Introduction
The Apple Company is one of the most successful electronics companies around the globe. The company designs and produces the state-of-the-art products whose quality has captured customers to maintain their buying behavior.
The electronics giant is well known for its unique software and hardware structures whose success has been attributed to its focus on some unique and hi-tech internet-based services and merchandise such as personal computers and cell phones.
For instance, its phones use the iOS operating system, while other Smartphones use different operating systems such as the Tizen OS for the Samsung Company.
This paper discusses the Apple Company’s organizational culture, corporate governance, organizational structure, leadership, organizational ethics, and corporate entrepreneurship.
These managerial economics topics are very important because they point out the secret behind Apple Company’s success in the electronics industry.
The Contribution of Leadership to Apple Company’s Success
Leadership plays a very crucial role in managerial economics in terms of determining the future of any organization. The leader develops the path through which the organization will follow towards success or failure.
For Apple Company, developing a successful business platform is now the company’s core leadership agenda. The leadership has built up a well-structured business strategy that has the client at heart as the company’s most valuable asset.
The leadership shifted its attention to transforming the business world by producing several customer-friendly goods and services (Albanese, 2014).
Despite the challenge from its core competitor, Samsung, which revealed its plan to produce OLED displays that caught the attention of many customers, Steve Jobs had an excellent plan to drive the company to greater heights.
In fact, after reviving the company, which would have otherwise been closed in 1997, following leadership and management challenges, Steve Jobs had envisioned a time when he was to revolutionize the world of “personal computing, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, retail stores, and digital publishing” (Isaacson, 2012, Para. 1).
Steve Jobs deployed a transformational leadership style that focused on seeing every stakeholder play his or role of lifting the company’s productivity. Workers who did not perform their duties diligently were fired.
Apple Company’s current business position under Tim Cook is founded on what Steve Jobs established. He was a perfectionist who needed everything to be the way the company’s objectives had stipulated. Tim Cook, his successor, took over at a time when the launch of Apple Maps was being done.
He has positioned himself into Steve Jobs’ leadership shoes. Good leadership is about developing a competent managerial team that is committed to working. Having returns of 11% a year is a clear indication that Apple Company has the best leadership (Albanese, 2014).
The motivation behind Apple’s leadership is customer experience, unlike its competitors who focus more on the market share. Ensuring the best customer service has made the company rise to be the best electronics business worldwide. The company has demonstrated a healthy relationship between its leaders and the management team.
Apple Company’s Organizational Structure and its Importance
In managerial economics, an organizational structure is a key pillar that defines how the different stakeholders and organizations’ staff members interact. Apple Company has a very secretive organizational structure. It is believed that even some of its staff members cannot describe the structure.
The reason for this secrecy is that the company does not want its competitors to know about its strategy. However, the company has a structure where all employees, leadership, and management departments work collaboratively.
Initially, when the company was steered by Steve Jobs, the company was utilizing the Top-down structure where all decisions originated from the leader down to the managers and employees.
The current structure that was developed under Tim Cook’s leadership is collaborative. Several communication channels have been established for employee contribution before information reaches the company’s top management.
These channels comprise the supervisors who report to the project directors and then to the heads of the department before reaching the manager (Yarow, 2013). Apple Company demonstrates excellent resource coordination as required in managerial economics since everyone has a chance to practice his or her expertise.
Recruiting new staff members is a process that Apple Company’s supervisors have taken with a lot of seriousness to recruit the best team that can take the company towards the witnessed success. The company’s employees work in their areas of specialization.
Specialization in Apple Company has paved a way for proper scrutiny of all activities. According to Yarow (2013), employees have a chance to broaden their skills, attain new experience, and/or learn more in their areas of expertise.
Specialization has helped Apple Company’s employees to become innovative. They have come up with iPod, iTunes, iPhone, App Store, iPad, and the Apple TV, which have helped it to retain its existing clientele while at the same time attracting new ones.
How Apple Company handles Corporate Governance
Corporative governance is very important in any company’s management since it highlights the operations, connections, and procedures that direct and control the business. The work of Apple Company’s board of directors is to check the performance of the company’s management (McCrum, 2012).
It ensures a balance between the company’s management and stakeholders. The company’s board is also responsible for setting ethical principles that guarantee worker professionalism and responsibility.
Such ethical principles have been central for Apple Company to the extent that the company has vowed to produce quality and user-friendly products at affordable charges.
Although issues arose concerning gender balance on the board of directors committee arose when it had only one female member amongst a panel of several White male members, Apple Company promised to counter the issue by bringing more female shareholders to the board as a way of ensuring that all stakeholders were represented.
According to McCrum (2012), the company “has bowed to investor demands to give shareholders greater influence over the election of directors, a move that will make it far harder for other leading US companies to ignore calls to improve corporate governance standards” (Para. 1).
Apple Company’s corporate governance is set to steer it towards great achievements. The company upholds preponderance appointment of directors whom it needs to remain at the top of the competition.
The procedures for selecting committee members who are committed to getting the best-qualified women and other minority groups are included in the board.
This corporate governance move has helped the company to handle the issue of diversification. It has also adopted better approaches to deal with the issue of investors under the new management.
Apple Company’s Plan to Maintain Balance between Rewards, Culture, and Boundaries
Apple Company has a culture of straightforwardness, stylishness, and modernism. The company’s rewarding plan has helped to increase demand for the company’s products around the globe while at the same time boosting worker motivation.
For instance, the company rewards its workers with salary increments together with hi-tech iPads among other perks, which keep them motivated to serve its clients devotedly.
The company knows well that such a worker treatment is not a loss, but an added profit since motivated employees end up increasing their input to the company. This culture has rewarded the company to the extent that it has risen to be the best international electronics business company (McCrum, 2012).
Whenever the company hires its employees, it seeks to ensure that each worker’s talent are nurtured and tapped for the benefit, not only of the company, but also of the individual employee. Such a unique culture helps the company to mark its boundaries based on its core values without being swayed by its competitors’ products.
Apple Company has remained in its line of production, not giving in to any persuasion to incorporate its competitors’ software into its devices. For instance, the Nokia Company tried to include Android in some of its devices. However, this move was not profitable as it was expected.
Remaining true to the culture has created the boundary between Apple Company’s products and those of its competitors. This uniqueness has made the company develop a customer-centered norm, which has made it remain relevant in the market. Apple believes in the philosophy of ‘working diligently.
Such a philosophy led to the launch of the first music player gadget, namely iPod. The customer-centered culture has helped to define the company’s business boundaries. Supervisors in the project levels act as advisors to the employees, rather than their bosses.
Apple Company’s Organizational Ethics
Managerial economics dictates organizations to uphold moral principles. The company maintains very high ethical standards where every person who is associated with it is treated with utmost respect. The company does not discriminate its clients based on their buying power.
It values the contribution of all its stakeholders, regardless of the share. It has well-established programs that seek to motivate and train its workers. It trains its employees to demonstrate impartiality and respect when handling the company’s customers (Lashinsky, 2015).
As part of the human rights observation, the core objective of the company is to maintain accountability and transparency in its business operations (Warren, Gaspar, Laufer, 2014). The company has education programs around the world where it offers free classes on the business-related subject.
These educative programs are a positive way of giving back to the society. It instills some skills that are not taught in class to help in boosting learners curriculum vitae. The company’s employees have insurance covers.
Their health is the company’s top priority. The company maintains integrity by ensuring that no counterfeit Apple products can be manufactured and sold to its esteemed clients (Lashinsky, 2015).
Steps taken by Apple maintain Corporate Entrepreneurship
The reason behind Apple’s success is not just its unique culture, but its well-built entrepreneurial structure. Steve Jobs was able to know what his mission was when he established the company. He maintained customer satisfaction by guaranteed innovative products from its qualified human resources.
The company has maintained the entrepreneurial structure by observing and delivering what the customer needs. The company has created a very good global marketing strategy. It has ensured that all best advertisements, which require some concepts of socializing, have an Apple product in them.
The company has some of the best staff members who have worked tirelessly to place the company in its current top position. Professionalism has built the company to its present condition. Specialists play the supervisory roles.
Maintaining high standards is among Apple’s mission. It has always worked hard to achieve its agenda. These Standards have helped the company to maintain its uniqueness, thereby attracting more customers.
Reference List
Albanese, A. (2014). Has the tide turned for Apple? An appeal hearing keeps the door open for a reversal in the company’s e-book case. Publishers Weekly. Web.
Isaacson, W. (2012). Real Leadership Lesson of Steve Jobs. Web.
Lashinsky, A. (2015). No. 1 Becoming Tim Cook. Fortune, 171(5), 60-72.
McCrum, D. (2012). Apple yields to governance reform call. Web.
Warren, D., Gaspar, J., & Laufer, W. (2014). Is Formal Ethics Training Merely Cosmetic? A Study of Ethics Training and Ethical Organizational Culture. Business Ethics Quarterly, 24(1), 85-117.
Yarow, J. (2013). Apple’s New Organizational Structure Could Help It Move Faster. Web.