Compare and contrast three companies Research Paper

Compare and contrast three companies - Research Paper Example The services and products include software, online advertising technologies, search and cloud computing. On the other hand, Apple Company specializes in the production of computers and computer-related devices such as software and mobile smartphones. Apple Incorporation designs iPads, Macs (personal computers), iPhones, iPads and various versions of operating systems such as OS X, iLife and iWork. With a current market cap of $105 billion, Apple is slightly behind Intel and ahead of Dell. iPods sold by the company account for over two-thirds of the MP3 player market (Kahney 1). The three companies not only share a host of similarities but also exhibit a range of differences. The two companies; Google and Semco, share a similarity in the degree of freedom given to employees in order to design or influence the end products of production. The engineers working at Google have significant independence in terms of the types of projects they chose to work on. The engineers are encouraged to allocate up to a maximum of 20 percent of weekly working schedule time to the pursuit of personal software ideas. Records indicate that the products, Google News and Gmail first came out as individual endeavors of Google’s employees (Kahney 2). On the other hand, Semco has eliminated the aspect of using time clocks in management. The employees operating on the factory floor enjoy the freedom of coming to work and leaving when they feel like doing so. The management of Semco makes the assumption that all the employees are trustworthy adults and as such, do not need direct supervision on time-keeping. It is unbelievable that the employees could come to the factory every morning and fail to get down to work as expected by the management (Semler 6). The expected observation by the very management (counselors) is that the workers would eventually start coordinating the working-hours scheduling by themselves. The workers have freedom to the extent that, upon achieving the set