Managing The Human Resources The language of culture in relation to organisations and to organisational change has become increasingly

commonplace since the publication of a number of popular management books in the 1980s (Peters and Waterman1982; Deal and Kennedy 1982; Handy 1985).

Culture is in principle a lens through which an organisation can be understood through an appreciation of an organisations behaviour, rituals, beliefs, shared ideology and unspoken assumptions.

Chris Hendry (1995) in his book Human Resources Management asks us to examine organisational culture in distinct sub categories. Hendry states that organisational cultures are never fully aligned, intrinsically complex and contain multidimensional subcultures. He believes that in identifying how these cultures behave an organisation can gain both a positive and a negative understanding on the effect the culture has on the staff and the work place. In order to provide a reasoned analysis of what is good and what is detrimental to the organisation of Apple this paper will use the principles of Hendry and look at individual aspects of the Apple culture in particular relation to Communication & Trust, leadership, recruitment and performance reviews.

Communication & Trust

Despite high competition Apple has been successful in developing a culture that is flexible and robust to meet the demands of a turbulent demanding market.

The leaders within Apple have developed over the years a culture that is person centred with employees empowered to express themselves and make decisions. Many believe that this has been a key contributor to the success of Apple. It is believed that the flatter the hierarchical structure the better it is to communicate. Therefore it would be assumed that communication within Apple is a shining example of best practice particularly as Steven Jobs has worked hard to remove bureaucratic barriers by moving away from the old style hierarchical structure. However the employee survey carried out in 1990 identified that despite all this, there still remains communication problems within Apple that would indicate a weakness that is addressed further in this paper.