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Role of Leadership in Achieving Sustainable Organizational Change: Steve

Jobs

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Imperial Journal of Interdisciplinary Research (IJIR)
Vol-2, Issue-8, 2016
ISSN: 2454-1362, http://www.onlinejournal.in

Role of Leadership in Achieving

Sustainable Organizational Change:
Steve Jobs
Colin Ting Si Xue
Asia Pacific University of Technology and Innovation, TPM, Kuala Lumpur, 57000,
Malaysia

Abstract: There are many leaders who have Change – A process model
successfully led the organization to growth and The change as a process was firstly introduced by
success using different leadership styles. This paper Lewin in 1947 [23]. According to the model, it is
analyzed the role of leadership of Apple co-founder more important to focus on the steps of
and former CEO, Steve Jobs, in achieving implementation rather than conceptual tasks
sustainable organizational change and his required. A successful change project should
leadership styles. Due to his great leadership styles, undergo three steps: unfreezing, moving and
Apple Inc. has been one of the top technology freezing. To begin a change, the organization should
organization today. ‘unfreeze’ its current state thus new behavior can be
adopted successfully. People are preparing to leave
Keywords: Apple, Leadership, Steve Jobs, current state. After that, resisting forces should be
Sustainable Change, Trait Theory, Transformational minimized and change should be implemented by
utilizing driving forces. People have to leave their
1. Introduction current comfort zone. Once the change has been
implemented, the organization should ‘refreeze’ into
In today’s fast-moving business world, it is new state. Figure 1 illustrates Lewin’s change model.
getting more important for the organizations to
embrace change. Without change, the organization
will likely lose their competitive advantages and
unable to deliver the needs from loyal customers.
[35] stated that changes are necessary in
organizations to improve efficiency and overcome
the challenges posed by competitors.
What actually change is? Figure 1. Lewin’s Change Model. [23]
According to [21], change basically means
“organizational restructuring, developing new job
functions and creating new organizational
Leadership – Change Agent
departments”. It also means organizational
Changes usually do not occur unless it is suggested
development and organizational transformation [29].
by someone in the organizations such as adopting
A successful change needs to undergo a thoughtful
different goals, framework, objectives etc. [4].
planning, strategic planning, people involvement and
Leaders play a vital role in achieving the changes in
fully budgeted. [34] also said every organization
an organization. They are not only responsible in
should have a healthy growth of business. [15]
better job performance but also to drive positive
mentioned that change enables an organization to
change. They have a clear vision of the organization.
stay competitive and efficient in marketplace. The
In order to have a successful change, the most
needs of change are to have a more integrated way of
important element that leaders must have is
working and to improve performance of business. A
“leadership”. Leadership can be defined as one of the
proper change management is necessary for every
key drivers of the organizational change
organization in today’s business world. [20] noted
implementation [12]. A great change of organization
that an improper change will cause an organization to
is related with change leadership. According to [19]
fail in their business. An organization needs to adapt
and [34], a leader should have leadership skills
change continuously in order to stay competitive. To
which include marketing and sales ability,
have an effective change in organization, it must
communication skills and leadership development.
begin well for the changes to take effect [13].

Imperial Journal of Interdisciplinary Research (IJIR) Page 263

Imperial Journal of Interdisciplinary Research (IJIR)
Vol-2, Issue-8, 2016
ISSN: 2454-1362, http://www.onlinejournal.in
Without these skills it may cause ineffectiveness of
change. [38] said there are two reasons on the failure
of organizational change. One is people in the
organizations are ignored and another one is lack of
leadership styles used by change agents. Besides,
leader’s behavior is also important as it affects the
change process [26]. Effective change is impossible
without a proper, strong leadership. In today’s
business environment, [3] and [18] have analyzed
and concluded that transformational leadership is the
best. It is the most effective in times of
organizational change. A transformational leadership
will have set of behaviors: fairness, set goals, give
supports to others, high expectations and good
communication.
2. Organization Background
According to [6], Apple Inc. was founded in
April 1976 by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak with
extremely innovative and intelligent minds. During
that time, both of them wanted to create a central
processing unit (CPU) that is different from their
competitor – IBM. After almost one year, Apple was
finally incorporated and became a challenger to IBM.
Based on [33] analysis, after Steve Jobs was resigned
from Apple Inc. in 1985. Then he had formed a new
company called NeXT Inc. Apple Inc. started facing
problems such as difficulty in increasing sales and
market share. Although Apple Inc. has hired
different leader, but it seemed useless. Apple Inc.
was in financial problem and was on the brink of
bankruptcy and its sales result was plummeted by
30%. Apple Inc. has removed Gil Amelio as CEO
due to his unsuccessfulness of leading company.
Steve Jobs has been rehired as CEO. It was shiny
opportunities for him to pitch his company, NeXT
company. On 20th December 1996, Apple Inc. has
announced to use NeXT software and this has
become the foundation for their computer future
Operating System due to its user friendly,
aesthetically pleasing and able to run powerful
software. Besides, Steve Jobs also reduced the
number of products by 70% because they are
unnecessary. During that time, his strategy was only
to produce main products: desktop and portable
device for both consumers and professionals. Apple
Inc. was then acquired for $427 million and it has
successfully away from bankruptcy. After Because
of his strong leadership styles and innovative vision,
he had successfully made a triumphant return to
Apple Inc. Apple Inc. has been recorded as one of
the greatest comeback in business history [24].
Today, Apple Inc. has operated more than 350
retails store worldwide. It also established an online
store which served as a primary driver of success.
The organization has hired more than 110,000
employees and made annual sales of $51.5 billion
[5]. Apple Inc. has designed and developed different
Imperial Journal of Interdisciplinary Research (IJIR)
types of innovative products such as MacBook,
iPhone, iPods, iPads and Apple TV. Besides, the
organization also developed software such as Mac
OS X Operating System, iTunes, iLife, GarageBand
etc. Among these, iPhone has been recognized as one
of the most innovative products. According to [31],
Apple CEO, Tim Cook has announced that Apple
has successfully sold 700 million iPhones. Apple Inc.
has provided a vast amount of applications and
services to iPhones. As of June 2015, Apple Inc. has
announced the App Store has passed 100 billion
applications downloads. According to [16], Apple
App Store has been recognized as top mobile
application sources. One of the reason of the success
of iPhone is its app store.
Today, Apple Inc. has so many strong
competitors such as Google, Microsoft and Amazon
who also develop high-tech products. Apple Inc. has
planned strategically on how to beat its competitors.
They have treated innovation as the source of
survival and they penetrated these ideas into
corporate culture. This is how Apple Inc. was unique
from others. According to [17], Apple Inc. has
predominated and fulfilled the needs of customers, at
the same time, they have produced luxurious,
faultless and advanced fashionable products. When
these have been combined to together, people will
choose Apple products rather than others.
3. Discussion
In order to lead an organization to success, it
should have a great leader with different leadership
styles. Steve Jobs has been identified as one of the
most celebrated and passionate leader in technology
sector. According to [28], a good characteristic such
as abilities and personalities can be determined
through leader’s behavior. Job’s leadership is defined
by his behavior and personality. Apple Inc. faced
difficulties in 1980s. Apple Inc. has invented and
introduced Apple Lisa at $10,000. However, it was a
failure. During that time, Apple computers such as
Mac I and Newton was unsuccessful. Steve Jobs was
fired by the company, company underwent several
CEO changes, declining of the stock prices and its
future was in unknown state. When Steve Jobs came
back as CEO in 1997, he had successfully saved the
company. He quickly changed the company
corporate culture and new era of Apple begun. His
leadership styles are defined when he came back to
Apple Inc. in 1996. He said Apple Inc. will die if it is
still not get the attention on what it needed. The main
leadership assessments of Steve Jobs are
Transformational Leadership and Trait Leadership.
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Imperial Journal of Interdisciplinary Research (IJIR)
Vol-2, Issue-8, 2016
ISSN: 2454-1362, http://www.onlinejournal.in
3.1. Transformational Leadership
[32] and [38] explain transformational
leadership as a leader who is able to stimulate and
inspire his followers to achieve extraordinary
outcomes. The leader will usually ask and help the
followers to do more than required and achieve
unexpected goals. The leader will pay full attention
to his follower and help them to solve the problem by
looking at old problem in new way. As [22] said, a
transformational leadership will have these
characteristics: “help subordinate understand the
need of change”, “adopt long-range and broad
perspective”, “help subordinate to find their own
fulfilment” etc. [27] explored that one of the
leadership style of Steve Jobs is transformational. He
was a leader who always motivated his followers,
stakeholders, customers with strong vision, that was
to create something that was different from others,
innovative and trendsetter. There were three
attributes used to describe his characteristics:
“creative”, “visionary” and “passionate”. He always
thinks about the needs of customers when he had
new ideas.
Steve Jobs always invent something that is better
than others, makes the complicated things simple. In
2001, he had successfully invented a new device that
totally forever changed the way of listening music.
The new device comes with a small little shinny
white design – iPod. He had used his creativity to
design the iPod and made it different from its
competitors. Compare to its competitors, the users
just simply plugged the cable with the computer and
started transferring music to the device. Within few
years, iPod quickly became a hot product for music
lovers. When Microsoft launched Zune media player
in 2006, it only achieved a less than 5% market
share. The reason is simple; it was designed with
profit in mind while iPod was designed with usability
[43]. With the launch of iTunes music software in
2003, together with iPod portable music player, had
helped the commerce of music once again. He had
also created the first online music store that
competed effectively with piracy. [41] said with the
launched of iTunes, the percentage of illegal music
download also reduced. iTunes used a system, called
Digital Rights Management (DRM) to encrypt music
files to prevent from illegal download [7]. As Doug
Morris, former head of Universal Music Group said
“Steve Jobs had created something that had changed
the way people buy music and people would be
willing to pay for it” [43]. People no longer need to
go to the music store to buy the entire CD ($18)
instead of just buy a song online which costs $0.99.
When iTunes combined with iPods, he successfully
turned the music into a fashion statement and became
a must-have mobile accessory. Paul Vidich, former
head of Warner Music Group said “Steve Jobs had
made digital music fashionable” [43]. iPod and
Imperial Journal of Interdisciplinary Research (IJIR)
iTunes both have successfully revolutionized the way
people listen to music and the willingness of people
to spend money on applications on iTunes. Steve
Jobs was never a traditional leader but a people who
always wanted to create something different for
everyone (Tabitha, 2014). Since 2007, Apple
Computer, Inc. has been changed to Apple Inc.
which means Apple was not only a computer
manufacturer. The company was shifted towards
consumer electronics like iPhone, iPad, and Apple
TV.
3.2. Trait Leadership Theory
Trait theory considers the individual
characteristics that will make the leader different
from non-leaders through personality, physical,
social and intellectual traits [11]. According to [2],
leadership success cannot be guaranteed only based
on the possession of certain traits, however effective
leaders can be different from other leaders in certain
key respects. These key respects are: ambition,
energy, cognitive ability, motivation, self-
confidence, desire to lead, business knowledge etc.
According to [1] and [14], they said a leader
who are adventures is able to take the risks in
innovation is also a way to show self-confidence. A
leader should be able to try something that might fail.
Steve Jobs always have high self-confidence that
every product he introduced could be innovative and
able to change the world. [8] said one of the famous
sign to show his self-confidence is the willingness to
bet the entire organization on Apple II. In the
beginning when Steve Jobs had invented the first
Mac computer, he believed that he was able to sell
the computer and create value for the company.
However, it was declined by Apple Inc. since
innovation needs a lot of money. When Jobs was
back to the company and became CEO, he turned
around the bet he made before. This time he bet the
entire company on iMac computer and iPod. He
refused to do any market research by saying “my job
is to figure out what the people are going to want
instead of what they want because people will never
know what they want until you show them
something” [44].
According to [9], Steve Jobs had a high
cognitive ability. He was able to solve most of the
problems in the company. When he was young, his
parents inspired him to learn and experiment. Walter
said he liked a wonderful design. One of the most
famous example is how he solved the crappy phones
in the company. Their phone was huge, complicated
and in ugly design. During that time, they were
having success with their iPod products. Jobs had an
idea that is to design a portable smartphone with
wonderful design. In 2007, iPhone was released and
it totally changed the definition of a smartphone [42].
Every time Jobs announced a new iPhone, he was
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Imperial Journal of Interdisciplinary Research (IJIR)
Vol-2, Issue-8, 2016
ISSN: 2454-1362, http://www.onlinejournal.in
able to fulfil the customers’ needs. [17] said people
were willing to choose and purchase their products
due to its impeccable, luxurious and high-tech, they
were able to satisfy all their needs. Until now, iPhone
is still the most successful smartphones and the sales
reached 231.2 million [36].
4. Conclusion
In conclusion, Steve Jobs was one of the leaders
who has a strong leadership style that successfully in
achieving sustainable organizational changes. He had
used his personality, traits, and intelligence and
leadership styles to save the organization from the
brink of bankruptcy to one of the most profitable
organization. As a transformational leader, he was
more focused on the quality and innovation. He used
his intelligent, creativity and passion to create
countless products such as MacBook, iPhones, iPad,
iPod etc. Besides, he always introduced the products
that met and satisfied the customers’ needs and
demands. [37] said Steve Jobs understood the
customers’ needs and their feeling of using the
products. He will design computers and smartphones
with friendly user interface that appealed more to
customers. He had achieved the slogan that he
created “think differently”.
5. Recommendation
Steve Jobs has a very strong leadership style that
can lead an organization to success. However, Steve
Jobs does not have a strong emotional intelligence
[10]. Emotional intelligence is important as it helps
to make a comfortable environment at work. He
refused to listen to his employees besides work
discussion about the new ideas. He almost made
every decision himself. In order to have a better
leadership styles, he should open his mind by
listening to employees’ opinion. This will help the
problems and projects to be done faster. Besides, the
relationship between leader and employees will
definitely improve. According to [25], she said some
employees rejected to work with Steve Jobs due to
his attitude. A project might fail if employees resign
suddenly. He should stop scolding employees by
using foul languages in public as this will reduce the
organization image. If a leader has a good attitude,
many employees are willing to work with him and
this will increase the speed of a project and also
bring an effective result.
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