The Organizational Structure, Work Culture and Global Business Strategies of Google Inc - Essay Example

Google’s Steep Learning Curve in China Executive summary Google Inc. is the largest multinational technology organisation which is well-known for their fastest and simplest search engine services. The organisation is also popular for their commitment towards innovation. The services of Google is successfully scattered over 144 countries across the world. The essay has communicated the organisational structure, work culture and global business strategies of the organisation. The strategies of the organisation promote ethical and consumer centric approaches of the management. Over a period of time, the organisation was facing huge obstacle in their business venture in the China market. The essay has described various social and political issues which have forced the organisation to alter their modern management approaches. The discussion has also illustrated various effects of closing the Chinese operations on the management and the overall reputation of the organisation. According to the study, this decision may hugely affect the finances as well as market position of the business. Introduction The study is based on the discussion of different management issues faced by Google Inc. in the China market. It will illustrate various challenges faced by the organisation to properly run their operation as per the social and ethical norms of China. The main objective of any management is to achieve the ultimate goal of the organisation by motivating and directing the workforce (Wood, et al., 2004). The modern management practices influences managers to focus on different requirements of the stakeholders of various countries (Wood, et al., 2004). There are a number of management issues faced by global organisations such as economical, political, social and technological (Bloom and Reenen, 2010). Recession, inflation and currency fluctuation of different countries can provide significant effect on the business management procedure of global organisations. The difference in the political rules and regulations also affect the decision making capacity of the managers. Management need to cope up with the rapid development of technologies in different market to attract more customers (Bloom and Reenen, 2010). International organisations need to focus on the differences of the social structure of their operating countries before introducing any product or services. The decision of product or services design can differ as per locations due to the changing preferences of local people (Weihrich and Koontz, 2005). Customized products of local organisations can provide huge competition to the standardised products of the global organisations (Weihrich and Koontz, 2005). The discussion has further described the impact of the management issues faced by Google Inc. in China. Company Profile of Google Google Inc. is a multinational organisation which offers high quality online advertising technologies, cloud computing and internet search software. It was established by Sergey Brin and Larry Page in the year of 1998. The organisation is headquartered in California, US (Marketline, 2015). The company is currently leading the global market by developing Android mobile operating system and Google Chrome operating system. The organisation runs over one million servers across different countries of the world (Marketline, 2015). The current organisational design ensures the freedom of speech of the employees. The organisational work culture of Google encourages knowledge-based work approaches of the workers. All the engineers of the organisation are encouraged to devote 20% of their work time in various interest projects (Kuntze and Matulich, 2010). The organisational design of Google Inc. is distributed in three major hierarchical levels such as board of directors, executive management group and specialized managers in different departments such as engineering, products, sales, legal and finance. The organisational culture encourages the managers and subordinates to directly work with each other without the involvement of any informal channels (Kuntze and Matulich, 2010). Organisational design of Google Google’s global business strategies The overseas business strategy of Google Inc. varies from representing simple office culture to indulging into complex partnership with different foreign companies (Vise, 2007). The core business strategies of the organisation include: Increasing their customer focused products and services. Motivating ethical approaches in every business operations. The organisation believes in the “Don’t be evil” business approaches which encourage them to promote customer friendly services. Creating challenging and encouraging work environment. To provide the fastest search engine services throughout all the part of the world. Encouraging creativity and innovative thinking within the team members of the organisation. Effectively and efficiently coordinating the teamwork of the organisation. Upgrading all the operations with the latest technologies and encouraging the employees to learn new and smart techniques to perform their regular tasks (Vise, 2007). The organisation follows few very simple rules to be the most successful technological service provider of the world. The organisation believes in providing simple and innovative solutions to their consumers. These technological solutions must be simple, easy to use and faster than any other competitor services (Bloomberg, 2006). Collaborative work approach by the engineers and programmers is also a major reason behind the successful structure of the organisation (Bloomberg, 2006). The continuous thrive for innovating something new and unusual has assisted the brand to create a unique recognition (Bloomberg, 2006). The management of the organisation believes in fulfilling all the requirement of the efficient employees to motivate them to provide their best performances. The management welcomes innovative ideas from every level of the organisations (Bloomberg, 2006). Challenges faced by Google Management in China operations The attempt of Google Inc. to globalize its business in China has confronted heavy criticism and resistance. They had introduced “google.cn”, a new Chinese-language website, which had assisted the organisation to penetrate over 90 million households across China. In order to follow the censorship laws of China, the management of Google had agreed upon removing all the disapproved websites by Chinese government such as websites with details of Falun Gong and 1988 massacre of Tiananmen Square. They have also banned various sites promoting free speeches to support the social norms of China (Hamilton, Knouse and Hill, 2009). This decision was not very well-accepted by the consumers of other countries specially the US. The management of the organisation had to face a lot of obstacles to introduce the separate website for the Chinese consumers (Levy, 2011). The management decision making process of the organisation has displayed inadequate ability to address and solve these problems (McDaniels and Gregory, 2004). Following all the censorship laws imposed by the government of China was one of the toughest tasks for the management. The senior management of the programming and engineering departments were witnessing hard time to handle inadequate search results and fickle service. The organisation was also facing huge challenges from the local competitor Baidu. The services provided by Baidu were more technologically advanced than Google Inc. Baidu had introduced an innovative technology with search algorithm to generate more relevant results in Mandarin. Google therefore established their new division in China and concentrated on recruiting local talents to properly understand the preferences and requirement of the population (Levy, 2011). They have followed transformational leadership theory during the process of choosing leaders and managers for their Chinese division. Selecting and recruiting local talents in the position of leaders and managers has assisted them to increase the trust relationship between the management and customers (Dvir, Eden, Avolio and Shamir, 2002). Though this move has provided few advantages to the organisation but it is still not enough to compete with the market presence of Baidu. The innovative and customer focused nature of Baidu awarded them the most superior position in the market. On the other hand, the management decision making process of Google Inc. failed to deliver quality products and services as per the preferences of the local consumers (McDaniels and Gregory, 2004). Besides this competition in the market, the organisation has also faced different cyber attacks over a period of time. Various Chinese authorities have criticized Google for their inability to properly censor all the restricted websites. They have faced a number of complaints about displaying unethical and vulgar search results. The management of Google Inc. has informed that the main motive of the cyber attack was to access the private Gmail accounts of various human resource activists. The investigation of these attacks also conveyed that a number of Gmail accounts of human right activists from different parts of the US, UK and China have been violated due to poor security structure of Google (Branigan, 2010). The management of the organisation has decided to remove the censorship from their search engine and to withdraw the customized “google.cn” website. They have also declared to publish the details about those attacks on website. These decisions have certainly weakened the position of the organisation in the Chinese market. Their decision to pull out the censorship may also lead them to end their business relationship with the Chinese market (Branigan, 2010). Impact of shutting down the China operations of Google The decision of Google management to shut down their business division of China can affect their overall market reputation as well as revenue. China is one of the fast growing market in the world. Closing the business venture in China will result in losing access to one of the fast-growing consumer market in the world (Hamilton, Knouse and Hill, 2009). The organisation has already spent a huge amount to create a separate business unit in China. They have allocated finances to recruit new talents to the local division of China. The decision of management to close these divisions will cause a huge financial loss for the organisation. The primary strategy of the organisation is to scatter their services throughout all parts of the world. The management has targeted to set up their business venture in almost all the developing countries in the world. China has been considered as the second largest country in the world. This country possesses approximately 1.35 billion populations (Hamilton, Knouse and Hill, 2009). The inability of Google management to successfully conduct their business in China market may decrease their overall market share in comparison to other multinational organisations. On the contrary, this decision supports their strategy to provide simple and standardized services to the global customers. This setback will assist the management to properly design their website and search engines by removing all the unnecessary restrictions. Conclusion The discussion of this essay has described the management decision and leadership procedure of Google Inc. It has also emphasised on the organisational design of the technology giant. The study of the organisation’s position in the China market has described a number of challenges they have faced during their business ventures. A number of governmental restrictions and social norms have forced the management to modify the core values and strategies of the organisation. Therefore, the essay has communicated the possible impacts of the decision of shutting down their business unit in China on the overall market reputation of the organisation. Reference List Bloom, N. and Reenen, V., 2010. Why do management practices differ across firms and countries?. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 24(1), pp. 203-224. Bloomberg, 2006. The secret to Google's success. [online] Available at [Accessed 27 February 2015]. Branigan, T., 2010. Google to end censorship in China over cyber attacks. [online] Available at [Accessed 27 February 2015]. Dvir, T., Eden, D., Avolio, B. J. and Shamir, B., 2002. Impact of transformational leadership on follower development and performance: A field experiment. Academy of management journal, 45(4), pp. 735-744. Hamilton, J. B., Knouse, S. B. and Hill, V., 2009. Google in China: A manager-friendly heuristic model for resolving cross-cultural ethical conflicts. Journal of Business Ethics, 86(2), pp. 143-157. Kuntze, R. and Matulich, E., 2010. Google: searching for value. Journal of Case Research in Business and Economics, 2, pp. 1-10. Levy, S., 2011. Inside Google's China misfortune. [online] Available at [Accessed 27 February 2015]. Marketline, 2015. Google Inc.: Company overview. [pdf] Marketline. Available at [Accessed 27 February 2015]. McDaniels, T. L. and Gregory, R., 2004. Learning as an objective within a structured risk management decision process. Environmental Science & Technology, 38(7), pp. 1921-1926. Vise, D., 2007. The google story. Strategic Direction, 23(10), pp. 24-73. Weihrich, H. and Koontz, H., 2005. Management: A global perspective. Singapore: McGraw-Hill. Wood, S. J., Stride, C. B., Wall, T. D. and Clegg, C. W., 2004. Revisiting the use and effectiveness of modern management practices. Human Factors and Ergonomics in Manufacturing & Service Industries, 14(4), pp. 415-432. Read More