Management Organizational Behavior- Apple free essay sample

If there is a survey about which business you believe is the most valuable and has most revolutionary influence on the society last ten years, it must be true that most of the people will choose Apple. From some professional evaluation about Apple, it describes Apple as an enterprise which has ability to take over the world one bite at a time and is already doing it. As of July 2011, Apple is the largest publicly traded company in the world by market capitalization with 357 retail stores in ten countries and 60,400 permanent full-time employees and 2,900 temporary full-time employees around the world. At the same time, its revenue and profit is more than Google and Microsoft combined, and its annual revenue is totaled $65 billion in 2010 and is growing to $108 billion in 2011 miraculously. Apple not only is one of the most successful enterprises in the world nowadays, but also already is a creative, miraculous and revolutionary company which is founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne on April 1, 1976 during its starting stage. Apple’s organizational mission is providing products which are innovative leadership and needed for consumers. Obviously, Apple already achieves its mission perfectly by creating its unprecedented products like iPod, iPhone, iPad, and iMac. Actually, what Apple achieves must connect with its organizational culture, management and structure. All of these factors link with each others closely and influence entire performance as well as operation. Its creative culture is implementing in every position in the company and provide a mass of inspire to let employees think and create differently. Also, its open and flexible management as well as structure enable every outstanding inspire can be applied, which will stimulate free creation and inspire by employees. Apple’s management focuses on trusting employees and creating a productive environment with Apples Values. Although Apple already is a legendary business, it’s impossible for it to avoid the influence by internal issues and external issues. The latest and the most serious internal issue must be the quit and death of Steve Jobs, which reflects that Steve Jobs’s generation is ended and Apple will step into a new stage. Apple not only is losing a top CEO who has top managerial ability as well as experience and excellent partnerships in the technology industry, but also a hero, a symbol and a culture in the entire business. Also, the signal problem of some iPhone reflects the quality of Apple’s products and designs are not good enough, which brings about the trust crisis of consumers and investors. It also is harm the organizational reputation and image which are famous of high quality and outstanding design. At the same time, Apple’s operation is affected by the external competition a lot. As the developing of Android, Samsung and Motorola are gaining more and more market share from Apple, and those companies already can follow the steps of Apple. More and more consumers of Apple are starting to accept the other brands’ products, and they believe the other brands can replace Apple well and ever better than it. Apple’s situation is not so perfect as most of people’s opinion. However, Apple’s organizational management still is an outstanding example for most of the business in the world, and worth to learn about it. The reason why Apple enterprise is able to keep on developing its excellent operating and management is that Apple builds a mature system of organizational culture, design and structure. These three elements influence entire business system which includes all the employees. For the organizational culture, many experts believe a strong or weak culture can determine a business is successful or not. And it includes three levels which are behavior, values and beliefs and assumptions. Obviously, Apple is an enterprise with a very strong organizational culture which makes employees recognize the shared assumptions, values and beliefs. According to Don Reisinger’s article from internet, it states that Apple’s corporate cultures are focusing on design, believing Apple is better than all others and believing in Jobs. In technological market, Apple is famous, as it cares more about the design of the products more than other companies. Apple encourages its employees actively share their opinions and inspires, which can create an explicit direction for employees’ assumptions, values and beliefs, and behavior. At the same time, this corporate culture allows employees communicate and cooperate easier, and their consensus can be reached easily. By stimulating creative inspires, Apple can collect a mass of inspires from its employees and select which one can be most suitable. Therefore, Apple always can create some unique products which are able to meet the desires and wants of the consumers. At the same time, Apple’s culture leads employees to believe Apple is better than all the others. Actually, it provides confidence to employees, which can stimulate employees’ creation and develop their opinions. Lastly, the most important one is the complete trust in Jobs who s the founder and the brain of Apple. According to the definition of organizational culture, it states that organizational culture can be represented by heroes, stories, slogans, symbols and ceremonies. In Apple, Steve Jobs himself is a hero and savior, as he revives Apple’s aging business model, innovates products which are beyond all expectations and builds successful strategic partnership with others. Also, what he does in Apple is the lege ndary stories for all the employees, which can provide clear model to motivate their attitudes. For instance, Jobs told his employees that â€Å"Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations. † This speech can encourage employees to innovate fearlessly. In addition, Apple’s cultures not only affect its employees, but also its consumers who believe Apple’s design, quality and reputation. At the same time, the effect of organizational design and structure provide more continuous vitality to Apple for facing the developing marketable environment. Actually, organizational design refers to the systemic process of reshaping organizational structures and roles for improving efficiency of enterprise. And it must consider some contingency factors like environment, production technology, strategy, and size of the organization. With the consideration of these contingency factors, organization needs to select the types of departmentalization which refers to the grouping of related activities into units. In Apple, it applies functional and geographic departmentalization. In functional way, Tim Cook who is the current CEO in Apple has the most powerful authority and management directly different functional departments like design, finance, and software. Each functional department has its specific power and responsibility. For instance, the department of finance is focusing on the control of cost and risk, and the department of design is focusing on the exterior design of products. Also, Apple applies geographic departmentalization which refers to establish separate unites in each area where the organization does business. Departmentalizing in the geographic way is fit for most large companies especially global companies like Apple. In Apple, CEO is in the top level and has most of the authority like the other departmentalization. The second level is the departments which are responsible for different regions like department in America, Europe, and Pacific region. And these territory departments have their specific and lower departments. For instance, there will be department of Japan, Australia and Far East under department in Pacific region. In summary, the organizational structure of Apple is meeting its strategic objective that CEO is the centre and other departments are working around him. Also, the design and structure allow Apple’s corporate culture become more effective. Organizational design, structure and culture which are three key elements in Apple are actually linking together closely, and have chain effect. Therefore, it’s necessary to maintain all of them working in a stable and compatible status for enabling Apple keep on growing in the highly competitive market. However, only having those outstanding marco-organizational elements is not enough for this large and global enterprise to gain more competitive advantage, as the excellent internal management also is importantly required. For the managers in different departments, the basic functions are planning, organizing, leading and controlling well, which can be the indicators reflect whether a organization has excellent internal management or not. In Apple which has more than 60,000 employees around the world, it must be a challenge for managers to direct and possess employees well. Although Apple has successful advantage of quality and numbers of employees, how to manage unavoidable conflict and motivate employees well is a difficult problem for managers. Conflicts in organizations can be classified into intrapersonal, interpersonal, intragroup, and intergroup. Conflict is needed to understand and diagnose correctly by managers, as it will bring about some serious negative effects like insubordination, lack of direction and even organizational fragmentation. When most of the companies face internal conflict, they always want to achieve peace by deliberating on the common points connecting the two conflicting people or groups. Specially, Apple not only uses this way to manage conflict, but also apply the open confrontation which refers to the conflicting people or groups are allowed to discuss frankly and confront each other unswervingly, as Apple believes the conflicting people or groups are just aiming to help organization to gain the most profit. At the same time, the way of motivate employees in Apple plays a key role for creating a top employee team in the world. Apple always provides clear vision and direction for employees to follow, so that employees can recognize what they need to do clearly. Unlike other large enterprises, as Apple builds excellent employee relations and communications, which are not limited by the level of employees, employees’ personal vision and opinion can easily communicate with others. Also, Apple is an enterprise which needs so much inspires and creative ideas, so that it need employees to keep on creating. In Apple, if you can provide an outstanding inspire or creation no matter which level of employee you are, you will be the hero in the company. By motivating, employees in Apple always are working in an active and creative status. For someone who wants to be an outstanding manager, the management in Apple must be a successful example to study and understand. A clear and practical managerial vision must be defined before doing anything else, and a manager must recognize the effect and result after applying his or her management. The managerial objective is at the centre of the managerial system, and the organizational culture, design and structure are built around the objective. For the organizational design and structure, both of them should be built base on the actual situation of enterprise and the industry environment. For the successful organizational culture, it should be contagious for the employees, with organizational characteristics, creative and ability to spread the culture to consumers. For the managerial functions, managers should pay equal attention on planning, organizing, leading and controlling, and should not ignore the importance of one of them. Especially, managers must understand that only focus on the external management like analyzing the industry environment is not enough. They must recognize the role of human resource management in the organization, as how to motivate employees well and deal with organizational conflict correctly can become significant advantages of the enterprise in current industry environment. In summary, current outstanding managers should be able to provide comprehensive help and support to the organization instead of one-sided. For the recommendations of Apple, the managerial are can be keep on improving. First, the latent fight of authority which will affect the harmonious balance situation and the entire performance seriously should be recognize and prevent at once after the quit of Steve Jobs. Second, Apple should understand the quit of past CEO will bring about change of the organizational structure and access the result of it. Lastly, the corporate culture which believes Apple is the best should be improved, as over spreading this culture may be negative to the employees’ attitude and performance like being arrogant and underestimating competitors. In general, every employee in Apple should have comprehensive understand of the influence by the quit of Steve Jobs. At the same time, maintaining the company in a stable and harmonious status is a basis element for fighting with other companies and keeping organization advantages. Apple must never misestimate the power from management, so that it still able to keep its top place in the world.