Apple's Values and Strategies to Motivate Employees - Thesis Example

Detail orientation, creativity, and aspiration for simple yet inspiring inventions are the key personality traits that every Apple team member possesses.

Values at Apple Inc.

Apple has a set of values that it has fostered in its culture and employees' personalities through aggressive training. Some of these values include empathy for users, aggressiveness, achievement, positive social contribution, innovation/vision, individual performance, team spirit, quality/excellence, individual reward, and good management. These values appear to be ideological and achievement-driven, and Apple's training manual further reinforces these values. The training manual includes programs like Component Isolation, The Power Of Empathy, Using Diagnostic Services, etc. All these training methodologies promote Apple's values and persuade the employees to act compassionately, be customer-oriented, and stay fearless about feedback (Duerson, 2012; Biddle, 2012). Apple's long-standing slogan of Think Different pushes its practices, offering employees to be different, emphasizing on inventive and innovative ways.

Intrinsic Vs. Extrinsic Motivation

When it comes to motivation, Apple has successfully managed to attract and retain potential talent with the help of its intrinsic motivational techniques. Apple provides remuneration that is slightly higher than the average market remuneration package. It's mainly a competitive environment and opportunity to progress that motivates employees to perform well in their respective jobs. Apple mainly recruits employees with a flair for innovation and challenge. These personality traits comply well with the organizational culture of Apple.

Goals, Culture & Motivation

Apple has a culture that fosters competitiveness, innovation, creativity, and ownership. This culture is a result of Apple's ideology introduced by its leadership. It has managed to devise a working environment that allows employees to operate more independently. Other than on-site jobs through which employees are assigned goals aligned with their job description with complete ownership, off-site jobs facilitate ownership and independence along with complete responsibility for the jobs assigned. Other than this flexible yet goal-driven working environment, non-monetary benefits like flexible spending accounts, accommodation for the disabled, team member commuter programs, and team member stock purchase programs also play a role in employees' motivation (Apple, 2012).

Attribution Theory, Perception & Judgment

Attribution theory is concerned with how individuals interpret events and how this relates to their thinking and behavior. Attribution theory assumes that people try to determine why people do what they do (Aronson, 2003). In the light of this theory, one can analyze that Apple has a competitive, innovation-driven, and creative environment and employees view their success when it is aligned with overall organizational culture and objectives. The expectations of leadership and their criteria for judging employees' performance modify employees' perceptions about themselves and their performance. Hence, it is Apple's overall culture that drives their leadership's judgment and employees' perception of themselves, their co-workers, and their performance.

Decision-Making & Creativity

As stated earlier, Apple has managed to make its employees liable for their performance while providing them complete autonomy on the job. Through this work model, employees are encouraged to make their own decisions and be their leaders. On the other hand, creativity is the cornerstone of Apple's philosophy. Other than a vast product line bearing impeccable designs,  Apple's culture, workplace, practices, and policies reflect the importance of depicting creativity while working with and at Apple. A simple example is Apple's career portal which states Creativity from every corner on the main webpage (Apple, 2012).