Managing Conflicts in Orgs
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The document summarizes the conflict between Steve Jobs and John Sculley at Apple in the 1980s. It describes how Jobs recruited Sculley to be CEO in 1983 while Jobs focused on the Mac division, but they later had a power struggle as Apple struggled. In 1985, the board sided with Sculley and removed Jobs from his position, though he remained on the board. The cultural differences between the entrepreneurial Jobs and experienced executive Sculley, as well as their different visions for Apple's future, ultimately led to their falling out.
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Managing Conflicts in Orgs
- 1. The Big MAC Conflict: Founder Steve Jobs vs. CEO John Scully Jeffrey Fisher, Rose Hastings, Yelena Naginsky, & Allen Teplitsky
- 2. 1976: Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak found Apple computers in Jobs’ parents garage. 1980 – 1983: Apple grows rapidly, becomes a publically traded company and is listed in the Fortune 500. 1983: Jobs recruits Pepsi executive John Sculley to become CEO of the company while Jobs focuses his attention on running the Macintosh division of Apple. 1984: The Mac debuts to rave reviews but disappointing sales which puts a financial burden on the company and strains the relationship between Jobs and Sculley. 1985: After a power struggle between Jobs and Sculley, the Board of Directors sides with Sculley and removes Jobs from his position as Apple VP and General Manager of the Mac department. Although he still remained a chairman of the board, he is stripped of all authority and resignes from the company shortly thereafter. Timeline of Conflict
- 3. Cultural Differences PEPSI 1898, APPLE 1976, PIXAR 1986, NEXT 1988
- 4. “A descriptive theory that aims to predict strategy use from combination of both concern for self and concern for other” ____ on Pruitt Dual-concern Model of Conflict Management http://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&docid=c5KJx9HssgSYvM&tbnid =L7JOj6OqGyDYtM:&ved=&url=http%3A%2F%2F2012books.lardbucket.org%2Fbooks%2Fprinciples-of-social- psychology%2Fsection_16_02.html&ei=cyTBUfDHHceE0QGhioGgCw&bvm=bv.47883778,d.dmQ&psig=AFQjCNEK3 HemQAzxKy26bazwmxqa__PgYA&ust=1371698605132491http://www.gamechanger.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/YoungJobsBorder-214x300.jpg
- 5. ‘Sculley says he accepts responsibility for his role but also believes that Apple’s board should have understood that Jobs needed to be in charge. “My sense is that it probably would never have broken down between Steve and me if we had figured out different roles,” Sculley says. “Maybe he should have been the CEO and I should have been the president.”’ Dual Concern Model of Conflict Management http://boygeniusreport.files.wordpres s.com/2012/03/steve-jobs- young.jpg?w=942 http://professornerdster.com/wp- content/uploads/2012/02/John-Scully-XXX.jpeg http://s.appleinsider.ru/2012/05/Jobs-and-Sculley.jpg
- 6. Lewicki’s Strategy & Tactics of Integrative Negotiation Understand and satisfy underlying interests and needs Interest often stem from deeply rooted human needs or values Founders Syndrome Need for control Need for recognition Need to execute personal vision The Founder’s Perspective: “Giving up control means losing identity. If I trust others with my invention, they could take the business in the wrong direction. They might try to take the value away and cut me out. I’ve spent years building this, and I am not going to give it to some strangers. They don’t really understand it and should not be the ones to run to the finish line with it.” Understanding the Other Party’s Interests & Needs
- 7. “My sense is that it probably would never have broken down between Steve and me if we had figured out different roles…Maybe he should have been the CEO and I should have been the president. It should have been worked out ahead of time, and that’s one of those things you look to a really good board to do.” - John Sculley in 2010 Understanding the Other Party’s Interests & Needs
- 8. Coleman’s Power Theories: Conflict and Power Competition (limited power) Cooperation (expandable power) VS.
- 9. All’s well that ends well?
Editor's Notes
- 1983 – 1985 "Jobs basically created his own team to create his own product, the Macintosh. His team actually had its own building. He even flew the pirate flag there. He said, 'It is better to be a pirate, than to be in the navy.' He had this company-within-a-company that became pitted against other parts of the company that actually made money." 1985- They basically stripped Jobs of responsibilities and gave him an office that he referred to as 'Siberia.' Well, someone like Steve Jobs could not sit in Siberia."
- There are four sectors in the figure that express how someone can strategically manage conflict through being concerned for others and oneself (problem solving), Concern only for self (contending), No concern for anyone including oneself (inactivity), and yielding which is a high concern for others and low for oneself. Most of these were used during the conflict, and even possibly in combination with one another, because they are strategies by choice they can be changed. -Problem solving is an common strategy used by supervisors toward subordinates, Sculley describes (in his interview) how he personally used this strategy with force in hopes of influencing Jobs which led to noncompliance and ending in contending. -Inactivity, which in the textbook was referred to as “Avoiding” or “Inaction” was not displayed by anyone saying “I will do nothing now” but the entire notion of having a team work in a separate building allowed an absence of confrontation. With a pirate flag up Jobs conveyed simultaneously that he only cared about himself and would plunder the rest of the company to take care of his own division. As well the board then used the inactivity strategy against jobs, putting him into an office he dubbed, “Siberia”, but he left. Jobs leaving could be analyzed with low concern for Sculley, who he cut communication with, and having high concern for himself and his needs by leaving to start a company again, so essentially the final strategy was contending through quitting. http://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&docid=c5KJx9HssgSYvM&tbnid=L7JOj6OqGyDYtM:&ved=&url=http%3A%2F%2F2012books.lardbucket.org%2Fbooks%2Fprinciples-of-social-psychology%2Fsection_16_02.html&ei=cyTBUfDHHceE0QGhioGgCw&bvm=bv.47883778,d.dmQ&psig=AFQjCNEK3HemQAzxKy26bazwmxqa__PgYA&ust=1371698605132491
- During an interview with Sculley, he expresses how the board should have switched their roles. This care for the company and for Job’s needs above his own was an avenue not explored when the conflict was occurring. If jobs could have been CEO earlier the conflict might have been averted. Exploring the opposing parties interests through yielding is an avenue that was worth looking into in the conflict between Steve Jobs and Sculley.
- After the conflict arose btwn Jobs and Sculley, there was still an opportunity for a resolution if the two sides had taken the steps to understand and address each others needs. Jobs needs stemmed from his vision of himself as the lifeblood of Apple. He epitomized “Founders Syndrome” which is very common among entrepreneurs. It is very common for people with this condition to have an extremely high need for control, down to the smallest details of the company’s operations. They have a need for recognition and visibility which ensures that everyone knows that the company is theirs. They are driven by the need to execute their vision of what the company or product should be.
- Had Sculley and the board understood these needs they could have tried to work out some arrangement with Jobs that would have allowed him to keep control over the aspects of the company that he cared most about – such as the product design- which allowing the CEO to control the more operational details. Sculley ultimately understood this but by then it too late.
- Coleman talks about limited power vs. expandable power. In the case of Jobs v. Sculley, the assumption was that there was a limited amount of power – which they couldn’t share. Either Jobs would have the power or Sculley would. Had they instead been operating under the assumption that there was an expandable power there could have been room for both of them. Sculley in a 2012 interview): “I wasn’t as sensitive as I wish I had been on that. On the other hand, there was no question in my mind, either then or later on, that we had no choice but to follow the business strategy which we did. It was to continue to focus on the Apple II until the (Macintosh) technology became powerful enough — which it later did in 1986 — when we could launch what (we called) Desktop Publishing, and it became wildly successful.”
- Ultimately, this conflict had a fairly happy ending for Steve Jobs. He returned to Apple as the company’s CEO in 1997 and worked in that capacity until he resigned in August 2011. He passed away from pancreatic cancer just two months later. In a commencement speech he gave at Stanford University in 2005, Jobs reflected on his conflict at Apple in the 1980’s and said that all in all it had been for the best. Referring to several good things that happened in his life after leaving Apple, he said, “I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it” (Jobs, 2005).