Management in Action Case Study: A Case Analysis of Steve Jobs

The irregularities in business operations and management have been a constant problem in the 21st century. There were numerous researches and diverse theories which tried to resolve this issue. This study will analyze Steve Jobs’ personality, organizational behavior, attitudes, and factors that influenced his ability to rejuvenate the Apple Company by making it the world’s most valuable.

1. Leadership traits ensure the workers’ performance. Jobs was known for his audacious and rude nature, yet he managed to make the Apple Company unbelievably successful. This study will analyze Jobs’ traits based on the Big Five personal qualities: agreeableness, openness to experience, conscientiousness, and neuroticism, according to the article by Hussain, Abbas, Shahzad, and Bukhari (2011). Being agreeable is a personal quality that makes people winners even in hopeless situations. It has a tendency to meet cooperation and social harmony as well as sacrifice personal interests. Jobs displayed this personal quality acknowledging how good his staff base was. He made sure that no matter how difficult the situation was, there always was a way out. Being open to experience is very important because it requires intelligence, creativity, and curiosity to understand hidden meaning, and it provides different ways of solving problems. Jobs used instincts and intuition to find out what the customers want. According to Jobs: “Our tasks is to read things that are not yet on the page instead of relying on market surveys.”

A conscientious manager is aware of his organization’s future. He tries to prevent all forms of risk ensuring flawless work and provides a well-ordered and neat pattern in carrying out certain activities. The Apple Company became the most valued organization in the world due to Jobs’ negation on short-term benefits by ensuring the continuous development of the product. It caused diverse reactions from the technology community, but in a world filled with worthless and annoying interfaces, his passion for the future benefit ensured rejuvenation of the company. Steve Jobs once said: “I do not think I run a roughshod over people but when something sucks I tell it to their face.” He appears to be an extravert person who is frank with everyone every single moment in life. This trait brings out the best in all of his employees because they have a leader who is ready to prompt the right action. Lastly, a neurotic person is pessimistic, angry, depressed, frustrated, and tends to over-react due to mistakes. Though, people who are less neurotic are emotionally stable and have the more inner strength to face stressful situations. Jobs combined these two personal qualities. He yelled at staff unable to meet goals using curse words to express repulsion in board meetings, and at the same time, he focused on work and refused to bend towards external obligations until he was through with what he is doing.

2. In evaluating Jobs traits’ importance of organizational behavior, it should be said that a great leader must develop a great team by handing obligations to team members as a guide letting them develop their own ideas by giving them purpose and correction. The abrupt halt in producing computer peripherals to the new production phase (consumer, pro, desktop, and portable) saved the company. Decision-maker is someone who is ready to weigh options and act according to the organization’s goals assessing all the pros and cons in realizing the best decisions, cost, and timeline for implementation. Jobs demonstrated this by involving his best employees in major company’s decision-making process scrapping out incompetent and picking the top three, thereby, enhancing responsibility and adequate performance. Steve Jobs unalloyed passion for perfection and excellence is notable in his avoidance of the use of another company’s computer software or hardware. It made him create an efficient interface that works perfectly.

Furthermore, conceive visions and working with it is an important trait a leader should have. Jobs demonstrated this in his drive to make Apple products as the major sought after product in the world. The vision died as he was overthrown, but his return brought back the first focus of building an efficient product in not-profitable pursuit. Jobs annually gave 100 out of his best staff a retreat, so that he would get their attention listening to their needs and acting promptly. He showed that his was passionate to make people motivated in order to ensure great products. It was the only way to make the great profit over time.

3. In his article, Kaye (2011) states that attitudes are the long-term evaluation of people, inanimate objects, or even ideas that are either positive or negative, There are cognitively based, affective based, and behavior based attitudes. Jobs’ cognitively based attitude shows his passion to produce the best product in the world and make other companies inferior in terms of producing similar products. Regarding the affective based attitude, Jobs was not satisfied with the leadership of technology companies. He made established Microsoft and Apple Companies which produce good products. Thus the sales and marketers manage the company instead of the product manager. Regarding the behavior based attitude, Jobs expressed an outright disgust, and most of the times cursed people who fail to meet his desired target. He sought for perfection, and when he did not achieve it, he totally expressed disgust.

4. obs’ personality and attitude were the major reasons that stimulated the Apple employees to strive for greatness. It is the reason why the company differs from other companies with nicer bosses. Jobs indicated that his personality warranted him being forceful: “Maybe there a better way – a gentlemen’s club where we all wear ties and speak in this Brahmin language and velvet code words – but I do not know that way because I am the middle class from California.” It means he worked with his unpopular personality combining it with his foresight on achieving his goals.

5. Steve Jobs was known for arrogance and loathsome attitude. It made people around him uncomfortable. Everyone likes being treated well; otherwise, it tends to create ripples in the organization. Though Jobs focused on the goal at its peak some of his employees disdained his personality and made him worry. Jobs’ passion to ensure perfection made his employees work under the pressure. He encouraged his subordinates to do more work in less time with few recourses to meet goals. In conclusion, Steve Jobs was fully committed to his cause, he had an unbridled focus on each goal to achieve, and he had the best employees. Due to his personality, he was able to meet his dreams.