The Apple business model: Crowdsourcing mobile applications

Much to Apple's chagrin, the ‘suicide express’ at the Foxconn manufacturing complex in China has been widely reported. While outsourcing the manufacture of technology components is neither new nor unique, the external sourcing of digital content is integral to the success of Apple's business model. In 2008, Apple opened up their platform to third-party IT developers, leveraging their expertise for the supply of applications. Apple's rapid dominance of the mobile market led to the emergence of a business model that weaves together Internet-enabled mobile devices with digital content, brought together within a closed proprietary platform or ecosystem. Applying a Global Production Network analysis, this paper reports on fieldwork among Apple mobile application developers in Sweden, the UK, and the US. The analysis shows that although some developers experience success, financial returns remain elusive and many encounter intense pressure to generate and market new products in a competitive and saturated market. Crowdsourcing allows Apple to effectively source development to a global base of software developers, capitalizing on the mass production of digital products while simultaneously managing to sidestep the incurred costs and responsibilities associated with directly employing a high-tech workforce.     

Owning the consumer—Getting to the core of the Apple business model

This paper uses a business model framework to analyze the main limitations of Apple Inc. post-2003, a significant turning point in the company's history. As such, we move beyond an exclusive focus on what makes Apple unique or different by evaluating the mundane and out-dated elements of its business model. To do so, we examine the end-to-end supply chain, from source to store, to present a more holistic evaluation of the Apple business model. Drawing on the existing literature, we argue that the quintessential element of the Apple business model is its ability to ‘own the consumer’. In short, the Apple business model is designed to drive consumers into its ecosystem and then hold them there, which has been hugely successful to date and has allowed Apple to wield enormous power in the end-to-end supply chain. We demonstrate this through a detailed evaluation of Apple's physical and content supply chains and its retailing strategy. Moreover, we find that the very business processes that enable unparalleled corporate control bring with them new problems that Apple has thus far been unable, or unwilling, to adequately address.     

财务战略驱动企业盈利模式——美国苹果公司轻资产模式案例研究

本文首先明确了企业现金流结构是连接企业价值与盈利模式的关键变量,架构了"企业价值→财务战略(现金流结构主导)→盈利模式(轻资产模式)→商业活动与资本行为→财务业绩"的财务战略驱动盈利模式的理论框架。文章以美国苹果公司为分析对象,选取该公司自2001年至2011年间的主要业务经营资料与关键财务数据,从财务战略驱动视角,透视苹果公司持续轻资产模式运营的基本要点,包括实施简化生产和标准化零配件、快速供应链、极短的存货周转期、高额现金储备和营运资本、小额固定资产投资、巨额研发与销售终端投资、并购技术性优势企业、内源融资主导等等,这些轻资产战略的基本特征的概括既丰富了财务战略的理论主张,也给企业战略管理实践提供了许多实操性的启示。     

The impact of firms' internationalization on financial statement presentation: Some French evidence

Historically, the format of financial statements has varied from one country to another. Recently, due to the attractiveness of their capital markets, the strength of their accounting professions and the influence of their institutional investors, Anglo-American countries have seen a steady increase in the impact of their accounting practices on other nations, even influencing the actual format of financial statements. Given that French accounting regulations allow a certain degree of choice in consolidated balance sheet format (‘by nature’ or ‘by term’) and income statement format (‘by nature’ or ‘by function’), this study examines a sample of 199 large French listed firms in an attempt to understand why some of these firms choose not to use the traditional French formats (‘by nature’ for the balance sheet and ‘by nature’ for the income statement), instead preferring Anglo-American practices that we call ‘alternative’ (‘by term’ format for the balance sheet and ‘by function’ format for the income statement). We first analyze the balance sheet and income statement formats separately using a logit model, then combine the two and enrich the research design with a generalized ordered logit model. Our results confirm that opting for one or two alternative formats is related to internationalization, influenced by several factors: size, international auditor, accounting standards, foreign listing and international sales. When distinguishing the decision to adopt at least one versus two alternative-format financial statements, our findings also provide evidence that not all variables play the same role: ‘Accounting standards’ and ‘Foreign listing’, which are important in explaining the use of at least one alternative format, are irrelevant in explaining the use of two alternative-format financial statements.     

Can internally generated futures accelerate organizational learning?

After many years of scenario planning, this paper takes a moment to reflect on its use within, and value to, organizations. The author states that ultimately the benefit of scenario planning must result from ‘changed and more skilful action by the organization within its business environment.’ Navigating through the business environment is discussed as taking on two forms, that of strategising and learning where the former is dominated by ‘knowing by gaining control’ and the latter by ‘knowing by participation’ and reflection. Taking this logic a step further, van der Heijden sees the purpose of scenario planning as being categorisable along two dimensions content/process and thinking/action producing a matrix of four categories of purpose. Although he sees these four reasons for using scenario planning as harbouring different degrees of difficulty and likelihood of success, he advocates above all that organizations think carefully about which category is appropriate for them and ensure that the process of scenario planning is designed to support this goal.     

Capitalist accountability and the British Industrial Revolution: The Carron Company, 1759–circa. 1850

The paper argues that accounting historians can help us to understand the origins of the British Industrial Revolution (BIR) by explaining the contribution of accounting to financial success. It re-examines the archive of the Carron Company (hereafter, ‘Carron’) from its formation in 1759 to around 1850 to explore the theory derived from Marx that class conflict, the capitalist mentality, its social relations of production, and accounts, drove the BIR. It shows that, contrary to the currently accepted view that Carron’s early financial accounts were a ‘shambles’, its partners used integrated financial and management accounts based on double entry bookkeeping to impose capitalist accountability on their managers and workers. The paper argues that zealous accounting was critical to Carron’s financial success because accountability for capital drove organisational and technical innovation and it underlay the partners’ early social solidarity. Carron’s partners worked collectively during the company’s difficult formative period up to the 1780s, using accounts to hold the managing partner and his subordinates accountable to them for the circulation of capital and to conduct class war against their workers. From the 1790s, the managing partner exploited a weakness in Carron’s system of corporate governance to understate its profits to demoralise other partners into selling their shares to give him control, which he used to divert a disproportionate share of its accumulating wealth to him and his family. The paper concludes that Carron’s history supports the Marxist theory that accounts played an important role in fuelling the BIR by giving capitalists a technology for controlling production for profit, what Marx called controlling the ‘valorization process’, and for promoting the social cohesion of capital. It calls on accounting historians to test this theory by revisiting the archives of other leading BIR firms, so that we can construct a history of this pivotal shift in the trajectory of world economic development on solid empirical foundations.     

The office: The weakness of numbers and the production of non-authority

It often seems to be taken for granted that numbers produce effects and that practices of accounting enhance authority. This also goes for accounting and the environment. This paper shares this belief and argues that practices of accounting have been a crucial technology for taking nature or ‘the environment’ into account in the post-war era. Nevertheless, the ‘constitutive turn’ in the studies of accounting should not tempt us to leave unexplored the limitation of accounting practices and the inabilities to govern by numbers. With a point of departure in a pollution control agency, the paper explores the making of a non-authoritative office. It points to the emergence of what is labelled ‘accounting intimacy’ rather than the exertion of government at a distance. The paper also points to the ways in which the agency, rather than building a separate and distinct authority, came to reproduce the actor subjected to being governed, i.e., the polluting factory, within its own office. The author argues that this can be related to the investment in a shared ‘technical interest’ and the belief that the right (emission) number in itself would be sufficient to move the factory. The paper then explores the conditions for which numbers nevertheless came to have effects. The argument is that this should be seen as inextricably linked to the emergence of an ‘interesting object’, i.e., ‘the environment’ and an environmental interest, within the office. Thus, we need to pay attention to the formation of interests, and as accounting scholars turn to ‘the environment’, the latter should not be taken for granted.     

Accounting for the Apple Inc business model: Corporate value capture and dysfunctional economic and social consequences

In this special issue the authors account for the Apple Inc innovative business model in terms of its capacity to create and capture value from its global supply chain. The authors argue that there are a number of reasons why the Apple business model may not be sustainable and more broadly explore the dysfunctional social and economic aspects of corporate behavior that seeks to fragment and elongate global value chains to capture value within the firms financial reporting boundary whilst displacing cost and risk.     

The Eurozone needs exit rules

This study argues that the key issue for defining and solving the Eurozone’s (EZ) difficulties lies in readjusting the relationship between the centre and the periphery of the EZ. Our argument proceeds in two steps. Firstly, the basic finance problem of a centre-periphery system is captured by a threat game with complete but imperfect information. To get close to the essence of the current EZ sovereign debt crisis we analyse to what extent a ‘troubled’ periphery member can negotiate a bailout from the centre due to the existence of a negative externality arising from its potential default. Secondly, we analyse how establishing ‘exit rules’ would shift the centre-periphery relationship in a way that safeguards the stability of the EZ. We demonstrate that such rules may help limit the scope for brinkmanship whereby fiscal problems in one member state create a negative externality for the rest of the EZ. We then discuss key policy implications concerning financial aspects of the centre-periphery relationship within the EZ.