Impact of Culture on International Business - Essay Example

In 2005, on the part of the human resource, climbing at the corporate ladder was hard at Apple Incorporated due to external business and economic conditions (Gitman & McDaniel, 2008, p.284). At some point, it created an elemental impact among employees who were not so pleased about the kind of compensation they received from a renowned international business like Apple Incorporated. This is a potential threat to Apple’s stability as it relies heavily on its human resource while it continuously adapts a different culture that deviates from other corporations in the US at present time.

In fact, Apple is known for its ability to change the traditional organizational hierarchy that ended up being emulated, especially on not adapting to official business dress code (O’Grady, 2008, p.34). This is a strong indication of a culture with high value for freedom of creativity, expression, and innovation. For many years now, Apple is highly differentiated from other international businesses, especially in the same industry, by having a strong horizontal hierarchy, where hardware engineers, for instance, worked together with interface designers, marketing, and documentation personnel in creating a new innovative and complete product offering (O’Grady, 2008, p.29). Due to its horizontal hierarchy, the social network at Apple is, therefore, predictable, less complex, but at some point, with strong cultural impact.

For instance, the high value for freedom of expression allows employees to disseminate substantial information to others. This would be a remarkable source of cultural conflict. In addition, any form of dissatisfaction on the part of the human resource would probably create a fast-pace domino effect due to culture that is strongly adhering to horizontal hierarchy that has a great depth of flexibility, and value for freedom of expression. This, at some point, raises significant concern on increasing individuality even if there is ongoing consensus effort for working as a team.

To compensate this risk, it is, therefore, important on the part of the CEOs to maintain their high level of leadership. In this view, there is a strong level of impact on coping with change that would complement with the prevailing complexity that has strong association with managing organizational culture. The recent culture at Apple Incorporated would be a significant challenge to the next-in-line leaders. If leaders would not be properly acquainted with this kind of culture, just as how Jobs created and made use of it to the fullest, cultural conflicts would certainly arise.

This happened way back when Apple was still on its way to creating a significant change. Due to different cultural orientation, Raskin and Jobs ended up having personality conflict in 1981 (O’Grady, 2008, p.29). Due to absence of vertical hierarchy, Raskin and Jobs parted their ways as each one of them have substantial justifications of their own actions. The recent cultural orientation at Apple today is not far from how Jobs and Raskin started it. It is clear that the presence of culture with strong adherence to horizontal hierarchy is potentially risky if there is no effective leader that would take a whole control of it.

Thus, after Jobs, the next leader at Apple could only ward off cultural conflicts if strong and remarkable leadership would be initiated. ReferencesGitman, L. J., & McDaniel, C. (2008). The Future of Business: The Essentials (4th ed.). Mason, OH: Cengage Learning. O’Grady, J. D. (2008). Apple Inc.: Corporations that Changed the World. Westport, CT: ABC-CLIO.