Leadership is an important aspect for any organization, as through this process higher authorities are able to guide influence and direct the work ethics and behavior of employees so that they are able to achieve specific goals for the organization. Leadership skills lead managers to boost confidence and zeal in employees, defines the future vision, and motivates the organization (Bolman & Deal, 2017). Hence, a leader helps to initiate actions, provides motivation, reinforce confidence, supports with guidelines and helps to build moral and work environment with the coordination of the employees. Apple is one of the leading tech and gadget producing multinational company that has been suffering from leadership issues from past few years (Choudhary, Akhtar & Zaheer, 2013). This assignment is going to discuss search leadership qualities in the organization Apple. Further, it will be discussing its strength weakness opportunities and threats with respect to the organization and its leadership for the recommendations for future aspects improvement will be discussed.
Apple Inc. is a USA based multinational company having its headquarters in California. This organization deals in services such as technology, gadgets, software and different other online services. There is a series of bestselling products of apples including, iPhone, iPad, smart computers, mac book, smart watch, apple TV, and software such as iOS, macOS and online stores such as iTunes iOS apple store, mac store and iCloud (Apple Inc., 2018). In the year 1976, three individuals, Steve Jobs, Ronald Wayne and Steve Wozniak founded the company in California with its first computer namely apple 1. Steve job was one of the best CEOs in the world who leads the Apple Inc. towards every achievement the organization acquired in its journey. In the twentieth century, apple became the leader in innovation, application and implementation. This made the organization a brand and acquired a worldwide brand value. However, from last ten years the organization is focusing on simplicity with innovation and providing customers with quality products. As the apple products are equipped with Mac operating systems that provides quality service without any complex operation, the company is able to integrate innovation with simplicity (Apple Inc., 2018).
The working culture of this organization believes in the utilization of its human resources in excellence and innovation. The prime three aspects of the organizational culture are creativity and innovation, working under tremendous pressure, high level of secrecy or confidentiality and focus on diversity or inclusion. As the product is famous for its innovation and creative features, the employees should have creativity and innovativeness within their personality and for that, company provides its employees with appropriate environment to work freely (Chan, Pun &Selden, 2013). The company does not have any dress code provides the employees with their personalized working space that leads the employees to work in calm and focused manner. Secondly, as maximum of the projects has specific deadlines, the employees should have the quality to work under pressure. To make the employees aware of such norms, the CEO himself works for long working hours and sets examples for his employees. As the apple products are known for its innovations, secrecy is the primal aspect that the employees have to maintain within the apple campus (Khan, Alam &Alam, 2015). Furthermore, by including diversity and inclusiveness within the organization, the company is trying to break a stereotype that mentioned this organization as less diverse and the company of white people.
The meaning of leadership is different from a person who is able to manage 100 people working in an organization. In recent business world, leadership is an ability to motivate and influence a group of people, who has the ability to drive the organization towards excellence (DeRue & Ashford, 2010). While working in the marketing department of the Apple Inc. USA, I was able to observe the three primary leadership skills of Tim Cook the CEO of Apple Inc. These leadership practices were developing a way for fellow employees, challenge the old and slow process and push them to achieve more and finally sharing a vision and mission to the organization (Heracleous, 2013). The leadership skills of the CEO was able to create a principle regarding the way the employees should behave with their respective clients or colleagues as it is important to create a healthy working environment. Furthermore, the leadership was able to facilitate strategic formulation and implementation as the CEO himself worked for long hours to set goals for fellow employees. Hence, he led the path and challenged the old and slow pathway to success. The third strategy was to provide the employee group with vision, mission and objectives for future strategic implementation. The current vision and mission statement of this organization is depending on the legacy and brand name of the organization (Kunnanatt, 2016). Further, after the death of former CEO Steve Jobs, the current CEO Tim Cook has changed the vision as well as the mission statement and modification was to influence the employees as well as to stay active in the increasing market competition with respect to innovation. The current CEO Tim Cook introduced the current vision statement of apple and according to him, the company will continue to produce innovative and evolving products and the products will be simple by controlling primary technologies they innovated years ago (Groysberg & Connolly, 2013). Furthermore, the organization will not settle and will achieve excellence and they will be targeting markets in which their contribution will mark difference. This detailed vision reflected by the CEO of the company describes the company’s relative efforts to achieve success and growth. On the other hand, careful selection of market for its simple, innovative and user-friendly products determines that the company has its specific customers and therefore the organization is trying to fulfill the demand of those customers only (Heracleous, 2013). On the other hand, the mission statement of the company describes the holistic approach of the leaders about the company and therefore with changing market, the company changed its mission statement. It states that apple has been able to introduce several bestselling personal computers, iOS X, and professional software as well as it had brought the revolutionary changes in the smartphone industry by implementing iOS operating system. Therefore, the company’s mission is to become the reigning leader in the tech and gadget industry in future years as well (Kunnanatt, 2016).
Therefore according to the mission and vision statement of the Apple Inc., the objectives of the higher authority of this leading organization are
Therefore, through these leadership practices, it is properly determined that the effective management and usage of organizations resources is the primary pursuit of this organizations vision and mission that set the objectives for the future achievements of the organizations (Chadwick, 2010).
Mission, vision and objectives are three important aspects for any organizations growth and development as it provides a future roadmap, implementing which the company can achieve success (Dermol, 2012). These mission and vision statement also decides the organizational culture of the organization as work pressure, work related ethics and working environment depends on the load of work a group of employee has. There are three important roles mission or vision statement plays in any organizations growth and development are helping to communicate the purpose of the organization to the stakeholders, create and inform the strategy to the employees, and develop measureable goals and objectives that will be helpful in attaining organizational strategy (Baumgartner, 2014). Therefore, these statements helps to provide an idea about the aspirations and through written segments are provided to each employee so that the vision guides them to develop self-goals to achieve the greater goals for the organization.
Decision making process in the Apple Inc. is more collaborative than individually driven. Collaborative decision-making process is the technique through which, the authorities are able to reach to a decision in which shared vision of each employee is present. This process makes ach employee the part of the innovation and hence, those employees put their 100 percent effort to reach the target for the organization (Dermol, 2012). The leadership in Apple Inc. focuses on collaborative decision making for problem solving technique and recommendations or feedback for each employee of the respective department is collected to generate a common solution using which the decision for future aspect is taken (Dervitsiotis, 2011)).
The organizational structure of the company is hierarchical and is named as spoke and wheel hierarchy. This hierarchy helps the organization to deliver with rapid innovation (Ashkenas et al., 2015). This changed hierarchy (from a pyramid to spoke and wheels) has led the organization to listen different perspectives of the same situation as every individual has the right to share his or her point of view about any problem or innovation. In the spoke and wheel, where CEO is at the center of wheel and the entire departmental heads are different spokes of the wheel, the designations matters as higher authorities has the right to discuss their point of view regarding any situation in the organization (Chen et al., 2012). Therefore, the structure is less stiff; everyone has autonomy, but are bound to report the CEO for any situation. Further, as the organizational culture is changing, the organization has started using external languages as well. The reason behind this is the incorporation of diversity in the organization.
Apple Inc. is the company that focuses on the quality of the product as innovation and quality are major key factors in their products. Hence, when it comes to performance, the organization focuses more on quality work rather than quantity or time spent in the organization. Therefore, the organization has introduced several working hour ranges depending on which employees can choose his or her favorite working hour in the organization (Dermol, 2012). This describes the mood of the organization as employee friendly and due to this the work and life of the apple employees are balanced, however due to extra working hours sometimes this balance disrupts. Hence, the CEO himself stays back and works for long hours so that employee feel motivated for working. Furthermore, the common stories involved the creation of apple Inc. in a small garage and the way three founders of the company led the organization to reach ultimate success. The reason behind this story is to motivate those employees who are staying away from their homes for the innovation and development of the company (Kotter, 2012).
However, despite such secrecy and harsh working hours, employees stay in the organization as the organization provides them an opportunity to use their brains and produce innovative ideas. Furthermore, the organization provides them with facilities that only apple employees can use in the entire world such as custom-made mac operating system for each employee (Traynor et al., 2014).
As the former CEO Steve Jobs died 7 years ago, the new CEO Tim Cooks had responsibility to lead an organization that is a giant brand in the global market; hence, there was a chance that wrong decision will lead the company to suffer from higher loss (Gesme, Towle & Wiseman, 2010). However, as an employee of the apple Inc., I am able to point out few things the manager is able to introduce in the company. These are creating an environment where feedback of each employee matters. This leads to increase harmony and peach in the organization and the organization began to include diverse and talented people in their workforce, which was not the scenario in the era of former CEO (Kane, 2014).
The first strength of this organization is the ability of marketing about the products on larger scale, and create a hype about the brand and upcoming products. The annual advertisement budget of this organization was around $1.7 billion in the year 2015, which was double the figure the organization used for marketing purpose in the year 2011. Furthermore, despite of being second in the list of company spending revenues in advertisement, apple was able to attract its customers with specific and unique advertisement campaigns (Johnson et al., 2012).
Strong distribution channel and brand value are the second biggest factor that makes the organization stronger than other technology and gadget organizations. Throughout America, apple is the biggest organization that provide its branded products to the customers through different means, such as using supermarkets like Walmart or online retail portal like amazon. Furthermore, the brand name of apple is the strength of its products. Famous magazines like Forbes and interbrand has named apple as the most valuable brand in the 2015. Hence, the brand and widely available products are important for the success of the organization (Montgomerie & Roscue, 2013).
The first and primary weakness of this organization is dependency on its bestseller product apple smartphone. The organization is completely dependent on the sales of iPhone for generation of revenue and according to the reports of Apple Inc. sales. The iPhone was able to generate 66% of the revenue as the sales of this product grew by 57%. This leads to generate enhanced demand of the product in the market that further decrease the revenue of the company as technological changes, high quality components are to be included in the product (Heracleous, 2013).
Incompatibility of the iOS with other operating system is the secondary weakness for the organization. As the iOS is different from android and windows operating system, the connectivity of the iOS with such operating systems are not possible hence, consumers had to suffer a lot while using iOS. This is the reason Apple lost a bigger section of its honest consumers after the launch of android, as it was more user friendly and easy to connect with any other operating system (Johnson et al., 2012).
As the internet market is expanding and the company has its own range of software, the future prospect of this organization is expected to grow tremendously. Furthermore, the organization can utilize its software and the usage of internet to generate wearable devices such as caloric intake calculator, blood pressure calculator and so on (Montgomerie & Roscue, 2013).
The organization is expanding its manufacturing to developing nations such as India, which is a huge marketplace and has the capability to increase the revenue of it tremendously. Furthermore, manufacturing in this country will provide the local buyers the product in less cost, leading to expand the customer base in such bigger marketplace. Hence, the growing market place, and sustainable, manufacturing nation is another opportunity for the company to grow its business (Heracleous, 2013).
The primary threat to Apple Inc. is the risk of data breaching. As the business of the apple needed to store data about its investors, employee, consumers and other stakeholders, the personal data of these individuals leads to disrupt the privacy or secrecy of the organization (Montgomerie & Roscue, 2013).
On the other hand, increasing competition in the market of gadgets by Sony, Samsung and other renowned organizations is another risk factor for the company. On the other hand, amalgamation of two biggest rivals of apple google and Samsung has enabled the consumers with products that competes with apple and its innovation. Hence, market competition is the biggest threat for apple nowadays (Johnson et al., 2012).
Strength
Behavioral theory in leadership is determined as the influence of the leader on the employees that changes their attitude towards work and explains the ways to change such behavior in the employees (Chemers, 2013). The CEO followed the behavioral theory of leadership as any new step he used follow himself before asking the employees to follow the same. Hence, the three strengths of his leadership quality was
Weakness
As the behavioral theory, let the CEO, Tim Cook, provide the employees with amenities so that they can provide the organization with best innovative products, there were several weaknesses of the leadership. These weaknesses affected the leadership skills of CEO, as it affected the relationship between employees and the leader.
As the weaknesses of the leadership has greater effect on the organization, therefore the organizations leadership (the CEO Tim Cook) should focus on stronger aspects of the leadership theory to lead such big and expanding organization (Dervitsiotis, 2011). As expansion needs employment of new and inexperience employees, behavioral theory might help them to trust their personal ability by making them stable and increasing interpersonal dialogue between the leadership and employees (Darling & Heller, 2011). According to this theory, every employee should be provided with his or her independent space so that they can think differently and focus more on their ability as an employee of such an organization. The reason behind providing an independent and self-determinable condition to employees is the basic concept of behaviorism. According to different economists, behavior theory help the employees and the leadership to learn newer concepts as the environment around them help them to acquire such concepts (Battilana & Casciaro, 2012).
Furthermore, this leadership theory will also be able to focus on tasks as well as employees. Ultimately, the strategic planning and implementations will be possible for the expansion and development of the company (Van de Ven, Ganco & Hinings, 2013). It will enhance the trust between the CEO (leadership) and the employees so that employees are given independence to think about innovations and development. Furthermore, practicing the behavioral theory will provide the CEO with another view to see employees and their concerns and he will be able to fulfill the employee demands (Otley, 2016).
The CEO will focus more on the future aspect of the employee than his or her present performance (Momeni, 2009). He will further provide the employees with necessary training and services so that their productivity in work can be enhanced. Further, as the trust increases, the employees will be able to work their 100 percent capability to achieve the target, prioritized the organization for the development and expansion of the company (Battilana & Casciaro, 2012). The employees will be provided with training for skill improvement and after the training, they will be implementing those strategies in the production or development leading to ensured innovation for the future products of the company. Further, the employees will not feel bound by the company laws and will secure the important data themselves to safe their innovation from breaching or theft (Taylor & Taylor, 2014).
Further, there are some leadership theories that the CEO of Apple Inc. should apply to enhance his leadership skills.
Conclusion
Organizational development is extremely dependent on the leadership as after initial or persistent success, employee’s behavior and action becomes stagnant and they need to push to achieve further success for their organization. Apple Inc. is one of the biggest organizations in the world nowadays and the CEO Tim Cook is able to provide the much-needed push to his employees to achieve innovation and excellence for the organization. This assignment provided the organization details with the strength weaknesses, opportunity and treat of the organization. Further, it included the strength and weaknesses of the leadership theory the leader of the organization used to direct the company. As there were several negative factors, the assignment recommended another leadership theory to deal with the loopholes and provide the employees with a strong and sustainable leadership to achieve ultimate success for the company.
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