Assessing Organizational Design and Structure



Assessing Organizational Design and Structure

Background of the Company

Apple Inc. is a computer manufacturing company that is working globally. Apple grew very fast in a little time due to its strong culture, hierarchy, policies and the innovation which truly made the company achieve prosperity. The organizational structure of the company is made is such a way to be more competitive in a critical juncture in the company's history. The organizational culture of Apple is very unique with the drive to outperform and succeed with the high involvement of the employees. Apple has been continuously involved in the innovation process and is hoping to be the market leader very soon because of its strong encrypted culture and structure (Carlton, 1998).

Apple's Organizational Culture

Organizational culture is comprised of the mind-set, experiences, beliefs and values of an organization and its employees. Currently, there are seven primary characteristics of organizational culture as described by: (1) innovation and risk taking, (2) attention to detail, (3) outcome orientation, (4) people orientation, (5) team orientation, (6) Aggressiveness, and (7) Stability. Research indicates that Apple Inc successfully embodies five of the seven primary characteristics of organizational culture.

Innovation and Risk Taking: Apple employees focus on innovation as their basis for taking calculated risks for change in the areas of transforming health care, cleaner power generation, exploring nanotechnology, aviation technology, greenhouse gas reduction, global research facilities and so forth (Robbins, 2005).

Attention to Detail: Apple employees focus on attention to detail in such areas as customer service, quality and assembly of products, meeting performance targets, enhanced decision-making through training and education and so on.

People Orientation: Apple considers their more than 300,000 employees to be their greatest asset, and they are “passionate about making life better with new ideas and technologies”.

Team Orientation: A significant part of Apple's culture as a global company involves nurturing diverse and cross-cultural teams in such areas as public relations, automotives, global research, nanotechnologies, marketing and so on.

Aggressiveness: Though Apple does provide the tools necessary for employees to be aggressive and competitive, the degree to which people are aggressive and competitive is truly up to the individual employee (Wilson, 1995).

Apple's organizational culture is based on the idea of self-motivation in the individuals through the empowerment. The distinctive structure of Apple allowed it to innovate, grow and react more quickly according to the turbulent changes occurring globally. Apple at the time of its innovative structure grew faster as decisions made by the employees were from the diverse group of people which truly contributed success in the prosperity of apple. The corporate Apple's headquarter made the overall activates and policies be fulfilled and obeyed by the employees. These activities are assigned in such a way to facilitate employees in making day to day decisions in countries all over the world. Apples organizational culture mainly focuses upon the following (Parhizgar, 2002).

Inverted management pyramid

Greater Liberty and Freedom to accomplish the task at hand

Constant Learning, Knowledge Creation and Knowledge Sharing

A More Enjoyable and Humane Work Environment

A Hyper-productive Cooperative Work Mode

Emergent ...