Management and Operations: A Case Study of Apple

Management and Operations

Executive Summary

This report has discussed specific situations in the history of Apple and has analysed the actions and achievements of Steve Jobs and his team successor Tim Cook. It has also elaborated strengths and weaknesses of the respective leaders and in managing complexity and taking right decisions. Different theories and models have been applied to the leaders’ decision making and have done a critical evaluation for the theories. The part B has discussed different approaches including Just in Time and TQM in context with Apple and has linked the approaches with the decision making of the leaders and managers of the company. The report has concluded on the various factors and their impact on the decision-making of the leaders and managers in both a positive and negative way.

Introduction

Operation management can be defined as the administration of the business processes to enhance the level of efficiency within an organisation (Slack and Brandon-Jones, 2019). It primarily focuses on efficient conversion of materials and labour into services to enhance the profit of the business organisation. Operation management is essential for an organisation since it ensures the balancing of the costs with the revenue to maximise the operating profit of an organisation (HILL and HILL, 2011). This report will be discussing the managerial and leadership skills that have been implemented in the history of Apple. Moreover, it will also discuss the strengths and weaknesses of Steve Jobs and his successor Tim Cook and their respective actions and achievements.

Apple is a multinational technology company and is headquartered in Cupertino, California and the organisation is under the leadership of Tim Cook as its CEO (apple.com, 2021). The organisation generates revenue of around 274.51 billion US dollars and provides employment opportunities to nearly 147000 individuals globally.

Part A:

1(a): Examine specific situations in the history of Apple, where various managerial skills and leadership qualities (or lack of them) were demonstrated by the company’s top managers.

A leader can be defined as a person who has a vision and an ability to influence others towards the achievement of a goal (Andriukaitien? et al., 2017). A manager is a person who holds the responsibility of a specific department and the workforce in that department and has the power to exercise performance appraisals, monitor performance and recruitments (Patiar and Wang, 2020). Different types of manager in an organisation and can be subdivided into functional managers, team and supervisory managers and line managers. In the year of 2007, Apple launched the first iPhone at a price range of as high as 200 dollars. However, after 2 months the iPhone went on sale, Apple started offering the customers at a huge discounted rate. This activity has led the organisation to face criticism and CEO of Apple, Steve Jobs received a huge chain of mails due to this issue. To resolve the issue, Steve Jobs adapted a situational leadership style to combat the present situation and decided to offer the customers with a credit amount of 100 dollars as a refund. This form of leadership has played an effective role in that tough situation in Apple (wired.co.uk, 2021).

Presently, during the COVID-19 situation, which demanded social distancing and hygiene and safety of the employees, managers at Apple have adopted to new work strategies and policies to support work from home policies to sustain the business operations in the organisation. Moreover, this decision of the managers also enhanced the motivation of the employees and sustained the business operations of the organisation. Six thinking hat can be described as a simple and effective thinking process that aims at enhancing the productivity, focus and mindfulness of the people. The significant applications of the six thinking hats are leadership development, creative and innovative thinking, decision menacing, and enhancement of team productivity and communication, organisational change and identification of action where high performance is required.

1(b): Actions and achievements of Steve Jobs, and his successor (the current CEO), Tim Cook.

Steve Jobs is considered as one of the greatest technological innovators of all time with the vision of humanising personal computing, user experience hardware and software design. In the year of 2001, apple under his action centred leadership style, introduced an iPod device into the market that offered a user-friendly way accessing the music. Further, it also provided the service of iTunes that helped the customers to integrate millions of music into a single device without the hassle of carrying CDs. The biggest innovation and achievement of Steve Jobs is the introduction of the iPhone in the year 2007 that combined the features of a computer as well as an iPod. It was an instant hit and the company successfully sold around 1.39 million units in the year of 2007 (statista.com, 2021). He also focused on the development and innovation of the existing products of Apple.

Tim cook is the successor of Steve Jobs as the CEO of Apple and has implemented a transformational leadership style to accomplish organisational goals. In the year of 2012, there were multiple bugs with the apple maps in the 1.0 version of the software. There were multiple flaws in the software and to address it, Tim Cook adopted a transformational leadership style to improve the maps. The customers were offered with daily updates and introduced features like 3D flyovers (wired.co.uk, 2021). It was a huge and successful improvement over the previous versions of the Apple maps.

2(a): Identify and analyse the specific strengths and weaknesses of the respective leaders in various situations

The biggest strength of Steve Jobs was his vision and charismatic personality. His vision of innovation and development has led Apple in the development of multiple innovative devices like Macintosh, iPod, iPad, iTunes and others (hbr.org, 2021). He introduced iPhone in the year of 2007, this was a perfect combination of a computer, phone and an iPod, and that was a leading change in the industry. However, Steve Jobs could simplify complex things and eliminate any unnecessary components, which appeared to be more appealing and led a change. Steve Jobs had a transformation leadership style and that led to his huge achievements and success. However, the biggest weakness of Steve Jobs was his inability to identify the appropriate target market for Next computer and his confusion. Due to this, the assets of the organisation had been sold to Apple at an amount of 429 million dollars (hbr.org, 2021).

The major strength of Tim cook that led to his success was his risk-taking ability. It is an important quality of a leader to take difficult decisions, that may have an impact on their surroundings and the risks have an equal chance of success as well as failure. His risk-taking ability in different complex situations like when he decided to forfeit an amount of more than $100 million if the organisation underperforms has led Apple to reach this height and has led to a leading change in the organisation (entrepreneur.com, 2021). However, under the leadership of Tim COOK, Apple’s ability to deliver innovative products in the market has declined and under his leadership, the company has become reactive to compete in the market. As an instance, Apple launched Homepod in order to compete with Amazon’s Echo (medium.com, 2021).

2(b): Link specific managers’/leaders’ actions to different theories and models of approach. These should include situational leadership, systems leadership, and contingency

Situational leadership style can be defined as an adaptive leadership style where a leader adapts a specific style depending on the demand of a specific situation. Steve jobs adopted a set of tactics and different strategies in order to implement his situational leadership style. This style was adapted when Apple was struggling in the 90s and faced substantial competition from Dell and others.

System leadership can be defined as the capabilities and the skill set of an individual or an organisation required catalysing and supporting the system change process (weforum.org, 2021). Tim Cook has implemented this style of leadership when Johny Srouji joined Apple in the year of 2008 and led to the development of the A4 chip, which is considered as the first system designed by Apple.

Contingency theory states that there is not a specific way to lead an organisation to its best since some external, as well as internal factors, acts as a hindrance (business.com, 2021). When Apple was facing huge competition from Dell, HP and other tech companies in the 90s, Steve Jobs returned Apple and adopted a specific leadership style to take control of the situation. In the process, he completely reorganised the company and developed plans for development. Moreover, he also cancelled multiple product lines and adopted an achievement-oriented leadership approach.

2(c): Critical analysis of at least two of these stated theories.

A leadership style is of primary importance in managing a large number of an individual within an organisation and has an impact on the behaviours of group, communities and followers. According to Ghazzawi et al. (2017), the situational leadership style is a merger of supportive and directive leadership style. Moreover, this form of leadership demands a leader to monitor the performance and evaluate the commitment of the employees in the accomplishment of a specific task. The leaders following this style of leadership should vary and modify their leadership approach according to the demand of a specific situation and depends on employee commitment and relation behaviour. This style of leadership is advantageous since it helps to recognise the requirement of flexibility. Moreover, it also creates a healthy comfortable environment for the employees. However, the situational leadership style focuses on short term needs rather focusing on long-term goals.

System leadership can be defined as the necessary skill set and the capabilities of an individual or an organisation to support and enhance the system-level change process. A large scale of skills and attributes is to be applied by system leaders in order to generate a system change. This pattern of system leadership is applied in situations of complex challenges where collective action is required. As opined by David and Drysdale (2018), this form of leadership can be defined as the ability to create a change or a system that includes creation, utilisation and exploitations of the connection within the system. This style of leadership benefits by making the work process easier and eases the workload. Moreover, it also helps in faster growth. However, this leadership style may not be practical in every situation and does not cater to the contingencies.

Part B:

1(a): Identify two theoretical approaches which could help address the customer order fulfilment issues and quality issues at Apple.

Just in Case – It ensures the right decision on time to make organisational benefits (Lee, 2021). This approach requires materials on time to be transformed into goods. Just in case is the approach that can help Apple in fulfilling customer orders for satisfying them. This approach holds the idea of the complete elimination of waste. This approach will pull the products of the company and will not keep it in the factory. In this approach, the organisation will work to meet specific customers’ orders (Shen et al., 2020). This approach will make the organisation rely on suppliers rather than the manufacturer. This way the availability of raw materials can be ensured within the organisation and this can help Apple in improvising customer orders in a great way.

TQM (total quality management) –This approach ensures quality operations and services to ensure long-term value and success for organisations (asq.org, 2020). This approach includes the quality improvement processes within organisations. Total quality management is the process of increasing operational development and decreasing defects and errors from operations. This approach will make Apple more customers focused, pay attention to employee engagement, through rewards and motivation, process thinking and integrated systems of functional specialities (asq.org, 2020). Total quality management can improve Apple's order services through a systematic and strategic approach, continuous improvement, fact-based decision-making and communication with transparency.

1(b): Identify how each of your two stated theoretical approaches would address each issue; and the strengths and weaknesses of using those approaches in this context.

Just in case

By application of just in time practice, Apple can grow the management philosophy of its production with a collection of various concepts and serving its customers specifically designed items. It can apply the customisation of its electronic devices as per the needs of its customers in the required time (multiprofessionals.com, 2020). The focus of practising this approach will be fulfilling the necessary quality requirements of the customers. This practice can build the efficiency of the company in the area of providing orders oriented services and increasing the value image of the company immensely. However, the practice will need uninterrupted support of the top executives of Apple. In this case, any denial of accepting the change can interrupt the process and this can create an obstacle in the application of this approach within the organisation.

TQM

Under the TQM approach, Apple will clarify its objective of change to the employees and will identify its critical success factors such as specific customised designs or services for customers, selective production and so on. It will develop the measures tracking the sales and profits and production flow. Then it will identify its customer segment such as the financially enriched and technologically upgraded people. It will also collect real feedbacks through some survey or questionnaire to get the insights of the services through some survey tool such as some questionnaire software or other. After it will start the survey by asking frequent questions to the customers and will start improving its lacking areas with some smart goals such as providing customisation of services or products to enhance the value image of the company to process improvement initiatives.

It can create resurvey about the changed services and monitor every month development of products or services. Incorporating sufficient data into marketing plans such as dynamic market trends can help the organisation to enhance its service orders (Patricia, 2016). It can make its technologies user friendly so customers can use it familiarly. This way the products of the company can attract a large number of buyers. This practice can help the company to enhance its operations and services to increase its value image. However, this can also cause a risk in term of not meeting the change goals. It can cause a large number of financial resources to meet the goals.

1(c): Explain the role of management/leadership in your recommended approaches, and explain the business value of addressing these problems.

In Just in Time practice, the managers and leaders of Apple will grow its philosophy or vision of managing the operations. The leaders and managers of the organisation will play the role of adopting new ideas and strategies for customisation of the designs and services for the customers with on-time production, delivery to satisfy its customers.

In TQM practice, the managers and leaders of Apple will start developing measures and track sales and profits for further use in quality improvement for its targeted segment of customers. The managers and leaders of Apple will create surveys to collect feedback from the customers and then start developing the new ideas for quality improvement and lastly will collect more feedbacks through its marketing teams to ensure customers satisfaction from their products.

• To increase suppliers number

• To ensure specific customisation for customers

Inventory management will be influenced by the new approaches, as these methods will lead Apple to develop its strategies with innovation and use advanced technology to increase organisational brand value and sustainability.

Capacity management will get affected in a good way, as these practices will make the company to increase its number of suppliers to ensure uninterrupted operations and service to ensure customer satisfaction.

In case of scheduling, the organisation will make sure the supply of raw material, production of the customised designs and services on time. This will ensure the proper implementation of them just in case and TQM approaches within Apple.

2(a) identify potential factors in the business environment at Apple that may impact on the realistic possibility of carrying out your recommended approaches.

Potential factors like Stakeholder relationship will make the shareholder and suppliers produce uninterrupted services including raw material and other financial investment to make profits and grow businesses together. Competing interests such as strategies used by the rival companies can make the leaders ad managers of the organisation develop ideas that are capable of beating the competition and staying update with the market trends. Source of conflict will lead the managers and leaders of the company to make decisions that can balance between the organisational welfare and satisfy employees as well to ensure comfortable adoption of the new approaches. Culture of the organisation will make the leaders and managers of Apple design their products and their use features collaboratively and develop the operational structure with team value. CSR practice makes organisations to obey all the Governmental, social and environmental rules to regulate a valued business in the market (Lu et al., 2019). This factor will encourage the organisation to comply with all the regulations in favour of the society and environment to ensure a great brand value image.

2(b): Analyse how those factors might impact on the decisions managers/leaders will need to make about carrying out your recommended approaches.

Stakeholder relationship may affect the decision making of the leaders and managers of Apple in both a positive and negative way. This factor will encourage the leaders and managers to build good communication with their shareholder and suppliers that can strengthen the flow of materials and financial backups in a good way. However, this same factor can lead the organisation to invest more in the raw material and any bad material can reduce the quality of the products. Shareholders' denial of investing in the company can interrupt the services and operations. Competing interests can help leaders and managers to adopt a variety of ideas to neat the competition. However, focusing always on the rivals' moves can distract the managers and leaders decision-making process from base works of the organisation. It can cause a serious interruption in their decision-making.

Source of conflict is a significant factor that can encourage the managers and leaders of Apple to develop healthy and positive work ambience within the organisation. This will include collaborative working projects, communication between the workers and different departments as well. On the other hand, this practice can cause serious stress for the leaders and managers because the continuous effort of solving conflicts can cause mental stress for them. The organisational culture will help the leaders and managers to maintain a healthy work environment by protecting employee safety and organisational values. This practice will ensure the increase in the value image for the brand. However, maintain one specific organisational culture can make the decision-making processes of the leaders and managers rigid and less flexible. It can interrupt the adoption of new ideas frequently to develop organisational culture and operations.

The CSR rules will surely build the value image for the brand and will make the leaders and managers adopt strategies that are environment friendly and suits social culture and ethics. However, this practice can cause large financial expenses to maintain all the CSR laws. Maintaining all the environment-friendly activities such as carbon emission, waste reduction and recycling will make the organisation invest in new technologies that can cause a big amount of expense for Apple.

Conclusion

This report has discussed various situations within Apple including its management and leadership operations. It has discussed the achievements of Steve Jobs and Tim Cook. This report has further proceeded towards analysing strengths and weakness of the leaders and has elaborated different theories linked to managers and leaders. The next part has discussed the Just in time and TQM approaches of quality management within Apple. It has explained the application of these two practices in context with the organisation and has explained the role of managers and leaders within the company. Potential impactful factors have been discussed and how the factors can affect the decision making of the managers and leaders that have been founded as well.

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