6.0 Corporate Culture

According to Robert E. Quinn and Kim S. Cameron at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, there are four types of organizational culture: Clan, Adhocracy, Market, and Hierarchy.

1) Clan oriented cultures are family-like, with a focus on mentoring, nurturing, and “doing things together.”
2) Adhocracy oriented cultures are dynamic and entrepreneurial, with a focus on risk-taking, innovation, and “doing things first.”
3) Market oriented cultures are results oriented, with a focus on competition, achievement, and “getting the job done.”
4) Hierarchy oriented cultures are structured and controlled, with a focus on efficiency, stability and “doing things right.”

There’s no correct organizational culture for an arts organization. All cultures promote some forms of behavior, and inhibit others. Some are well suited to rapid and repeated change, others to slow incremental development of the institution.

Opinion

     In my opinion, I feel that Apple Corporation adapts a Market oriented culture. Steve Jobs were reported by the Business Insider that he is notorious for pushing his employees harder-than-hard. There was  even rumors that Steve Jobs once fired an employee in the elevator for not having a good enough answer to the question "So what have you done for Apple lately?" This shows he shapes his corporation to be very result oriented. Besides that, I think Steve Jobs does very well in being strict in protecting the company's secrets. The company is one that thrives on secrecy and obsessive attention to detail, and this approach is less than conducive to friendliness. In Apple, an employees can be fired with immediate effect if they are found guilty of sharing the company's secret to other people as well as corporation. I think that Steve Jobs have done a good job in protecting the trade secrets of Apple by creating this healthy fear among employees. Besides this, I feel that their rewarding system as mentioned in my "motivation" blog post also sets a culture to inspire employees to word harder-than-hard and strife to outwit Apple's competitors like Dell, HP or Accer in the laptop market.


     In conclusion, I think Apple is one of the most successful and valuable companies today thanks to their tough-as-nails attitude within the company's culture when it comes to behavior and results expectation from the employees.

 Bibliography

1) The Tipster. "4 Types of Organizational Culture". 14th May 2013. 28th September 2013. http://artsfwd.org/4-types-org-culture/

5.0 Motivation

Motivation

Motivation refers to the inner desire or passion to do something






Rewards:

1. Financial rewards

• Piece rate pay
• Performance
• Co-mission
• Profit share
• Fringe benefits-pay more money

2. Non Financial

• Job enlargement
• Job rotation
• Team work
• Empowerment
• Job enrichment-better on your own job

Maslow hierarchy of needs

Diagram shows the Maslow hierarchy of needs

Herzberg:

Motivators & Hygiene factors

Motivators: (cause of satisfaction)

• Achievement
• Advancement
• Interesting tasks
• Opportunities for promotion
• Personal growth
• Recognition 
• Responsibility 
• Work itself

Hygiene factors: (causes of dissatisfaction)

• Company policy , rules and regulation
• Relationships with peers, subordinates and supervisor
• Salary and wages
• Security
• Status
• Supervisor and coordination
• Working condition-make worker or people unhappy

Opinion

In my opinion, Apple Corporation is considered the most innovative and admired company
in the world (BusinessWeek, 2009; Fortune, 2009). Over the years, they have managed to attract and retain its employees thanks to the benefits, or expected and non-performance related incentives, it offers, such as product discounts or insurances (Apple, 2010). But even more important is its outstanding creative culture. Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, argues that the latter is the gravitational force that puts all the bright and creative people together (Burrows, 2004). Apple employees’ motivation is a key success factor and hence they need to be given incentives in order to foster creative thinking and sustain high motivation (Tidd and Bessant, 2009).

This is evident in the case of the Apple Corporation in US, Apple Store employees in the United States will be getting pay raises of up to 25 percent of their previous wages, based on performance. In addition, Apple CEO Tim Cook  implemented a new discount system which began that week in 2011 July.Under this new program, Apple employees receive $500 off of a Mac or $250 off of an iPad. This discount, which can be used every three years, is available to all employees who have worked for the company for at least 90 days. Employees also receive a standard 25 percent discount on Apple hardware. I think that it is through a fair and square rewarding system that based entirely on meritocracy that helps Apple's employees to drive themselves forward to make their products more successful.

Under this new program, Apple employees receive $500 off of a Mac or $250 off of an iPad. This discount, which can be used every three years, is available to all employees who have worked for the company for at least 90 days. Employees also receive a standard 25 percent discount on Apple hardware. This i feel also gives motivation for new employees to work harder for the companies as the Apple has take the step of faith by rewarding them even before they have performed.  In my opinion,I think that reward system is a crucial element in encouraging flexibility, increasing performance and competing for talent in competitive labor markets in the world

     Personally, I feel that money should be secondary to affection for the company when it comes to motivation. I can earn a lot of money in a company but if i feel unhappy with my grumpy employer, it doesn't mean anything at all to my sense of achievements. And yes, I do agree that money is important element for employees motivation as we have to make a living for ourselves to support our beloved family. In order to get more out of employees, we have to look at their psychological needs of employees which i feel that recognition of employees contribution plays an important part as we humans have a deep need for others to think highly of us especially when we do contribute genuinely. I think that through appropriate recognition and giving the due credits to employees, it will also drive them to go extra miles for their employer.

Bibliography

1) Apple (2010) All the benefits you’d expect. 28th September 2013 from http://www.apple.com/jobs/us/benefits.html

2) BusinessWeek (2009) The 50 Most Innovative Companies. 26th September 2013
Available at: http://bwnt.businessweek.com/interactive_reports/innovative_50_2009/

3) Burrows P. (2004) ‘The Seed of Apple’s Innovation’, BusinessWeek [Online]. 25th September 2013 from
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/oct2004/nf20041012_4018_PG2_db08
3.htm 

4) Juli.Ipad Gadget.Apple Rewards Employees with Raises and Better iPad and Mac Discount Program. 28th Sepember 2013. from http://www.padgadget.com/2012/06/21/apple-rewards-employees-with-raises-and-better-ipad-and-mac-discount-program/

5)  Tidd J., Bessant J. (2009) Managing Innovation. 4th edn. West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons Ltd. 27th September 2013

4.0 Training

Training and Development

People (Employees) are often said to be a firm's most important asset. Training and development (T&D) is very very important for people working in sales as customers are unlikely to make purchases from sales people with little or no sales knowledge. T&D not only helps to make staff confident and competent in their jobs, but it can also help to motivate the workforce as they feel more valued by the employer.This can help to improve the level of customer service, thereby contributing to be better customer loyalty and higher sales.

Opinion

     In Apple Corporation, they conduct orientation for new employees. They all get a new iMac but they have to learn to set it up by themselves. The catch is to help get new employees to move around and talk to their colleagues. In my opinion, i feel that through this way, it sets up opportunity for new employees to engage in conversations with their seniors and also motivate them to take initiatives. That, i think is a form of on the job training in disguise as it helps new employees to settle down in their new environment.  Besides that, there are off the job training in house training in Apple Corporation as well like the Apple Training and Certification that delivers a training curriculum that includes hand-on lab experiences, lectures, and web-based training through a worldwide network of Apple Authorized Training Centers (AATCs). These forms of off the job training has several advantages as it's training certification gains worldwide recognition, builds credibility in the employees resume, and helps connect employees to their employers and clients.
I feel this kind of workshop helps employees to sharpen their soft skills as it's workshops involves interaction with the instructors and there are also on the job training that requires communication with the client and with the employer as well.

Bibliography

1) Apple Corporation,"Apple Training and Certification" 2011. 25th September 2013. from http://www.apple.com/education/docs/Apple-TrainingCertificationCatalogWeb.pdf

3.0 Recruitement

Recruitment


     I have learned that Apple Corporation hires people based on 3 major groups - Corporate, Retail Store and Students & College Graduates. From this 3 major groups, they are further narrowed down to each specific functions. In my opinion, I think Steve Jobs uses a competency-based recruitment and selection. This kind of selection helps identify applicants' hard competencies which are education background and knowledge as well as soft competencies which can be derived from personality of the applicants but still rooted in knowledge.

     I think Steve Jobs predicts the job performance of a job applicants and find the best people to achieve its corporation's objectives. In the Apple's official website, there are array of questionnaires to guide and assist the applicants to narrow down their areas of expertise that would best fit the corporation. I think that the advantage of this recruitment method is that it is result oriented, whereby discrimination won't exist and every potential applicants will be selected purely based on their ability to perform in the specific role that the company is looking to fill in.
In their website, i also saw that Apple Corporation's advertisement very much reflect their organization's organization structure whereby there are specific functional units within their organization. In conclusion, I feel this kind of recruitment method is fair enough as it is not biased in any way and it reflects Apple's meritocracy system that simply selects the best among the rest. I think I might want to try to apply there in future as i see that the fairness is their system is attractive to me.

Bibliography:
1. OntoHR project,2013. VET Competencies and personnel selection. "The state of the art".25th September 2013

2. Robbins, S.P & Stuart Kotze,R, 1987. "Management Concepts and Practices" Canadian edition. 25th September 2013

2.0 Organization Structure

Organization       

An organizational chart is a diagrammatic represent of a formal organization structure, 

(Figure 1)

Business Structure 

1. Sole Proprietorship

• owned by a single individual.
• has total control of and responsibility for his or her business
•  receives all profits, and can make important decisions quickly.

2. Partnership

• an association of two or more people acting as co-owners of a for-profit business. 
• partners share personal liability for all claims against the partnership, as well as share all profits and losses. 

3. Corporation

• a more complex form of business organization. 
• exists apart from its owners or shareholders and is a legal entity in its own right. 
• has its own rights, privileges, and liabilities apart from the individuals who form it.
• has shareholders who invest money in the business and therefore own it.
• shareholders hold an annual meeting at which they elect a board of directors to manage the company's daily affairs.

( Source: Mculloch, Linda. Organizational Structure . 2013. 1 September 2013. <http://sos.mt.gov/business/Models/index.asp> )

Organizational Structure                           

1. Bureaucratic Structures

• Have numerous layers of management, cascading down from senior executives to regional managers to departmental managers, all the way down to shift supervisors who work alongside front line employees.
• Decision-making authority has to pass through a larger number of layers than with flatter organizations.
• Advantage is that the Top-level managers in bureaucratic organizational structures exercise a great deal of control over organizational strategy decisions.
• Disadvantage is that it is bound by rigid controls and can also find themselves less able to adapt to changing conditions in the marketplace, industry or legal environment.
• Example of Bureaucratic structure: 

Figure 2:

                

Source: Ltd, Finntrack. "Management Class." 2013. Organization Theory and Design. 1 September 2013. <http://management-class.co.uk/learners/organisation.htm>.

2. Functional Structure

• Employees are grouped together and work is allocated based job functional. 
• There will be someone who is in charge of a function like marketing, and all of the marketing work for the entire entity will be performed by people in the marketing department.
• Other common functional divisions include finance, purchasing, production, sales, and so on.
• The advantage is that a worker who is an expert in his functional area can perform tasks with a high level of speed and efficiency, which enhances productivity. 
• The disadvantage is that there will be problems in teamwork as the different functional units may face difficulty working well with other unit
• Example of functional structure of a pharmaceutical company

Figure 3:

(Source: Sine, W. D., Mitsuhashi, H., & Kirsch, D. A. (2006). Revisiting Burns and Stalker: Formal structure and new venture performance in emerging economic sectors. Academy of Management Journal, 49, 121–132.)

3. Divisional Structure

• Each separate division of the organization is responsible for its own operations.
• Divisions can be defined based on the geographical basis, products/services basis, or any other measurement.
• Example: A food & service company that owns a  dining restaurant chain and a fast food brand may be organized by division. Instead of corporate level functional responsibilities for all marketing activities, there may be a casual dining marketing department and a fast food marketing department that are both independent of each other.
• Advantage is that it allows a team to focus upon a single product or service, with a leadership structure that supports its major strategic objectives.
• Disadvantage is that a company comprised of competing divisions may allow office politics instead of sound strategic thinking to affect its view on such matters as allocation of company resources.
• Example:

Figure 4:

(Source: N/A. " Organizational Design." 2013. 1 September 2013. <http://2012books.lardbucket.org/books/small-business-management-in-the-21st-century/section_16_02.html>)

4. Matrix Structure

• Matrix Structure is a combination of the functional and divisional structures. 
• The organization places the employees based on the function and the product.
• It uses teams to complete tasks.
• The advantage is that it can lead to an efficient exchange of information as different departments will work closely and communicate with each other frequently to solve issues which allows for quick decision making.
• The disadvantage would be the overhead cost which typically increases because of the need for double management. The extra salaries an organization must pay can put a strain on its resources.
• Example of matrix structure:

Figure 5:

( Source: University New Carter. "Contemporary Forms of Organizational Structures." 2013. Organizational Structure and Change. 1 September 2013. <https://new.edu/resources/contemporary-forms-of-organizational-structures> )

The Leader that I choose: Example of Apple Corporation organizational structure (Matrix Structure) led by Steve Jobs:

Figure 6:



( Source: http://fortunebrainstormtech.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/apple_org_chart_large11.jpg )

(Figure 7)
 In Figure 7, it's show Steve Jobs using Matrix organization structure organization chart to function the "Apple" business.

Opinion

     I think that having a matrix organization as it enable each country's Apple corporation to functioned within it's own capabilities based on the environmental needs and yet still maintaining a very general standardization requirement in all Apple Corps around the world. One example would be the pricing method of Apple, all Apple stores around the world charges the same price in all of the distribution store even though they are in different currency. Matrix structure also offers solution to keep the costing as low as possible as Apple has many of their headquartered manufacturing lines headquartered in Tucheng, New Taipei, Taiwan and also China. This saves a lot of cost as the labor cost of employees in these countries are cheap in comparison to the employees hired in America. This is due to the strong American currency which is the US Dollar.

     Even though Apple Corporation's adoption of this structure has its advantage, it also has its own downside as well. Competition among production lines will also prompt cannibalism. In this year, no matter how good the iPhone 5C ends up performing on the open market, I feel that Apple’s decision to launch two iPhones in one year rather than their conventional way of offering one device per year could result in self-cannibalism, as users who will have bought the iPhone 5S instead gravitate toward the cheaper option. Cannibalism also occurred between different products as in the case the iPhone cannibalizing the iPod for the past several years. In my opinion, all these happened because of the unclear boundary between all the Apple corporation production lines.

Bibliography

Nick Kolakowski, Slashdot, "Will the iPhone 5C Cannibalize the iPhone 5S?" 16 September 2013. 28th September 2013. http://slashdot.org/topic/bi/will-the-iphone-5c-cannibalize-the-iphone-5s/