Apple Inc - Strategic Human Resources Management - Case Study Example

Apple Inc. Strategic HRM Introduction Strategic HRM Background Various critical methodological and conceptual issues still remains pertaining to the nature and size of the human resources systems practices, irrespective of the growing and persistent empirical evidence that they are related to the performance outcomes of the organisation. The most fundamental issue of strategic HRM systems in modern organisations still entails the understanding of how it affects the organisation outcomes. In that regard, this critically analyses the progress along the lines that demands for the basic re-thinking and development of the HRM system construct validity. Similarly, strategic planning entails managerial decisions regarding organisational long-term goals since 1960s (O'Grady Jason 146). Hence, strategic plan is a resultant product of strategic planning process which in return is the organisation’s log-term objective. Organisational strategic plans deals with the long-term values, growth and survival of organisations, a factor that makes strategic planning strong external orientation. Strategic planning accentuates on the top-to-bottom approach to goal setting. In a nutshell, the organisational units together with the lower level managers are merely the recipients of the delegated tasks and have no influence regarding the setting of objectives and goals, whilst the specialised strategic planning units and the senior manager’s posses the legal power of developing organisational objectives in entirely. Senior executives therefore have the responsibility of developing and executing the organisation’s strategic plan that needs to accommodate both the effectiveness in regard to high ratio of inputs and outputs, and efficiencies in terms of appropriate output (O'Grady Jason 153). The adjective word “strategic” is a common word frequently used in the practise and theory application of the business management. Unfortunately it appears not to have a definite meaning. Strategic HRM can be referred to as the sustainability of an organisation. Some scholars refer to strategic HRM as the long-term plan of a particular organisation and how it aims on balancing its internal weaknesses and strengths with its external threats and opportunities to maintain a competitive advantage. This study will endeavour to make contributions on how strategic HRM has been used to build high performance work systems at Apple Inc. by addressing the concerns on the levels and definitions analysis involved in measuring and conceptualising the strategic HRM construct. The five components of the HR systems structure comprise of: HR principles, programs, climate, policies, and practises. Most researchers have suggested that the entire system of strategic HRM practises offers the strongest theoretical basis of comprehending the organisational HRM performance link. And it is for this reason that these researchers have concentrated on the HR system level. Apple Incorporation Background Apple Inc. is one of the most influential organisations in technology in the modern world. The company was started by two individuals named Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs in 1976 (Lüsted Marcia 23). The duo started by creating a prototype computer just for fun. They later named their computers’ as ‘Mackintosh’ when they realised its potential. The Macintosh computers become a success and what followed was a myriad of product innovations (Lüsted, Marcia 27). They eventually started making electronic gadgets such as iMac, iPod, and iPhones. The company would then turn into a giant company dealing in both music and computer electronic in the United States. The company commenced by revolutionising the previously complicated machines into easy to use personal computers by pioneering technologies such as the mouse and the Graphical User Interface (GUI) and making them more conventional (O'Grady Jason 157) The second coming of Steve Jobs in 1997 saw the new generation of Apple with the iPod media player which was followed by iPhone. These two devices revolutionised the company that it decide to drop the “Computer” from its name and later changed it to Apple Incorporation, hence, giving the Company a corporate name. Strategic HRM at Apple Inc. As much as the success of any given organisation depends on its location and its implausible manufacturing capabilities, it can achieve much success without a strong HRM strategy. A good HRM strategy has always been a determining factor of steering company into high heights above its competitors in the modern competitive business world. An example of such company is the Aplle Inc. This is because the company has heavily invested in talented employees besides applying talent management processes in the running of its business, and hence making it ahead of its rivals such as Dell Inc. and Microsoft. The major success of Apple Inc. is pegged on its way of recruiting (Becker Brain and Huselid Mark 890; Jose, Kemmy 35). Apple Inc. is known to be notorious by recruiting high-quality employees they source from other rival organisations. This exercise is referred to as pirate raiding by some people. Moreover, Apple Inc. also demands committed and hardworking traits from their members of staff who are capable of getting the precise details perfectly (Becker Brain and Huselid Mark 895). Apple Inc. also emphasises hard work for its entire employees instead of promising life and life balance. The company’s concept prefers its employees to own their careers instead of promising them with career development. Hence, that in essence means that Apple as an organisation partially supports the career paths of its employees (Jose, Kemmy 68). Therefore, it is the duty of Apple employees to personally look for information regarding their jobs in the diverse units. Another aspect is that, irrespective of the employee training available at Apple Inc., the corporation neither creates nor offers learning plans for its employees. When it comes to nurturing talent management, the company prefers its employees to do it by themselves instead of offering them with training and development programs (O'Grady Jason 147). The corporation encourages its employees to develop their skill on their own and be self-reliant (Ikujiro Nonaka and Kenney Martin 73). Agility is one of the most fundamental aspects of Apple inc. success. This argument can be derived from the fact that the corporation shifted its agility from being a computer manufacturing company to a music industry, then afterwards to dominate the Smartphone industry. This is due to the talent and dexterity contributions of its employees. The Incorporation’s strategy has also always been supporting its employees to prepare themselves from the next new innovation, instead of reinforcing them to focus on a single aspect and improving themselves on that same subject (Phillips, Jean and Gully Stanley 96). Most organisations are known to traditionally develop programs as part of the retention strategy. This is not the case with Apple inc. instead; the company practises a culture known as the prospect of wealth creation that will trickle down to a favourable retirement of the employees if they happen to achieve their own individual accomplishments. This economic reward is a significant retention factor for Apple Inc. (Jose, Kemmy 74). Their employees are periodically presented with stock grants in case they enormously contribute to the company (Boxall Peter and Purcell John122). Besides Apple’s culture of nurturing talented and innovative staff, the Company has also heavily invested on strong working teams. Most of the company’s projects are effectively done by assigning them to teams who compete in coming up with new innovations (O'Grady Jason 150). Out of the participating teams, the best innovation is always chosen. The company’s design teams are always subjected to two meeting every other week. The meeting forums are meant to bring several of these teams together to a round table discussion in regard to their product designs, then the other following meeting is always known as the “Go Crazy” meeting. The go crazy meeting is the point where the employee participants are given a forum where they can freely brainstorm and share their ideas on absolutely anything It has been arguably argued by many authors that Apple Corporation is an arrogant employer simply because they simply push their employees to the limit without much assistance from the Corporation (O'Grady Jason 160). However, Lüsted Marcia 47) supports Apple’s approach to strategic HRM, terming it as a strategy that works well for both the employees and the Campany as well. This is because the employees are made to believe that for them to survive they have to become something special in their line of duty. It also enables them to be proactive and even learning new things, train and develop themselves everyday irrespective of the absence of training and development programs from the incorporation Strategy and innovation For many years, Apple Inc. has earned itself a strong reputation of quality, beauty, and simplicity as part of its mission. The corporation focuses on the user experience and reward with a fierce loyalty and strong sales from its thoroughly crafted hardware to award winning design (O'Grady Jason 162; Mine Afacan et al. 489 ). When it comes to future plans for innovating new products, Apple is full of secrets and often very quiet about their business strategies. The company always shy away from the media coverage and do not comment on their unannounced products. The corporation has a very simple strategy: the mediocrity is the excellence. The company has spent so many years trying to perfect their complex strategy that have been seen impressive results from the amalgamations of software, hardware, and services. Its products have accomplished the goal of being powerful and easy to use (Mello, Jeffrey 149). These products are inviting and modest so as to attract the users to be creative devoid of getting in the way. The other strategy of the company is its retail stores which doubles-up as their innovations. The company has a pedigree of adapting the new existing technologies and developing new technologies for its clients. With the help of the company’s specialist, the company was able to improve from Apple I and II to GUI, mouse and finally LaserWriter. The processes through which strategic HRM impacts on individual and organisational performance Strategic human resources management (SHRM) signifies the current phase on evolution of the human resources management. The previous SHRM evolution phases comprised of labour relations – that is mandated with negotiating the relevant unions that represents employees of those particular organisations; purchasing - that is responsible with hiring and firing at best costs; Human resources – irrespective of the insinuation of being more strategic, the human resources basically characterises the name change with little substantive difference; Personnel – this arm of SHRM is tasked with managing issues concerning organisation employees such as employee relations, benefits, some emphasis on control, and compensation (Collins Norman 125). SHRM impacts on organisations in a number of ways because of the significant role it plays by linking strategic objective and goals with human resources management (Kaufman Bruce and Miller Benjamin 120). For example, Apple Corporation has linked its HRM strategies with its business strategy as well as its recruitment strategy. The corporation also has a recruiting system that is able to identify the most and even more innovative members working force in the industry. Hence, it evident that Apple’s recruiting efforts are embedded on its system activities (Kim Andrea and Lee Choonwoo 132). The efficiency of this practice has been established by the external market forces, both vertical and horizontal alignments, and the general effectiveness of the core business strategy. Additionally, the evaluation of both the process and outcomes suggests the significance of strategic recruitments. It is also critical to note that SHRM impacts on organisations since they depend on it to determine their future results. This is because it is about competitive advantage differentiation (Collins Norman 126; Mayur Chikhale and Mansouri Mo 284). Competitive advantage can be achieved in different ways by different organisations in the modern world. Apple incorporation achieves its competitive edge by providing the latest and innovative technology, quality products, and competitive prices for their products. Unfortunately, most of these can easily be imitated by rival companies. However, Apple took a further step of protecting their technological innovations by applying the ‘proprietary format’ to guard their copy rights. For example, several of its music tracks purchased on iTunes are encrypted with ‘FairPlay’ that enables them to be only played on Apple products. It is their product strategies that lock-in its consumers to create repeat customers (O'Grady Jason 173). Becker Brain and Huselid Mark (916) argue that the SHRM has the capacity to fundamentally contribute to the effectiveness of an organisation in reference to effectiveness, productivity, competitiveness, efficiency, flexibility, and return on investment. Many researchers have not been able to link SHRM and organisational performance management (Stanton Pauline and Nankervis Alanv72). The authors imply that organisational performance is a significant factor of the SHRM and business. The authors further suggested that the links between individuals, divisions, sections, and the entire outcomes are perceived to be the solution to the global competitiveness and effectiveness. Organisations can achieve impressive performance enhancement by increasing its employment flexibility and employees productivity (Kim Andrea and Lee Choonwoo 140). Apple incorporation has certainly achieved this through the alignment of its collective employee’s performance outcomes with the HRM imperatives and extensive strategic business (Stanton Pauline and Nankervis Alan 88). The nature of the organisational performance as learnt in the case of Apple incorporation in this report indicates that a wider SHRM processes and strategies should be derived from the organisational objectives and values. Phillips, Jean and Gully Stanley (114) adjoins that the performance management systems of an organisation then in turn evaluates the SHRM programs effectiveness at the micro-levels. For example, the results of remuneration, staffing, career management processes and systems, outcomes of job design, and learning and development. Similarly, the macro-levels contributes to the achievement of such business compliance, productivity, effectiveness, profitability, and return on investment It is also imperative to note that modern organisations should involve managers in the strategic implementation and strategic goals by involving the strategic management into the strategic planning process due to the current complexity of the global business (Collins Norman 123). The conventional scientific management involves the process of leading, planning, controlling, and organising. Hence, strategic management is referred to as the combination of the strategic management and planning into one process. Thus, the below five components represents the strategic management processes through which the strategic HRM impacts on both the individual and organisations: 1. Internal assessment 2. Environmental analysis 3. Strategy formulation 4. Strategy implementation 5. Strategy control However, Mayur Chikhale and Mansouri Mo (289) mention a confusing presumption in the organisational performance management reflects in several behaviours the natural inconsistencies in SHRM theory and practise in entirely. There is also a common need and reason suggesting that SHRM should generally be aligned with organisation outcomes and objective, together with the performance management, either informally in small organisations or formally in big organisations. Several models and approaches are usually deigned on particular disciplinary action since the general theory regarding performance is not available (Manole, Christian et al. 209; Stanton Pauline and Nankervis Alan 129). Mine Afacan et al. (398) affixes that several evidence have been highlighted by various scholars in their research suggesting that there is a link between the improved business performance and HRM practises. This practise is commonly known as the High Performance Work Systems (HPWS), and it comprise of the human resources development, reward and compensation, staff selection, teamwork and communication, and performance appraisal. This argument is supported by (Siew, Soo et al. 121) who mentions that the HPWS comprise of the managerial practise systems tasked with enhancing the initiatives and skills, and increasing employee empowerment which motivates and make it possible for them exploit their greater empowerment. Conclusions In this study, it is eminent that the strategic HRM of Apple incorporation and the subsequent vertical alignment between organisation effectiveness and organisational performance management is evident in the Company’s corporate values, business strategies, and mission statements. The Company’s business outcomes such as the employee flexibility and competence, and productivity should be clearly featured into the appraisal of the strategic HRM and performance management systems. The company also identifies the significance of their employees and their relationship organisation performance together with the value of horizontal alignment with the entire strategic human resources management processes. References Boxall Peter and Purcell John. Strategy and Human Resource Management. 3rd ed). NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Phillips, Jean and Gully Stanley, M. Human Resource Management. Natorp Boulvard: South-Western College Pub, 2014. Mello, Jeffrey, A. 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