Positive and Negatives

Apple Inc uses bureaucratic control and the sub processes of feed-forward control, concurrent control and financial control to a certain extent. Apple Inc also uses clan control to meet its performance standards and objectives. Apple’s positive and negative reactions to the use of these controls have a significant impact on the corporation.

Apple requires suppliers to commit to their Supplier Code of Conduct as a condition of doing business with them. This is an advantage for feed-forward because Apple makes sure that their suppliers meet policies, procedures, and rules before any operations begin. To meet the requirements Apple conduct onsite audits, approve corrective action plans, and verify implementation. As a result, worker protections and factory conditions have improved at many facilities throughout Apple’s supply base ("Supplier Responsibility", 2011).

Apple’s measurement of concurrent control is how they have a plan to reduce cost in shipping their product. A design and engineer team of experts are deployed to develop a product for packaging that is slim and light yet protective. Efficient packaging design not only reduces materials and waste, it also helps reduce the emissions produced during transportation. The advantages of this plan are that more Apple products are being shipped to fit on each shipping crate, more crates fit on each vessel and aircraft, and fewer vessels and aircrafts are used.

Apple’s financial control is a method to put a regulation on the finances of the company. Simply put, it controls the outgoing money and incoming money. The financial control mechanism goes hand in hand with proper auditing, which is another control mechanism they implement. Apple’s exercises internal control in the creation and preparation of their financial reports because it gives an assurance that the reports they submit are done correctly and that they follow the accounting principles accepted in the country ("United States Securities And Exchange Commission", 2010).

A clan control refers to the cultural values in an organization. Apple relies on shared norms, beliefs, values, corporate culture and information relationships to facilitate the meeting of the organizational goals and to regulate employee behaviors. The positive reaction to this type of control is that Apple employees perform well given minimal standards and direction and they participate in designing the control systems and standards. The negative reaction is that organizations that use this type of control require trust among their employees otherwise it may lead to loss of important information in the organization if the employees are not trustworthy (Barnat, 2011).

References

Barnat, R. (2011). The Evaluation and Control Of Organizational Strategy. Retrieved from http://www.strategic-control.24xls.com/en101, retrieved on 2 November 2011.

Supplier Responsibility. (2011). Retrieved from http://www.apple.com/supplierresponsibility/, retrieved on 2 November 2011.

United States Securities and Exchange Commission, Form 10-K, Apple INC, Retrieved from http://investor.apple.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1193125-10-238044&CIK=320193, retrieved on 30 October 2011.