Organizational Culture-A Case Study of Apple Inc.
Organizational Culture
A Case Study of Apple Inc.
An Overview
Every organization has an existing culture incorporated in its daily activities. The culture of Apple is a crucial factor that is continually contributing to the success of its business. The culture has been useful is developing its business philosophy, beliefs, values, and behavior among its employees. This company is known for its outstanding innovation that enhances new items. Apple is an incorporation that designs, manufactures, and markets personal computers, music players, software, accessories, and applications, among others. Its headquarters are in Cupertino, CA, and it has more than 45 offices globally. Its mission is to have the best personal computers in the whole world. It has led to the revolution of digital music because of its iTunes and iPods online store. This organization believes that it can make the world better by its inspiring innovation. Apple has unique cultural traits that have been the main factors that have made it competitive in the information technology sector and consumer electronics. It keeps on enhancing the organization’s culture and uses it as a tool for success and strategic management. Some of its competitors are Sony, Google, Dell, and Lenovo.
Keywords: Organization Culture, Values, Innovation, Apple organization’s culture.
Apple organization’s culture
For the last decade, Apple has had a culture that focuses on its employees, customers, and suppliers’ values. The customer part is based on accessibility, privacy, and education, while the values of diversity and inclusion focus on employees. Although most of Apple’s values are focused on its customers, they never forget the rest of the people who collaborate with them to make their products come to life. They have a unique set of values that encourage employees to have fun at work, Build a strong and positive team, and pursue learning and continuous improvement. Another significant focus of Apple is its external environment. The employees have a medical cover, security provision, Dental and vision protection, paternity and maternity leave off time payment, paid occasions, transport offer, and free training sessions. The representatives of Apple incorporation have started to embrace a group attitude that will lead them to shape themselves to family culture. Every worker has formed a habit of wearing clothes that have Apple logos and guard stickers, and they have excellent interpersonal relationships.
The ability of Apple to integrate adhocracy culture has made them very innovative and competitive against other similar companies. Its employees are always motivated and are allowed to be creative and take risks. Apple introduced the adhocracy culture after it created the iPod because it needed some new generations of products and services to keep them more competitive. Besides, Apple provides its full-time employees with developmental programs through a broad and viable benefits package that is hidden from the public. This creates job satisfaction and increased commitment, and it reflects the employee’s turnover. Because the package covers a wide range of areas, employees always feel comfortable and appreciative of the support offered by the company. In the information technology world, Apple has become a leader because of its creativity. They have pervasive product lines and programs that have touched and changed the lives of many in the world. They lead in their environmental practices, their supply chain is excellent, and they put a lot of importance in whatever they do.
This company’s culture comes with a policy that insists on hiring the best employees in the labor market. Under the leadership of Tim Cook, employees who do not meet the company expectations are fired. The company believes in to-notch excellence to maintain and reinforce its culture, promoting and appreciating efficiency among employees. For example, the company has, for long, had programs that understand the excellence of workers and reward them accordingly. Excellency is especially emphasized when they are doing product design and development because it is a significant growth strategy.
Apple Inc.’s culture supports rapid innovation. The company is severally appraised and placed as one of the most innovative companies on earth. Employees who emerge to be innovative are usually awarded due to their contributions to the development process. Due to this creative culture, the company has been able to continually introduce new products that are very profitable and can attract target customers.
Steve Jones, during his leadership, developed an organizational culture of secrecy. This culture has continued to shape the company’s human resource development. The secrecy culture was meant to be part of the company’s way of minimizing theft of information or intellectual property. This culture has enabled this company to maximize its leading edge against its many competitors. The corporate culture requires employees to keep all the business information within the company. The company has set policies, rules, and regulations that are found in the employment contract. Therefore, this culture has helped prevent the business from espionage and the adverse effects of employee poaching.
The company ensures the supplier’s responsibility by having Suppliers code of conduct. This is to provide more secure working conditions. This is one of the strictest in its operations. For one to show that they agree to the code of conduct, they must meet all the requirements of the supplier’s responsibility. There are laws, organization arrangements, and social standards that are supposed to be adhered to. Apple discourages underage work. If underage workers are identified in its industrial provider’s facilities, they make them be returned to their respective homes and taken back to school with full payment of fees.
The Apple organization’s culture also considers diversity. It believes that to be more creative, it has to have people from diverse backgrounds, races, and gender. It has employed different ethnic groups, including Native Americans. It has approximately 38% of female contracts, and it also offers its contacts to blacks and minorities. For the last five years, the company has continued to hire more women, which has driven its progress over time. Research shows that 53% of new employees every year are from underrepresented groups in the United States.
Necessary steps to change the culture of the organization
Apple’s organizational culture can bring a lot of challenges in the future, especially on the emphasis on keeping a high level of secrecy and combativeness. An environment with a high degree of confidentiality limits the rapport among the organization members and can also reduce their morale. This, in turn, reduces the effectiveness of business operations and decrease employee turnover. Apple can change this culture by reducing combativeness that is unnecessary to overcome its disadvantages. It should also come up with a new cultural practice that only focus on keeping the business relevant to the trending changes in technology, cloud service, and digital content distribution, among others.