where the entity becomes effectively responsible to nobody.