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An important factor determining an organizations success is its leaders willingness to encourage and implement teamwork strategies (West, 2012). Successful organizations encourage teamwork for its numerous benefits, including improved work efficiency, better employee relations, increased accountability, improved productivity, higher morale, enhanced flexibility, and innovation (Hellriegel & Slocum, 2010)./
Apple is a very successful corporation that embraces teamwork. Since its founding, the company has adopted teamwork, a critical factor in determining its success in the technology and communications industry. The benefits of teamwork are evident in innovation, product development, and employee relations.
Apple Teamwork: Business Aspects
One of the main advantages of teamwork is increased innovation (Hellriegel & Slocum, 2010). Apple leaders implement policies and management strategies that create a work environment fostering creativity and innovation. The companys corporate culture is founded on employee collaboration and cooperation (Milian, 2011). Each department comprises small teams working together to achieve specific goals. As a result, employees exhibit more cooperation, commitment, and creativity. Working in teams encourages exchanging ideas, opinions, and feedback, essential in enhancing innovation (Hellriegel & Slocum, 2010)./
Teamwork has increased employees productivity, flexibility, and efficiency (Hellriegel & Slocum, 2010). Employees achieve results faster by working towards common goals. At Apple, teamwork is critical to the completion of projects within certain time frames. For instance, the company could deliver the iPod, iPhone, and iPad to consumers within specific periods because employees worked in teams that ensured speedy delivery of the products to the market (Lusted, 2012).
Teamwork reduces the pressure experienced by individual employees because responsibilities and tasks are shared. Employee deals with tasks that are within their area of specialization. Therefore, they deal with challenges and difficulties efficiently without stalling the progress of their teams. Teamwork improves flexibility because team members apply creative problem-solving strategies (West, 2012).
Employee cooperation is a crucial factor determining Apples products success in the market. New products are designed, manufactured, and marketed by teams comprising employees with various skills (Lusted, 2012). For instance, a team could include engineers, designers, technology experts, marketing experts, and management gurus who play different roles in ensuring the timely completion of products.
One of the reasons why Apple delivers a new product into the market every year is the strong spirit of teamwork that governs employees (West, 2012). Teams meet weekly to review their progress and deal with challenges that members encounter. Finally, teamwork improves accountability and responsibility. Apple does not create committees to oversee the activities of different teams (Lusted, 2012). Each team has a leader who reports directly to management regarding the teams progress./
Teamwork at Apple: Resolution of Conflicts
Conflict resolution and problem-solving are easier when employees work in teams than individually. It is because teams encourage open discussions that involve presenting feedback from members (West, 2012). Discussion among employees is one of the methods used to resolve conflicts and deal with tough situations at Apple. Team discussions include the presentation of opinions, ideas, criticisms, and complaints from members. In addition, employees brainstorm to come up with potential solutions to their challenges and problems. Apples leadership encourages accountability and honesty among employees./
Accountability eradicates criticism and blame because employees know their tasks and responsibilities. Apples principles of business conduct include honesty, respect, confidentiality, and compliance (Lusted, 2012). Employees must adhere to these principles in dealing with fellow employees and conducting business. The policy encourages employees to discuss issues with their team leaders and managers. For that reason, teams meet weekly to discuss the challenges and problems they encounter in achieving their goals.
Effectiveness of Apple Team Work
An advantage of teamwork is increased efficiency and effectiveness in achieving goals (West, 2012). This is mainly due to the speedy completion of tasks, effective methods of resolving conflicts, and increased creativity encouraged by the open dissemination of knowledge and ideas. Apple hires highly knowledgeable employees who are passionate about their work. Its teams comprise devoted and competent employees committed to timely attaining specific goals. Teamwork has enhanced Apples achievement of objectives because the organization has consistently introduced new products into the market every year (Lusted, 2012)./
In addition, the high quality of its products is primarily due to teamwork. Timely introduction of new products is proof of efficiency, cooperation, and effectiveness among employees. One of Apples goals is to use innovation to provide customers with quality products (Lusted, 2012). This is evident from their numerous products that have created revolutions in different market segments. The companys success in innovating is mainly due to the concept of teamwork that the company embraces and implements (Milian, 2011). After the demise of Steve Jobs, Apple continued to innovate because of the core principle of teamwork that governs its corporate culture. The companys success is determined by cooperation and collaboration among employees (Milian, 2011)./
References
Hellriegel, D & Slocum, J 2010, Organizational Behavior, Cengage Learning, New York.
Lusted, M. A 2012, Apple: Company and its Visionary Founder, Steve Jobs, ABDO, New York.
Milian, M 2011, Why Apple is More than just Steve Jobs, Web.
West, M 2012, Effective Teamwork: Practical Lessons from Organizational Research, John Wiley & Sons, New York.
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