Andrew Hood

Prin. B/M/F

Morton

2/12/15

Rate That Business Decision

The news report I used can be found at http://fortune.com/2012/10/01/the-greatest-business-decisions-of-all-time/ 

        In this article concerning the position Apple was in during the late 1990s, the opportunity cost would have been to fire the CEO Amelio and replace him with Edgar Woolard, a board member at this time, who would have had the leadership and decision-making skills to get Apple out of the nearly $1 billion of debt they were in.  Gil Amelio, having served as the CEO of Apple for just over a year, had increased Apple’s debt by about $700 million by selling 1.5 million of Apple’s shares.  As a result, Apple’s board looked into hiring a new CEO.  In their searching, they found and hired former co-founder Steve Jobs.

        Instead of hiring Steve Jobs, Apple’s board’s next best alternative would have been to bump the new-at-the-time board member Edgar Woolard into the CEO position, as he would have not only gotten them out of their debt, but he would have given Apple’s employees a better working atmosphere and created a better reputation working with customers.  Woolard, having only been at Apple for about a year, realized the direction that CEO Gil Amelio was taking Apple, and brought it to the board’s attention to be discussed.  Woolard was a concerned board member eager to take action to solve the problem at hand, and that’s what he would have done had he been hired as the new CEO and been given freedom to fix Apple’s financial problem.  These are ultimately the reasons why the mature, responsible, and wise Edgar Woolard would have done excelled and flourished at the position of CEO for Apple.