Steve Jobs and Apple

Apple Culture Change Apple has been through many transformations and cultural shifts throughout its interesting history. The company was founded in a garage in the 1970s and later became the most valued company in the world. Needless to say, there have been many challenges that the company has had to overcome along the way. This analysis will focus on some of the more recent cultural changes that the company has went through in the last five years.

Some of these changes involve the fact that Apple has had to endure the loss of its founder and chief visionary Steve Jobs. Other changes in culture relate to its production methods and some of its overseas business partners who have generated significant amounts of negative publicity for acting less than ethically in many cases regarding the treatment of employees.

Despite all the challenges that Apple has had to endure along its journey, it has consistently maintained some of the most loyal customers that the electronics industry in general has ever created. Apple's Culture "To make a contribution to the world by making tools for the mind that advance humankind." -Steve Jobs (The Economist, 2009) For much of its history Apple didn't actually publish a mission statement and there seems to be some debate as to whether an official mission statement ever existed at all.

Despite there being no agreed upon mission, this quote by Steve Jobs from the early 1990s has been cited as an embodiment of the company's mission and culture. The closest official statement from the last five years was found in an annual report that describes the business organization as (Apple Inc., 2013): "The Company is committed to bringing the best user experience to its customers through its innovative hardware, software and services.

The Company's business strategy leverages its unique ability to design and develop its own operating systems, hardware, application software, and services to provide its customers new products and solutions with superior ease-of-use, seamless integration, and innovative design." Despite the lack of an official statement, Apple has been associated with being one of the world's foremost innovators ever since the company's inception and with its breakthrough platform known as the "digital hub" strategy that introduced transformative products such as the iPod.

However, these innovations are largely accredited to Steve Jobs who has recently passed away (2011) which ushered in a new era in which Tim Cook took leadership of the company. The company had to balance Cook's introduction with the trajectory the culture has taken throughout its history. The balancing act is evident in this vision statement made by Cook about Apple's new vision under his leadership (Rowland, 2015): "We believe that we are on the face of the earth to make great products and that's not changing.

We are constantly focusing on innovating. We believe in the simple not the complex. We believe that we need to own and control the primary technologies behind the products that we make, and participate only in markets where we can make a significant contribution. We believe in saying no to thousands of projects, so that we can really focus on the few that are truly important and meaningful to us.

We believe in deep collaboration and cross-pollination of our groups, which allow us to innovate in a way that others cannot. And frankly, we don't settle for anything less than excellence in every group in the company, and we have the self- honesty to admit when we're wrong and the courage to change.

And I think regardless of who is in what job those values are so embedded in this company that Apple will do extremely well." The statement is clearly balancing the transition by recognizing that Apple has a culture that is largely distinct of its leadership and recognizing the values that are, and always will be, inherent in the organization.

Despite the need for the culture to be established as its own entity, Cook later began to differentiate himself and his values through such acts as announcing publicly that he was gay in a defiant and confident move that was largely well accepted by the market and investors alike (Lashinsky, 2015). Despite the main organizational culture attracting much of the publicity, Apple has had to consider other culture changes that have impacted its organization in a variety of ways.

There have been numerous reports over the years of horrific working conditions in the Chinese factories that produced many products like the iPhone 6 in its supply chain with partners such as Foxconn (Bilton, 2014). While the company understood, it needed to make a vast culture change to address these issues, it is a difficult situation for Apple since they do not have direct control over the factory.

Furthermore, not only does the partners in the factories have negative records of human rights violations, but the same trend funnels even further down the supply chain into the producers of tin and many of the raw materials that go into Apple products (Bilton, 2014). Conclusion Apple is an interesting company to study from the perspective of organizational culture do to.