External and Internal Environments

Apple Inc. is a reputed and well-known computer manufacturer and Smartphone and digital devices device maker. The company has made strong roots in the computing market since its beginning’, because of its maintained quality, continuously delivered to its valuable customers.

The firm was formerly known as Apple Computer Inc., as Steve Jobs started it with his friends Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne in the 1970s. Apple Incorporation (Inc.) is well known for its design and sells the best quality of the Computer, Music and Mobile-phone Industries. Apple uses a different business strategy in which all employees and management work together to create their products and services, while Apple’s main focus is customer relationship management. Apple Inc. uses various types of internet business models like Business to Business e-commerce is used in the selling of computers which helps operate proficiency in other businesses. Business to Consumer e-commerce model sells iPods, computers, iTunes, iMac and other products to different individuals rather than businesses. Another Business to Government e-commerce model is selling Apple products to government-operated organizations.

Hence, there are various segments in which the company has expanded its business globally where especially two segments of the business offering; mutual funds and stock solutions and other is education loans where students are interested in taking education loans where the company has been exhibiting its image as a one of the leading IT company which provides these services to the extensive market and continuously strengthen its approach to gain more profit from the market after investment.

Five Competitive Forces Model Strengthen Organization

 The model of the Five Competitive Forces was developed by Michael E. Porter in 1980. Since then, the ‘five forces tool’ has become one of the important methods for analyzing an organization’s industry structure in strategic processes.

This model is based on the insight that a corporate strategy should meet the opportunities and threats in the Apple organizational external environment. Especially, competitive strategy should be based on understanding its structure and the way they change, where forces determine the intensity of competition and hence the profitability and attractiveness of the organization.

Based on the information derived from the organization’s integration with Porter’s Five Forces Analysis, management decided and addressed two most important from the organizational perspective on how to influence or exploit particular characteristics of this organization and two forces which have been strengthening the organization.

According to Michael Porter’s (1997) article, the strategy is defined as:

• Strategy is creating a unique and valuable position involving different activities.
• Strategy requires you to make trade-offs in competing- to choose what not to do.
• The strategy involves creating “fit” among a company’s

Apple has expanded its business and keeps on continuously expanding its services. Apple first started with desktop computers, the best quality Apple represents. Then slowly tooled over the market and launched various digital players. Apple iPod and iPhone were hugely accepted by all the people seeking quality produce. Apple is always known for the quality it provides.

• Organizations especially focus on their competitors’ level of how easy or difficult it is for current services to maintain, in which barriers do exist by their
• The second one is to use the core technical power of experts during the technological changes where experts are mandated to get into because of organizational market position and taking a lower percentage of profit

Two forces where an organization needs improvement

 Organizations need to focus on two important forces of the business model, as discussed below:

• Organizations need to focus on competitive analysis and how to start some new services as their competitive organizations are doing in the
• Organizations need to control external threats which are going on with external entities substituting businesses and introducing cheaper ones.

External Threats Affecting Apple’s Business

 For a few months, the organization have been facing issues of external organizational conflict by their few clients due to organizational and interpersonal factors where some clients of this IT-based company are blaming higher management is not that much good and even not listening to employees’ requests for which employees’ had gone for strike too, and these issues are related to organizational behaviour towards its customers and clients, these issues have created organizational conflict. Few other IT companies have created such issues by the mean of the competitive force of the market.

Even now, the situation is under control but not as effectively as expected, and they are continuously losing their business. Hence, there is a need to effectively handle the situation by applying conflict resolution theories and models of conflict control.

As we know, conflict is an essential force governing all aspects of life. It has always existed between many competitive organizations.

Therefore, understanding and managing external conflict is a vital investment to improve organizational performance where effective conflict management can assist Apple to keep in touch with new developments and create suitable solutions for their threats where managing conflict is a way to improve organizational decision-making system and resource allocation, ultimately can make the organization more effective. Hence, the goal is to explore the procedures for managing individual and collective conflict in organizations while considering the advantages and disadvantages of different organizational and procedural approaches to managing customer relationships.

Organizational Strengths and Weakness with its Business Strategy

 There are a few strengths and weaknesses of this organization, and have its strategy of control over organizational strength as discussed below:

Strengths:

 According to (John E. Gamble, 2012), the primary and foremost strength of Apple Inc. is its technological edge over its competitors. The iPhone has turned out to be a success and has been related standing in more than 70 countries. Also, iTunes has turned out to be an exquisite revenue-generating source, and since it conjointly sells with its tool, i.e. the iPod, thus the revenue has increased for Apple Inc. Another Strength of the Organization is that each software system that Apple Inc. produces introduces its hardware with high quality and unique features, resulting in its experience in the industry’s top position. The striking advantage over the competitor’s products is the straightforward style of the Apple product. Its product’s brand loyalty and super dedicated research and development department are also its major strengths.

Weakness:

 The company has passed numerous challenges after Steve Jobs’s death (Apple Inc.’s founder). Apple has battled for intellectual rights, which directly impacts company performance. In the market, Samsung had a top position in Smartphones in 2011 by designing Galaxy and other products and also Google’s Android operating system is matching iPhone’s key features. The high cost of the product and less improved features provided by Apple have created a negative image in customers’ minds.

As per the business perspective, here we will briefly discuss the business analysis, which will include a few points of business strategy as key strategies, organizational aim, short-term goals, measurement of success and its operating model that have been successfully implemented.

So, let’s start with the overall scalability of the business of this organization. The key point is that it shares the same values with all types of customers, even focusing on the same organizational objectives.

It just put the challenges in the perspective of business but well known, over the past decade, their challenge has been coping with the massive growth of the organization. It’s a nice problem to have, but it’s a tough problem. And it’s about scaling the infrastructure and processes to handle that, and I think organizational executives recognize that the organization is trying well to accomplish this scalable growth of the business. So, I would say that it’s not always the case for Apple, even if we look across corporates in America.

Organizational Resources, Capabilities and Core Competencies

After getting the complete analysis through the given data and external sources, I found that the “Unification” operating model a suitable Example of “Apple Inc.” because the organization has been working and integrated with a single business strategy for competitive focus. And it’s leveraging this company with high-level integration and IT standardization, and it successfully measures by adding up the global numbers of integrated business branches for the same services.

This model shows its capability for high process integration, and standardization means their business is the management, requires a single integrated strategy for competitive advantage and problems are formulated centrally and tailored for needs and optimizing the business.

We do see a lot of dysfunction in organizations. A lot of that dysfunction can be traced to a bad relationship or a misunderstanding between corporate finance and IT, and that’s exactly right and challenging for rapid growth.

After this short discussion of Apple Inc., which emerges at a continuous pace towards IT business management due to its technological background, the IT market has been growing faster. As discussed above, people are getting more interested in taking benefits using investments, loans, etc. Still, here a considerable point comes up in mind, i.e. security because it’s a core technical domain; it’s essential that to be a lot of security policies require for handling the business, money, data transfer over the network, information technologies threats, etc. Many security threats are vulnerable to the customer or this IT-based company.

Organizational Value Chain

 In the start, Apple faced so many struggles, and there were so many challenges. The challenges included were user-defined and easy to interact with computers. But soon, it was realized that Apple pioneered the computer world. It always fulfilled the needs of its customers. It has changed the minds of mobile phone users. Although the products are costly compared to those made by another company, it used such a strategy to expand its business widely and not it has a large empire.

One important thing about the strategy followed by Apple is that its quality is constant. It is never decreasing from the beginning. Apple’s brand position has evolved, but today’s brand remains consistent with these early promises.

Another approach used is to provide an excellent interface to the user. The gestures Apple uses are very good and hard to see in another company’s product. The company’s product strategy is based around this, with the iPhone, Mac, iCloud, iTunes and the Apps Store all in performance are key components.

The company is not merely a mobile device. It’s spreading in so many digital services. ITunes and iBooks are such examples of services the company provides. Apple’s amazing background service is iCloud, making many services and functionality that consumers use reachable on whatever (Apple) device they use.

Apple has a branding scheme that focuses on feelings. The initial face is how an Apple product experience makes you feel. Apple has made life so imaginative, and people’s dreams are becoming true using such excellent quality products. Apple does not want to be a pioneer in a single product. It is spreading its business and services day by day. It is the key point of Apple’s strategy.

It’s a matter of fundamental importance to the organization because it addresses the economic logic of why the organization exists in the first place, where manufacturing companies create value by acquiring raw materials and using them to produce something useful like; Samsung. Retailers bring together a range of products and present them in a way that’s convenient to customers, sometimes supported by services such as fitting advice in its technical operations. The value that’s created and captured by this organization is the profit margin:

“Value Created and Captured – Cost of Creating that Value = Margin”

The more value organization can create, the more profitable it would likely to be, and when we provide more value to the customers, we build a competitive advantage.

Understanding how the company creates value, and looking for ways to add more value, are critical elements in developing a competitive strategy. Michael Porter discussed this in his influential 1985 book “Competitive Advantage,” in which he first introduced the concept of the value chain, where a value chain is a set of activities that an organization can carry out to create value for its customers. Porter proposed a general-purpose value chain that this organization can use to examine their activities and see how they’re connected with organizational, functional activities. How value chain activities are performed determines costs and affects profits, so this tool can help you understand the sources of value for your organization and its flow process.

Therefore, Apple is a pioneer in the computer world and over the next years, it will regulate its market position through its products. It has been in Forbes’s top companies; the only focused products were iPhone and iPad. They have made people crazy. For Example, in 2009, Apple announced “Snow Leopard”, the latest version of the Apple Mac operating system, including features allowing Mac computers to sustain Microsoft Exchange fully, because of which a boom started for Mac for the persons who wanted to use an email with ease. Then Apple released LION in about 2011, which included all the business perspectives businessmen need. It was a great jump for Apple in the market. All the businessmen have started to use Macs for their benefit.

After all the discussion of Apple Inc. analysis, we covered strengths, applicable forces, external factors and organizational capabilities with its considerable value chain.

Apple is one of the good and effective leaders in the market and has its product brand, which has been continuously gaining the market and showing its effective business competency. Apple’s commitment to ensuring everything they do is about human technology and determining technology to benefit human needs is very clear.

Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, has changed the world with its Apple product, which is the true representative of quality, technologies and experiences where innovation is always seen in its product, and that’s why it is a leading brand in terms of technologies.

References

 Apple (2012). Apple’s official Webpage. Retrieved from www.apple.com

Costantino, C. A., and Merchant (1996). C. S. Designing Conflict Management Systems: A Guide to Creating Productive and Healthy Organizations. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.

Sofiane Achiche, Francesco Paolo Appio, Tim C. McAloone, Alberto Di Minin (2013). Fuzzy decision support for tools selection in the core front-end activities of new product development, Research in Engineering Design, 24, 1, 1

Jeffrey W. Alstete, John P. Meyer (2012). Intelligence Methods and Systems Advancements for Knowledge-Based Business.

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WEEK 6 ASSIGNMENT – EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL ENVIRONMENTS

Week 6 Assignment – External and Internal Environments

Overview

In this assignment, you are to use the same corporation you selected for the Week 3 assignment and examine the industry in which the entity operates. This assignment requires the use of three or more quality resources, including your textbook. Use any or all of the following resources to conduct research on the chosen corporation:

• The corporation’s website.
• Public filings from the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Filings & Forms page.
• Strayer University’s online databases.
• The Nexis Uni database.
• Other credible sources, such as the corporation’s annual report, will often provide insights that other resources may not include.
• It is expected that you will use your textbook as a resource for this assignment.

Instructions:

• Read the Assignment Formatting and Tips [PDF] before starting the assignment. Refer back to this document as needed.
• Download and save the External and Internal Environments Template [DOCX].
• Use the template to write a 4-6 page academic research paper in which you include the following:

Step 1. Choose one segment of the general environment that would rank highest in influence on the selected corporation:

• Assess how this high-ranking segment in the general environment influences the corporation and the industry in which it operates.

Step 2. Considering the Five Forces of Competition, choose one that you estimate to be the most significant for the selected corporation:

• Evaluate how well the corporation has addressed this force in the last five years. Support your response with relevant, specific evidence.

Step 3. With the same force in mind, predict how the corporation could improve its ability to address this force in the next 5-10 years. Support your response with relevant, specific evidence. Step 4. Consider the external threats affecting the corporation:

• Assess how the corporation should deal with its most serious external threat. Support your position with two pieces of specific evidence.

Step 5. Consider the opportunities available to the corporation:

• Assess how the corporation should deal with its greatest opportunity. Support your position with two pieces of specific evidence.

Step 6. Consider the corporation’s greatest strengths:

• Determine the strategy or tactic, as explained in the textbook, the corporation should use to maximize its strengths. Support your choice with specific evidence.

Step 7. Consider the corporation’s most significant weaknesses:

• Determine the strategy or tactic, as explained in the textbook, the corporation should use to minimize its greatest weakness. Support your choice with specific evidence.
• Use three or more quality sources, including your textbook, to support your writing. Choose sources that are credible, relevant, and appropriate. Cite each source listed on your source page at least one time within your assignment. (Note: Wikipedia and similar websites do not qualify as academic resources.)
  • For help with research, writing, and citation, access the library.
• Produce writing that is clear and well organized and applies appropriate Strayer Writing Standards (SWS) style. Writing contains accurate grammar, mechanics, and spelling.

This course requires the use of Strayer Writing Standards (SWS). The library is your home for SWS assistance, including citations and formatting. Please refer to the Library site for all support. Check with your professor for any additional instructions. The specific course learning outcome associated with this assignment is as follows:

• Analyze the effects of the general environment, competition, threats, opportunities, strengths, and weaknesses relative to a corporation.