“Can You Follow an Icon and Succeed? Apple and Tim Cook after Steve Jobs” | Case Study Solution | Strategic Management

Case Questions: “Can You Follow an Icon and Succeed? Apple and Tim Cook after Steve Jobs”

Please read the mini case “Can You Follow an Icon and Succeed? Apple and Tim Cook after Steve Jobs and answer to the followings” on page 408 of the textbook and provide an APA formatted written paper, minimum of four (4) pages (and at least six (6) peer-reviewed resources in support of your arguments) and answer the following questions:

● Please evaluate a CEO’s job, and what makes a CEO’s job so complex? Use the challenges Tim Cook faces as Steve Jobs’ successor to provide examples that support your answer.
● Tim Cook came from Apple’s internal managerial labor market to succeed Steve Jobs. According to your analysis, do you think that using the internal managerial labor market is the best approach to follow when replacing S. Jobs?
○ Use materials in the chapter regarding the internal and external managerial labor markets to explain your answer.
● Given their different leadership styles of Steve Jobs and Tim Cook, describe the differences you found in Apple’s culture under Tim Cook’s leadership compared to the culture in Apple when Steve Jobs was CEO.
● Using information in this Mini-Case as well as you found additional materials through your searches, how do you evaluate Tim Cook as a CEO?
○ Is he an effective strategic leader or not? Use examples from the chapter’s discussion of “Key Strategic Leadership Actions” to justify your answer to this question

Question 1: Please evaluate a CEO’s job, and what makes a CEO’s job so complex? Use the challenges Tim Cook faces as Steve Jobs’ successor to provide examples that support your answer.

In any organization, the CEO (Chief Executive Officer) is holds the top executive position who has many primary responsibilities to look after which includes making the major corporate level decisions, effective management of the overall resources and operations of the organization. The CEO acts as the main point of communication between the BODs (Board of Directors) and the corporate operations. The BODs and the Shareholders of the company elects the CEO of the company (KENTON, 2020). Depending upon the mature, size, structure of the company the role of CEO varies from one another. In case of large corporations, the role of CEO might be only with the strategic decisions but for the small corporation the CEO along with involving in strategic level decisions they are also involved in day-to-day operations. Some of the major roles and responsibilities of CEO in an organization include,

• Acts as the main point of communication between the BODs (Board of Directors) and the corporate operations and the public when needed.
• Strategic and corporate level decision making as well as developing and implementing mission and vision for the company.
• Formulating various policies with the communication of BODs along with evaluation of the works done by the officers at different positions.
• Representing the company in a more appropriate way in the public which will create a good public image for the company which helps in network building as well.

CEO being in the top position are abided to the high level of decision making as well as risk making their job very complex as the success of the organization in to large extent depended on their decisions and actions.

Different Challenges faced by Tim Cook as a successor of Steve Jobs

After the resignation of Steve Jobs from the CEO’s position in the year 2011, Tim Cook was appointed as the new CEO of Apple Incorporation in the same year from the internal hiring as Cook was already working as a COO in the Company (Bidwell & Keller, 2013). It. As I mentioned earlier being a CEO is a challenging and complex job. Steve Jobs has been a wonderful CEO and the leadership styles and approaches he followed resulted positive outcomes to the company (Schwan & Soeters, 1994).

When CEO like Steve Jobs had already set benchmark by their work, different challenges had been faced by newly appointed Tim Cook. Several Challenges faced by Tim Cook as a successor of Steve Jobs are as follows:

• One of the main challenges for Tim Cook was maintaining the same level or even though more than that level of success as well as maintaining the similar culture and strategy so that it is ensured that the employees are motivated to think new innovative product ideas.
• Another challenge faced by Tim Cook was the dramatic fall in stock price of Apple when the CEO of the Apple died in the same year when he resigned. Cook has to make sure and follow proper leadership style to win the trust of the shareholders retain the stock price back to normal as the shareholders are not sure about his leadership style.

• Another challenge for the Cook is manufacturing enough number of iPhones so as to meet the market demands for the iPhones in the coming years. If the demand exceeds the supply of iPhones than it can degrade the brand image of the company.
• Another challenge for the Cook is being the public face for Apple Incorporation which was properly handled and carried by Steve Jobs in a very well manner. Jobs already had the public craze and it takes time to accept and know Tim Cook as a new CEO of Apple. 

Question 2: Tim Cook came from Apple’s internal managerial labor market to succeed Steve Jobs. According to your analysis, do you think that using the internal managerial labor market is the best approach to follow when replacing S. Jobs? Use materials in the chapter regarding the internal and external managerial labor markets to explain your answer.

Tim Cook was appointed through the internal hiring process from the internal managerial labor market of Apple Inc. after Steve Jobs resigned from the CEO’s position. Filling the employee from the internal managerial labor market is the method where employees in the executive positions are placed through the internal labor market or we can say from the employees who are already associated with the organization (Lazear & Oyer, 2004).. In many of the companies, the CEOs are assigned from the internal managerial labor market.

In my opinion, companies can achieve several benefits for filling the top level executive positions using the internal labor market. Apple Incorporation took a good decision of appointing new CEO as Tim Cook replacing the Steve Jobs from the internal managerial labor market. As it has been mentioned in the case that the Took was already working as a COO of the company which indicates that he was already aware about the organizational culture, process or we can say it familiar with the company.

During the period of Steve Jobs, he has adopted great leadership styles and implemented effective strategic decisions that had led to the success of the company. Therefore, hiring someone from the internal labor market becomes necessary so as to have an employee who is loyal and is familiar with the leadership styles and the strategies of the past CEO of the company.

As we can see that Tim was already working as a Chief Operations Officer for Apple and is associated with the IT for more than thirty years while makes him most eligible candidate for that position. Hiring the employee through the external labor market can be very risky for such big companies because it can directly hamper the overall process of the company as the strategic decisions and action taken by the CEO impacts the overall functioning of the business. Therefore, it is good to hire internal employees.

Question 3: Given their different leadership styles of Steve Jobs and Tim Cook, describe the differences you found in Apple’s culture under Tim Cook’s leadership compared to the culture in Apple when Steve Jobs was CEO.

Comparison between the leadership styles followed by Steve Jobs and Tim Cook

Both of the past CEO (Steve Jobs) and present CEO (Tim Cook) of the Apple Incorporation are considered as the successful leaders who followed effective leadership style and actions analyzing the situations. During the period of Steve Jobs the brand value and the stock price of Apple Inc. started spiking because Steve Jobs had introduced various product innovations in the form of products like iPod, iPhone, iPad, iTunes, Mac and App Store which is considered as the core business of Apple Inc.

On the other hand after being appointed as a new CEO of Apple, Tim Cook had also introduced several products like Apple TV, Air Pods, Ear buds, Apple Watch, iPad mini, etc. The following table provides a comparative analysis on the leadership styles of both of the CEOs, Steve Jobs and Tim Cook at Apple.

The company was accused for keeping excessive overtime and poor working conditions around Chinese factories who are involved in producing iPhones. The company was accused for helping the National Security Agency (NSA) to steal data from the iPhones.
Never paid regular cash dividends to its investors. Paid cash dividends to its investors for the first time in those last 17 years.

Question 4: Using information in this Mini-Case as well as you found additional materials through your searches, how do you evaluate Tim Cook as a CEO? Is he an effective strategic leader or not? Use examples from the chapter’s discussion of “Key Strategic Leadership Actions” to justify your answer to this question

I would consider Tim Cook as the most appropriate CEO for the Apple Incorporation who is an effective Strategic Leader. Despite of the huge competition among the companies in the market the company has been able to grow as a dominant brand which has become possible only because of adopting effective leadership styles and implementing strategic decisions by the current CEO of the company (Tim Cook) who was appointed as CEO after the Steve Jobs.
Tim Cook always believed in the fact that one must take risks in order to succeed. Compared to Steve Jobs who was a kind of outgoing personality, Cooks seems to be a quiet and reserved kind of person because he always listens carefully towards the people who are speaking around him.

Tim being appointed as a CEO of the company which was founded on innovation listens the voices of the people working for the company as he believes that anyone can innovative ideas for the organization. He also focused on having diversity in the organization variation in culture; ethnicity, nation, etc. can bring different innovative ideas and can help the organization to succeed. He always believed in himself and the trusted himself about the strategic decisions that he is making.

For Example, according to the information provided by Fox Business, when the stocks of Apple Incorporation was falling dramatically Cook chose to give up to one third of his stock based compensation which is nearly about $130 million in case if the stock under-performed the S&P 500. This clearly reflects the faith that he has toward his decisions and actions making him a strategic leader.

References

Bidwell, M., & Keller, J. (2013, August). Within or Without? How Firms Combine Internal and External Labor Markets to Fill Jobs. The Academy of Management Journal, 57(4), 1035-1055.
Glick, M. B. (2011). The Role of Chief Executive Officer. SAGE Journals, 13(2), 171-207.
KENTON, W. (2020, July 1). Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Retrieved from Investopedia: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/ceo.asp
Lazear, E. P., & Oyer, P. (2004). Internal and external labor markets: a personnel economics approach. Labour Economics, 11(5), 527-554.
Quinn, L., & Dalton, M. (2009, February 18). Leading for sustainability: implementing the tasks of leadership. Corporate Governance: International Journal of Business in Society, 9(1), 21-38.
Schwan, R., & Soeters, J. (1994, March). The strategy of vacancy-filling from internal and external labor market sources: An empirical assessment of the recruitment strategy of different types. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 10(1), 69-85.
Sharma, A., & Grant, D. (2011, March 3). Narrative, drama and charismatic leadership: The case of Apple’s Steve Jobs. Journal of Business Strategy and Leadership, 7(1), 47-59.

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