Cultural Changes To Organisations Apple Case Study Business Essay

Cultural Changes To Organisations Apple Case Study Business Essay This essay was primary design to examine the important of the cultural changes to organisations using Apple as a Case Study, gathering different systematic approach with variable models, then having examined the core aspect of culture, the leadership quality, organisation structure, performance management and the human resource strategy, to analyse possible outcome of any chosen approach for the predicted changes. It was discovered that there is no one way approach to the end result, in recommendation to this complexity nature however, conclusion where made, that sacrifice have to be made to get rid of the bad aspect of the organisation to retain this goods, that it is rather totally impossible to have a holistic and unique organisation without some form of setback if organisations objectives are to be achieved. More so the recommendations made where in great consideration of Apples corporate culture. What is culture of Apple? Apple incorporation is todays one of the biggest if not the biggest organisation culture change trend master, in the past few years apple as being in the light of it totally perceive genius ways of getting thing done with a different, however Apples corporate culture is constantly changing as a result of changes to its leadership/CEO from time to time. Apples corporate culture is characterise by its intense work ethic and casual work culture (case study p.3) observers also noted that Apple culture is centred on secrecy and very hard discipline for employees that void the rule by sharing information. To gain an in-depth understanding of this we must dwell into Apple historical background, it pros and cons, and the possibility of future management. Therefore the empirical question would be what is the culture of Apple? What is culture? Culture has been describe by many authors, school of thoughts, theories to mention a few in relation to its conceptual usage, it has been described for example as the dominant values espoused by an organisation, the commonly held and relatively stable set of beliefs, attitudes, values and norms that exit throughout an organisation the basic assumption and beliefs that are share by member of an organisation. In recent time culture has been refer to as the way things are done around here. Lynch (2006, p.37) culture refers to the shared understandings and meanings of that members have concerning an organisation. Rather as individuals have distinctive personalities organisation have their own particular culture. Some will be friendly, relaxed and informal while others will be highly formal aloof and hostile. Also Drenna(1992).in senior.B (1997).p101)says culture is what typical of the organisation, the habits the prevailing attitudes, the grown up pattern of accepted and expected behavio ur . The main feature of culture is that even though there are many organisational differences there seem to be share understandings within them. Culture tends to build gradually in rational thinking of groups with the system which later forms a sub/dominant culture. Using Handy (1993) cultural model, handy opine that A culture cannot be precisely define, for it is something that is perceived, something felt handy (p. 191).however he pointed out the four type of culture in organisation which are explain in fig1.1. Type Metaphor Characteristics Power Culture A web Control from centre; political and entrepreneurial ,personal power serves the figure-head and the leader Role Culture The Greek Temple Classical structure; bureaucratic; role identity position power predominate, serves the structure Task culture A net Valued individual expertise and contribution focus on completing the job, both personal and position powers are important; high level of collaboration base on group unity. Person culture A cluster or galaxy Combine of a lose collection of individuals-pursuing own goal but share common facility, power not necessary a focus because members are experts in their own field. This culture serves the individual. Fig1.1 The four culture type highlights how power and control are utilized by organisation and of whose interest are they serving? certainly theres an element of power culture at Apple inc, as noted in the case study, Steve entrepreneurship style had giving way for personal ideology and more-or-less gain control over the system, he is characterise as Apple a mirror image of Apple, of course we can say this is of Advantage, but the bad aspect is the span of control and politic associated with Steve upon returning back in late 1990s, when he changed the culture back to the way its use to be when he was at the apex Apple. Also the Role culture could be link with eras of Sculley, and other leaders who try to formalize the structure by imposing their own rule, neglecting the important of project groups, which is central to the Task culture even though individual expertise at Apple is crucial to its innovation the only existing collaboration is based on secrecy. A typical reflection of Apple is t he individual culture we may say is the Person culture as different geeks work tiredly to bring about a unique invention based on their expertise. Is the culture good or bad for Apple? According to, Van backer(case study p.10), ( Backer)an analyst at Gartner inc, noted when Apple goes out to hire somebody, the no 1 criteria isnt how much experience you have or who you know .its whether they think you will fit into the culture. Secrecy seems very good for Apples corporate culture as it brought good market value for the product, innovation, and keeps customer loyalty going, the downside of this though is the culture of Secrecy had eaten deep into both the internal and external environment of Apple, they became so paranoid that employee were not allow to share internal information, they call it the surprise factor (case study P.11 1). Clearly this will affect employees engagement and leads to de-motivation of individuals, another is legal ethics surrounding secrecy that leads to big bail out in legal battle, which of course is bad for the corporate image and share profit. Reasonably any changes to the secrecy culture without due care may affect performance and alter t he structure. Nevertheless the culture seems unique but can it function without structure, the leadership, performance and strategy? Ideally, we can communicate this by a thorough analysis of the model below; take note that the model is a non linear model as all the elements are inter-related and interdependent. Fig1.2 A model of relationship between culture, leadership, performance, strategy and structure. The model explained that culture is interdependent with the other four linked organisational behaviour, that any alteration at the centre point (culture) will have a major effect on the these linked elements in any direction, in a simple form an alteration of culture as a result of leadership change will also result in structural change, impacted the strategy, and affect the performance, the rebounds effect may occur in vice-visa order, which in turns brings complexity rather than flexibility. As organisation faces difficult obstacles in providing systemic changes to culture, the most successful organisations are belief to be those with a clear understanding of the important changes from the four elements; this view is supported by various scholars, Cameron and Quinn (2006) emphasis this life cycle shift in culture that had developed in Apple over time. Noticeable in the case study is the commentators reference to Apple as a unique culture, analysts argued that Steve the CEO of Apple is the best marketer in the world, this is good but his leadership style suggests a different view. For instance secrecy is the pinnacle of Apples strategic marketing culture. The initial exit of Steve saw a change in leadership that resulted in different performance and strategy, when Sculley was brought on by Steve to help, as a manager, this itself would obviously alter the Structure, because the strategy was not yielding good results. Which cause a drastic change of performance as the new leader struggle to change the previous culture. Apple was known to appreciate and value its employee, it worth noting that whereas motivational theories such as B.F Skinner (1974), Mintberg (1979), have highlighted the importance of reward and value as the ideological stimuli that motivate individual to work, in contrast, at Apple any universal concept of motivation might not work, because of how Apple justifies its reward system with a do or die culture. More so the structure at Apple Inc is becoming complex as it evolves into a different pattern over the years. FIG2 Hierarchy and Flat structure THE EFFECT OF STRUCTURE The above is an illustration of a standardize structure of organisation formulated by many scholars over the year to explain organizational functionality; the flat is more prominent to entrepreneurship, with suitable element of informal, charismatic, and informal leadership quality but grapevine in nature while the other is ideal for a larger organisation, this was centred by the work of Mayo (1934) in Hawthorn study and was later confirmed by Huczynski and Buchanan,(2007 p.460). It is said the right structure must support strategy, be appropriate-reflecting the goals of individual or the organisation. It must remain flexible and be permissive to communication. However, of all the supportive research is the work of Canadian academic, Henry Mintzberg. According to Mintzberg (1979) an organisational structure is the sum total of the way in which it divides its labour into distinct tasks and then achieve coordination between them. also structure is define as the established pattern of relationship between the components parts of an organisation, out lining both communication control and authority patterns .supportive to this also is Wilson and Rosenfeld(1990) explained that structure distinguishes the parts of an organisation and delineates the relationship between them. This is supported by Apples trend in organisation structure which is more complex than initially perceived, for instance Apple is seen as the pioneer of work hard play hard ethic. Equally important is the frequent changes in culture as different leaders tried to adopt a different approach to reorganise the structure, it is interesting that analyst said Apple adopted a style that was not too far too formal or hierarchical and that the approach was more result-driven.the other bad effect of Apple structure is it tend to yield to favouritism, unfairness and biases, this bad thing of having a formal structure, as employees complain of organisational politics within the system, this will no doubt de-motivate staff morale. In ugly circumstances as a reference to the case study, any poor performance at Apple will not be consistent with its culture; it is important to say that any change in culture will resort in change in structure, however if the structure cannot survive without the culture then where do we inject the leadership style to bring about ultimate performance? Apple structure is neither hierarchy nor flat we could say its more of a hybrid or matrix, the flat is more organic which is prone to bureaucracy according to Max webber in analyst of organisation he had identified the principle of bureaucracy as a continuous organisation that is bound by rules. Webber outline the importance of ideal bureaucracy to an organisation as positive and rational unlike the other which he described as domination as charismatic authority and traditional authority .thus we are likely to adjust the culture to fit the structure as the case of Apple might be, ideally the Adhocracy culture may be implemented. Apples ideal culture Vs Structure Cameron and Quinn (2006) gave an insight into what an ideal adhocracy culture is, they went on to say that there are four types of culture develops within different dimension, the four culture namely the Clan culture, the Hierarchy Culture, the Market Culture and the Adhocracy Culture. The assumption were that organisation were in business to develop new ideas, new product and thus be able to respond to the hyper turbulent world, therefore the major task of management would be to forester creativity, entrepreneurship and innovation. The good picture is Apple structure is informal which promotes cratetivity, and recognises the important of leadership charisma, its a bitter end as this can only work effectively in smaller organisation. Adhocracy have been characterised as tents rather than palaces in sense that they are temporary and response to situational changes rapidly, taking advantage of flexibility and ambiguity. As Apple is a technological industry which must learn to adjust and respond to change in product and market value, Apples culture is dynamic because of the visionary and risk of it leadership effectiveness, as their focus is leading edge of new products and producing unique and original product. However is important to state that the transformation of Apple largely rely on leadership quality and employee commitment to it structural and cultural changes whenever the needs arise. Fig 2.1 A representation of Apples organisation formation structure. AGENT OF TRANSFORMATION AND THE IMPACT OF LEADERSHIP Leadership as a concept has been an interesting centre piece to different fields of thought, to the ordinary man; a leader is just a symbolic head, but as a supportive element by theorists and analysts a definite category of classification; it is said the most important type of leaderships are of the following: the charismatic, the traditional, the situational, the appointed, the functional and the principle centred leader for the purpose of this essay we will look at leadership from management perspective, according Cole(2004), leadership is define as the following: leadership at work is a dynamic process whereby one individual in a group is not only responsible for the group results but actively seeks the collaboration and commitment of all the group members in a achieving group goals in a particular context and against the background of a particular national culture INNOVATORS The leadership style of Apple is highly represented by their iconic CEO Steve that is highly regarded for his innovative, creative and marketing strategies. Using classification of leadership, his style could be linked as the transformational leader according to Burns (1978), which is characterised by the transformation of organisation, creativity and innovation with the purpose to engender commitment. This is genuinely good for Apple, However the simplicity of his approach could resort in the downfall of his perceived personality and organisational performance, for instance if this was ideal for the organisational culture then the question would be the sited instances of global workforce revolting against the culture of secrecy used by Apple as an accepted way to move the company forward. The side effect of Steves charismatic role at Apple is what happens when he leaves the organisation! Will this mean theres no other possible replacement for his strategy and the portrait of Apple i s damages for good? If apple is to maintain its status quo as the number one most valued company in the world then it needs to engage itself in some form of leadership reorientation as over the past decade different management/leaders have tied to change the culture of apple and its structure only to head back to the starting point which is where they are today, Steve job certainly must be doing some right, concrete evidence suggest that Steve job must have outperformed his expectation to the board of management as emphasized in the case study. CONSTRAINTS the ripple effect of change of leaders/managers at Apple inc emphasis the need for change in culture, however this changes also brought about change in structure as each leader tries to implement his/her own ideology, arguable is the internal problem that apple faces from its reorganisation, for instance the appointment of Sculley who was credit for making Apple one of the biggest and fastest-growing corporation in the US.(case study p.5 ).A series of failure in the early 90s again brought another power shift when the board decided it time for leadership change and Micheal pindler was appointed in 1993 to replace Sculley, Spinder also fail to perform as expected ,Amelio could have being the one man that brought the last drastic change into apple because of his focus on Apple product line and workforce reduction but fail follow Apples corporate culture, once more Steve was back in business to turn things Around. A key point to his transformational leadership style, nevertheless it wou ld appear that the board were more interested in performance rather than leadership quality or style; however performance cannot be divorced from leadership. THE ACHIEVER Performance, theres no generalised definition of performance; it has being said that performance cannot be easily defined as you cannot measure or manage it. However few management researchers have noted the core different of performance from other fields in comparison to management sectors. Performance is more adapted to performance management day in day out, therefore performance could be agreed to be of relevance to situational changes. Armstrong and Baron (1998) define performance management as a strategic and integrated approach to delivering sustained success to organization by improving the performance of the people who work in them by developing the capability of team and individual who work in them.. Therefore, it provides avenue for knowledge on organizational objectives and goals and a spectrum to manage and train individual in order to achieve to such objectives Armstrong stress that performance is strategic because it is concern with broader issues facing organizational effectiveness. As evidence in the case study the market value of Apple against the backdrop of its financial performance over the years in Exhibit VIII, it is clear that in the past decade there being a major profit share in the company, more so recently Apple posted all time record revenue with increase earnings of 78 percent, as of July 2010. Apple posted record revenue of $15.7 billion and also quarterly profit of $3.25 billion, (APPLE press release 2006). Surely the share holders would be very pleased with the result. These results compare to workforce engagement and the strategy used to achieve result cannot be overlooked, Apple was known to appreciate its employees. It was consider a great place to work for people who are personate about what they did. (Case study p.3) also experts felt one of the key success to Apples performance is its ability to attract and retain key personnel in technical, marketing and staff positions. Nevertheless financial performance in one comfort zone for the company identity externally, but does this speak the same for the internal general audit of employee of Apple who work tirelessly for over 60hours to get this results out. The secrecy involved creating the competitive edge and the sighted instance of the Chinese employees that commit suicide then how engaged are the staff of Apple incorporation. In reality if we alter the strategic approach of performance which rely on secrecy and long hour working ethic, surely this would revert the profit standing of Apple ,therefore this cant be achieved although the element of secrecy may be bad, this however may not be change as the entire strategy and organisation culture rely on it to survive. The unique culture of Apple which is base on the leadership style of one man approach: Steve jobs, can it survive after the exit of jobs. its plausible to say yes as jobs himself claim he had trained others to manage whenever he is no longer available, however the determination of each individual could result in systemic failure of the culture as every leader approach with a different goal setting. If the goal serve as the basis for motivation, and the goals are set by managers, industrial standard or base on negotiation, how then do you motivate individual, researchers Add a few more noted that one can be motivated by target set against the others while you could be de-motivated by over pressured standard. levison (1972)highlights this in Asinine attitude towards motivation, in relation to reward or punishment to motivate workers, more so borrowing the work of Hygiene theory of motivation by Herzberg (1968),which he claim that the most important motivator or satisfier are Achievement Recognition Work itself Responsibility Advancement. While the following called hygiene factors or dissatisfies Company policy and administration. Supervision-the technical aspects. Salary. Interpersonal relations-supervision Working conditions. Herzberg pointed out that these factors were intrinsically related to the content of work, i.e. with intrinsic challenge, interest and the individual responses generated by them. If applied to Apple, how do we justify the working condition of staff who work for long hours to get the job done, or does the secrecy atmosphere bring about individual motivation or fear of punishment has whoever fail to comply to the culture is noticeably punished, the reward scheme in apple for those that come up with innovative technology like iphone, mac ipad could result in esteem of individual while the punishment approach on the other hand is detrimental to the public image of Apple as any failure leads to sacking individual or leakage of secret will automatically result in dismissal. Therefore we could say any universal concept of motivation might not work in Apple cooperate culture base on perceived punishment and reward of staff performance, thus Apple cooperate culture is zero experience and no stability of staff until now though it has worked for the company. Even though the strategy may be consider risky. Apple target young staff recruits with less commitment and more glory seeking rather than experience. However is worth saying the older generation are not mush expandable. This could be explain using Maslow (1956) Hierarchy of needs, which he associated the important of needs to motivate individual, starting from basic needs called physiological needs, follow by safety needs, then love needs, esteem needs, and self actualisation. He emphasis that as one needs is fulfil we move up to another. A key point to Apple Staff retention Goal setting (locke,shaw sari latham 1981)A change in goal will foreseen a better Apple as a company, for example Apple has always focus on improving on a previous product i.e. Iphone1,2,3..4.e.tc while not come up with something entirely different and innovative. Even though Apple came up with a micro palm device name ipad, it still relied entire on the old operating system which is gradually facing out as competition grows in the technology industry. Again the past ten years down the line Steve Jobs was back the in same job at the apex of the company after many failures of different managers at various stages of cultural development within Apple inc. even though Jobs is making money for apple for now the question is will same strategy that fails at the initial past decade in culture, work for the future? A do or die culture was Apples it ideal for apple? For instance sculley tried for Apple for about five years, thus due to cultural strategy of sculley, the board got rid of him. At this juncture the answer would be it all depends on many factors conserving strategy culture and variable element to forecast the future. THE OVERALL STRATEGY Ohmae (1982), comment that what business strategy is all about is, in a word, competitive advantage. Without competitors, there would be no need for strategy, for the sole purpose of strategic planning is to enable the company to gain, as efficiently as possible, a sustainable edge over its competitors. different academics, have define strategy in reflexion of objective and organisational goal with viable attribute to structure. Chandler (1962) defines strategy as the determination of the basic long-term goals and objectives of an enterprise, and the adoption of courses of action and allocation of resources necessary for carry out those goals. In a simple word strategy must encompass various aspect of organisational defitions, create analysis while making choice before implantation and return back to analyse result. This is represented in strategic process below .by Johnson and scholes (2006). The strategy process Strategy Analysis Implementation Choice HRM Finance operations sales/marketing All the above are based on structure and corporate culture, therefore the overall strategy at Apple is subjected to many reviews taking in to consideration their strength, i.e. secrecy and brand packaging, the unique and trend product, and the possible side effect that comes with ethical issues like radiations, one man culture-Steve, an alteration will result in change in performance, therefore this are necessary tool for Apple to keep, if they are to maintain continues brand and global advantage. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATION Base on reviews of different model in relation to the impact of corporate culture at Apple the following conclusion can be made: There is a significant effect of Apples corporate culture on leadership, performance and reward, strategy and structure. There is also significant impact of the corporate culture on the internal and the external environment. The following recommendations are opinionated: There should be a minimal structural adjustment to Apples corporate culture; management should make sure to reduce dissonance, workers are allowed in decision-making process and team interaction be also allowed. Employee should be made adequately aware of the organisational gains, loses, management policies and goals and a reasonable reward scheme in place to motivate workers. Has secrecy is both good and bad for the organisation it should be kept at a level that encourage performance and it share understanding among the employees and manage since is a necessary evil that cant be gotten rid of. Leadership role should also in context of management training to retain future management and valuable culture.

Othello and Different Senses of Abnormal :: Othello essays

Othello and Different Senses of Abnormal  Ã‚        Ã‚   As inconsequential as they may initially seem, the various types of abnormalities in William Shakespeare’s tragic drama Othello do impact upon the audience. Let us explore this subject of the deviant in this play.    In the essay â€Å"Wit and Witchcraft: an Approach to Othello† Robert B. Heilman discusses the abnormal attitude and plans of the ancient as manifested in his verbal imagery:    If we take all the lines of one character out of context and consider them as a unit, we have always a useful body of information; but if, when we study Iago’s lines, we find that he consistently describes himself in images of hunting and trapping, we learn not only his plans of action but something of his attitude to occasions, to his victims, and to himself; and beyond that there is fixed for us an image of evil – one of those by which the drama interprets the human situation. (331)    And how about epilepsy? In Act 4 the evil Iago works up Othello into a frenzy regarding the missing kerchief. The resultant illogical, senseless raving by the general is a prelude to an epileptic seizure or entranced state:    Lie with her? lie on her? – We say lie on her when they belie her. – Lie with her! Zounds, that’s fulsome. – Handkerchief – confessions – handkerchief! – To confess, and be hanged for his labor – first to be hanged, and then to confess! I tremble at it. [. . .] (4.1)    Cassio enters right after the general has fallen into the epileptic trance. Iago explains to him:    IAGO. My lord is fall’n into an epilepsy. This is his second fit; he had one yesterday. CASSIO. Rub him about the temples. IAGO. No, forbear. The lethargy must have his quiet course. If not, he foams at mouth, and by and by Breaks out to savage madness. Look, he stirs. Do you withdraw yourself a little while. He will recover straight. (4.1)    Epilepsy on the part of the protagonist is unusual and physically abnormal. But the more serious abnormalities in the play are psychological. Iago is generally recognized as the one character possessing and operating by abnormal psychology. But Lily B. Campbell in Shakespeare’s Tragic Heroes tells of the time when the hero himself approached â€Å"madness†:

Careless Whisper

Same with tactless, reckless, stupid.- the one who whispers, demand, control. â€Å"CARELESS WHISPERER† – it has something to do about our consciousness, conscience, and common sense as the one who whispers us to be careless.Authors: Raff yeoman Halibuts Glacial Marie Pedro okay Cyril clawing Diane Ethel Rodriguez herald taupe Date and place of composition: august 24, 2013 – event/topic thought by the group that took place in Xavier university's library fifth flu, around pm- pm August 27, 2013 – the topic was scudded by the group and shared inputs/ideas how to write about the topic. This was done in McDonald's divisor around pm- pm. August 30, 2013 – the group was able to write about the topic and starts to combine the work. This was done in raff yeoman's place around 1 pm- pm.August 31, 2013 – finalization of work, editing, and posting it to formal output. This was done in glacial marries place around pm- pm. The readers: The readers of this project are mainly the general public. Meaning everyone, everyone who's stupid enough to think that they are responsible regardless of the airless acts that they have been doing. PURPOSE: In our time now, a lot of people are in great trouble about being a responsible person. Responsible person towards themselves, other people, to the environment, and most especially to God.Are this people aware of what they have been doing? Do they think before they do something so careless to the extent of having the cost of others? This â€Å"careless† topic hopes to enlighten our minds and open our eyes to the naked truth of the obvious risk and reality of danger in the present. Contents: the contents of this project are the events/incidents that we have been witnessed on lily living. An act of carelessness has been witnessed after a high school student of Xavier university falls from the second floor of the university gymnasium.It happened outside the building barricade. Not considering the danger, the kid risk his chances jumping off the metal bars to get the ball. The floor was slippery for it was raining had made the major contribution on making him fall directly to the solid ground. The kid was not moving when I saw him. A campus security responded to him immediately and called for rescue. As I saw the kid's mouth drawing lots of blood, I felt bad for him. His careless act and decision almost put his life to an end. Students also are subject to several acts of carelessness.Irresponsible tardiness and absences are so common. Always absent, cutting classes, afterwards keep themselves pressured for they almost consumed the allowable absences. Lack of self discipline is one major problem. Not doing home works and projects. Not participating in class. And when it's time for grading, asking the teacher â€Å"WHY I GOT FAILED†, â€Å"WHY I GOT LOW GRADES†. They should have asked themselves if they did their best. If they are worthy for those grades that they been dreaming. Another incident that can be considered as â€Å"careless† happened a year ago, along Bali highway. Hen a driver still drives a public Jeep even when he was in the influence of alcohol. He was so careless that he even brought his son with him and let it sit beside him in the front seat. He should have considered his condition and think that he was in charge of the many lives of his passenger. As a result of his stupid reckless act, the Jeep that he was driving got an accident that leads to the death of 3 people and several injured including his son. He should have taken extra are thinking that his son is in the vehicle.And nevertheless should haven't drive through his condition. Carelessness leads also to the cost of the environment to go against us. This is when the former leaders of our society disregard the issue of illegal anti- environmental activities in Canaan De ROR. This includes illegal mining, illegal logging, and toleration of improper waste ma nagement. This careless act brought a massive effect after super typhoon sending hit the northern Mindanao. That was indeed a very powerful typhoon that can really caused a massive and tragic event.But the carelessness of our leaders had multiplied the damage it brought. Trees that may have slowed the falsehood were gone, drainage that should give way to the water were clogged by garbage. If leaders have took full responsibility and foreseen something like it, they should have initiated full authority and made precautions for it. All carelessness leads us to be apart from God. For we may hurt everyone and everything that he made. We may be able to be sorry for it, and be forgiven. Maybe we'll realize it sooner or later, but the fact is â€Å"the damage has been done†.

High Power Continuous Wave Fiber Laser System - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 13 Words: 3964 Downloads: 5 Date added: 2017/06/26 Category Statistics Essay Did you like this example? Introduction of High Power Fiber Laser The optical fiber with very high surface-to-volume ratio and a strong waveguide effect provides the fiber based laser source the potential to generate high power laser beam with high quality. In addition to the capacity of generating raw optical power with high beam quality, the fiber laser system has other appealing features, such as supporting robust and compact system designs, allowing ultrashort pulse operation, offering a board wavelength tunability, and providing high gains. Those features stimulate the research on the high power fiber lasers system, and lay the foundation of novel appealing applications, such as remote material processing, aerospace and defense. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "High Power Continuous Wave Fiber Laser System" essay for you Create order In the past decade, a remarkable increase of the powers produced by fiber lasers with high beam quality has been achieved (see Fig.1). As a result, the high power laser becomes strong counterpart of the solid-state bulk laser, and penetrates rapidly into areas that formerly other lasers were used. Fig. 1. Progress in output power from diffraction-limited and near-diffraction-limited Yb-doped fibers . Literature Review In the early 1960s, the first fiber laser was demonstrated by Snitzer . The doped fiberà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s potential for high optical gain was revealed by David Payne and co-researchersà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ working on Neodymium- doped fibers in mid 1980s . In 2009, the high power fiber laser, which based on a specifically silica-host ytterbium-doped fiber-based laser (YDFL), obtained 10 kW output in the single-mode (SM) regime. Although architectures are different, the high-power fiber lasers and amplifiers are mostly archived with rare-earth-doped (RE-doped) double-clad fibers. The double-clad fiber, which was initially demonstrated in 1988, provided the option of cladding pumping, and proved to be one of the key technologies for power scaling. The structure of this double cladding is that the active RE-doped core is surrounded by a much larger à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“inner claddingà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬? (see Fig. 2), and are encircled together by out cladding. The pump beam emitted by fiber-coupled high-power diode bars or other kinds of laser diodes is coupled into the inner cladding, and confined within it by an outer cladding. The confined pump beam will be absorbed into the core while it propagates along the fiber. The laser light is generated in the central core, and the laser light can have very good beam quality à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å" even diffraction limited beam. Thereby, by means of double cladding configurations one realized the conversion from low brightness pump to high brightness single-mode fiber laser output. As the spatial and angular pump acceptance [can be expressed as the product of area and the square of the numerical aperture (NA)] for the inner cladding is significantly improved to the core pump, Such conversion is more effective, and close to 5 orders have been demonstrated experimentally. Among high power RE-doped fiber lasers, the YDFL is notable in term of high power. The Ybà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s broad absorption band extends from 900 to 980 nm (see fig 3), covering high power pump LDà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s best performance wavelengths, offers a low quantum defect [energy difference between pump and laser photons] for pumping with 9xx nm LD and lasing above 1040nm. This superior property offers the potential for achieving very high power efficiencies and reducing thermal effects. In addition, lasing at wavelength above 1040nm, the Yd ion shows a simple four à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å"level structure, that excludes excited state absorption and also a variety of detrimental quenching processes allowing high doping concentrations, which means high pump absorption per unit length. On the contrary, the small quantum defect also has a usually unwanted consequence: the significant quasi-three-level behavior, especially when lasing at short wavelengths (less then 1040nm), that will cause a high threshold and decrease the power efficiency. Fig. 2. Structure of a double-clad fiber and principle of cladding-pumping The Nd doped laser emitting at 1060 nm is a four-level system, which means a lower laser threshold. Associated with the relatively advanced state of 808 nm diodes for pumping Nd:YAG, this made Nd the choice for high power fiber lasers in early stage. Todayà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s high power pump diodes in 9 xx nm are sufficiently bright to make threshold unimportant for most quasi-three-level high power fiber lasers. These overcome the obstacle of ytterbiumà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s higher threshold and raise advantages of a lower quantum defect and higher doping concentration with quench-free. The first single-mode Yb doped fiber laser with output power over 100 W was demonstrated in 1999 , and it illustrated that the advantages of Yb doped double cladding structure can support for further increase in the average power by scaling the size of the optical fiber and the power of pump diode source. Soon after that, the power of cladding pumped YDFL obtained the kilowatt level. Thereafter, by invest igating the large-area core design and fabrication, the single-mode operation in kilowatt level was realized that would not have been possible for Nd doping. Figure 3: Absorption and emission cross sections of ytterbium-doped germanosilicate glass, as used in the cores of ytterbium-doped fibers. Another sophisticated technique which is adopted in all double-clad fiber lasers at 3 kW and above, is tandem-pump [in-band pumping with high-brightness pump sources, such as one or several fiber lasers, or thin disk laser]. The tandem pump makes it possible to pump close to the emission wavelength so that the quantum defect heating will be low resulting in a reduced thermal load. Actually, some advanced solid-state lasers, such as thin disk laser, is well matched with requirements of in-band high brightness pumping source, and 1 KW level output thin disk laser pumped fiber laser have been realized. Nonlinearities are an issue to further increase the CW output power of the fiber laser. The fiber laser considered above such as in Fig. 1 has operated with linewidths in the 1à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å"10 nm range. In such system with cw operating, excepting at the extremely high powers or long delivery fibers, the stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) is a weak effect and is relatively easy to prevent. However, for output power above 10 kW, the Raman gain can become so high (tens of decibels) that a considerable part of the power is transferred to a longer-wavelength Stokes wave, reducing the power in the signal wavelength. There are some applications need single frequency sources which can provide light power with narrower spectral line width, such as coherent beam combination of multiple single frequency fiber sources with high power. This scheme offers a promising method for further power scaling, and consequently this stimulates interest in single-frequency power scaling. For narrow bandwid th, especially at linewidths less than 10 MHz, the SBS is the dominate nonlinearity and the severe obstacle for high power single-frequency fiber sources. The SBS can be suppressed with shorter fiber and larger mode field area, and output power of hundred watts has been reported with such schemes .However, this power is still less comparing with the bulk solid state laser. There are several options for SBS mitigation, including straining the fiber in order to broaden the SBS gain bandwidth, and reducing overlap between the optical and acoustic fields. The highest power high-gain fiber amplifier can archive 1.7KW. It was realized by combination of the modest spectral broadening with phase modulation and the fiber with enlarged effective mode area. The most effective way to mitigate nonlinearities (excluding self-focusing) is to enlarge the effective mode area by optimizing geometry designs and material choices of fiber structure. Unlike the passive power delivery fiber, this task is more challenge for active fiber, as doping-induced refractive index changing, and thermal stability will be issues. A straightforward design approach to maintain pure single-mode operation is to increase the core diameter, with the NA reducing correspondingly. However, the downside is the waveguide effect gets weaker, and consequently light is easier lost from the core when the fiber is bent. More works on fiber designs for addressing these challenges are related to photonic crystal fibers techniques. It is possible to make single mode operation in a multi-mode supported fiber, by building up preferentially amplify, or attenuate for specific mode, while the mixing or coupling between modes should be controlled to minimum. There have been works focu sed on using differential gain by selective RE doping across the core , and differential-bend-loss by controlled bending of the fiber. The leakage channel and chirally coupled core fibers are designed to selectively couple propagation mode to high loss mode. The high order mode but not the fundamental mode is coupled to leaky mode, which will substantially be attenuated. The multifilament core and multicore fiber arrange filaments or cores in a two-dimensional array. There are evanescent-field coupling among cores, and the overall structure can exhibit single-mode guidance with large mode area. Academic Objectives From the aspect of power generation, Investigation of advanced fiber for mitigating nonlinearity will be still the most critical issue in increasing the output power for cw fiber lasers. It has been estimated that the maximum single core output powers of the ytterbium doped fiber laser should be at several tens of kilowatts level based on present technique. However, single-mode operation is not indispensable for lots of high power lasers applications. The single or near single mode operation in the MM fiber which is developed by balancing the mode quality, the achievable power, and the damage threshold of the fiber, can offer possibilities to archive higher output power. In addition to that, as the emission wavelength of well developed thin disk laser is still covered by the Yb ionà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s absorption band and is more close to the emission band of the Yb ion, the research on novel architecture using thin disk laser to tandem pump the special designed Yb doped fiber laser al so offers the potential to increase output power of fiber laser and develop novel fiber laser with useful function. The proposed research will focus on advanced fiber, especially for the evanescent-field coupled waveguides, also called multi-core fibers (MCF). The main aim is to design and realize novel types of active MCF for increasing the output power of fiber laser with good beam quality, and for suppressing the SBS effect. Besides that, Based on the advanced thin-disk laser, and the novel MCF fiber, the investigation on the novel laser architectures will also be performed. The Outline of the Project According to the above proposed objectives, the research work can be divided to two main phases. The first phase will be focused on fiber design and fabrication, and the expected deliverable is the novel active fiber with improved performance in nonlinearity mitigation and bending resistant. The other phase is about the novel fiber laser architecture, and investigation of the novel tandem pump configuration based on thin-disk laser will be performed. Mathematical Model and Design Strategy The main nonlinearities for cw operating fiber laser is SRS and SBS. Although both of them can be mitigated by the enlarged mode area, the SBS is still too strong for increasing the power of single frequency laser in the LMA fiber. The proposed research aimed to suppress the SBS in the LMA fiber for mitigating both SRS and SBS. According to the previous research, the SBS threshold can be expressed by : (1) The ÃŽÂ ±u is acoustic attenuation coefficient for the acoustic mode of order u, Aeff is the optical effective mode area, G(Ñ ´max) is the SBS effective gain coefficient at the peak frequency, K is the polarization factor. We can see form the equation. Beside the mode area, the SBS can be suppressed by increasing the acoustic loss, reducing the overlap integral, and the SBS effective gain coefficient. The is the normalized overlap integral of the electric and acoustic fields and it can be expressed as : (2) The E0 is the optical field associated with the fundamental mode, and à ?u the field of a longitudinal acoustic eigen-mode of order u. The overlap integral can be changed by modifying the fiber refractive index profile and acoustic velocity profile. The acoustic loss can be changed by glass composition design. As different dopants have different effects on optical and acoustic properties, it is possible to create suitable dopants profile in the core and cladding to reducing the overlap integral or increasing the acoustic loss. Table 1 is some common dopants used for making silica glass based fibers. The profile of the optical and acoustic field can be indicated by optical and acoustic refractive indices. Similar to the optical refractive index, acoustic refractive index is defined as na(r) = VL Silica /VL (r) , where VL(r) is the longitudinal acoustic velocity in the core, and VL Silica is the longitudinal acoustic velocity of pure silica glass. Table 1. Trend of optical and acoustic refractive index change of different dopants in silica GeO2 P2O3 TiO2 B2O3 F2 Al2O3 Optical refractive index à ¢Ã¢â‚¬  Ã¢â‚¬Ëœ à ¢Ã¢â‚¬  Ã¢â‚¬Ëœ à ¢Ã¢â‚¬  Ã¢â‚¬Ëœ à ¢Ã¢â‚¬  Ã¢â‚¬Å" à ¢Ã¢â‚¬  Ã¢â‚¬Å" à ¢Ã¢â‚¬  Ã¢â‚¬Ëœ Acoustic refractive index à ¢Ã¢â‚¬  Ã¢â‚¬Ëœ à ¢Ã¢â‚¬  Ã¢â‚¬Ëœ à ¢Ã¢â‚¬  Ã¢â‚¬Ëœ à ¢Ã¢â‚¬  Ã¢â‚¬Ëœ à ¢Ã¢â‚¬  Ã¢â‚¬Ëœ à ¢Ã¢â‚¬  Ã¢â‚¬Å" One straightforward approach to modify the loss for optical and acoustic field of a fiber structure is created a type of optical guiding and acoustic anti-guides with a dopant material(Fig 4 (a)), such as Al2O3, and it has been demonstrated in . The other approach is to reduce optical and acoustic field overlap, with different dopants in the core (Fig 4 (b)). The resultant optical and acoustic refractive index profiles of above approaches are shown below. (b) Fig. 4. Dopant designs for reducing the overlap of the optical and acoustic fields The strategies shown in fig 4 are based on single core fiber. There are quite a few research works on improving the effective mode field in single core fiber, and it is little room to enlarge the effective mode field areas further without detrimental effect in single core fiber LMA. Recently, multicore fiber based LMA has been investigated as passive delivery fiber , and as active fiber in the novel laser architecture. The supported optical mode field of MCF can be designed by core size and core interval; the profile of the acoustic and optical field can be modified by the distribution of dopants and doping area size; and the loss of the optical and acoustic can be controlled by doping material. Thus, it is worth investigating a novel active MCF supporting a few modes or only single supermode with the reduced overlap between the acoustic and optical field. Optical Index Al Yb Ge F/B Acoustic Index Fig 5 the schematic of the proposed 19 core double cladding fiber A fiber design strategy to suppress the SBS is shown in Fig 5. An optical guide while acts as an acoustic anti-guide in the effective optical field areas of MCF will be fabricated by manipulating dopants in core and cladding, for example as shown in fig 5, by choosing Al2O3 in core and GeO2 in cladding. Because the fields of optical and acoustic are separated, the interaction between the optical and acoustic waves is weaker. Furthermore, the MCF will be designed to support a few modes or only one supermode, that benefits for manipulating refraction index to increase threshold of the SBS in the single mode MCF, as the à ¢Ã‹â€ Ã¢â‚¬  n=neffà ¢Ã‹â€ nclad of single mode MCF is larger than single mode single core fiber(SMF), for example, the index difference à ¢Ã‹â€ Ã¢â‚¬  n=neffà ¢Ã‹â€ nclad is 3.69ÃÆ'—10à ¢Ã‹â€ 4 in the case of the 19-core fiber reported in and only 1.60ÃÆ'—10à ¢Ã‹â€ 4 for the SMF, providing more room of à ¢Ã‹â€ Ã¢â‚¬  n for manipulating dopants. Finally, the reference value of parameters such as the diameter of each core, the core interval, and the doped areas of each core, will be archived by numerical calculation. Numerical Calculation The optical field in the waveguide can be solved by numerical calculation the Maxwell equations. Like the optical field, by numerical calculating the nonlinear acoustic equation, the acoustic field can be obtained. After that the SBS threshold can be calculated with equation (1), (2). From the nonlinear acoustic equation, we can obtain the equation that determines the longitudinal acoustic eigen-modes. The acoustic modes that contribute to the SBS associated with the optical fundamental mode have constant azimuth. Neglecting the damping factor, the radial distribution of such a mode can be expressed as: (3) The ÃŽÂ ©u is the acoustic frequency and the ÃŽÂ ²u is the propagation constant of the acoustic mode, VL(r) is the longitudinal acoustic velocity profile across the fiber. The wave equation for optical field in waveguide is derived from the general Maxwell and can be written as: (4) The EO is the optical field, ko=2p/l is the wave number of the optical field, and no(r) is the refraction index profile across the fiber. The optical mode is efficiently backscattered by the acoustic mode when the phase-match condition, ÃŽÂ ² = 2ÃŽÂ ²u, is fulfilled, where ÃŽÂ ² is the propagation constant of the optical field. The ÃŽÂ ² is determined by the optical wavelength ÃŽÂ », the effective refractive index no,eff, and it can be expressed as: ÃŽÂ ² =kono,eff=2pno,eff/l. Determined by the structure, the acoustic field in the proposed 19 core fiber is confined in the inter cladding, and the acoustic index can affect the confining effect. As the position of inter cladding is fixed, once the doping concentration is chosen, the acoustic field will be determined. The optical field in the MCF is determined by both the doping concentration and the geometry structure of the MCF. It is the geometry structure of the MCF provides the extra room to design the optical field with desired mode. The field of a longitudinal acoustic (à ?u) can be numerical calculated with finite-element method. beside the finite-element method, previous research has indicated the à ?u can be solved by utilizing the solver for optical scalar wave equation after defining a few new terms for acoustic wave. to numerical solve the equations (4), as numerical calculation by the finite element method is still valid when strong coupling exists between the different cores, the mode structure of the optical filed in the MCF is also calculated by finite-element method based on commercial available software such as Fimmwave or Comsol-Multiphysics. After knowing the à ?u and the EO, the can be calculated by taking the à ?u and E0 into equation (2). Finally, taking the into equation (1), the Pth of the designed fiber can be obtained. The theoretical M2 propagation factor can be computed with the method in. For a doping state, different Pth value and mode structures can be achieved for different geometry parameter, such as single core diameter and core interval. Optimizing the geometry parameter is necessary to get the high Pth value with good mode structures. Finally, repeatedly implementing above step for different doping condition, a series of optimized reference parameters can be obtained. The home institute IFSW has equipped the fiber manufacturing facility à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å" consisting of a modified chemical vapor deposition (MCVD) preform production lathe and the new commissioned drawing tower. The prototype of the proposed double-clad MFC fiber will be produced in the IFSW by the stack and draw technique. Investigation on the Laser Architectures The mode field mismatch and high operation power set the obstacles on employing the state of art fiber communication components in the high power laser architecture. Beside that some of critical components for high laser, such Bragg gratings in the LMA cores, large mode area pump coupler or combiner for high power diode are still in the initial stages. Above aspects cause the architecture for the exited high power laser is limited comparing with well developed communication band fiber laser. Most of the previous research on increasing the output power focused on developing the LMA fiber. As the difficulty of increasing the output power by enlarging the mode field is increasing continuously, it is time to consider improve the laser output from other aspect. The high brightness power scalable thin disk laser acting as the in-band pumping source can generate less quantum defect heat than 9ÃÆ'—ÃÆ'—nm laser diode, providing the potential to developing novel or improving existed laser structure by using components which are thermal damage or degradation sensitive. Thus there are rooms to increase the output power or improve the efficiency by developing the laser architecture with thin disk laser and special designed high power components. One of proposed architecture improvements is to replace the butt-coupled HR-mirror in the existed laser with the Bragg grating in the core of the double cladding fiber. Fig 6 (a) the butt-coupling mirror based laser architecture Fig 6 (b) the FBG based laser architecture FBG1,2 reflectors for the laser radiation; FBG3 reflectors for the pump light; The reflection rate of the FBG1 is around 99%, that of FBG2is around 50%. For the butt-coupled mirror based laser architecture (Fig 6 (a)), as the butt-coupled mirror will reflect both the pump light and the laser radiation on a very small area, the energy densities will be extremely high in core and cladding near the conjunct point. To withstand such high power densities, special material substrate such as the sapphire is needed to remove the heat very quickly. Even though, the core power density is still close to the damage threshold of the mirror coating. Furthermore, as the pump wavelength is closed to the laser radiation wavelength, to fabricate the dichroic mirror will be rather difficult. Although the Bragg grating inside the fiber core still has the problem of thermal damage, the damage threshold of FBG will be higher than mirror face. Considerable power increasing is expected for replaying mirror with the Bragg grating. From the aspect of fabrication, the wavelength of the Bragg grating is determined by the mask period and the refraction index of the fiber core, it will be easy to fabricate two FBG with spectrum interval larger than 4nm, which is enough to separate the in band pump light and laser radiation. Finally the FBG also can provide the facility to control the laser wavelength, and the laser output wavelength will be determined by the corresponded reflector. In fig 6 they are FBG1,2. Fig 7 the proposed hybrid laser architecture DMCF: doped multicore double cladding fiber, SMF: single-mode fiber, PMSF: polarization maintained single mode fiber ISO1: polarization dependent optical isolator, Amp: amplifier, DM: dichroic mirror, BS: beam splitter,Li (i = [1; 5]): plus lenses, FBG1: fiber Bragg grating for laser radiation, FBG2: fiber Bragg grating for pump light, PZT: Piezoelectric Ceramics Limited by components, many well developed communication fiber laser techniques such as wavelength tuning and polarization stabilizing cannot be projected to high power fiber laser area directly. A promising method to solve the problem is to develop hybrid architecture which employs a low power single mode fiber feedback loop to control the high power laser. By applying the advanced communication laser techniques in the single mode feedback loop, the high power fiber laser with wavelength tuning and polarization stabilizing can be realized. The proposed hybrid laser architecture with wavelength tuning and polarization stabilizing is shown in fig 7. The thin disk emitted pump light is coupled to the double cladding fiber with a dichroic mirror and a plus lens. The FBG in pump wavelength is employed in the far end of the active fiber. A small part of the emitted beam is reflected and coupled to the feedback loop whereas the most of power is coupled out from the laser cavity. The lens set (L4 to L6) constitutes a free-space imaging system for projecting the far field of the DMCF onto the input face of the SMF. Polarization independent optical isolators and circulator in the feedback loop determined the light traveling direction and eliminated the unwanted reflected light. Furthermore, the polarization independent optical isolator shapes the light to single polarization state, which will be persevered in the feedback loop by polarization maintained fiber. The FBG1 is fixed in a stretch preloaded piezoelectric ceramics, and the reflected wavelength can be tuned slightly by driving the PZT with Bi-directional signal. After passing th e feed pack fiber, the DMCF will amplify the seed laser radiation, and consequently power will be scaled and the polarization can be preserved. The Estimated Time Table Milestones Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Modelling of the multi core fibre x x x Numerical calculating the parameter of the model x x Fabrication of the multi-core fibre x x Improving the performance of the multi-core fibre x x Improving the performance of the existed architectures x x Investigating the novel laser architectures x x The Bibliography