Mission and Objectives of the Company Including Its Corporate Social Responsibility - Assignment Example

Task 1 The organization chosen for the case study is Apple Inc. An international company founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak for designing the hardware for the computing machines. Apple’s mission statement starts unconventionally and it consists of list of accomplishments completed up till now. Apple claims to be the best personal computer solution provider both in terms of hardware and software. As the mission statement depicts, Apple mission statement argues the utility of its hardware designs. Mission statement is quite straight forward and full of clarity. It says that Apple design MAC and useful machines for personal and enterprise usage. Apple’s mission statement is very much understandable by the layman because of the fact that no high ended claims are write along with complex business language. The mission statement is always useful for the development of strategic management throughout the lifecycle of the company. The company goals are clearly showing the simplest yet worthy intentions in the future. Apple’s mission statement and objectives clearly outline that it is intended to provide the best personal computers for students, educators and consumers at a larger level both in the domains of hardware and software. The precise factors are of importunate importance in the Apple’s objective and mission statement because of the fact that consumers are always on the lookout for the easiest and informational approach in any document. The mission statement of Apple reveals the plans to serve the social masses of the society (Foster, 1993). The list of accomplishments written by the Apple’s management in the mission statement like the production of software products like OS X, iLife, etc and the products in the hardware domains like MAC, i-pod etc transforms the mission statement in a very useful helping document for both an investor and a student for the best buying decision and evaluation of the company. The clear cut explanation with names of the past accomplishments not only elevate the sense of trust in the company, it also compels a potential buyers to get attracted of the company and make a buying decision that will certainly help in terms of monetary gains. The mission statement also shows the sense of responsibility towards the society because Apple has always been producing the quality products for its consumers in multiple domains as this is the fact highlighted in the mission statement. Hardware, software, music , mobile and many other computing domains are effected in a positive sense by the Apple products because of the fact that the founder of Apple always stressed the production of best products in the market and have a competitive edge. The strategic management approach of Apple has always been at the best standards which are the main reason why Apple is leading in the modern personal computer industry. Its quality products in every computing domain have facilitated the peoplearound the world irrespective of color and race. The main and primary peculiar factor of the Apple’s mission statement is the pledge to produce the best solutions for the people. Setting the goals higher makes the performance better and this is the point which is the stepping stone in the mission statement (Dowling, 2000). Apple’s corporate social responsibility can be understood at multiple levels for example the Apple mission statement outlines that Apple is focused on providing the best solutions in the domain of technology for the consumers to increase their productivity level in the practical life which is the serving of the society in one form but on the other hand, Apple’s mission statement says that Apple is focused to provide healthy environment for the employees where they work. Apple is focused to deplete the excessive working hours which is another form of corporate social responsibility. Apple is also focused to provide the best education for its employees on the spot and as the official website of Apple claims, employees are given continuous education even during the job. Apple is also involved in application of the “Philanthropic” model of the CSR and involved in providing many funds for the non-governmentalorganizations for the benefits of children who are abandoned from their homes, the flood and disaster effected people and most important ofall, Apple is involved in providing the education for the students who cannot afford the expenditures . Apple believes in “Creating shared Value” CSV model of the CSR which argue that social responsibility, welfare and social work and company works in a corporate domain are two different things. The company must focus whole heartedly on the company works and quality of the products in order togenerate wealth taxes, monetary funds, incomes, profits that can be used in the works for the society. That is the reason why Apple has always been best and leading entity towards the growth and welfare of the society. Another model known as Resource based view (RBV) which argues that resources are valuable, intimal and rare and they must be used in accordance with a specific ratio for the CSR. Apple used to focus on developing the best technology products and inculcate all the charity programs into one program but Tim Cook has changed this strategy and announced that Apple is going to launch a new charity program for the welfare of the society in which the employees will give donations. The quota for this donation is set to be employee donations of up to $10,000 a year. The donations will be givenfor the disaster hit people around the world. Similarly Apple is focused on development of producing cheap technology products that can be given to the third world countries like Africa and Asia so that people can get used to the new technology and equip their lives with state of the art gadgets than can recue their augmented workloads in the daily routines. Social accounting is another useful model in the CSR domain which Apple is trying to implement because of the fact that every organization in the contemporary world which belongs to the mainstream business holds a responsibility to the society which must be fulfilled (Chun, 2011). Task 2 Company's approach to strategic management Apple’s management structure has always been unconventional and extremely flexible. There are no layers of complexhierarchalframeworks and the employees are free to elevate the interaction at different levels. The Apple’s top management tries to deplete every kind of barrier between the managementand the lower level employees and this is the reason why Apple has been successful in producing the machines which are capable of giving the best performance under different conditions. If an employee of Apple finds error or discrepancies in the product then he or she is free to go and fix the error without passing through complex approvals of the organizationshierarchy. The strategic management technique of Apple has always focused to nurture a relation of respect between the project managers and the employees. Apple has a goal to maintain the startup culture at the workplace even it has grown into a fully-fledged leading company of the world because of the fact that injecting the startup culture will give an open space for the employees to think beyond the boxes. The most important factor is the strategic management of Apple is the factor of less formality more work which meansthat there are no conventional departments which have no use at all for example in Apple most of the projects are led by the technology learned people who do not possess degrees in the management rather they are well equipped in the technology knowledge but they have a deep insight of what the customer needs. The strategic management of Apple is strong because Apple always seeks to come up to the claims done in the mission statement. The mission and vision statement are perfectly in accordance with each other. The Apple’s strategic management approach and structure can be best understood by the SWOT analysis. (Apple, 1997) Apple SWOT Analysis One of the primary strengths of Apple is the expanding closed ecosystem which was the primary goal of the organization because in the mission statement, it is touted that the organization will strive to produce the best products in multiple related domains like software, hardware, music and personal usage. The Apple has produced the best products so far in the hardware and software domains which support each other and they are useful in multiple platforms. This gave rise to the most importunate actor in the strategic management area which is known as the customer loyalty. The customer loyalty of Apple is unmatched because of the privileged usage Apple gives to its customers all over the world. The Apple products are beautiful in the outlook as well as capacious in the software domain which elevates the performance profile of the device. This customer loyalty and brand reputation has givenrise to strength of Apple which embarks its strategic management health which is the strong economic position in the market. Apple is the highest gross profit producer till date among its main competitors. Being the leader in the mobile phone, smart phone industry, Apple has been producing the best and capable products as has no debts from any organization. The economic monetary profits of Apple are $10,000,000,000 cash, gross profit margin 43.9% and no debt which is the best and the foremost figures uptill now. Apple has streamlined its all focus in producing the image in the corporate world (Schipper, 2007). Now we will take a look at the weaknesses in the strategic management off Apple Inc with the context of SWOT analysis. One of the primary weaknesses of Apple is the high price because of the fact that many competitors are exploiting this point of Apple to gain a fair market rate in the third world where people cannot afford the expensive Apple products. The Apple products are very much elevated in terms of cost and the Apple strategic management has always focused on pricing strategy which is distinctive andstatus oriented. Apple products are worthy of a high price but Apple has suffered many monetary losses in the third world and many other countries because people cannot afford the high prices in this era of economic crunch. The strategic management techniques are not bechanged by Apple at the management level which is likely to effect the overall monetary gains of the company. Another weakness which has caused detrimental consequences for the company is the lack of support for thethird party integrations for other platforms because OS X is not supportive of other hardware devices. Android OS has posed many threats for the i-OS because of the fact that Android is open source and supportive for many extensions without any long and complex processes whereas there is a complex and effortful standardization procedures in the Apple which is quite difficult for the normal developers to cope up with. Apple has another weakness which has been discussed a lot in the strategic management contexts and that is the Patent infringements. Apple has officially lost many trials and it seems that company is not focusing on the main targets in the shareholder industry. Apple has always focused on migrating the standards to its own devices like the latest i-PAD but the solution to the lack of good strategic management practices has not been presented uphill now (Tar, 2014). Opportunities is the area where Apple has no match, Because of the closed expanding ecosystems, the company has a great open ground to play. From the electronics area to smart phone, company is seeking to use the innovative standards in almost every domain. The company is looking forward to launch iTV and the strategic management force of the company is flexible enough to give the technical people a fare ground to develop their skills. The company has a large market share in the upcoming next generation gaming as Apple seeks to launch ha new gaming console. Threats are also huge and the strategy management techniques discussed in the above parts of the paper are necessary to be implemented with full planning and homework in order to deal with the risk factors (Stevenson & Hojati, 2007). Task 3 Recommendations Strategic management must be confined undersome rules and well defined approaches. Appleshould strive to deplete the weaknessesespecially the pricing strategy. The pricing strategy must be of penetrative nature in the third world countries and the brandloyalty should be achieved in the areas which are not using the Apple products. The operating systems of Apple must be made compatible with the third party software integrations because of the fact that in this era of open source, more and more companies are looking forward to sign thepactswith those platforms and services which hare allowing cross platform support. Apple must manage to deal with the issues of patent legitimacy in order to make up for the damage that has been done. The Apple strategic management strategies must be calibrated clearly with the organizational goals. The management strategy must be to place a management person havinga degree in the management domain because no matter how unconventional and out of the box solution Apple has today, a technical person cannot satisfy the managerial needs of a project. There is also a need to integrate the submissive behavior of the employees within the organization to elevate the existence of the nurturing behavior. There must be a support section for the employeeswho are facing some kinds of problems because the employees are the running soul of the organizations which must be kept intact and in aform of team. Apple is applying a value based pricing model but it must be changed to penetrative approach only for the third world countriesand for this purpose, the mode of operation can also be changed to franchising where the products may be decreased in case of outlook and quality. There is also a need to inject some traditional backgrounds in the company because of the fact that in order to survive in the modernworld’scorporate world, the strategic management unit of the company must be updated with the current trends (Blodget, 2013). There is a need to start the succession plans and elevate and improve the customer relationships, there is a great need to open the franchises in different parts of the world in order to enhance the sales force of Apple which his very much confined to the converged placed up till now. There is also a need to inculcate the fact that the unconventional and nontraditional ways are necessary to be adapted in placed where they are suitable for example in the first world and European countries, such a workplace will work fine but in the other countrieswhere the work force is not used to such working criteria there nontraditional approach will not work. There must be customerprofiling and customer discounts in in order to increase the customer relationship with the people. There must be an adaption to the increased workplace and Apple should open more stores because Apple needs more customer relationship in different parts of world. Apple should also pay extensive heed on creating new joint ventures. References Blodget, H. (2013). Apple's 'Mission Statement'. Retrieved from http://www.businessinsider.com/apples-new-mission-statement-2013-8 Chun, R. (2011). CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY AT APPLE. Retrieved from http://www.imd.org/research/challenges/corporate-social-responsability-apple-opportunity-rosa-chun.cfm Dowling, G. (2000). Creating Corporate Reputations: Identity, Image and Performance: Identity, Image and Performance. Oxford University Press Foster, T. R. (1993). 101 great mission statements: how the world's leading companies run their businesses. Kogan Page Ltd Schipper, I. (2007). Apple: CSR company overview. Retrieved from http://somo.nl/publications-en/Publication_1963 Stevenson, W. J., & Hojati, M. (2007). Operations management (Vol. 8). Boston: McGraw-Hill/Irwin Tar, A. (2013). Apple SWOT Analysis. Read More