Evaluating the Capacity of an Organization – Apple Inc

Evaluating the Capacity of an Organization – Apple Inc

Introduction

Apple Inc. is a multinational technology company that designs, produces, and sells a wide range of technological products globally through online stores, retailers, direct sales, and third-party retailers. The company’s major client base is small and medium-sized education and business establishments, and government and enterprise customers. The products include smartphones, tablets, e-books, and application software. The application software consists of various products, from basic daily applications to professional programs such as video and photo editing software. The company also offers internet services such as the iTunes store to enable customers to buy and download video content and music. Apple Inc. also introduced Apple Pay, a mobile payment service allowing users to safely pay for what they buy in stores using mobile devices such as Apple Watch and iPhone. The company also produces and sells Apple TV, which connects customers’ televisions and enables them to access digital content such as music, videos, photos, and games and coordinate the data stored in the user’s other devices. Apple Watch is currently being recommended as one of the most efficient wearable devices that people can use to track their fitness and health. This report provides an overview of Apple’s capacity and recommends measures that can be taken to improve it.

Overview of Apple Company’s Capacity

Apple’s organizational capacity includes organizational skills, resources and knowledge, environment and culture, and engagement and partnership. Resources include tangible assets and concrete materials that support practice improvements, programs, and the delivery of services. They consist of stable and adequate staffing, funding, equipment and facilities, informational resources, technology, and program materials. Knowledge and skills include the essential competencies and expertise required to design and manufacture products. It also incorporates the skills and knowledge related to management, leadership, policymaking, critical analysis, change management, and workforce development for administrators and managers. Partnership and engagement include collaborative relationships with external partners and the community to support integration and promote improved practices. Productive relationships are characterized by seeking feedback, building trust, and actively working together toward a common objective.

The company maintains a high level of capacity through the growth cycle of the corporate year by balancing strong efficiency in its operations with unique serial innovation and addictive designs that redefine the market and command premium pricing. The combination secures conservative wisdom that maintains that if the company’s competitive advantage relies on intense value and efficiency, the company will not invest beyond what is necessary for design, innovation, or service. Therefore, the company can focus on cutting costs along the value chain to align design, innovation, and service with its strategy. Currently, Apple Inc.’s actual capacity forecast for the year is increasing stock price beyond $170.00. The company has also set aside various measures to improve capacity to the required levels.

To begin with, its operations management includes the application of ten operations management decisions to ensure that all business aspects are run without interference. The decisions are connected to design, product and service quality management, location approach, capacity, process design, and inventory management. The company also ensures that operations management is cautiously implemented via synchronized efforts in designing and developing products, marketing and selling the products, and managing the supply chain.

In the design of goods and services, various organizational officials and components handle the company’s processes. Junior vice presidents coordinate with senior vice presidents to ensure that outputs successfully design technological products. In quality management, the management team emphasizes quality standards and control. The senior vice president for operations coordinates with other senior vice presidents to guarantee that the production team complies with the company’s quality requirements. The company’s human resource management strategies incorporate support to maximize the capacity of employees for the design and development of products. The company also works with suppliers to ensure adequate capacity and efficient processes in process insufficient capacity design. Suppliers are issued with directives for the design of the production process and the Apple Supplier Code of Conduct to improve how they manage their human resources.

Apple has a selective location strategy, including seller authorization. However, many approved sellers operate in urban areas for maximum exposure of the company’s brand and traffic from walk-in customers. The company also has a limited approach to the approval of sellers globally. The approach has made the company maintain a high position among the most lucrative companies globally. The company’s layout strategy and design emphasize the expectations of its customers. For instance, approved sellers and the stores owned by the company are spacious with little decoration to ensure that Apple products are visible. The company also uses innovative office layouts to encourage workflow efficiency and creativity. The company’s human resource and job design strategies emphasize excellence and creating a friendly work environment to boost employee morale.

Apple Inc. has maintained an efficient supply chain by automating processes and consistently monitoring supplies. The monitoring evaluates the productivity and capacity of suppliers and compliance with the company’s supplier code of conduct. Apple also uses various inventory management techniques, such as serial numbers, to control and trace products. In addition, the company uses the first in, first out technique that guarantees that the old models are sold before the new ones are made available in the market. Scheduling is done both manually and automatically. Automation is implemented in scheduling manufacturing and supply chain tasks, while manual scheduling is implemented in single stores and offices. The company’s main aim in scheduling is to make the most of capacity utilization of human resources, facilities, and equipment. Apple Inc. meets maintenance needs via devoted teams. Its IT teams also serve as repair teams for its servers and other IT systems. The vice president for human resources guarantees that the company’s workforce is always at adequate capacity to uphold high performance.

Ongoing Maintenance of Organizational Capacity Within Organizations

Maintaining organizational capacity requires assessing the organization to determine its capacity-building needs and then applying the most likely strategies to affect the necessary change. Organizations need to implement an individualized approach to customize capacity-building activities and align them with organizational circumstances and needs. Assessment often reveals interrelated organizational needs for easy strategic planning. Organizations also maintain capacity through development and technical assistance, including coaching, training, and peer networking. Peer-to-peer learning opportunities such as communities of practice, roundtables, and learning circles reduce isolation and promote problem-solving and collaboration, strengthening organizational capacity.

Organizations may also use technical assistance partnerships to identify and implement capacity-building solutions for shared community and organizational development issues. Another strategy used to maintain organizational capacity is using centralized platforms to track competency across the organization matrix. Human resource managers need to stay updated on the employees’ competencies so that they can allocate the right resources with the right experience, skills, expertise, and qualifications to the tasks within the organization. Centralized platforms are used to plan new strategic measures to take to maintain organizational capacity.

Organizations also maintain organizational capacity through capacity planning strategies. Proper capacity planning means reduced firing and hiring cycles and intelligent fulfillment of long-term and short-term future organizational demands. Resource managers need to remain aware of future potential projects in the organization and subsequent demand for resources so that they can balance the resource pool with the required skills. Suppose there is a gap in the skills needed within an existing resource pool. In that case, the human resource manager can proactively implement resourcing treatments through techniques such as upskilling or training the current employees or hiring a contingent or permanent resource to stay ahead and eliminate future holdups.

Another strategy that organizations use is forecasting the future capacity to maximize billable use. Using the existing capacity in an organization to the maximum potential affects intelligent and efficient capacity planning strategy. Therefore, scheduling and allocating resources to the tasks is not enough, which is why it is crucial to ensure that maximum resources are set aside for billable projects. Organizations also implement a workflow for the requisition and allocation of resources to ensure they are acquired on time, documented, and audited. The other strategy is increasing profitability by reducing bench time through effective capacity management. Most exceeding benched resources pose a challenge to an organization by incurring unnecessary overheads and limiting the productivity of various resources in the organization. Therefore, it is vital to forecast bench time to take corrective measures to maintain the required organizational capacity and leverage real-time data to use resources proactively.

 Methods of Evaluating the Capacity of an Organization

Conducting outcome and process evaluation is vital in capacity development. Evaluating processes provides valuable information on the implementation of the efforts towards capacity building and how to improve capacity development. Process evaluations can also offer important data to improve the practices in capacity building by learning from the successes and failures of the practices used. Evaluating outcomes assesses how the efforts made to build capacity resulted in the anticipated outcomes and identifies any unexpected outcomes (Vallejo & Wehn, 2016). Valuations also play a vital role in increasing understanding of capacity-building dynamics and documenting whether the envisioned changes occurred.

The main methods used in evaluating an organization’s capacity are theocratic approaches and complex adaptive systems. The theocratic approach is mainly used in evaluating the effectiveness of the investment made for capacity development and the organization’s ability to meet accountability needs. The approach focuses on three main areas. The first one is the assessment of the capacities and needs required and then used in defining capacity development. The second area is prioritized capacity development areas, and the third area is long-term capacity maintenance strategies (Vallejo & Wehn, 2016). The approach incorporates logical structures for monitoring and planning capacity development. The logical structures specify indicators associated with assessing the organization’s progress toward achieving the envisioned capacity. The indicators, however, usually become the objective rather than a proxy for evaluating capacity development due to resource and time constraints.

The complex adaptive systems method focuses on capturing behavioral changes in the relationships between the participants directly involved in capacity development instead of specified outcomes in terms of conventional indicators of technical performance. It considers the complex nature of capacity development and capacity and is founded on participatory tactics. The approach is open to recognizing unanticipated and anticipated changes arising from capacity development. The complex adaptive systems method also highlights learning from experience to improve capacity. It encourages interaction between stakeholders in selecting, managing, and evaluating specific modalities of capacity development in complex environments from the beginning of interventions by discussing and reflecting on the assumptions behind the envisioned change and the conditions that may be required for change to occur from different levels and within different viewpoints (Vallejo & Wehn, 2016).

Narratives founded on experience are used to build knowledge and awareness that change is required and that the development and improvement of capacity are linked to various elements. Such narratives include the significant change technique that includes collecting stories about change. The newest evaluation technique in the complex adaptive system is founded on five capabilities. It proposes that change should be assessed by focusing on major capabilities that impact capacity and overall organizational performance. The capabilities include the ability to act and survive, self-renew, adapt and connect other capabilities, create development results, create coherence, and the ability to relate so that organizational objectives can be met.

Recommendation for Measures for Improvement and Criteria for Evaluating Improvements

Measures for improvement should begin with the following five basic steps. The first step is engaging stakeholders to develop organizational capacity to achieve specific improvements. According to Kay (2021), an effective capacity development process requires encouraging the participation of everyone involved. Therefore, this step focuses on ensuring that stakeholders claim more responsibility for the capacity development outcome and sustainability. The engagement of the capacity development process with direct participants facilitates effective decision-making and enhances the transparency of the process (Harrington et al., 2014). The second step is assessing capacity assets and needs. This step includes engaging stakeholders and capacity developers to determine the areas that need extra training, those that should be prioritized, and how capacity building can be integrated into organizational development techniques.

The third step is formulating a response strategy to address capacity development. This step includes organizational arrangements, knowledge, leadership, and accountability. In organizational arrangements, evaluations usually find institutions inefficient due to weak or inadequate procedures, policies, leadership, resources management, communication, and frameworks (Harrington et al., 2014). Organizations are thus required to create human resource frameworks that cover policies and procedures for deployment, recruitment, incentive systems, transfers, skills development, ethics, and values and systems for performance evaluation.

In leadership, coaching and mentoring are used to help encourage the development of vital leadership skills such as communication, setting priorities, and strategic planning. Knowledge focuses on creating solid education opportunities and continued learning and professional skills development systems. It supports the implementation of continued learning and internal knowledge services. Accountability facilitates better efficiency and performance. Besides, it also creates independence and enables the organization to monitor, oversee, and evaluate institutions. Further, accountability also promotes the growth of capacities such as language and literacy that facilitate increased engagement in the capacity development process (Harrington et al., 2014). The fourth step is implementing a capacity development response. The implementation of a capacity-building framework includes the inclusion of various systems and continual reassessment and change based on the changes in the organization’s external environment. Evaluative indicators are used to measure the effectiveness of the projects being implemented. The fifth step is the evaluation of capacity development based on the changes around organizational arrangements, knowledge, leadership, and accountability.

Measures for improvement include deliberate actions used to enhance individual and organizational capacity to grow knowledge and skills and strengthen existing capabilities and competencies. The main objective of capacity development should thus be understood as targeting skills, capacity, and knowledge. Capacity development also focuses on solving problems and enhancing performance, and the interventions applied in the development process are planned based on experience, behavioral change, and development theories (Kay, 2021). This input combination results in planned and emergent modifications that are difficult to measure. Improvement may also include the result-based approach, including impact, strategic planning, outputs, and outcomes. Strategic planning focuses on identifying impact, outputs, and outcomes and defining the development goals of the capacity development. Achieving these goals requires identifying the specific outcomes that often occur within specific systems and coordinating them with stakeholders. Impact is associated with the envisioned or actual change in the development of human resources and is measured through individual welfare. An outcome is the anticipated or actual change in the development condition supported by intervention and is measured through change in the organization’s performance, adaptability, and stability.

Improvements can be evaluated through the rational goal model, system resource model, organizational development model, managerial process model, functional model, bargaining model, and structural-functional model (Guerra-López, 2008). The rational goal model focuses on an organization’s capacity to achieve specific goals. The assessment tactic is derived from the description of the goals the organization is required to achieve and comparing what the organization has achieved to what it had planned to achieve. The systems resource model reviews organizational outputs by determining how close the allocation of resources in an organization under given circumstances contributes to the optimal distribution of the resources in different subsystems in the organization. The model posits that organizations strive to satisfy their needs and survive based on various subsystems. The subsystems include the ability of the decision-makers in a subsystem to distinguish and accurately deduce the real components of the external environment, the organization’s ability to exploit its environment to acquire scarce resources, the ability of the systems to create a specific output, maintain internal daily activities, organization’s ability to coordinate relationships among different subsystems, the organization’s ability to give feedback on its efficiency in the business setting, the organization’s ability to assess the impact of its decisions and the ability to meet goals using existing systems (Morkel & Mangwiro, 2019).

The managerial process model reviews an organization’s effectiveness based on its ability to effectively perform various managerial functions such as budgeting, planning, and decision-making. It assumes that organizations set and accomplish goals due to different managerial processes’ effectiveness. The organizational evaluation is dictated by its processes’ capability to realize anticipated goals. It is founded on the concept of considerable rationality that interconnects the impulses, drives, feelings, wishes, values, and individuals needs to the organization’s functional goals.

The organizational development model views effectiveness based on renewal and problem-solving capabilities. It emphasizes creating management practices to promote managerial conduct, demonstrating concern and interest for workers, group loyalty, team spirit and teamwork among management and workers, commitment, trust and confidence between management and workers, and more freedom to set individual objectives. The model integrates individual needs and organizational goals using techniques and knowledge from behavioral sciences. One of the foundations of the approach used in the model is that the negative attitudes towards work that most members in an organization hold and their work practices are often responses to the work environment they are exposed to and how the organization treats them instead of intrinsic personality attributes. The second foundation is that organized work aimed at meeting people’s needs and organizational requirements results in the highest productivity (Morkel & Mangwiro, 2019). The bargaining model focuses on the transactions and exchanges of groups and individuals pursuing diversity goals. The decision-making capacity is firmly founded on the exchanges between the components of the organization. The model presumes that organizations are cooperative and sometimes competitive in distributing resources. It also assumes that organizations are only effective if their goals yield sufficient contributions from stakeholders. Evaluation using this model includes identifying how decision-makers allocate resources to meet organizational objectives.

The structural-functional model focuses on understanding the structural designs established by an organization to sustain and grow itself. The effectiveness of the organization is improved by its ability to develop structures. Various aspects define the model. One of the aspects is the general security of an organization based on the social forces around the organization. The second aspect is the stability of authority lines and communication, which includes the continued ability of leadership to access and control the people in the systems. The third aspect is the steadiness of informal connections within the organization. The fourth aspect is continuous policymaking, and the fifth aspect is the similarity of outlook. According to Guerra-López (2008), the structural-functional model is applied by describing the organization’s structures that evolve as the organizational framework sustains itself and stabilizes how it relates with its setting. The functional model focuses on the social consequences of the activities in an organization. The model ensures that every system defines its purpose for attaining goals, determining resources to achieve organizational goals, establishing a way to coordinate organizational efforts, and reducing the tensions and strains in the environment. The attainment of goals focuses on defining goals and evaluating achievements. The functional model also characterizes organizational activities as either dysfunctions or functions. Dysfunctions are perceived as the impacts that alter existing conditions towards the opposite direction opposing the direction to achieve organizational goals. Functions, on the other hand, meet existing organizational needs.

Conclusion

Organizational capacity is connected to the effectiveness and performance of an organization. Apple has managed to maintain a competitive advantage in the technological market due to its ability to achieve high organizational capacity in producing high-quality products and continuous innovation to introduce new designs. Organizations’ most complex tasks in capacity development are maintaining the acquired organizational capacity. Therefore, it is essential to maintain collaboration among all stakeholders to facilitate effective maintenance and be better positioned to eliminate any issues that could reduce capacity. Organizations also need to continuously measure improvement and evaluate the achieved organizational capacity to determine areas of improvement. The evaluation approaches vary based on the situation at hand because some situations include adjusting the organization’s structure to meet organizational needs while others require improving the performance of employees. Organizations also need to include all stakeholders in the evaluation process to ensure that all organizational capabilities are considered.

References

Guerra-López, I. J. (2008). Performance evaluation: Proven approaches for improving program and organizational performance. John Wiley & Sons.

Harrington, H. J., Voehl, F., & Project Management Institute. (2014). Organizational capacity for change: Increasing change capacity and avoiding change overload.

Kay, A. (2021). Implementation capacity and evaluation capacity. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.1377

Morkel, C., & Mangwiro, N. (2019). Implications of evaluation trends for capacity development. Evaluation Landscape in Africa: Context, Methods and Capacity, 191-216. https://doi.org/10.18820/9781928480198/08

Vallejo, B., & Wehn, U. (2016). Capacity development evaluation: The challenge of the results agenda and measuring return on investment in the Global South. World Development, 79, 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2015.10.044

 

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In this final week of class, you will review the various dimensions of capacity you have researched in prior assignments. The emphasis will be on your understanding of the key components of capacity, how these can be maintained and improved, as well as the role each plays in the fulfillment of the mission of an organization.

The Signature Assignment of this course requires that you utilize the emphases of the prior chapters in providing a thorough study of the capacity of an organization. Using a review of the peer-reviewed literature, you will report on the current capacity of the organization, making thoughtful recommendations for improvement, providing measurements to evaluate improvements that have been made to date, as well as criteria to evaluate these improvements. Evaluation of this assignment will be based on your clarity of understanding and thoroughness of your research about the primary topic of the class, capacity.

For this Signature Assignment, you will select an organization and examine the organizational capacity. Provide a research paper to thoroughly develop the key requirements and an infographic to visually communicate the measures for improvements. Completing this assignment will provide you with a good understanding of both the materials and personnel responsible for creating and implementing organizational capacity. This key characteristic of organizations is a vital component you will encounter frequently in your academic and professional career.

For your research paper, be sure to address the following:

Select a publicly held organization
Consider the goods and services the organization provides.
Specify the personnel and material (of all types) that comprise the organization’s capacity.
Specify the level of capacity needed through the growth cycle of the corporate year.
Research the actual capacity forecast for the year.
Provide measures to improve capacity to required levels.
Also, be sure to include the following:

Develop the Signature Assignment by providing a thorough research study of the ongoing maintenance of organizational capacity within organizations.
From your review of recent peer-reviewed research, provide a thorough discussion of the methods of evaluating the capacity of an organization.
Discuss pertinent recommendations for measures for improvement and criteria for evaluating improvements.
Length: 12-15 pages, including title and reference pages

References: Include a minimum of 5 scholarly resources.