MGT 211

PRINCIPLE OF MARKETING

Assignment 01

Ms. Afsana Akhtar

Section 03 Samiya Yesmin 11304043

1/10/2012

This is a deliberation about the different ways managers are running Apple and Google. Based on the articles provided of Fortune Magazine’s book excerpt of “The Secrets Apple Keeps” and Interview of Larry Page.

Managing is all about how a manager can make other people in the organization work effectively and efficiently to achieve appropriate goals and objectives. This varies from organization to organization as each has its own goals and the best ways to achieve them.

As ‘Apple’ is a high-tech company belonging to such an industry where technology is changing every day and competition is excessively fierce, so to remain above it secrecy is a major issue. As Phil Schiller put it, the first few days of a product release is akin to that of a movie’s, intellectual properties are as valuable as limited they are. Also announcing products before launch is a business suicide, as competition will get time to come up with something similar or new, and customers will hold back from buying existing products, overall hurting the company sales. While secrecy within the company will ensure that chances of information leaking out is minimized as well as making for a healthy competition within employees to get maximum productivity, Douglas McGregor’s Theory Y. As they say in Apple, it’s not about the money rather the idea of being a part of such an esteemed company. And securing information also removes any sort of office politics and helps people mind their own business. And by the success of ‘Apple’ company, it is easy to say this managing method works for them.

Now ‘Google’ is an absolutely different type of organization, their goal is to “organize the world’s information”. And to be able to do that, they need to get the most number of minds together for this task. Thus the “learning organization” approach works best for them. So having free information empowers the employees while the open and friendly environment helps them work better as team work is crucial. This is also in part a “systems approach” as the total output is worth more than the sum of outputs of its parts separately, as the goal is to provide free mass information, which is not some secret new technology. Other added perks, like free gym and food etc. makes it a less staid and more stimulating job.