Introduction to Management: Analysis of Apple Inc.

This report provides an internal analysis of Apple Inc. and strategies to mitigate risk factors and utilize the strengths of the company. It also highlights the environmental constraints faced by the organization and ways to mitigate these challenges. The report covers organizational structure, ways of motivating employees, process control and recommendations.

Running head: INTRODUCTION TO MANAGEMENT
Introduction to Management
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author note

1INTRODUCTION TO MANAGEMENT
Table of Contents
Summary....................................................................................................................................2
SWOT........................................................................................................................................3
Pestle..........................................................................................................................................4
Stakeholders...............................................................................................................................5
Organizational Structure and Design.........................................................................................6
Motivating employees................................................................................................................7
Recommendations......................................................................................................................7
Control and Recommendations..................................................................................................8
References..................................................................................................................................9

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Summary
Apple Inc. has been chosen as the organization of choice in this given report. Apple Inc. is
one of the leading multinational companies in the technology department. The company has
its headquarters in Cupertino in California (Apple, 2019). It is counted among the top four
technology giants along with Facebook, Google and Amazon. The company designs,
generates and sells computer software, consumer electronics and other online services. The
company has been founded by Ronald wayne, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. The company
is well known for its revenues and size and the total annual revenue of the company mounted
to $265 billion in the fiscal year of 2018 (Apple, 2019). The company is the largest among all
the information technology companies and is the third largest mobile phone manufacturers
after Huawei and Samsung. In the year of 2018, Apple has become the first company to be
valued at more than 1 trillion. The company has more than 500 retail stores in more than 20
countries with 1.3 billion Apple products being used globally (Apple, 2019). This report
would conduct an internal analysis to provide suitable strategies to mitigate risk factors and
utilize the strengths of the company. The environmental constraints faced by the organization
would also be highlighted along with the strategies to mitigate these challenges. The key
stakeholders within the organization would be identified and evaluated to identify the amount
of priority needs to be given to each. The organization structure, ways of motivating the
employees, process control and recommendations are others aspects to be covered in the
report.

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SWOT
Strengths
The major ability of the organization is the ability to design and develop exclusive
software, hardware and other services. The technological capabilities and innovation of the
organization is the one of their greatest strengths (Annualreports.com, 2019). Therefore, the
organization should aim to enter the mass market instead of only catering to a niche market.
Apple, mainly sells premium products but other companies like Samsung and Xiaomi has
been able to cater similar products to a larger market at much lesser price. Apple needs to
develop products that can be mass marketed to all the developing countries. The company has
developed a powerful brand through strong marketing capabilities and advertisements so the
company use the brand image to cater products in new consumer segments.
Weaknesses
The major weaknesses of the company is that their distribution network is limited and
they have high selling prices which means that they are mostly dependent on high end market
segments (Annualreports.com, 2019). In order to protect the organization from these
weaknesses, it is key to develop products for medium and low end consumers so that the
company does not remain dependent on only one consumer segment. Moreover, the company
should include more distributors into the organization so that increase their market
penetration.
Opportunities
Initially, the company would have to include more distributors into their network
which is one of the major opportunities for the organization (Annualreports.com, 2019).
Similarly, the organization needs to develop new product lines catering to middle class and

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upper middle class segment. The growth opportunities are high in developing countries like
China, India and Brazil. However, even though, their disposable income has increased, it has
not reached the equivalent level of a premium consumer.
Threats
The major threats faced by the organization are increase in competition, imitability of
the products offered by the company and increase in the labor cost in various countries
(Annualreports.com, 2019). In order to avoid this threats, the organization should make sure
to use their innovative capabilities to develop new product lines. The advancement in
technology has made it easier for other companies to imitate their products so it is essential to
use continuous innovation to remain a step ahead of their competitors like Samsung, Huawei
and Xiaomi.
Pestle
Political  Improvement in the free trade policies
 Stability in government
Economic  Rapid growth of the economy
 Stability of the economy
Social  Increase in use of mobile phone and online websites
Technological  Technological integration
 Increase in market for new applications
 Cloud computing becoming one of the major trends
Legal  Increase in privacy and telecommunication regulations
Environmenta
l
 Business sustainability
 Energy efficiency in products

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 Trends in labor rights
Table 1: Pestle
Source: (Khan, Alam & Alam, 2015)
In terms of environmental constraints, the organization is facing problems in
developing sustainable practices within the organization. The organization needs to develop
products that are energy efficient and move towards contributing to the sustainability (Khan,
Alam & Alam, 2015). The company has already faced issued with labour rights in different
countries where they had to heavy fines for not providing the workers with proper working
conditions. These has resulted in the lack of knowledge of the suppliers and partner
companies in different countries.
The organization has been developing programs regarding recycling of products to
manage sustainability and contribute to the society (Rochman et al., 2013). The products are
being developed to make it more energy efficient which consists of processors and
components that emit less heat along with improved battery capacity. The organization has
also taken initiatives to improve the employment practices throughout the supply chain.
Stakeholders
The major stakeholders of Apple Inc. are consumers, employees, investors, suppliers
and distributors (Cooper, 2017). The consumers are one of the most critical stakeholders of
the company as they purchase company products and are loyal to the brand. The employees
belong to the group of people responsible for the innovation, product design and competitive
advantage of the company. The investors have put in their capital into the company and
expects profit maximization and increase in growth of the company. They keep the
organization running by providing capital in time of need. The suppliers provide product
parts to the company which is essential for developing finished products. The distributors are

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the ones responsible for delivering the product into the market and they belong to final stage
of the supply chain and is essential for increasing market penetration for the company.
Consumers should be given the highest priority among the stakeholders as they are
the one making the purchase. The products are developed based on the needs of the
consumers and consumers acknowledge the products as it is able to meet the expectation of
the consumers regarding the quality and aesthetics. Therefore, it is essential to provide the
consumers with top most priority as they will determine the position of the company in the
market.
Organizational Structure and Design
Image 1: Apple’s organizational structure
Source: (Joseph, Klingebiel & Wilson, 2016)
Apple uses a hierarchical structure where decentralization of the different decisions is
one of the changes embraced by Tim Cook. Grouping on the basis of the product is another

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key aspect of the organizational structure. There are eight members in the Board of directors
where three member are currently acting as the CEO of the company. The structure ensures
tight control for the senior management across the overall business (Joseph, Klingebiel &
Wilson, 2016). There is lack of flexibility in the organizational structure of the organization.
The hierarchical level of the structure facilitates in mechanistic structure
within the organization but after the arrival of Tim Cook, decentralization has been used in
some areas which means that the current organizational structure consists of both organic and
mechanistic structure.
Motivating employees
In order to motivate the employees, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and Goal-setting
theory should be used. The senior management has always tried to motivate the employees in
Apple where Steve Jobs have led with examples. It is crucial to understand the need of the
employees in compensation, job design and management style (Lee & Hanna, 2015). The
hierarchy of needs would be able to provide the employees with flexibility and added benefits
to fulfil their basic needs such as savings plans, health benefits and other perks. Moreover,
job security is another factor which can be motivate the employees using the Maslow’s
theory.
On the other hand, goal-setting theory is a theory which focuses on task goals as the
means of motivation. This theory clearly focuses on the importance of the relationship
between performance and goals (Latham, Brcic & Steinhauer, 2017). The senior management
should set goals for each employees and motivate them to achieve these goals by providing
them autonomy, direction and support. This will help to improve the job satisfaction of the
employees working in Apple.

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Recommendations
The analysis of Apple Inc. and all its aspects has highlighted these following
recommendations:
 Catering to a different market segment by using innovation to develop products for
the moderate income group
 Improving the flexibility in the organizational structure by developing a flat structure
to reduce the level of bureaucracy within the organization.
Control and Recommendations
Control needs to be implemented before, during and after the project to make sure that
any deviation in the project can be addressed immediately to achieve the chosen objective in
the research (Cathcart, Greer & Neale, 2014). Feed forward control would facilitate in
keeping the standard of the work performed by the employees by providing them with
training and development. This would facilitate in understanding the way to cater to different
market segments which are quite different from the current premium segment. The
concurrent control would be implemented to make sure that the quality of the products
developed are par with the standards set by the company. Finally, Feedback control would be
used to send sample products to different users to check whether the products are meeting the
expectation of the consumers or not.

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References
Annualreports.com. (2019). Apple Annual report. Retrieved from
http://www.annualreports.com/HostedData/AnnualReports/PDF/NASDAQ_AAPL_2
017.pdf
Apple. (2019). Site Map. Retrieved from https://www.apple.com/sitemap/
Cathcart, A., Greer, D., & Neale, L. (2014). Learner-focused evaluation cycles: Facilitating
learning using feedforward, concurrent and feedback evaluation. Assessment &
Evaluation in Higher Education, 39(7), 790-802.
Cooper, S. (2017). Corporate social performance: A stakeholder approach. Routledge.
Joseph, J., Klingebiel, R., & Wilson, A. J. (2016). Organizational structure and performance
feedback: Centralization, aspirations, and termination decisions. Organization
Science, 27(5), 1065-1083.
Khan, U. A., Alam, M. N., & Alam, S. (2015). A critical analysis of internal and external
environment of Apple Inc. International Journal of Economics, Commerce and
Management, 3(6), 955-961.
Latham, G. P., Brcic, J., & Steinhauer, A. (2017). Toward an integration of goal setting
theory and the automaticity model. Applied Psychology, 66(1), 25-48.
Lee, J. M., & Hanna, S. D. (2015). Savings goals and saving behavior from a perspective of
Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Journal of Financial Counseling and Planning, 26(2),
129-147.

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Rochman, C. M., Browne, M. A., Halpern, B. S., Hentschel, B. T., Hoh, E., Karapanagioti, H.
K., ... & Thompson, R. C. (2013). Policy: Classify plastic waste as
hazardous. Nature, 494(7436), 169.