Analyzing Apple Inc.'s Leadership in Managing Organizations & People

This report provides an in-depth analysis of Apple Inc.'s leadership skills, focusing on how these skills affect organizational culture and contribute to the company's objectives. It examines the leadership practices of Tim Cook, the CEO, and how his strategies influence employee behavior and overall organizational performance. The report also includes a SWOT analysis, identifying Apple's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, with specific attention to the role of leadership in these areas. Recommendations for future improvements in leadership practices are discussed, aiming to enhance the company's strategic implementation and market competitiveness. This document available on Desklib offers valuable insights into the dynamics of leadership within a leading multinational corporation.

Running head: APPLE INC. LEADERSHIP SKILLS
MANAGING ORGANIZATIONS AND LEADING PEOPLE
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

1APPLE INC. LEADERSHIP SKILLS
Table of Contents
Introduction..........................................................................................................................2
Organization description and its objectives.........................................................................2
Leadership practices............................................................................................................4
How leadership affected the organizational culture............................................................6
SWOT analysis....................................................................................................................9
Strengths of apple Inc......................................................................................................9
Weaknesses of Apple Inc.................................................................................................9
Opportunities on Apple Inc...........................................................................................10
Threats of Apple Inc......................................................................................................11
Leadership evaluation........................................................................................................11
Strength..........................................................................................................................11
Weakness.......................................................................................................................12
Recommendations..............................................................................................................13
Conclusion.........................................................................................................................16
References..........................................................................................................................17

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Introduction
Leadership is an important aspect for any organization, as through this process higher
authorities are able to guide influence and direct the work ethics and behavior of employees so
that they are able to achieve specific goals for the organization. Leadership skills lead managers
to boost confidence and zeal in employees, defines the future vision, and motivates the
organization (Bolman & Deal, 2017). Hence, a leader helps to initiate actions, provides
motivation, reinforce confidence, supports with guidelines and helps to build moral and work
environment with the coordination of the employees. Apple is one of the leading tech and gadget
producing multinational company that has been suffering from leadership issues from past few
years (Choudhary, Akhtar & Zaheer, 2013). This assignment is going to discuss search
leadership qualities in the organization Apple. Further, it will be discussing its strength weakness
opportunities and threats with respect to the organization and its leadership for the
recommendations for future aspects improvement will be discussed.
Organization description and its objectives
Apple Inc. is a USA based multinational company having its headquarters in California.
This organization deals in services such as technology, gadgets, software and different other
online services. There is a series of bestselling products of apples including, iPhone, iPad, smart
computers, mac book, smart watch, apple TV, and software such as iOS, macOS and online
stores such as iTunes iOS apple store, mac store and iCloud (Apple Inc., 2018). In the year 1976,
three individuals, Steve Jobs, Ronald Wayne and Steve Wozniak founded the company in
California with its first computer namely apple 1. Steve job was one of the best CEOs in the
world who leads the Apple Inc. towards every achievement the organization acquired in its

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journey. In the twentieth century, apple became the leader in innovation, application and
implementation. This made the organization a brand and acquired a worldwide brand value.
However, from last ten years the organization is focusing on simplicity with innovation and
providing customers with quality products. As the apple products are equipped with Mac
operating systems that provides quality service without any complex operation, the company is
able to integrate innovation with simplicity (Apple Inc., 2018).
The working culture of this organization believes in the utilization of its human resources
in excellence and innovation. The prime three aspects of the organizational culture are creativity
and innovation, working under tremendous pressure, high level of secrecy or confidentiality and
focus on diversity or inclusion. As the product is famous for its innovation and creative features,
the employees should have creativity and innovativeness within their personality and for that,
company provides its employees with appropriate environment to work freely (Chan, Pun
&Selden, 2013). The company does not have any dress code provides the employees with their
personalized working space that leads the employees to work in calm and focused manner.
Secondly, as maximum of the projects has specific deadlines, the employees should have the
quality to work under pressure. To make the employees aware of such norms, the CEO himself
works for long working hours and sets examples for his employees. As the apple products are
known for its innovations, secrecy is the primal aspect that the employees have to maintain
within the apple campus (Khan, Alam &Alam, 2015). Furthermore, by including diversity and
inclusiveness within the organization, the company is trying to break a stereotype that mentioned
this organization as less diverse and the company of white people.

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Leadership practices
The meaning of leadership is different from a person who is able to manage 100 people
working in an organization. In recent business world, leadership is an ability to motivate and
influence a group of people, who has the ability to drive the organization towards excellence
(DeRue & Ashford, 2010). While working in the marketing department of the Apple Inc. USA, I
was able to observe the three primary leadership skills of Tim Cook the CEO of Apple Inc.
These leadership practices were developing a way for fellow employees, challenge the old and
slow process and push them to achieve more and finally sharing a vision and mission to the
organization (Heracleous, 2013). The leadership skills of the CEO was able to create a principle
regarding the way the employees should behave with their respective clients or colleagues as it is
important to create a healthy working environment. Furthermore, the leadership was able to
facilitate strategic formulation and implementation as the CEO himself worked for long hours to
set goals for fellow employees. Hence, he led the path and challenged the old and slow pathway
to success. The third strategy was to provide the employee group with vision, mission and
objectives for future strategic implementation. The current vision and mission statement of this
organization is depending on the legacy and brand name of the organization (Kunnanatt, 2016).
Further, after the death of former CEO Steve Jobs, the current CEO Tim Cook has changed the
vision as well as the mission statement and modification was to influence the employees as well
as to stay active in the increasing market competition with respect to innovation. The current
CEO Tim Cook introduced the current vision statement of apple and according to him, the
company will continue to produce innovative and evolving products and the products will be
simple by controlling primary technologies they innovated years ago (Groysberg & Connolly,
2013). Furthermore, the organization will not settle and will achieve excellence and they will be

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targeting markets in which their contribution will mark difference. This detailed vision reflected
by the CEO of the company describes the company’s relative efforts to achieve success and
growth. On the other hand, careful selection of market for its simple, innovative and user-
friendly products determines that the company has its specific customers and therefore the
organization is trying to fulfill the demand of those customers only (Heracleous, 2013). On the
other hand, the mission statement of the company describes the holistic approach of the leaders
about the company and therefore with changing market, the company changed its mission
statement. It states that apple has been able to introduce several bestselling personal computers,
iOS X, and professional software as well as it had brought the revolutionary changes in the
smartphone industry by implementing iOS operating system. Therefore, the company’s mission
is to become the reigning leader in the tech and gadget industry in future years as well
(Kunnanatt, 2016).
Therefore according to the mission and vision statement of the Apple Inc., the objectives
of the higher authority of this leading organization are
1. The company will continue to surprise its customers with latest technologies and
products.
2. It will lead the world in shaping the future prospects of gadgets and technologies
with its innovative ideas.
3. As the brand has a global name and identification, the organization will focus on
expansion of the company, and will make the product available to global
customers through every means such as online or offline retailing.

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4. Furthermore, in the aspect of pricing, the company will be targeting to gain price
and market share to increase its profit share.
5. To create a craze for its upcoming products into newer generation customers, the
company will be taking help of social media and other social platforms to create a
hype and anticipation (Coleman, 2013).
Therefore, through these leadership practices, it is properly determined that the effective
management and usage of organizations resources is the primary pursuit of this organizations
vision and mission that set the objectives for the future achievements of the organizations
(Chadwick, 2010).
How leadership affected the organizational culture
Mission, vision and objectives are three important aspects for any organizations growth
and development as it provides a future roadmap, implementing which the company can achieve
success (Dermol, 2012). These mission and vision statement also decides the organizational
culture of the organization as work pressure, work related ethics and working environment
depends on the load of work a group of employee has. There are three important roles mission or
vision statement plays in any organizations growth and development are helping to communicate
the purpose of the organization to the stakeholders, create and inform the strategy to the
employees, and develop measureable goals and objectives that will be helpful in attaining
organizational strategy (Baumgartner, 2014). Therefore, these statements helps to provide an
idea about the aspirations and through written segments are provided to each employee so that
the vision guides them to develop self-goals to achieve the greater goals for the organization.

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Decision making process in the Apple Inc. is more collaborative than individually driven.
Collaborative decision-making process is the technique through which, the authorities are able to
reach to a decision in which shared vision of each employee is present. This process makes ach
employee the part of the innovation and hence, those employees put their 100 percent effort to
reach the target for the organization (Dermol, 2012). The leadership in Apple Inc. focuses on
collaborative decision making for problem solving technique and recommendations or feedback
for each employee of the respective department is collected to generate a common solution using
which the decision for future aspect is taken (Dervitsiotis, 2011)).
The organizational structure of the company is hierarchical and is named as spoke and
wheel hierarchy. This hierarchy helps the organization to deliver with rapid innovation
(Ashkenas et al., 2015). This changed hierarchy (from a pyramid to spoke and wheels) has led
the organization to listen different perspectives of the same situation as every individual has the
right to share his or her point of view about any problem or innovation. In the spoke and wheel,
where CEO is at the center of wheel and the entire departmental heads are different spokes of the
wheel, the designations matters as higher authorities has the right to discuss their point of view
regarding any situation in the organization (Chen et al., 2012). Therefore, the structure is less
stiff; everyone has autonomy, but are bound to report the CEO for any situation. Further, as the
organizational culture is changing, the organization has started using external languages as well.
The reason behind this is the incorporation of diversity in the organization.
Apple Inc. is the company that focuses on the quality of the product as innovation and
quality are major key factors in their products. Hence, when it comes to performance, the
organization focuses more on quality work rather than quantity or time spent in the organization.

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Therefore, the organization has introduced several working hour ranges depending on which
employees can choose his or her favorite working hour in the organization (Dermol, 2012). This
describes the mood of the organization as employee friendly and due to this the work and life of
the apple employees are balanced, however due to extra working hours sometimes this balance
disrupts. Hence, the CEO himself stays back and works for long hours so that employee feel
motivated for working. Furthermore, the common stories involved the creation of apple Inc. in a
small garage and the way three founders of the company led the organization to reach ultimate
success. The reason behind this story is to motivate those employees who are staying away from
their homes for the innovation and development of the company (Kotter, 2012).
However, despite such secrecy and harsh working hours, employees stay in the
organization as the organization provides them an opportunity to use their brains and produce
innovative ideas. Furthermore, the organization provides them with facilities that only apple
employees can use in the entire world such as custom-made mac operating system for each
employee (Traynor et al., 2014).
As the former CEO Steve Jobs died 7 years ago, the new CEO Tim Cooks had
responsibility to lead an organization that is a giant brand in the global market; hence, there was
a chance that wrong decision will lead the company to suffer from higher loss (Gesme, Towle &
Wiseman, 2010). However, as an employee of the apple Inc., I am able to point out few things
the manager is able to introduce in the company. These are creating an environment where
feedback of each employee matters. This leads to increase harmony and peach in the
organization and the organization began to include diverse and talented people in their
workforce, which was not the scenario in the era of former CEO (Kane, 2014).

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SWOT analysis
Strengths of apple Inc.
The first strength of this organization is the ability of marketing about the products on
larger scale, and create a hype about the brand and upcoming products. The annual advertisement
budget of this organization was around $1.7 billion in the year 2015, which was double the figure
the organization used for marketing purpose in the year 2011. Furthermore, despite of being
second in the list of company spending revenues in advertisement, apple was able to attract its
customers with specific and unique advertisement campaigns (Johnson et al., 2012).
Strong distribution channel and brand value are the second biggest factor that makes the
organization stronger than other technology and gadget organizations. Throughout America,
apple is the biggest organization that provide its branded products to the customers through
different means, such as using supermarkets like Walmart or online retail portal like amazon.
Furthermore, the brand name of apple is the strength of its products. Famous magazines like
Forbes and interbrand has named apple as the most valuable brand in the 2015. Hence, the brand
and widely available products are important for the success of the organization (Montgomerie &
Roscue, 2013).
Weaknesses of Apple Inc.
The first and primary weakness of this organization is dependency on its bestseller
product apple smartphone. The organization is completely dependent on the sales of iPhone for
generation of revenue and according to the reports of Apple Inc. sales. The iPhone was able to
generate 66% of the revenue as the sales of this product grew by 57%. This leads to generate
enhanced demand of the product in the market that further decrease the revenue of the company

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as technological changes, high quality components are to be included in the product (Heracleous,
2013).
Incompatibility of the iOS with other operating system is the secondary weakness for the
organization. As the iOS is different from android and windows operating system, the
connectivity of the iOS with such operating systems are not possible hence, consumers had to
suffer a lot while using iOS. This is the reason Apple lost a bigger section of its honest
consumers after the launch of android, as it was more user friendly and easy to connect with any
other operating system (Johnson et al., 2012).
Opportunities on Apple Inc.
As the internet market is expanding and the company has its own range of software, the
future prospect of this organization is expected to grow tremendously. Furthermore, the
organization can utilize its software and the usage of internet to generate wearable devices such
as caloric intake calculator, blood pressure calculator and so on (Montgomerie & Roscue, 2013).
The organization is expanding its manufacturing to developing nations such as India,
which is a huge marketplace and has the capability to increase the revenue of it tremendously.
Furthermore, manufacturing in this country will provide the local buyers the product in less cost,
leading to expand the customer base in such bigger marketplace. Hence, the growing market
place, and sustainable, manufacturing nation is another opportunity for the company to grow its
business (Heracleous, 2013).

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Threats of Apple Inc.
The primary threat to Apple Inc. is the risk of data breaching. As the business of the
apple needed to store data about its investors, employee, consumers and other stakeholders, the
personal data of these individuals leads to disrupt the privacy or secrecy of the organization
(Montgomerie & Roscue, 2013).
On the other hand, increasing competition in the market of gadgets by Sony, Samsung
and other renowned organizations is another risk factor for the company. On the other hand,
amalgamation of two biggest rivals of apple google and Samsung has enabled the consumers
with products that competes with apple and its innovation. Hence, market competition is the
biggest threat for apple nowadays (Johnson et al., 2012),
Leadership evaluation
Strength
Behavioral theory in leadership is determined as the influence of the leader on the
employees that changes their attitude towards work and explains the ways to change such
behavior in the employees (Chemers, 2013). The CEO followed the behavioral theory of
leadership as any new step he used follow himself before asking the employees to follow the
same. Hence, the three strengths of his leadership quality was
 Humanistic approach towards employees, as the CEO helped each employee to
understand their specialty and acquire training to sharpen their skills. This is a
very important aspect, as in this highly competitive working environment, letting