Compare And Contrast Organizational Structure Of Apple And Samsung

2. Compare and Contrast of Apple and Samsung Electronics on innovation’s implementation

2.1 Organizational Structure

If a business wants to grow and be profitable, it requires an organizational structure so as to ensure that there are enough human resources with specific responsibilities within the company to accomplish its aims. A good organizational structure could help a company to increase its productivity, enhance the communication among its employees and employers, and inspire innovation; in other words, to create a labor environment where people can work effectively. (Faith Technologies, 2011) However, each company adopts its own organizational structure depending on its objectives. In our case, Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics have different organizational compositions.

On the one hand, Apple’s structure is very simple. There are the CEO, four vice presidents (the fourth is Paul Devene, who has been hired recently in order to be accountable for special projects), 8 senior vice presidents and the employees. There are no committees. The characteristic of its structure is that decisions are made at the lowest level. Specifically, corporate directors can make policy and oversee all activities, but local employees are responsible for day-to-day decisions. However, only the CEO is capable of approving or disapproving any final decision and only the finance chief is liable to profits and losses (P&L), and not each manager separately, as according to Steve Jobs, a company should have this type of command-and-control structure where opinions and ideas are shared at the top. (Research - Methodology, 2013) Moreover, this structure gives Apple the chance to concentrate on a few things at a time, so well and for so long, which is...

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...er, its leader, Tim Cook nowadays, is deeply engaged in R&D, while the employees are split into small focused groups, which motivates them more. Finally, Apple was always focused on a specific target group, on the niche, which helps conflicts between different aims to be avoided. (Kahney, 2010)

Instead, Samsung Electronics’ R&D strategy is totally different. First of all, Samsung Electronics strives to find new ideas and develop them in existing markets. As a result, it invests approximately $10.5 billion, or 5.7 percent of revenue (2012), and has over 60000 employees across 42 global research centres. Furthermore, it conducts surveys about consumers’ preferences and buys similar reports, while at the same time imbeds employees in different countries to observe and study people’ trends and try to find new ideas about how to satisfy their needs. (Furchgott, 2013)