Business Communication - Apple Company, Amcor Ltd - Case Study Example

Business Communication Student’s Name: Course Number Instructor’s Name: Institution: Date: Table of Content Table of Content 2 Apple Inc. 3 Introduction 3 Background of Apple Inc 4 Amcor Ltd 5 Comparisons and Analysis 5 Leadership 5 Organizational culture 6 Obstacles Conquered 7 Approach to innovation 9 Geographical requirements 10 Recommendations 10 For Apple Inc.: 10 For Amcor Ltd: 11 Conclusion 11 References 12 Apple Inc. Introduction If there is one organization that has grown with the highest pace never witnessed in the last one century, it is Apple Inc. Thanks to the visionary leadership of the founder and former CEO Steve Jobs. In fact, the company moved from the verge of being declared bankrupt to being the most valuable company in the world, as of 2012 (Green, n.d.). In 2014, the company’s value was standing at US dollars 700 billion and becoming the first American company to attain such a value. The visionary leadership of Steve Jobs is the bottom-line of the kind of success Apple Inc. enjoys today. He revolutionized the information and technology industry through his brilliant innovations that surpassed the entire industry. By the time Steve Jobs was out of the helm of Apple, the industry had substantially changed in virtually all areas including hardware and software, communication, and even publishing. As of March 2016, the company was employing approximately a hundred and fifty thousand permanent and full-time employees and owning four hundred and seventy-eight retail stores spread in over seventeen countries across the globe. The company records annual revenue of 233 billion dollars in the period ending 2015 and accounting for roughly 1.25 percent of the total GDP of the US (Heracleous, 2013). Apple Inc. has continued to receive global brand recognition taking the first position in the last four years consecutively. There is no indication that the company will relinquish the position in the near future bearing in mind the robust innovative plans that the company has put in place. Besides, Steve Job’s successor, Cook, followed in the footsteps of Jobs ensuring that the innovative culture of the company was maintained. Background of Apple Inc Three men Steve Jobs Ronald Wayne, and Steve Wozniak founded Apple Inc. forty years ago, on April 1, 1976. It all began when the three founders decided to sell Apple I personal computer kit, which were solely designed and crafted by Wozniak and later displayed to the public at the Homebrew Computer Club. Apple I had basic features of a RAM, CPU, and some textual-video chips that can now be as just but a personal computer. The incorporation of Apple Inc. was done on Jan 3, 1977, though Wayne was no longer part of the owners having sold his shares to his co-founders Wozniak and Jobs for eight hundred dollars. In the first five years of operation, the company’s grew significantly at a rate of around double the initial amount after every four months. In 1985, a power struggle ensued in the company between Steve Jobs and the company’s CEO John Sculley. The power struggle would saw Steve Jobs resigning blaming Sculley for curtailing his ambitions to launch new products, which the board and the CEO deemed it expensive and untested. Jobs departure marked the beginning of a gradual decline of the Apple’s sales following what was termed as wrong decisions by the management of the company. The company’s product were deemed relatively expensive compared with that of its competitors. The company returned to profitability after Steve Jobs returned to the helm of the company. Since then, the company has recorded a massive improvement in revenues subsequently improving the company’s valuation. Amcor Ltd Amcor Ltd is an Australian company dealing with packaging products, and listed on the Australian Securities Exchange. Amcor Ltd is among the leading global packaging companies with annual revenues of around 12 billion dollars within its three hundred sites spread across forty-four countries. With over six thousand employees, the company manages to recycle over 900, 000 tons of waste papers and cardboards annually. Amcor, as was initially known, derived interest in the tradition al papermaking activities in the early 70s and 80s. Using partnerships and strategic acquisitions, Amcor managed to get a stake in the industry. On May 1, 1986, Australian Papers Manufacturers changed to Amcor ltd and straight away set a mark in the industry. Amcor is committed to sustainability management and ensures responsible packaging and complies with important environmental guidelines. Comparisons and Analysis Leadership The kind of leadership style that an organization chose to adopt is unquestionably a determinant for of the overall performance of the organization and its success in the industry. Apple Inc. since its inception has adopted a unique kind of leadership style that perhaps tells why the company has strongly succeeded in the market. Its founder, Steve Jobs, although at some point parted ways with the company, returned to the helm leading with a lot of charisma. His participative and team-first kinds of leadership saw him form a strong bond with most of his employees. Jobs was very much aware that employees are the core players of the company. Hence, he made everything in his power to ensure that they perform at their level best. Although some critics have termed Jobs’ leadership style as autocratic and authoritative, only making decisions without making consultations, others have seen this as a success to the company, as decisions were made much more quickly. His predecessor Tim Cook followed his example. In fact, he is considered to be more visionary in his leadership than Jobs since the company has made more progress compared to when Jobs was still at the helm On the other hand, Amcor Ltd has continuously employed participative kind of leadership. The current CEO Ron Delia has instituted a participative kind of leadership assuming the role of his predecessors. The company is very much alive to the crucial role that employees play in the company. Hence, the management does everything to ensure that whatever decisions they make stems from a wide consultation. Although the management makes the final decision, the input of the team members and peers are highly valued. Likewise, Amcor Ltd has backed its participative leadership with transformational leadership style, which has seen the company expand unprecedentedly in the last three decades. By motivating its employees occasionally, the company has managed to enhance their productivity and efficiency through a strong visibility and communication of goals and objectives. Organizational culture Organizational culture is crucial in determining what the organization identifies with, both in the short term and long term (Feldman, 1988). The culture adopted should seem to support new policies, changes, and new strategies for an organization. In Apple, every employee that gets into the doors of the company is quickly integrated into an organizational culture that favors swift innovation. Being innovative is the bottom-line culture of Apple has seen in products such as iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. Apple’s organizational culture seems to be ideally in tandem with the company’s leadership style (Drori, 1995). Some of the key features in Apple’s organizational culture are top-notch excellence, innovation, secrecy, creativity, and moderate combativeness. The company’s organizational encourages extreme innovation, and creativity among its employees. In fact, the company is regarded as the most innovative companies across the globe. All employees are trained to be innovative, creative, secretive, and to perform at their highest levels. Amcor, on the other hand, has a team-first kind of organizational culture where teamwork is the bottom line of the organization’s core operations. Every employee hired by the company is incorporated into the company’s strong organizational culture. Although individual creativity is encouraged, it does not overrule the need to work as a team. Within the teams are groups of vibrant employees who are behind the innovation and production of the company’s new brands. Being in the service industry, employees are vital to the success of the company. Although Amcor Ltd values innovation very much, the company encourages individual teams to work continuously together to ensure that such innovative idea see the light of the day. Obstacles Conquered Not even a single company can boost of having a smooth ride to success. Challenges are bound to arise, but it all depends with the how the company manages them. Apple has had a share of obstacles since its inception approximately four decades ago. Fortunately, the leadership of the company has been quite visionary and has managed to suppress them. One of the major challenges that the company faced was the death of the founder and CEO Steve Jobs. Having been the person identified with the company his death left a huge leadership gap. However, the company’s board of directors was equally visionary pinpointing a person who would be entrusted the management of the company. True to their prediction, Cook has performed unprecedentedly well even surpassing Jobs. Another obstacle that the company has had to strive with was the need to match the global environment initiative to end the use of environmental destructive source of energy. The company responded quickly following the Greenpeace protest by eliminating the use of coal and turning to renewable sources of energy. Likewise, Apple Inc. was taken to task for their continuous use of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and brominated flame-retardants (BFRs) in its productions lines. The company equally responded by doing away with these elements completely in its production lines. Amcor Ltd has had its share of obstacles as well. Most notably are the controversies that have rocked the company for being involved with environmental pollution. In fact, the Heidelberg Magistrates’ Court convicted and the company fined $80,000 in 2008 for finding it guilty of discharging oil to the Yarra River from its Alphington plant. This seriously tainted the image of the company considering that a majority of people nowadays are sensitive to environmental pollution matters. However, the company has tremendously well in rebuilding its image by initiating and supporting environmental conservation projects. For instance, the company recently launched a five-year plan that incorporates a ten-percent decline in GHG discharges; fifty percent drop in landfill waste, as well as equipping their productions sites with water management plans. Approach to innovation In both companies, innovation is at the heart of their organizational culture. Both acknowledge that to survive in the most dynamic business environment of today, continuous innovation in their highest levels is inevitable. Apple uses a systemic kind of innovative strategies that stems from its founder Steve Jobs. At the top is having innovative business models that makes a company come up with a product that captures the needs and aspirations of the user. Innovation uses design process in its innovation in order to ensure that whatever they produce works the way a user desires (Johnson et al., 2012). Venture acquisitions and innovative partnerships are some of Apple’s other approach to innovation (Johnson et al., 2012). In acquisition, the company is keen to monitor the market and quickly grab an s pro-innovation company. In case they cannot acquire they enter into partnerships with companies or innovative persons. Amcor through its various segments offers quite innovative packaging solutions. They have equally incorporated a culture of innovation among its employees by building an innovative environment. The company profoundly invests on research and development to monitor the market environment and come up with innovative packaging solutions that meets the customers demand. Just like Apple, Amcor Ltd has strongly invested in venture acquisition as an innovative strategy. Brambles is an example of an innovative company that Amcor Ltd is considering acquiring. Geographical requirements The two companies have shown a commitment to sustainability issues and ensure responsibility in all their operations. Amcor ensures responsible packaging towards realizing stakeholders expectations of minimal impact to the environment while at the same time contribute positively to the society. All the interests of different stakeholders are considered in a framework that also recognizes the social corporate responsibility. The environment is one of the key five domains in an attempt to geographical requirements including emission of greenhouse gases. Apple Inc is also a leader in meeting geographical requirements in its operation and achieving sustainability in environmental issues as an important contemporary element for all companies in ensuring emission of green house gases and other environmental hazards are considerably reduced. Recommendations For Apple Inc.: Apple Inc. is a reputable commanding a sizeable share of the market. Therefore, the company should use this strength to make the most of the available opportunities and expand its distribution network. In addition, Apple should consider undertaking speedy innovation processes in launching new product lines (Kotelnikov, n.d.). However, with the presence of considerable threats of competitors, Apple should initiate appropriate course such as forming a stronger patent portfolio, combined with constant innovation to make Apple’s products much more competitive. For Amcor Ltd: Amcor is not doing badly off in the market. However, the company has had in the recent past to grapple with matters environmental pollution that seriously tainted its image. Although the company has done much to rectify this mess, they can still do more. Secondly, Amcor Ltd can go ahead and acquire Brambles since it will open new market opportunities for the company. Conclusion Based on the comparison of the two companies, Apple is way above Amcor, although they operate in different industries. The management of Apple Inc. is quite visionary, right from the time of Jobs to the current era of Cook. The innovative culture instilled among the employees of Apple is unmatched by any of the company. On the other hand, Amcor Ltd, although innovative, has not reached the level of Apple. Amcor Ltd has not fully incorporated the innovative culture into its organizational culture. Going forward, Amcor should take advantage of its brand to undertake more expansion plans, as well as fully embrace the innovative culture. 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