Upon reading Kristy Lessy’s blog post about the employee experience at Apple and how it has contributed to the success of the company, I thought it would be interesting to look further into the management side of Apple, and to tie it into what we learned in class 17 (specifically about Performance Management and BTM). In her blog post, Kristy mentions some important aspects about how the treatment of employees is crucial to the quality of customer service in a company, and that employees need to have pride in their company in order to have incentive to work harder.

The management side to Apple truly is the meat and bones of this whole system. In class 17, we learned about different types of managers, and how the ideal manager focuses on building power through influence rather than through their own individual achievement (McLelland, Burnham). Apple’s management seems to be following this recipe, as can be seen in this article. Their corporate culture is “extremely engineer-focused, emphasizes minimal bureaucracy, and likes taking care of its people” (Male). In class we learned that the manager’s job is not to get things better alone, but rather to influence people. Because Apple is managed mainly by engineers, the management thus oversees projects that it understands, and thus it relates to its team. This can very well be seen as a type of influence.

As seen in Apple’s success, having a management team that is passionate about their line of work leads to employees that are the same, and this is not only beneficial to the company, it can also leave its impact on society as a whole.

Works Cited:

Male, Bianca. “8 Management Lessons I Learned Working At Apple.” Business Insider. Business Insider, Inc, 02 Aug. 2010. Web. 06 Nov. 2014.

McClelland, David C., and David H. Burnham. “Power Is the Great Motivator.” Harvard Business Review. Harvard Business Publishing, Jan. 2003. Web. 06 Nov. 2014.

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