Evaluating an Organization’s Structure

¶ … Organization's Structure

Organizational structure is defined as a framework that a company uses to distinguish roles and responsibilities, power and authority as well as the method information flows within the organization. A company may choose a structure that will assist in reacting to changes and uncertainties from both external and internal environments. A suitable organizational structure will assist a company to implement proper decision making and operating procedures, which will aid the organization to achieve their goals and objectives. A common approach in assessing the organizational structure is to examine both the mechanistic and organic structures, which is the effective tool to rate an organization business process. (Dust, Resick, & Mawritz, 2014).

The objective of this study is to assess the Apple Inc. organizational structure and uses the 10-likert scale to evaluate the structure of the company. The study provides the recommendations for Apple to improve their organization structure.

Apple Inc.

Apple Inc. is a global electronic manufacturer giant specializing in designing and producing computer hardware, computer software, and consumer electronics. Some of the company most popular brands include iPhone, iPod, iPad, and MacBook. The Apple software brands are the iOS and OS X operating systems. Within the last few decades, Apple has successfully completed 39 acquisitions, 5 divestitures, and 2 company stakes. However, Steve Jobs resigned as the CEO of the company in 2011 because of the health issue. Replaced by Timothy Cook, the new CEO has implemented series of changes to produce an effective organizational structure.

Assessment of Apple's Organizational Structure

Organic and mechanistic organization structure are the two opposite continuum structure of organizations. Mechanistic organizations use the rigid, efficient, standardized and predictable method to run their organizations. Moreover, mechanistic organizations have rigid hierarchy features, a heavy reliance on formal rules, vertical specialization, policies, and procedures, downward communication flows and centralized decision-making. Contrarily, organic organizations are adaptable, flexible and team directed. Moreover, low level of formalization and horizontal specialization are the other features of the organic organization. Other features of organic organizations are multiple or weak hierarchies, loose rules, policies, communication flows in all directions, and decentralized decision-making.

In mechanistic structure, the managerial hierarchy has been identified as the main source of control. Moreover, human resources principles are geared towards selecting people to fit specific training and job as the needs arise. (Phillips, & Gully, 2013). At present, Apple Inc. is implementing the mechanistic organization structure practicing the centralized decision authority, observing more specialization, employees closely supervised, more departmentalization, more specialization and relying on more rules and regulations. Apple Inc.'s. Organization structure is based on work specialization using a norm to divide work activities into different tasks to assist individual employees specializing in certain tasks. The process is very critical to increasing the production process, and make employee concentrating on a particular task to enhance organizational goals. For example, Scott Forstall was a former VC (vice president) of IOS software development, and his only responsibility was to develop a software application. The work specialization assists Apple Inc. in possession of more software application inventories.

Departmentalization is also one of the important elements of the mechanistic structure. Apple manages its business entity by practicing the geographical departmentalization. Globally, the Apple business segments are characterized by departmentalization in the Europe, United States, and Japan. Moreover, the company has over 393 retail stores globally and is managed by skilled and knowledgeable people. Apple also implements functional departmentalization by separating different activities into a functional group. Moreover, Apple's organization structure is revolved around the centralized system making Apple be one of the top global technological companies in the world. Apple also practices formalization, which is also one of the major features of departmentalization where an organization guides employee's behavior with formal rules and procedures. For example, Apple has 13 departments where each department is guided by the specialized job function. For example, the hardware engineering department specializes in designing the hardware devices while the marketing department focuses on the distribution and marketing of the company products. However, the study evaluates the Apple organizational structure using the 10-scale assessment to identify strength and weakness of Apple's organization structure.

10-Likert Scale Apple Inc. Evaluation Method

Ronda, (2001) identifies the reliability survey and validity survey as the two methods of measuring the organization structure. The reliability survey is an internal consistency reliability. However, a validity survey uses the Likert scale to measure the effectiveness of the organization structure. This study uses Likert scale for the assessment of Apple organization structure.

Apple Likert Scale

Worst

Not Good

Fair

Close to average

Average

Better

Much Better

Good

Very Good

Excellent

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Mechanistic

Organic

Task Role: Rigid

Task Role: Flexible

Decision Making: Centralized

Decision Making: Decentralized

Sensitivity to Environment: Closed

Sensitivity to Environment: Open

Findings of the Apple Organization Structure Assessment

Mechanistic

10

Organic

2

Task Role: Rigid

9

Task Role: Flexible

4

Decision Making: Centralized

10

Decision Making: Decentralized

3

Sensitivity to Environment: Closed

3

Sensitivity to Environment: Open

10

Total Score

51 out of 80

Total Score (%)

64%

Results

The results of the assessment reveal that Apple scores 64% in the application of the mechanistic structure. However, I am surprised with the assessment because I believe that Apple will score more than 80% since Apple is one of the global electronic giants. For example, Apple scores very low in the practice of organic organization structure revealing that the company relies on mechanistic structure than organic structure. Apple should realize that knowledge workers in the contemporary technological environment need to work in an environment in effective mechanistic or organic cultures. Typically, "culture is an important factor in successful technology implementation, innovation, mergers, acquisitions, job satisfaction, organizational success, and team effectiveness." (Ronda, 2001 p 3).

The study recommends that Apple Inc. should integrate some elements of organic structure to make the transformational leaders having more influence on the employee. Dust et al. (2014) argue that the organic structure can assist the transformational leadership to have more influence on employee's receptivity.