Management in the Apple Company - Research Paper Example

?Management in the Apple Company Introduction Apple has thrived in the computing world in the past decade. Apple was striving as a company in 1997 and today, the Company lists between Intel on the front and Dell on the back by possessing a market cap worth $105 billion. 70% of the total market of MP3 player is commanded by Apple’s iPod while the iTunes have been employed to produce as many as 4 billion songs as yet. “Even the underdog Mac operating system has begun to nibble into Windows' once-unassailable dominance; last year, its share of the US market topped 6 percent, more than double its portion in 2003” (Kahney, 2008). The fanatical loyalty of the Apple brand becomes obvious to an outsider when he/she sees the shoppers sleeping just next to the shop-door in an attempt to be the first one to buy the new Apple item. Apple’s success as a company and the development of liking among the people for the Apple products as well as the whole Apple culture is an outcome of prudent and timely planning. This paper looks into the way management of the Apple Company has dealt with the four management functions of planning, organizing, leading and controlling. Management Functions 1. Planning Apple’s successful strategic planning is the most fundamental reason of its success. Apple’s foresightedness is a virtue that helps the Company display excellent and realistic planning. Apple regularly assesses the risks in the planning phase, thinks of a number of ways in which the risk can be mitigated and finally, takes the action that incurs Apple the minimal cost and the offers maximal advantage to the Company. Challenges that the Apple Company has conventionally planned for include but are not limited to the altering buying attitude of the target customers under effect of the global economy and/or their local economies, and growth in the number of fake and pirated items. Apple has frequently employed branding as a strategy to succeed in the ever-increasing competition. Branding can be defined as a process through which a brand develops association of the consumers with itself so that they would approach the very brand when they need to purchase something. There are few people who decide to purchase an Apple computer, though they surely want to try the less expensive gadgets like iPhone and iPod. Apple provides new users with an opportunity to learn about Apple by selling such gadgets at a significantly lower cost. Hence, Apple plans to use the small gadgets as advertisers to convince the users to buy larger and more expensive Apple products like Apple computers. 2. Organizing In the start, Apple was facing the problem of recognition. The sales staffers have for long been insufficiently informed of the Apple products. In order to tackle this problem, Apple resolved to establish its own stores that would have nothing but all Apple products in them. This enabled Apple not only to give a unique identity to its products amongst the similar computing devices already available in the market, but also make a customer-loyalty move. Consumers are facilitated with the establishment of Apple stores since both the PC and the Mac users can shop together. “This is a space where Macheads can not only get service but also hang out with others who enjoy Apple products just as much as they do. By creating this space, Apple encourages current and new customers to get excited about what it has to offer” (Inside CRM, 2011). 3. Leading Steve P. Jobs is Apple’s cofounder and the chief executive of the Company. Apple’s success can also be attributed to a significant extent to the exceptional leadership skills of Jobs. Jobs has invested so much energy in taking Apple from the nascent state to the level where it is today that he has taken little care of his own health. Owing to his deteriorating health, Jobs has taken medical leave for the company thrice within a period of ten years. In his absence, Timothy D. Cook used to look after the everyday works in the Apple Company. Most experts are of the view that although Jobs has been able to build a very strong and intellectual team for his Company over the years, his replacement with an individual who has the momentum of his level is near to impossible. The Harvard Business School professor David B. Yoffie who has decades of research experience upon technology said, “The company could not thrive if Steve didn’t have an extremely talented team around him. But you can’t replace Steve on some levels” (Helft, 2011). It was fundamentally Jobs’s exceptional sense of style that reflects in the Apple products. It was Jobs’s requirement that iPod should be button-free. It was a very big challenge for the engineers who had taken the project, but nothing but the achievement of his goal would convince Jobs. Jobs pressed the engineers hard to make them inspire the scroll wheel. “[T]hat’s been one of my mantras — focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains” (Qualman, 2011). For most of its history to date, Apple has been led by Jobs who was an ambitious, uncompromising yet providing leader. Jobs facilitated his workforce in every respect to help transform his imagination into reality. 4. Controlling Apple’s successive products are linked with the previous ones. The added features in the successive products complete the deficiencies in the products that have already been in the market for some time. For example, music on an iPod can be downloaded with the help of iTunes. Apple produces a whole range of Mac programs to cater for the interests of an average user. As a result of this immense control upon the whole range of software and hardware, Apple has earned customer loyalty. Apple users find all they need in the same store. Apple controls the consumers by understanding their psyche and the need of the hour. Apple is a smart brand. It knows the importance of identifying anything that is young and smart. The Mac guy in the Apple’s I’m a Mac appears quite smooth in comparison to the PC that looks uptight. Nobody would fancy going uptight after becoming smooth once. Apple wants its ideas to be original and to achieve that, it maintains the highest levels of secrecy that it can afford. Secrecy is Apple’s most fundamental strategy of communication and is ingrained in the Apple’s culture. There are very few companies that are more punitive towards their employees when they violate a rule or leak a piece of information to the outsiders. Apple’s obsession with secrecy can be estimated from the fact that quite often, the Company spreads fals information about the plants of its products to the employees. “Employees working on top-secret projects must pass through a maze of security doors, swiping their badges again and again and finally entering a numeric code to reach their offices, according to one former employee who worked in such areas” (Stone and Vance, 2009). Apple has conventionally tried to control not only its own employees, but also people who didn’t make part of its organization structure. Apple once sued the bloggers that according to Apple had broken the trade-secret laws. Apple was so enthusiastic about running this case that it paid a total of $700,000 in legal fees (Stone and Vance, 2009). References: Inside CRM. (2011). 11 Effective Strategies Apple Uses to Create Loyal Customers. Retrieved from http://www.insidecrm.com/features/strategies-apple-loyal-customers/. Helft, M. (2011, Jan. 17). A Deep Bench of Leadership at Apple. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/18/technology/18cook.html. Kahney, L. (2008, Mar. 18). How Apple Got Everything Right By Doing Everything Wrong. Wired Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-04/bz_apple?currentPage=all. Qualman, E. (2011, Oct. 5). Steve Jobs — 10 Lessons in Life & Leadership. Retrieved from http://www.socialnomics.net/2011/10/05/steve-jobs-%E2%80%94-10-lessons-in-life-leadership/. Stone, B. and Vance, A. (2009, June 22). Apple’s Obsession With Secrecy Grows Stronger. The New York Times. 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