Apple Incorporated is an American multinational organization founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniaks and Ronald Wayne on Apr 1st 1976. The company was industrialized in software applications, computer hardware, consumer electronics and digital distribution. It designs, producers and market its goods and services. A few of their most popular products of hardware are the MacBook, iPhone, iPad and ipod touch. For software, they have the OS X and iOS operating-system as their leading products. Over the years, Apple Inc. has had 39 acquisitions, purchased 2 company stakes and 5 divestitures. In addition, it has generated a unique reputation as well as brand loyalties amongst the consumers. In 2008, Apple Inc. was known as most admired company by Fortune magazine. And by 2011, the organization became the world's third-largest cellular phone maker.
On August 24th 2011, Steve Jobs has resigned as CEO of Apple Inc. anticipated to his health issues and was replaced by Timothy Make meals, the current CEO of the company. Though it has not been a long time frame since Cook got over, significant changes is seen throughout the business on the grounds of the various personalities of Careers and Cook.
Apple Inc. continued to thrive regardless of the changeover from Careers to Make meals, but considering their rich in diversity of their products, we will be focusing on only 1 with their most successful products which is the iPhone, or even more specifically the business composition of the iPhone division.
Analysis
What is organization structure? An organization framework is a composition contains activities such as process allocation, coordination and supervision, which are directed towards the success of organizational goals while, professionals deal with their huge company through their own business structure. You can find two type common organization structure models which is mechanistic and organic and natural organization. Now let`s take a look at how the Apple Incorporated organization is structured. This will depends upon the four basic contingency factors that happen to be strategy, size, technology, and environment.
First, let's check out the strategy part. Apple Inc. is using differentiation technique to contend with other big companies such as Samsung, Motorola and Google. Differentiation strategy utilized by Apple Inc. is by having their own OS X and iOS operating system as leading products as mentioned above. For instance, iPhone is using iOS which is exclusive and only Apple Inc. having this type of operating-system which is totally different using its opponents such as Android operating system. Google android operating-system is applying for most of mobile companies such as Samsung, HTC, Sony Ericsson and LG. Apple Inc. provide you with the world with the advanced technology, but ideas or technology during processing products easy to be leaked out if does not have a proper composition to organize Apple Inc.
The second contingency variable is size. Apple Inc. experienced 60, 400 long term full-time employees and 2, 900 momentary full-time employees worldwide which retrieved from a research on September 24th, 2011. The massive amount Apple Inc. 's employees which exceeding of 2000 or more people is considering a large organization and it is tend to be have significantly more expertise, more departmentalization, more guidelines and regulation than small group.
http://dev5. mhhe. com/textflowdev/genhtml/0073381489/8. 6. htm
Third is the technology. Technology is the one which transforms the business's inputs into outputs better and effectively or in other way to say it is the way tasks are completed using tools, equipment, techniques, and human being know-how. Matching to a British isles professor in group sociology, Joan Woodward's research, she classified it into three categories of core-manufacturing technology which is small-batch product, mass production and continuous-process creation and Apple Inc. is applying mass production theory. From the business composition, we also know that Apple Inc. has a higher departmentalization. Mass development is used to build a large number of uniform products in an assembly-line system. Personnel are highly reliant on one another, as the product passes from stage to level until completion. For example, when the hardware engineering department had finished their hardware design, they need to pass it to iOS and OS X division for inside software unit installation.
Last however, not least is the environment. Apple Inc. competes in three main digital media markets that happen to be personal computers, mobile communication devices and services (iTunes). Multimedia market belongs in the energetic environment. The technology it uses while in this environment have to be continuously advanced and up to date. If Apple Inc. halts improving and upgrading the technology, they'll fall season behind the line of other competitors. A straightforward and easy way to comprehend this will be by sampling the iPhone product line. It is highly competitive with several large, well-funded, and experienced rivals (Samsung and etc. ).
From the aforementioned four paragraph, we know that Apple Inc. is applying mechanistic structure for its company which can centralize decision expert, employees are closely supervised, more expertise, more departmentalization and much more rules and regulation to hander it to avoid it news / idea leak out although the surroundings is dynamic.
Now let`s go through the apple Inc. organizational structure. A couple of six basic elements of organizational structure as the mechanistic organization naturally is combines from the six basic elements which can be work specialty area, departmentalization, expert and responsibility, course of control, centralization versus decentralization and formalization and the six basic elements will affect the organisational designs too. Organizational design is the process when professionals develop or change the organization's framework to help in the attainment of the organizational goals.
Apple Inc. techniques work specialization as a norm by dividing their work activities into separate job duties to ensure that individual employees 'concentrate' in doing certain part of job in the production process alternatively than the whole task. The procedure is crucial to increase work result as when the employees are focusing on his/her own particular activity, they are able to work more successfully to perform organizational goals. For instance, being a previous senior vice president of IOS software, Scott Forstall who is only responsible to focus on iPhone applications and having no other responsibilities about the company's matters. This can help the company to generate one of the most prolific software application's inventors. In World Wide Developers Convention (WWDC) 2011, Apple Inc. been successful in launching iOS 5, which really is a mobile operating system, through Forstall technology.
Departmentalization is also an important aspect for Apple Incorporated in its company. Apple Inc. manages its business by training territorial departmentalization geographically. The business's operating sections are departmentalized globally in america, Japan, Europe and 393 shops all over the world. However, Apple Inc. possesses educated salesperson that can enhance the sales of its company. For example, the global communication section supervised by the Katie Organic cotton, the vice chief executive of the communication department is further departmentalize abroad such as European countries (The Middle East and Africa) by Alan Hely, Asia Pacific by Jill Tan and Japan by Takashi Takebayashi.
Furthermore, Apple Inc. also shows functional departmentalization in the business by separating the activities into different useful groups. For example, Craig Federighi who is the older vice president of software executive is dependable in the introduction of Apple Inc. 's software along with his team members. In '09 2009, Hill Lion was the most successful OS X (a computer software) released in Apple Inc. 's history by Craig Federighi and his team. Alternatively, Phil Schiller, senior vice leader worldwide marketing is departmentalizing into marketing function. He was instrumental in the development and marketing of iMac, iBook, iPod and OS X however, not Craig Federighi.
A type of command increasing from top of the organizational levels to the lower organizational levels can be observed in Apple Inc. organizational graph. It is the line of authority clarifying that the lower level reports to top of the level whereas the upper level will steer and supervise the lower level employees. Todd Teresi, the vice president of the mobile advertising group, iAD must report to Eddy Cue who is the mature vice leader overseeing Apple Inc. 's iTunes and the application form Store and Eddy Cue is sensible of reporting to Timothy Cook, the CEO of Apple Incorporated. Furthermore, the company is structured in the way that the Table of Directors, the CEO and the senior managers contain the highest power.
In Apple Incorporated, the employees will know who's responsible which job as it offers its own straight responsible specific (DRI). Normally the name of the in charge person can look on plans for a gathering and everyone in the appointment will know who's in charge of which process.
Span of control is the number of employees a manager can effectively and efficiently supervise. A couple of two types of period of control that are narrow and huge.
According to the Apple Incorporated, the business can be classified as having a broad span of control. Beneath the CEO of Apple Inc. Tim Make meals, there are 13 departments and each section have their own group of employees. For instance, under Phil Schiller there are many other employees like the iPad Director, vice chief executive of iPad marketing, vice president of education, vice chief executive of iPhone Product marketing and vice chief executive of software marketing.
Apple Inc. is a centralized company that is certainly the key reason that Apple Incorporated is the greatest technology company on the globe. The company planned a higher capital investment of 8 billion US us dollars in 2012. Nowadays, technical businesses can be reported to be the best business on the planet. This is applicable especially to smart telephones and tablets. As well as for that Apple Inc. must maintain their high level of technology to prevent itself from losing customers to the other companies. Due to all these, Apple Inc. is highly prompted to become centralized company. In additional, Apple Inc. has many activities in doing international businesses which contributes to Apple Inc. being the most complimented company on the globe.
Formalization of the company meanshow standardized an organization's jobs are and the degree to which employees behaviors are guided by a couple of rules and procedures. For Apple Inc. , we realize that it's high in formalization. Tim Cook, who's the CEO of the company, hasthirteen departments under him. Each of the departments has their own jobs and they will not do the other department's careers. For example, the marketing team is merely doing marketing and marketing only. If the other department, for example, the hardware anatomist division hasfaced some problems, they have to solve it themselves because the other team will not intervene.
The MOST SIGNIFICANT Things Resulting in The Success of Apple Inc.
While there're a great deal of reasons that made Apple Inc. an effective company, we feel that the most important factor that facilitates its success is the mechanistic group approach by the company. Now its atypical for a business which is mainly based and counting on innovation and creativity to perform its businesses, had chosen to adopt a far more rigid mechanistic way to perform it, but that's precisely the reason it is successful.
As explained in the previous section, mechanistic organizational framework emphasize on centrally controlled decision making system, and Apple Inc. needed this concept one step further, where even the employees keep their work fine detail a secret in one another. Through this tight enforcement of secrecy and compartmentalization, Apple Inc. is able to keep the specification of these new product from being leaked to the general public, and the technology developed using their company competitors, like that, they can ensure that no other company will be able to imitate or "grab" the tech before they officially unveil them. And keeping the product news tightly covered will also keep carefully the customers on their feet and keep them interested and intrigued about any of it, thus helping the company to make more income.
Being a mechanistic firm also means that the very best professionals make all your choice and all operations need to perform through them before they're carried out. This way, Apple Inc. can ensure that of its decisions and regulations are unified throughout the business and avoid confusions from the decentralized model where lower level professionals have their own power to make their own decisions.
Major Challenges Which will be Faced Over another 5 Years
Every company will have problems throughout its operating years, and Apple Incorporated is not exempted from it. One of the biggest challenges it will face over another few years is whether the company can continue to innovate like what it do under the authority of Steve Careers. Since Tim Make took over, the overall consensus of his management have been positive, however critiques also cited that Make meals hasn't really unveils his "signature" products like what Jobs does with iPad and iPhone. However, Cook do stabilized the dispatch over his one plus time of tenure as the CEO, and is also riding the influx of Jobs' success, but eventually the company should be creative again and churn out new products that will excite the consumers due to the eventuality that the consumers growing sick and tired of the current products and move on to other companies to get more detailed thrilling and interesting ones.
The last sentence also brings us to another challenge that'll be confronted by Apple Incorporated, which is the increasing competitiveness of the market it is fighting in. Almost 2/3 of the business's current earnings is made by its iPhone sales, and even though the product continues to be popular among its consumers, other competitors are gearing up to struggle iPhone for its market. Samsung, HTC, Nokia, Motorola and many others are producing better and better smart mobile phones, so it's up to Apple Inc. to go up to the challenge. Then there's the tablet computer market where its iPad is leading the sales, however, it won't last if the company is satisfied with its current glory, as even Microsoft, a business which only known to produce software, decided to diversify and go into the hardware industry by producing its tablet, the top tablet.
Of course there are other difficulties, for example how will Apple deal with the current global economic crisis that is forecasted to continue into 2013; yet, in my view both points which were elaborated above are considered as the primary ones that can do much more damage to the business, either financially or its reputation, if they're not handled carefully.
