Apple: Leadership, Organizational Theory, and Performance Evaluation

This report examines Apple's organizational theory and leadership practices, focusing on the management style of CEO Tim Cook. It analyzes his democratic approach, emphasizing employee relationships and consensus-building, within a hierarchical organizational structure. The report explores how Apple's product-based divisions facilitate collaboration and decision-making. It highlights Cook's transformational leadership style, emphasizing strategic planning, customer engagement, and employee relationships. The report also discusses the effects of power, influence, and conflicts within Apple, particularly the use of personal power, including expert and referent power. Furthermore, it examines the motivation theories employed by Apple to enhance employee engagement and performance. The report concludes with a summary of key findings and recommendations.

Organisational Theory and
Practice

Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................1
Main Body.......................................................................................................................................1
A. The management style , the principle and functions of management ..................................1
B. Organisational Structure to Achieve High Performance and Organisational Culture...........2
C. The leadership styles of CEO of that firm to enhance the organisational performance of the
organisation.................................................................................................................................3
D. Effects of Power, Influence and Conflicts of Apple..............................................................4
E. Motivation theory used by the Apple.....................................................................................5
F. Corporate Example.................................................................................................................6
G. Recommendations:.................................................................................................................7
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................9

Introduction
Organizational theory includes a series of task that have a relatively higher impact on
individuals, groups as well as structures that are part of the Organization. There are various
organization of different size and structure. It is important to understand the diverse
viewpoints of the Organization and adopt the unique leadership style that is vital of being
successful (Aboramadan, 2018.).
For doing this project Apple has been selected as it is one of the leading multinational
retail company in U.K., they are engaged in providing variety of products that mainly includes
personal Computers, software's as well as mobile devices. Currently, the company is lead by
Tim Cook and has witness immense impact by his continual and sustained efforts. This project
is broadly divided into seven tasks. This includes Management styles followed by Leader,
changes done by him in the company's structure to improve it's performance by monitoring
the different department at each level . The leadership style followed by him in order to
enhance the effectiveness of each of it's talented forces and thereby resulting in the growth of
it's Organization. In addition to this, it also covers power and influence of him and motivation
theory preferred by the CEO in order to ensure that employee's remain highly engaged to be
successful in achieving the objective of Apple.
Main Body
A. The management style , the principle and functions of management
Management Style can be referred as a way in which manager works to fulfil the
objectives of their Company (Azudin and Mansor, 2018.). The Style comprises of series of
tasks that includes planning, Organizing, making decisions and along managing their talented
workforce. Management Style varies and it is highly dependant on structure, culture, country
and even one's own ways for performing a particular task. CEO of Apple mainly follows
democratic style of management and has embraced some of existing practices of renowned
leaders and develop this own unique skills . He believes in the capability of it's employee's
and has realized that it is must to nurture as well as build a healthy relationship with them. Due
to this, he has enhanced his team's assistance that has motivated them in various ways that has
encouraged consensus building among their team members. Although, his style has resulted in
slower decision making process. But he has been successful in inspiring his team that has been
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engaged, improved their creativity and in turn has added valuable contribution that has led to
increase in their competency level. Tim Cook even ensures that his staff has gained a proper
understanding of all the principles and adopted them as defines their business integrity. These
principles includes providing a superior alternative to their existing needs and wants,
designing the products by adopting same philosophy by all their staffs. Adding to this he
concentrated more on creating different culture, unique structure and innovative products
instead of correcting the damage that cannot be repaired. He motivated his talented task force
in times of adversity and encouraged them to keep calm and had full faith in his team's
capability . One of the most important principle he emphasises s that create your own unique
place in the minds of people and don't ever change and continue to fulfil the objective for
which Apple was established. Along with all the above mentioned principles, he had a very
friendly nature and proved that you can be nicer even while competing with your immediate
competitor including Google and Samsung. It is must for the company to utilize all the
functions that mainly includes planning, Organizing, leading as well as Controlling (Baporikar,
2017). Apple's CEO made sure that he could sustain as well as enhance the brand image of
Apple that it's prior leader has done. He involved each of his talented staff for making
important decisions. This aids the company to have a clear idea of their objective and
accordingly organization all their activities by establishing a proper coordination among all
their team mates. This helps them to reach their target market and even increase their presence
at large.
B. Organisational Structure to Achieve High Performance and Organisational Culture
There are different structures adopted by different organization that are mainly
dependant on the nature, size and the environment on which the company currently exists
(Bauer and Lim, 2019). Under the leadership of Tim Cook, Apple currently follows
Hierarchical structure. This is also one of the most commonly used organization structure
used by many organization all over the world. This structure can be referred as structure
wherein employee's are clustered under different groups and assigned a supervisor for each of
the group. The criteria of division can can be varied that includes function, geography as well
as product (Burke, 2017). As the company is large sized, has numerous employees works
under the CEO of Apple that currently is Tim Cook. He know that it is impossible to
accomplish their desires without ensuring that their employee's are highly involved. In order
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to do this, he make sure that his different team collaborates on a continual basis as per their
product based strategy. This further aids the company to do all their task in a structured ways
by establishing proper and clear communication among all it's different department. The
leaders does this ,by considering views of each of the different team by involving all the
individuals and synchronizing the thought process. This helped Apple to become more
powerful in making autonomous decision and in turn resulted in creating as well as
developing unique products. Their Product based division is followed by the upper as well as
lower level of their corporate structure. This helps the presidents and the vice presidents
under each department to be able to organize their activities by carefully analysing the
capabilities of each of their talented task force. Along with this they even monitor the
activities of all of them at every stage by measuring each of their actual performance with that
of set standards. This helped them to take timely action to correct the direction in turn
improving the performance of each of their valuable talent and also bring them at the same
level. This further resulted in improving the efficiency level of them on consistent basis.
Thereby, aiding the company to innovate, attract,retain as well as enhance their customer base
in a very sustainable manner to reach closer to accomplish the desires of Apple.
C. The leadership styles of CEO of that firm to enhance the organisational performance of the
organisation
There are different leadership style used by different leaders that are highly dependant
on the nature, size as well as the personal and unique skills of an individual leading their
company(Child, John, John Wiley & Sons, 2015). Adding to this, the same leader can adopt
different styles that is highly dependant on the current situation that arises at a particular point
of time. In today's changing times good leader is someone who is well informed about the
latest technology and is capable enough to utilize it to attract as well as retain the interest of
their valuable customer's (Chowhan and et. al. , 2017). Tim Cook, the current leader of Apple
adopted transformational leadership style. It is important to get a better understanding of this
style in order to know the effect of it for enhancing the performance of each individual and
ultimately the organization as a whole. Transformational style can be inferred by the name
itself and can be said as transforming and improving the performance on a consistent basis of
the organization as a whole. The leader made sure that he is able to adopt as well as continue
the legacy of Apple's prior leader and still was able to bring the company at a newer level with
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his trustworthiness as well a greater accountability. He concentrated more identifying as well
as understanding his customer's preferences and accordingly fulfil their requirements. Thereby,
continue to engage their customer's with their unique and customized offering by maximizing
their satisfaction. Along with this he also concentrated in strategic planning that mainly
involves developing Apple's existing product and at the same fostering strong employee's
relationship. This can be verified by an example that they launched their new product i.e. i-pod
pro and developed their watches even better and fit the requirement to choose the most
healthier alternative. Adding to this, he is quite flexible and is capable enough to adopt and
develop the products of the company as the situation demands. He did this, when their
security issues were challenges by being calm enough to understand the address the issue and
even supported himself with the particular legislations. There are also some other qualities
possessed by him that mainly including transparency, taking smart risk and diversity.
So, it is clear that he is quite a inspiration leader, has innovated and set powerful
example that can help them learn as well as think of innovative ways to implement the same in
their Organization.
D. Effects of Power, Influence and Conflicts of Apple.
In today's changing time every individual challenge themselves as well as their similar
counterparts to reach their full potential in order to accomplish their desires (.Christensen, L.
T. and Cheney, G., 2015.). There are different ways in which the company could influence
their employee's and some of the companies could even utilize different types of power as
per the requirement of the situations (Zhong and et. al., 2016). The CEO makes use of personal
power that can be referred as using one's own unique strength for getting their hold in the
industry. He utilized his autonomous thinking and concentrated more on engaging his talented
workforce and encouraged cooperation that has resulted in improved decision making.
The personal power is further bifurcated into two powers that includes expert and referent
(Daft, Richard . Organization theory & design. Cengage learning, 2020). The expert power
comes from one's own knowledge, skills and most importantly his own experience. The
information particularly involve having accurate information that isn't possessed by others
mostly their immediate competitors. He stays calm , believe in listening all of the diverse
opinion of people that are surrounded by him. This has further helped to utilize his own as well
as experience of others by trusting and fostering strong relationship with all in the
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Organization. This in turn, has aided him to aggregate the ideas of all his talented employees
and innovate by uniting the minds of all of their people and have resulted in adding valuable
contribution to accomplish the objectives of the organization . The company has also utilized
referent power by trusting as well respecting everyone that includes all the resources and even
the competitor has constantly challenged themselves to utilize it's full potential. Tim Cook
hasn't instructed his all team mates to do the task as his stated guidelines and wants them to be
responsible by being innovative for performing their respective task that has been assigned to
each one of them. This has helped him in engaging as well as motivating his employees
whenever required and has been fruitful by having positive influence in improved
performance of each of their staffs and eventually has resulted in enhancing the performance
of the entire company. It can be inferred that that the leader with his continual as well as
sustained efforts has highly influences this talented people and made Apple become leader in
the industry.
E. Motivation theory used by the Apple
It is a necessary requisite for the company to motivate it's employee's as an increase
employee's engagement and motivation will results in improving the performance of their own
and in turn the entire organization (Liket and Maas, 2015). Thereby, the company witness a
constant increase in their growth in terms of financial terms that includes profitability, profit
margin, growth in their revenue. Along with this, it even includes growth in their non-
financial terms that includes the presence as well as popularity of Apple. There are different
theories used by different organization that maximizes the engagement of employee's that is
careful analysed and planned that enhances the performance of each of their employee's and
helps the company to gain sustained competitive advantage in the industry. Some of the
widely used theories can be explained further (Maheshwari and Vohra, 2015.).
Maslow's theory of Needs
Hertz berg's two factory Theory
McClelland's Theory of Needs
Vroom's Theory of expectancy
McGregor’s theory X and theory Y
The leader of Apple has many applied many theories but has witness higher
engagement of it's employee's by applying Maslow's theory of needs. This has aided the
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company to become leader in technological innovation. The theory states that it is must to
address the lower level of needs before moving further to address higher and most advanced
needs. It can bifurcated further that provides better understanding how the company utilized
this theory below (Mair,and Reischauer, 2017):
 Physiological Needs: The company has been successful to address the physiological
needs of each of their employee's by fulfilling their basic needs that is necessary for
their survival. This is done by the leader by ensuring that each of their employee's are
paid their promised Salary as stated by the company at the time of entering into a
contractual agreement between them.
 Safety Needs: Once the employee's has met their physiological needs then the leader
takes proper care of their safety, training and even sees to it that that he is able to
provide healthy working environment.
 Love and Belongingness Need: Once the above needs are satisfied than than their
love and belongingness needs to be fulfilled . CEO, has taken feedback and incorporate
them that includes support of social network and most important seeing to it that he is
able to establish strong employee relationship with their supervisor.
 Esteem Needs: Then, he look after his employee's esteem needs. This needs mainly
refer to the needs of employee's to get the respect and recognition that they deserve
(Subramanian and Gunasekaran, 2015). He do this by rewarding this talented staff with
provide them bonus along with this he even provide them free iPhone to those who
have shown exceptional improvement in their performance.
 Self Actualisation Needs: At last, the company has provide their employee's ample of
opportunities by ways education and development program that has aided employee's
to achieve their personal growth and know their areas of further improvement.
F. Corporate Example
To have a better understanding of the democratic style followed by Apple, it can
explained how other leaders in their company has implemented them and become successful.
As democratic style encourages participation of each and every team member and enhances
employees engagement (Manning, 2017) . It is one of the most effective method and proved to
be effective in increasing the productivity of the organization. For example, Google's CEO
Sunder Pichai has utilized democratic style by sharing the decision making power with this
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talented workforce. This has witnessed higher commitment,engagement and satisfaction. This
has motivated his employee's to enhance their productivity and thereby improved the
performance of the organization as a whole. This has enabled the Google to be best and
preferred by many people to be part of such company have value their employees. This is done
by them by providing them innumerable benefits that include child care facility, sport facility
and also providing them large number of leave days . On the other hand, Amazon CEO Jeff
Bezos has utilized autocratic style of leadership. This has aided the company to witness
higher engagement of their staff, enhances their productivity but observed lower commitment
as well as satisfaction level.
G. Recommendations:
Based on the above report of Apple, some of suggestion can be made to the CEO of the
company that can more favourable for the company to be able sustain their position and also
growth themselves in the long term. They should be flexible enough to utilize different
management style that is most suitable for the particular situation arises by utilizing the
potential of all their talented employees. This will be beneficial for the company in improving
the efficiency, productivity that will further help them to enhance their Brand Value. The
company should be able to do their task quickly by utilizing transformational style and is also
known by another name as visionary style. This mainly includes that company to establish
clear communication among all their workforce and make them fully informed about the
vision of the company. In this style the leader doesn't involve all their employee's in knowing
their views of doing daily or operational work. This will help the leader to make sure that each
of their valuable employee's be focussed and are provided a clear direction in achieve their
vision.
Conclusion
It can be concluded from the above mentioned report,that management style of CEO
plays an important role for improving the efficiency and productivity of Apple. Although the
company is doing quite well by adopting the democratic management style and resulted in
making their employee's engaged, innovating and utilizing the latest technology. This has
aided them to create a unique position of their brand all over the world. Along with this, their
leadership style and power that are described above has helped them to influence their
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decision and enhanced their performance. At last it can be said that leadership style and the
motivation theory has inspired employee's as they feel that they are highly valued by their
team and also all their organization as a whole. It is just that the CEO can utilize the above
suggestion to get ahead of their immediate competitors including Microsoft and dell. This will
help them to enhance their innovative skills that is vital for their growth. Thereby, aid them to
achieve their desire and become leader in their industry.
REFERENCES
Books and Journals
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Aboramadan, M., 2018. NGOs management: a roadmap to effective practices. Journal of
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organizational DNA, business potential and operational technology. Asia Pacific Management
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Baporikar, N. ed., 2017.Global practices in knowledge management for Societal and
Organizational Development. IGI Global.
Bauer, S. and Lim, D., 2019. Effect of communication practices on volunteer organization
identification and retention..Sustainability. 11(9). p.2467.
Burke, W. W., 2017. Organization change: Theory and practice. Sage publications.
Child, John. Organization: contemporary principles and practice. John Wiley & Sons, 2015.
Chowhan and et. al. , 2017. Persistent innovation and the role of human resource management
practices, work organization, and strategy. Journal of Management and Organization. 23(3).
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Christensen, L. T. and Cheney, G., 2015. Peering into transparency: Challenging ideals,
proxies, and organizational practices. Communication Theory. 25(1). pp.70-90.
Daft, Richard L. Organization theory & design. Cengage learning, 2020.
Liket, K. C. and Maas, K., 2015. Nonprofit organizational effectiveness: Analysis of best
practices. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly. 44(2). pp. 268-296.
Maheshwari, S. and Vohra, V., 2015. Identifying critical HR practices impacting employee
perception and commitment during organizational change. Journal of Organizational Change
Management.
Mair, J. and Reischauer, G., 2017. Capturing the dynamics of the sharing economy:
Institutional research on the plural forms and practices of sharing economy organizations.
Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 125. pp.11-20.
Manning, K., 2017. Organizational theory in higher education. Routledge.
Subramanian, N. and Gunasekaran, A., 2015. Cleaner supply-chain management practices for
twenty-first-century organizational competitiveness: Practice-performance framework and
research propositions. International Journal of Production Economics.164. pp.216-233.
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