Leadership Styles Comparison: Steve Jobs and Tim Cook at Apple, Inc.

This report provides a comparative analysis of the leadership styles of Steve Jobs and Tim Cook, focusing on their impact on Apple. The report highlights the contrasting management approaches of Jobs, who emphasized innovation and perfection, and Cook, who prioritized collaboration and efficiency. It examines how their leadership styles influenced the company's product development, market strategies, and overall business performance. The analysis includes references to their management techniques, the introduction of new products, and their respective focuses on core business operations. The report concludes by recommending a blended approach to leadership, combining elements from both Jobs and Cook, to address the current and future challenges faced by Apple. The report also includes references to books and journals, providing a comprehensive overview of the subject.

Management and Leadership
1

Table of Contents
REFERENCES.....................................................................................................................................4
2

With the starting of Apple Company, the relationship of Steve Job had excellent with the
organization (Herman, 2011). By considering the management style and leadership styles of Jobs
and Tim Cook, it has found that there are various reasons that bring changes occurred between both
tenures. Steve Job was passionate and more demanded towards the perfection and excellence from
his staff. But Cook has looked to achieve excellence at Apple. For this, he has made an immediate
point to make transparency and promote teamwork at the workplace. Along with this, Tim Cook has
inspired its workforce via an open door policy and has developed a collaborative working
environment during the work (GAYOMALI, 2015). Most of the management styles of Cook and
Job have same and some of the management techniques of Cook are more passive as compare to
Jobs. On the other hand, by considering the leadership style of both people, it has determined there
leadership strategies have different from each other. Under the leadership of Jobs, Apple had
produced large number of products to the public. During that time, company had introduced the
iMac, the iPod, iTunes, the iPhone, the App store and the iPad in the marketplace. With the help of
the leadership style of Steve Job, Apple becomes able to establish a core business at international
level. But the direction tactics of Tim Cook has given not too much worth to Apple (Lashinsky,
2015). He has only focused towards the core business and his decisions have given the brakes on
new products. Cook seeks to emphasize only on improving the working and performance of the
existing products rather than innovation. Therefore, there is a diversion between leadership styles of
Steve Jobs and Tim Cook (Răducan and Răducan, 2014). On the basis of this, it is recommended to
leadership team of Apple to adopt combination of both leadership and management styles to deal
with new challenges.
3

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Herman, R.D., 2011. The Jossey-Bass handbook of nonprofit leadership and management. John
Wiley & Sons.
Răducan, R. and Răducan, R., 2014. Leadership and Management.Procedia-Social and Behavioral
Sciences. 149. pp.808-812.
Online
GAYOMALI, C., 2015. 5 Surprising Insights About Steve Jobs's Management Style. [Online].
Available through: <https://www.fastcompany.com/3044205/fast-feed/5-surprising-insights-
about-steve-jobs-management-style >. [Accessed on17th October 2016].
Lashinsky, A., 2015. Apple's Tim Cook leads different. [Online]. Available through:
<http://fortune.com/2015/03/26/tim-cook/>. [Accessed on17th October 2016].
4