Organizational Structure of Apple essay

ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTUE OF APPLE 4

OrganizationalStructure of Apple

OrganizationalStructure of Apple

Thefigure below is an organizational structure of Apple, one of thelargest publicly traded companies based in the United States. At thetop, the company has two hierarchical levels.

Source:http://research-methodology.net/apple-leadership-and-apple-organizational-structure/

Thesecond highest positions in the organization are occupied by 10executives who reports to the Chief executive officer (CEO)(Dudovskiy,2016). The 10 departments of the firm are functional based with somesuch as software engineering, hardware technologies, hardwareengineering, and internet software focusing on the product whileothers such as online retail stores and marketing focus on thecustomers.

Inregard to span of control, at the top, Apple could be classified asmajorly a horizontal type of organization. The role of the variousfunctional department heads appears to have substantial weight on theentire firm and they all report to the chief executive officer, whichindicates that they are all in one level of power bracket.

Theoperations of the entity are largely decentralized. Dudovskiy (2016),states that to encourage innovation and creativity, the current CEO,Tim Cook, decentralized power to make decisions at different levels.The author also notes that groupings based on product forms anessential part of Apple’s organizational structure. Most of thefirm’s products such as iWatch, Apple TV, iPad, and iPhone weredeveloped from collaboration of groups, which indicates thatemployees at all levels are involved in decision making.

Appledoes not have strict procedures towards its employees according toDudovskiy (2016), who states that during the previous CEO’s era -Steve Jobs – the authority was mainly centralized but changes hasbeen made afterwards. The company does not recognize individual workas most of the products are a result of group collaborations.

References

Dudovskiy,J. (2016). Appleleadership and apple organizational structure – Researchmethodology.Retrieved 4 June 2016, fromhttp://research-methodology.net/apple-leadership-and-apple-organizational-structure/