Steve Jobs: Hero or Villain?

Culture of Ethics Team-Building The author of this report is to answer several questions for this exercise. The first question pertains to whether Steve Jobs, prolific late leader of Apple Corporation, was an ethical leader. Further, the author is to explain Steve Jobs was or was not an ethical leader. Further, the author is to answer to the question of whether or not the author is an acolyte or a rejecter and why the answer is one or the other.

While Steve Jobs did blur some ethical and legal lines, he was a great leader for Apple and the author of this report is most certainly a rejecter in terms of gleaning onto the traits and aspects of others. Steve Jobs is certainly one of the more prolific and notorious names in the history of industry, consumer electronics and computing right along with people like Bill Gates of Microsoft and Larry Ellison of Oracle.

However, Steve was known for a couple of bad habits including the blurring of lines relating to patents and competition practices. He was also not the most nicest man in the world per some of his former employees and colleagues. However, his adeptness in building a brand image and business in general are without compare a lot of the time as Apple has a firm, albeit small, place in the computer market and the literally dominate the MP3 player market putting even Microsoft offerings to shame (Baack, 2012).

For that reason, the answer about Mr. Jobs' ethics are a mixed bag and is not a clear-cut "yes" or "no." For that reason and because of the idea that everyone should rise and fall on their own genuine merit and self-attributes, the author of this report is a rejecter and not an acolyte. Admiring the qualities of a leader or other person is not an inherently bad idea but it can obviously be taken to extremes and not all habits should be copied or idolized.

Put another way, his charisma as a leader could be studied and perhaps partially emulated but his anti-competition tactics were comparable to Microsoft in fairly negative ways. Regardless, people need to know their own presence, their own limitations and their own dreams in life and react accordingly rather than trying to parrot or otherwise glom onto the mannerisms and behavioral patterns of others.

Jobs, like most people, was not uniformly a "good guy." He did very well for himself in terms of a businessman but he was also notorious for having a "brash" and "aggressive personal style" (Smith, 2014). Instead of a being an outright copycat of another person's modus operandi, people instead should find and fetter out best practices and habits and apply them properly to their own situations if and when a fit can be garnered between the style and the context in play.

Conclusion Steve Jobs' and his acumen as a businessman made him a hero to many and many people sorely miss him since his passing. However, while he was certainly a great man, he was also a flawed man and his flaws should not be ignored.