Apple Inc.’s organizational culture is a key factor in the continuing success of the business. A company’s organizational or corporate culture establishes and maintains the business philosophy, values, beliefs, and related behaviors among employees. This business analysis case shows that Apple has a corporate culture that enables human resources to support various strategic objectives. For example, the company’s cultural traits are aligned with the drive for innovation, which is a major factor that determines business competitiveness in the information technology, online services, and consumer electronics industries. Based on the organizational culture, this business condition facilitates the fulfillment of Apple Inc.’s corporate mission and vision statements. Through the leadership of Steve Jobs and, now, through the leadership of Tim Cook, the company continues to enhance its cultural characteristics to maximize human resource support for business relevance in various markets around the world. Apple shapes its corporate culture and uses it as a tool for strategic management and success.
Through its corporate culture, Apple Inc. strengthens its competitive advantages against other firms in various industries. The company competes against information technology firms like Samsung, Google, Amazon.com, Dell, Lenovo, Sony, and PayPal, as well as IBM and Intel. These competitors impose a strong external force that influences strategic management among firms in the industry, as illustrated in the Porter’s Five Forces analysis of Apple Inc. As a result, cultural traits must reinforce necessary competitive advantages through the workforce. The company partially achieves this strategic objective through its organizational culture.
Apple’s Organizational Culture Type and Characteristics
Apple Inc. has an organizational culture for creative innovation. The company’s cultural features focus on maintaining a high level of innovation that involves creativity and a mindset that challenges conventions and standards. The business depends on cultural support and coherence, which are determinants of competitiveness and industry leadership, especially in addressing aggressive and rapid technological innovation and product development. The following are the main characteristics of Apple’s corporate culture:
- Top-notch excellence
- Creativity
- Innovation
- Secrecy
- Moderate combativeness
Top-notch Excellence. Apple’s organizational culture comes with a policy of hiring only the best of the best in the labor market. Steve Jobs was known to fire employees who did not meet his expectations. This tradition continues under Tim Cook. Such a tradition maintains and reinforces a corporate culture that promotes, appreciates, and expects top-notch excellence among employees. This cultural trait is institutionalized in Apple’s organization. For example, the company has programs that recognize and reward excellence among workers. Excellence is emphasized as a critical success factor in the business, especially in product design and development, which is a major growth strategy (see Apple Inc.’s Generic Strategy and Intensive Growth Strategies).
Creativity. This cultural characteristic pertains to new ideas that help improve the business and its products. Apple’s management favors creativity among employees’ knowledge, skills, and abilities. This characteristic of the corporate culture enables the company to ensure sufficient creativity, especially among employees involved in product design and development processes. Such creativity is observable in the design and features of iPhones, Macs, and iPads, among other products included in Apple’s marketing mix or 4Ps. In this regard, the organizational culture helps maintain the company’s capacity to satisfy customers’ expectations and preferences.
Innovation. Apple’s organizational culture supports rapid innovation. The company is frequently appraised as one of the most innovative companies in the world. Based on this cultural trait, the firm trains and motivates it employees to innovate in terms of individual work performance and contributions to product development processes. The corporate culture facilitates rapid innovation, which is at the heart of Apple Inc.’s business. Rapid innovation ensures that the company continues to introduce new products that are profitable and attractive to target customers.
Secrecy. Steve Jobs developed Apple to have an organizational culture of secrecy. This cultural characteristic continues to define the company’s human resource development. Secrecy is part of the company’s strategy to minimize theft of proprietary information or intellectual property. It is also a strategic management approach that enables Apple Inc. to maximize its leading edge against competitors. Through the corporate culture, employees are encouraged and expected to keep business information within the company. This cultural trait is reinforced through the company’s policies, rules, and employment contracts. In this context, Apple’s organizational culture helps protect the business from corporate espionage and the negative effects of employee poaching.
Moderate Combativeness. Apple’s organizational culture has moderate combativeness. This feature is linked to Steve Jobs and his combative approach to leadership. He was known to randomly challenge employees to ensure that they have what it takes to work at Apple. However, under Tim Cook’s leadership, the company has been changing its corporate culture to a more sociable and a less combative one. Nonetheless, combativeness remains a major influence in the business. Apple’s corporate culture exhibits a moderate degree of combativeness that presents challenges that aim to enhance employees’ output.
Apple’s Corporate Culture – Advantages, Disadvantages, Recommendations
Advantages and Benefits. The combination of top-notch excellence, creativity and innovation in Apple’s organizational culture supports the company’s industry leadership. The business is widely regarded as a leader in terms of innovation and product design. These cultural characteristics empower Apple and its human resources to stand out and stay ahead of competitors. This corporate culture enables success and competitive advantages, as well as the further strengthening of the company’s brand, which is one of the key business strengths shown in the SWOT analysis of Apple Inc. Creativity and excellence are especially important in the company’s rapid innovation processes for continuous competitiveness and business development.
Drawbacks and Weaknesses. Apple’s corporate culture brings challenges because of the emphasis on secrecy and the moderate degree of combativeness. An atmosphere of secrecy limits rapport among workers. Also, moderate combativeness has the potential to limit or reduce employees’ morale. These cultural issues can reduce business effectiveness and increase employee turnover. Apple Inc. can address this situation by modifying its organizational culture to reduce but not necessarily remove combativeness. This recommendation focuses on reducing the disadvantages of combativeness, without eliminating the benefits of combative approaches in the company. Also, Apple can integrate new cultural traits to keep the business relevant, given trends and changes in the information technology, cloud services, digital content distribution, and consumer electronics industry environment.
References
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