Managing to Keep Apple Fresh

Managing to Keep Apple Fresh: Organizational Culture

Issue Identification

Employees

Competitors

Critical Discussion

Path-goal Model

Today, Apple can be regarded one of the most successful companies in the industry within which it operates. At some point, the company was headed for collapse. After Steve Jobs took control as CEO (from 1997), he instituted a drastic turnaround of the firm which has since then more or less dominated the industry. A number of factors have contributed to Apple's success; one of those being effective leadership skills. Steve Jobs knew how to set goals and get everyone to work towards achieving them by amongst other things aligning the organizational culture with the organizational goals. Apple's success story is proof that effective culture management is one of the ingredients of effective leadership. This text will explore the different culture-management practices that have been employed by Apple's leadership.

Issue Identification

Organizational culture refers to the values, practices, and beliefs held by the members of an organization (Balthazard, Cooke & Porter, 2006). These members can be categorized into three basic groups; employees, customers, and competitors (Balthazard, Cooke & Porter, 2006). In basic terms, all these groups play a role in the success or failure of an organization. Effective culture-management more or less cements these groups together, and at the same time responds to each one's needs in the best way possible.

2.1 Employees: Effective culture-management takes into account the various needs of employees. These needs are best taken care of when the leadership fully makes use of its employees' abilities. Essentially, these abilities can only be fully realized if the employees' conceptual, technical and human skills are tested and improved (Keller, 2007). This could involve coaching, which would suitably ensure growth and learning that is more or less continuous (Schermerhorn et al., 2012). The implication is that employees get to feel that their abilities are properly utilized and hence give their best to be part of the achieved goals (Keller, 2007).

2.2 Customers: An effectively managed culture is responsive to customer needs. Customers' needs are best met through the provision of quality products. Apple is known for the production of the world's most robust, yet elegant devices (Schermerhorn et al., 2012). Effective culture-management, therefore, incorporates aspects of customer satisfaction. This is crucial if an organization is to succeed in the highly competitive global market (Bucker & Poutsma, 2010). Customers develop a mindset that any future product will be better than the previous one. 2.3 Competitors: An effective organizational culture best responds to competitors by setting high performance standards. These high standards are in the form of employee-development and suitable product designs. Global management is about setting standards that are of global quality (Bucker & Poutsma, 2010).

3.0 Critical Discussion

Organizational culture is one of the situations that leaders face and have to deal with by applying the most appropriate leadership style. Effective culture-management is all about efficiently applying suitable situational theories to organizational culture. Customers and competitors constitute the external aspects of organizational culture. Employees, on the other hand, form the internal aspect. The external aspect can only be addressed if the internal aspect is in order.

3.1 The Path-Goal Model