Steve Jobs The Ceo Commerce Essay

Apple Inc which previously known as Apple computer, Inc., was established on 1st April 1976 in Cupertino, California and incorporated on 3rd January 1977. The founders of the company are Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne. On 9th January 2007, the word “computer” in the company name was removed because Apple Inc was shifting their focus from personal computer making to consumer electronics. Apple Inc. is recognized as an international company, manufacturer and they sell their products (such as the electronic gadgets, computer software and commercial servers) all over the world through the retail sales, online stores, direct sales force, and etc. Apple Inc. is well-known for its hardware products which are the Mac series, iPhone, iPad and iPod.

The history of the Apple begin from July 1976, Jobs and Wozniak first received the local retailer order of 50 computers and they started to form a company to build the computer, Apple I computer, computer which is without keyboard, monitor, case and power supply. They also sold 200 Apple I to the computer hobbyists in the San Francisco Bay area for US$666.66 each. After they had the model, Wozniak began his work on the Apple II. Apple II was designed to create a greater market than the computer hobbyists’ floppy having computer. In 16th April 1977, Apple II was introduced at the first West Coast Computer Fair. After that, Apple products kept on upgrading and become the well-known technology company in this world.

Content

Autocratic

Steve Jobs, the CEO and co-founder of Apple is a typical highly autocratic leader. Autocratic leadership means that a leader always command and hold over the employees or team. The team or employees cannot bring up any idea even if they are the best. Authoritarian leaders are not concerned about the will and needs of their followers. They lead primarily through coercion. If there is a vision, the followers must share the leader’s vision. Autocratic leadership style can direct to speedy decision-making and greater productivity under leader’s supervision. Drawbacks of this leadership style are that it leads to greater employee absenteeism and turnover. This leadership style perform only when the leader is the best in performing or when the job is inexperienced or where the project is short-term and risky. Because of this kind of leadership, Jobs led Apple into globalization. He was also a “high-maintenance co-worker” who demanded excellence from his staff and was known for his blunt delivery of criticism.

The autocratic nature of his leadership also bears some transactional traits, such as using verbal lashings and foul language at employees. He was also disgraceful for creating an atmosphere of fear in the company, carrying out rounds of ‘accomplishment’ to remove less competent staff. Besides, he always suddenly change his mind when making decisions. According to America’s toughest bosses of Fortune magazine, it said Steve Job is “inhuman drive for perfection can burn out even the most motivated worker.” Fortune magazine dubbed Jobs as “one of Silicon Valley’s leading egomaniacs.” (Williams, 2012)

The labor conditions in Apple’s Foxconn which manufactured plants in China perhaps a reflection of Jobs leadership style are. According to a report by twenty Chinese universities, they described that “Foxconn factories as labour camps and detailed widespread worker abuse and illegal overtime.” (Williams, 2012) This caused fourteen workers commit suicide in 2010. At the same time, “150 workers in Wuhan threatened to commit mass suicide because of worsening work conditions.” (Williams, 2012) In response to the suicides, Foxconn installed suicide-prevention netting at some facilities, and it sweared to offer substantially higher salary at its Shenzhen production bases. Workers were also forced to sign a legally binding document guaranteeing that they and their family would not sue the company as a result of unexpected death, self-injury, or suicide. In addition, “the employees claimed they had asked for a raise but were told they could either quit with compensation or keep their jobs with no raise. The employees quit, but received no compensation.” (Williams, 2012)

But it was his complete genius combined with his ability to articulate his vision and bring staff, investors and customers along on the journey – plus the lessons learned in a major career setback – that made it work. The results: indisputable.

Transformational

Steve Jobs is also being described as a transformational leader. According to Stephen explanation, transformational leader is a leader who is able to stimulate and inspires (transforms) followers to achieve extraordinary outcomes (Stephen P.Robbins, David A. DeCenzo, Mary Coulter, 2012). As for example, other than transformed Apple Inc., Steve Jobs also changed Pixar into a success legend. He definitely had the ability to motivate, provoke, and inspire his followers to put in extra effort for the purpose of achieving goals. He was able to level up the employees’ hard work and performances so that it goes beyond expectation.

In 1983, Steve Jobs has lured John Sculley (former CEO of Pepsi) to serve as Apple’s CEO. He once said to John, “Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water, or you want a chance to change the world?” (Top 10 Apple Moments). By saying this, it showed that Jobs possessed the quality of being a transformational leader for inspirational motivate John.

Nevertheless, Apple is famous for its secrecy. Apple Inc. will not reveal the image of their new product until the day that the leader of the company launched the product during press conference. Jobs said: “It is generally not Apple’s policy to trumpet our plans for the future; we tend to talk about the things we have just accomplished” (A Greener Apple). The example above makes Steve Jobs to appear opposite the quality of being a transformational leader.

Control Freak

According to Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, Steve Jobs is a typical perfectionist and ‘a bit of a control freak’. He said, “Working incessantly until it was done, that was Steve. He wanted to control every aspect. Including how you pay for an item in a store. Or what it looked like in a box.” (Steve Jobs was a control freak, says Oracle boss). Although Steve Jobs has a very strong desired to control other people, but he still willing to accept other people’s ideas in a certain situation. For example, according to Ellison, “Steve was one of those people where the best idea won, but you had to persuade him and he was a smart guy.” (Svetlik) Besides, Ellison also says about Jobs that “When he decided someone had a better idea, he moved on immediately. He didn’t care. All he cared about was building the best product.” (Svetlik)

Steve Jobs is said to be a control freak because when he is getting sick, he still control the progress of the company. He cannot let his hair down to enjoy his life and even concentrate recuperate at home. This can also be said that Jobs is a person who is always worry about his work and cannot let others to handle without his permission. Furthermore, he even control apple’s customer so that they can only use their product. This can be proof that iphone and ipad have their own charger and system. So, the product of apple can said to be unique. For example, the casing of iphone cannot be opened like other smart phone and iphone use IOS system which only present in apple product. The ways of ipod to download the song must through itunes. With these examples, we can proof that Jobs is a person who possessed strong control desired.

The tendency for Apple to be success and become popular among the society and even has the nowadays status are all due to the twelve successful rules that apply by Steve Jobs. These twelve rules are Do what you love to do, Be different, Do your best, Make SWOT analysis, Be entrepreneurial, Start small, think big, Strive to become a market leader, Focus on the outcome, Ask for feedback, Innovate, Learn from failures and Learn continually. (Kotelnikov)

Charismatic

According to Stephen, “A charismatic leader is an enthusiastic, self-confident leader whose personality and actions influence people to behave in certain ways.” (Stephen P.Robbins, 2012) There are five characteristics of being a charismatic leader which they have a vision, the ability to articulate that vision, willingness to take risk to achieve that vision, sensitivity to both environmental constraints and follower needs, and behaviors that are out of the ordinary.

Steve Jobs is famed for his speeches giving ability to catch his audiences’ attention. The special ways of his presentations are by communicating his ideas using metaphor, analogies and storytelling. During the launching of new products, Steve Jobs is able to capture his audiences’ attention and convince customers to buy Apple’s products. “When presenting the new Apple product “iPad” he would sit down on a couch as some of us would have at home and create a scenario that helps the viewer and listener to imagine a Sunday-morning scene at home, using this new product while reading a paper.” (Kramer, 2010)

The next reason that Jobs consider as a charismatic leader is on his deep knowledge and understanding of the technology he is immersed in. However, “Jobs has been the founder of Apple together with Wozniak, and together they developed the very first hardware.” (Kramer, 2010) Jobs had developed his visions and provoke the enthusiasm of the employees to achieve the tasks.

What Is The relationship Between Leadership And POLC?

Planning

Setting objective and determine the course of action is the most important things when come to the process of planning. The planning process requires the manager to think about the current condition of the company environment and determine the company future condition. It is an integral part for the company management especially when the company introducing the new invent product. Every successful product introduce must pass through a harsh and difficult planning process so that the product introduce to the public can meet the demand and expectation of the customers. What we can see from the pass is that, every product introduced by Steve Jobs gets a good reputation from the public. He is very concern with the planning because as a leader in Apple, he would be the one who takes all the responsibilities if the product being introduced does not receive good comments from the public.

Organizing

Developing organization structure and allocating human resources to ensure the organization can accomplish the objective is crucial when it comes to organizing stage. While work specialization became a very important issue when we talk about organizing. Nowadays, people are all doing things in rush, they also want to get things to be done fast. That is the reason why, we need work specialization to get things done faster. Work specialization involves division of work activities into several tasks. Therefore, it allows an organization to use the skills that workers have thoroughly. Steve Jobs has used his inspiration to attract many people with fantastic creativity and he grouped them together so that they can come out some products which are high in quality and out of ordinary.

Leading

However, Apple Inc is a huge company which employ almost 25,000 employees. Hence, it is crucial to lead this huge amount of people so that every task can be done smoothly. According to Stephen P. Robbins, “Leading includes motivating employees, directing the activities of others, selecting the most effective communication channel, and resolving conflicts.” (Stephen P.Robbins, David A. DeCenzo, Mary Coulter, 2012) If an organization is lack of leading, the employees will definitely lose their direction and do not know what they can do to make the company grow. Other than guiding the employees, a leader should also be enthusiastic and has the ability to inspire the others. By this way, the company can hence achieve the organization goal easily. Leaders should have the ability to motivate their employees, directing the activities fairly, learning how to choose the most effective and efficient way to communicate with people and solving the conflict between members. Steve Jobs as the leader in Apple, he definitely has the ability to gather all the employees together with his autocratic and charismatic style of leadership. His innovation has attracted people who are gifted with creativity and make them willing to follow him although he is of a bit control freak.

Controlling

Last but not least, controlling is also very important function to make the management work in an effective way. Controlling includes monitoring performances, comparing it with goals, and correcting any significant deviations. (Stephen P.Robbins, David A. DeCenzo, Mary Coulter, 2012) Without controlling, the rules will be loosened and the workers will be lack of discipline and hence, the organization will eventually corrupts. The manager should set the standard first of all and follow by making measurement by evaluating the activities done. After that, the manager should has make comparison with the standard that has been set earlier and if the evaluation show that the result does not reach the standard set, actions have to be taken to correct the mistakes. Steve Jobs has been realised the importance of controlling and his autocratic style of leadership that we have discussed earlier cannot be denying but do really develop the Apple company. It is vital for Steve Jobs to control the other employees and make the company operate as usual and able to be innovative.

Success of the Apple Inc

What lead the apple company from an almost bankruptcy company to become the world largest technology company. There are few reasons why apple will success will be discussed in depth further.

Combination of hardware and software

Apple invents the software with 100% free of virus since it has its unique code which hard to be cracked. Apple also unwillingness to expose its source code in order to maintains ironclad control of its product universe.Therefore it has its unique invented software and also its innovative hardware. Apple controls both side of the coins and it put itself in as great position.

Consumer Pull Strategy

Apparently we saw the company are hiring promoters and keep pushing their product to the customers. But what we saw in Apple is people crazy of booking for product before the products put on sale in market such as the case happens when i-Phone introduced. This is because Apple is applying consumer pull strategy, they assume consumer doesn’t know what they want, and people are looking for the newest technology and well-equipped products are being pulled by this strategy. The consumers are looking for something new and exciting for example Apple succeed did that with the innovation of iPod, iPhone and iPad.

Keep things simple

Steve job success makes the product simple and easy to use. He not just makes the design to be simple yet the functions inside the product are also easy to use. Although we can’t ignore that some of the people are technology consumer and they prefer the products which are more complicated. Except that most of the consumer prefer simple and easy to use product because apple by minimizing the decision making process of the consumer

Easy to use

Under the leadership of the Steve job, the management of the company has been change. Most of the companies create a product based on the need of the consumer but Steve job change the philosophy which the product create based on themselves and it must some product which they can’t live without it. Design are importance for every product manufacture but it will be consider as useless if the consumer do know how to use.

Advance technology

Under the leadership of Steve job, he keep gathers all the genius around the field and their work together. The introduction of the Iphone has been a threat for the competitor especially their competitor. These cause a major change of player in the phone industry. The advance technology has been in Apple Company before they introduce the apple phone and this make the company two year ahead of all major competitors.

Challenges of Apple.Inc

Apple has received large amount of attention after the share price of the company soared higher due to the introduction of the Iphone 5 and apple has become the world most valuable electronic company. If an investor purchase the apple share at june 2003 at the price of 9.80 he or she has gaining more than 6000% profit in the year 2012. Following death of Steve Job has increase the concern of investor whether the new CEO Tim Cook has the ability to create an outstanding product for the apple company. There are few challenge the apple company facing right now ach of them will be discuss in depth in the following:

Regulatory risk- Following the trend now, most of the investor prefers the technology stock because they yield higher return than the usual company. With the market capitalization of about 560 billion, the apple company has caught the attention of the regulatory department and government. This is because the government will get the pressure from the investor to impose a strict and stringent regulation in order to protect the interest of the investor.

Cash reserve- Apple Company holds more than 60 billion us dollar in hand and it catches the attention of investor on how the company spent and invests it wisely. Most of the investor has suggested the dividend and share buy back when it comes to the annual general meeting

Slow production- according to the Bloomberg news, the customer need to wait about 3-18 month to get their product. This increase the unsatisfactory of the apple fan as most of them are desperately want the product so well. The slow production will decrease the satisfaction of the consumer and the competitor Samsung will introduce a new product which will shift some of the customer to their product.

Focus on the innovation and product introduction must be fast- Apple Company should focus on the innovative and quality of the product. This will follow back the trend of Steve job by placing much effort on the innovation which creates an outstanding product. The product introduce after Steve job died has remain inside the expectation of the customer which cannot give shock to the customer. If these trends continue then the apple will give away the place of world number one to their rival Samsung.

Focus on the employee issue- Foxconn Techonology, a partner of the apple has raise a serious concern of the public when the employee of the technology company come into riot and commit suicide. This indirectly damages the reputation of the apple and will result apple fan to hate their product when it come to a report. This issue must solve immediately in order to maintain a good reputation of the apple company.

Findings

According to Stephen, “an autocratic style is that of a leader who typically tends to centralize authority, dictate work methods, make unilateral decisions, and limit employee participation.” (Stephen P.Robbins, 2012) The autocratic leader is who control fully and retains all power to make all decisions. They assume that employee motivation comes not through empowerment subordinates. Therefore, autocratic leaders assume full responsibility and take full credit for the work.

From the contents, we know that the autocratic leadership style of Steve Jobs had led Apple into globalization. His autocratic leadership style can direct the company to speedy decision-making and greater productivity. “Steve Jobs, former CEO of Apple, was the best representative of this style of leadership. Once out of Apple after a power struggle with the top management, he struck back, and eventually went on to become the best example of how total control over your company and employees and a focus on innovation can keep the clock ticking.” (Chaudhury, 2012)

Based on Chaudhury, CEO of Enterprise Management Associates, says, “Steve Jobs is a special example of a leader who dominated his company employees and guided them rightly with his authoritarian leadership style and unmatchable vision. He believed that one man with one vision can make Apple an iconic brand and company. And we see that his belief has actually materialised.” (Chaudhury, 2012)

From our opinion, the autocratic leadership style is essential for short term decision making in performing certain tasks. While the participative leadership style will be more suitable for long term decision making and more effective to perform tasks with difference ideas.

Participative leader is a leader who should hear everyone’s opinion and integrate them into a group decision either in a democratic way, a consensus finding manner or consultative. (Kramer, Leadership Behaviors and Attitudes of Steve Jobs, 2010) This participative leadership style is said to be successful because the decision is made based on the opinion of all the employees and an all rounded decision is made. Due to the decision is accepted by everyone, so the problem of conflict may be reduced.

For the purpose of becoming a good and successful participative leader, listen to and accept opinion of others is very important. However, Steve Jobs, who is the CEO of Apple has a low participative leadership. This can be proof by the anecdotes rumour which says Steve Jobs is a rather rude participant in meetings and extremely impatient. (Kramer, Leadership Behaviors and Attitudes of Steve Jobs, 2010)This situation clearly explains that Steve Job is an autocratic person and does not like teamwork.

Based on the article, there are five benefits of participative leadership which are everyone participate, new ideas are thrown about, decisions become more result-oriented, leaders can assess the worth of their policies, a progressive approach. (Mike Krutza, Jodi Wiff, 2008) If a leader really has these five principles, it can be said that he is a good leader and is admired by his employee at all the time.

In our opinion, there is another choice, which is participative style that suitable for Steve Job. If he participate himself in the team and work together with them, the effectiveness of the team may be higher. This is because different people have different ideas, so the best idea will be selected and yet to produce to the next step.