Leadership and Management Styles of Apple INC
This paper is about the leadership style adopted by the management team of Apple during a period of changes and the management changes within the organization and the cultural obstacles faced by senior management during the process of change. It also talks about the leadership and management styles of Apple Inc and it includes a review of the strategic activities of the senior executives and an overview of the operational and tactical decisions implemented by the company.
Moreover, it also includes the main components of competitive advantage and how to sustain it and an analysis of the challenges facing the company followed by SWOT analysis and recommendations that can help make the management style better. Apple Inc. is a company that not just designs personal computer and software’s but it also manufactures and markets them, making very high worldwide sales.
The product line of the company also includes iPod (digital music player), iTunes, iPhone, etc. the products owned by the company are sold at various chains of stores in USA, Canada, Japan, Italy and the UK and the sales are made both through retailers (around 170 outlets) and also online. The company employees more than 20,000 permanent and temporary workers worldwide and currently, the CEO of the company is the co-founder, Steve Jobs. Apple was founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in a garage in April 1976.
After the huge success of computers, Apple came up with iPod in 2001 that also proved to be phenomenally successful and after this they came up with iPhone that was basically an Internet-enabled Smartphone and video iPod. Originally, the company was known as Apple Computer but as the company expanded into the electronics market, it removed the word computer from its name in 2007. The two distinguish features adopted by Apple are since the time it was founded are:
- Innovations
- Passion
The approach being adopted by Apple is called integrator approach and this includes the higher costs as well as higher risks. The culture at Apple is innovation based and it asks for creativity from its employees and in 1995, Steve Jobs compared innovation to “fashioning collective works of art” and said it afforded “the opportunity to amplify your values” over the rest of society.
