Computer & Technology // The Employees Resistance to Change in Apple Inc.
The Employees Resistance to Change in Apple Inc.
Apple’s functional control system detailing on management control system involved means such as “budgets, variance reports, standard operating procedures, or performance-based remuneration or other techniques, seek to bring commonality of goals and process coordination within organization (Soobaroyen, 2005).” In this sense, management control system conclusively makes strategic assessment the quality of which influence organizational performance. The consensus they are making to create and implement strategic decisions comparatively link to an effective and sustainable high performance (Feldman, 2006). Further to sustaining the ability of producing and implementing strategic decisions, MCS facilitates the functional approach which deliberately increase optimal actions particularly in critical aspects. Apple’s morphine capacity is most influentially regarded due to its leadership and management hit-maker.
After the death of Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, there has been resistance to change with management and the other stockholders. It turns out to challenge the return of ‘man of perfection’ and create a boost turnover to Apple (Henry & Greenhalgh, 2006). Remember that Jobs turned Apple in spectacular fashion, making win-win strategies including: partnership with Microsoft, ended licensed deals with clone markets, and pushed the company into online distribution. With the consistent changes in environment, management is called to reflect and act on the developments of market demand. Change is an inevitable in all aspects of life. It exists in every ground hauling on deeper level and like shifting winds that comes routinely, ushering new challenges, new regulations, or new technology which redefines the core principles of business landscape and long standing practices of Apple administration.
There are three distinctive competencies of Apple are leadership, products and services, and marketing strategy. Steve Jobs’ leadership has taken a vital role to change management process, because as far as change’s definition is concerned, it requires the establishment of an innovative system and its execution. The conventional wisdom is used to be too old to cope with that. As technology and business milieu continuously progress and develops to deal with consumers’ satisfaction, Apple indeed, appears to have compensated homage to that particular outlook. Looking back to a decade after roughly folding, the consumer-electronics supplier is appeal over $100 billion and currently strokes shoulders with the USA’s most outstanding organizations (Thomke & Feinberg, 2012). Apple’s record as an innovator is credulously appeared. Take, for instance, its Macintosh computer which launched the arrangement of image edge and desktop mouse. This alternative to employing uncomfortable text commands guaranteed that computer convenience was no longer restricted to those more technically minded.
Successful organizations routinely take a series of consistent steps to match the people and work, to undertake the physical and economic activity so as to adequately match the operational performance to customer’ demand and satisfaction through skills and competencies of workforce. The fact that people is one of the major resources of an organization, management of large corporations never overlook the wider context of assessing people, to not just look beyond their skills and knowledge or their experience but rather see their potentials as essential assets that may drive firm to strategically stream the intensified force of competition. To compete while organization undergoes change, leadership in management is an important mechanism during change transformation process. Further, it may be achieved by adopting strategic planning and undertaking action and reflection strategies covering operational excellence that integrates the development of effective team, identifying optimistic attitude to motivate personality, communicate with heart, and track record of accountability.
Effect of change is measured through its outcome and that is operational quality or excellence in organization. World economic crisis has challenged contemporary emerging markets to integrate dynamic perspective and resource-based process to create a corporate strategy that links diversification and performance. Failure to innovate and change necessarily reflects the organizational failure itself to achieve the adopting changes and realize the potential benefits. Duggan defined operational excellence as “when each employee can see the flow of value to the customer and fix that flow when it breaks down” (2007, p. 27). As innovation requires not only the shifting of traditional view to modern view, as of the incorporation of technological advances, it also indicates and identifies the successful transformation of multi-determined and multi-level phenomenon in other resources such as work forces and finances.
Referring to the case scenario carried out in Apple Inc., the rationale behind the organizational training is analyzed to understand the interactive behaviors of supervisors in the competing claims within the organization. In order to understand the situation that is confronted by workforce, psychological theories come up with resolution in terms of balancing the conflicting forces acting upon individuals, groups and organization that emphasizes the cycle of experience that is occurring in human beings’ energy to complete their own cycle of understanding oneself.
Fritz and Laura asserted “how individuals behave in present moment is far more crucial to self-understanding than why they behave as they do (as cited in Corey 2000).” The awareness of an individual to learn his insights and introspection is the initial consideration to self-acceptance, understanding of the environment, concern for choices, and the capacity to make interaction with the self-motivated system of interrelationship. The cycle of experience promotes the direct and personal experience of an individual with his external environment.
In this context, cycle of experience considers that individuals are rational and self-centered, and reliable with individual preference as well. Gifford makes clear that methodological individualism “does not preclude higher level organization within which individuals interact and which influences that interaction; it just requires that higher level emergent properties of social systems (2004, p. 280).” In addition to this, it does not identify whether the instrument preferences will be self-seeking, altruistic, otherwise something else, and that individuals make choices. Perl’s contention relating to cycle of experience provides structure on how to understand and work with conflicts occurring at Lowe’s Enterprises’ workforce behaviors; that is, by using approaching individual conflict. In this sense, the individual instruments become demands for rational preference explanations of equilibrium performance and interactions to the groups and organization. Consequently, from the experience of sensation, awareness, energy mobilization, contact, resolution closure to withdrawal of attention (Megginson & Clutterbuck, 2009), the corresponding stages in the cycle is significantly use to diagnose and intervene the psychic energy to complete the cycle of understanding oneself.
Taking the instant case, it is noted that conflict occurs within the organization due to lack of individual’s understanding to his environment, satisfaction of needs, and sufficient actions to respond onto the psychological health and well-being (Megginson & Clutterbuck, 2009). Supervisors are rigidly eager to get the incentives from effective performance of their teams to prove that they better in management than the other supervisors. Cycle of experience approach the organizational problem by lowering the resolution of dilemma with respect to considering the individual conflict by means of: (1) creating keenness of the supervisors and their staffs to deal with the issue; (2) encourage the parties involved in participating to specific and concrete resolution of the situations; (3) encourage supervisors to make personal statements in able to stand conflict at several levels; and (4) be aware of the anxiety level that is arising between supervisors and negative consequences reaching among their staffs.
Kotter and Schlesingers (2008) recommended two fundamental strategic approach to manage resistance successfully: initially, analyze the situational factors of resistance and tailor the countermeasures accordingly, and lastly, adapt the optimal speed of strategy to alter resistance to fully acceptance and compliance. Strebel stressed that “top-level managers see change as an opportunity to strengthen business by aligning operations with strategy, to take on new professional challenges and risks, and to advance their careers (1996, p.86).” But not for several employees, including middle managers, since they considered such training as immaterial and unnecessary for change is neither sought nor welcomed. They are contained within the status quo and perceive the relationship of personal compact within the corporate as reactive. Thus far, training is considered as disruptive and intrusive, and upsets the time they need to provide for their tasks.
What must be done is not necessarily to put force in employees to support the induction program but promote and provide for the significance of the program in company’s workforce as well as individual’s competency in the workplace. Executive management, in this regard, must institute for the absolute support of the induction program for this not only better the company but as well as the employees’ understanding and effort exerted in everyday operational performance. In establishing such support, meaning to say, training management and staffs require to obtain sufficient observance from top management of the company. It should be noted, that plans, systems, resources and actions could not be completed when there is no approval which will be getting from the top management. This training program requires of communication strategies to arrange the plans and actions from the approval of the executive management, in which way deliberate to the substructure management of the company, which is the employees. Thus, when training management and staffs have executed such plans and programs accordingly, probable growth and development may followed because workforce is considered as major resource for business success in the midst of strong competition.
The strategic approach of training in way of the principles governing the full force of capabilities and skills or the entire competence of employees who would deal with transaction performance is necessarily empowered. Simply put, by the organizing the collaborative actions of staffs and executive management in pursuance to achieving of reconstruction plans to meet the demanding relationship of business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-customers (B2C), through strengthening the knowledge of employees by incorporation of training, it is assumed that outcomes be maximized. Also, it must be instilled to employees that what they see as irrelevant today may become important in the future development of the company. Hence, greater skills in addressing the business issues and the like manner is vitally not to overlook in developing both the values, ethics and strategy that company should be sustained.
Leader engages in coaching management approach. A leader who coaches gets to be respected by his subordinates. This is an efficient yet time-consuming approach since the manager or leader has to devote some of his time to his people instead of attending to other priorities of the company. Coach has no power over others in terms of obligating and mandating certain tasks, what he has is just the power of persuading and influencing others, but not to mandate others to do such actions (Kouzes & Posner, 2003). Considering the case of Apple’s employees, these are some of the next steps that may be taken to strengthen the employees ability to avoid the resistance to change, as a result of gathering and analyzing this information to highlight the competitiveness of leading the challenges.
-Set comprehensive goals and make plans. A competitive leader always asks himself, “Why am I here?” and seeking for the answer. The primary purpose of an organization is to accomplish what they have set for certain period of time. Leaders who succeed in getting high performance also display confidence in other people’s abilities to perform.
-Encourage promotion and partnership among employees. In establishing business-friendly environment, it is required to situate people who possess personality that is above others. Leader, for instance the administrators, must always attest integrity for the command of respect to others. He must not be persuaded to be impartial and make decisions beyond the wellness of the majority.
-Intensify coaching. The strategic approach of coaching in way of the principles governing the performance recognizes the full force, capabilities and skills of employees who could help in dealing with transaction performance. This is applied when businesses has found its point of inability to shift beyond the idiom of culture change which its practice remains a major block. Scrutinizing the development acquired in addressing the frequency of performance of in the workplace, coach – the person who is anticipated with greater skills in addressing the business issues and the like manner overlook to help the company in developing both the values, ethics and strategy that company should have been obtained.
References
Henry, M., & Greenhalgh, S. (2006). Customer experience and product leadership, Engineering Management, 15 (6): 44-47.Soobaroyen, T. (2005). Management Control Systems and Dysfunctional Behavior: An Empirical Investigation. AAA Management Accounting Section 2006 Meeting Paper.
Corey, G. (2008). Theory and Practice of Counseling and Psychotherapy. Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning.
Duggan, K. (2007). Measuring up Lean: The journey towards operational excellence. Management Services, 51 (1): 26-31.
Feldman, L.P. (2006). Product Leadership: Pathways to Profitable Innovation, Journal of Product Innovation Management, 23 (1): 99-100.
Gifford, A. Jr. (2004). Levels of Selection and Methodological Individualism. Evolutionary Psychology and Economic Theory Advances in Austrian Economics, 7: 279–295.
Henry, M., & Greenhalgh, S. (2006). Customer experience and product leadership, Engineering Management, 15 (6): 44-47.Soobaroyen, T. (2005). Management Control Systems and Dysfunctional Behavior: An Empirical Investigation. AAA Management Accounting Section 2006 Meeting Paper.
Kotter, J.P., & Schlesinger, L.A. (2008). Choosing strategies for change. Harvard Business Review 57(2): 106–11.
Kouzes, J.M. & Posner, B.Z. (2003). Leadership Practices Inventory, 3rd Ed. Participant’s Workbook: 10 Steps to Understanding and Using Your LPI Feedback. San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer.
Megginson, D., & Clutterbuck, D. (2009). Further Techniques for Coaching and Mentoring. Burlington, MA: Butterworth-Heinemann.
Thomke, S. & Feinberg, B. (2012). Design Thinking and Innovation at Apple. Harvard Business School, 1-14.
Strebel, P. (1996). Why do Employees Resist Change? Harvard Business Review, 86-92.
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