The Organizational Structure of Google - Essay Example

Organizational structures of many organizations keep changing and evolving over the passage of time. This can primarily be attributed to the need for organizations to modify and reinvent in response to the changing internal and external challenges. One such company that is changing the traditional form of organizational structure to appeal to potential employees is Google. Fortune Magazine suggests that Google is one of the best five places for employment and has consistently ranked among the top five best workplaces for a period of five years; “Google has topped the latest list of '100 Best American Companies to Work for' followed by -- software developer SAS and strategy consultants the Boston Consulting Group in the second and third positions, respectively” (The Economic Times, 2014).

The bottom layer of the triangle of the traditional pyramid of an organization structure consists of operative employees, with the supervisors sitting over them, middle managers located over the supervisors, and top management making the tip of the pyramid. Such an organizational structure ensures a vertical approach toward the management in which top management assumes decision-making authority and sends orders down for the operational employees working at the basic level.

From the retirement funds of the employees to their free programs of lunch and dinner, Google strives to provide its employees with customizable programs that match its employees’ needs. Fig. 1: Organizational Structure of Google (Wordpress.com, 2014).

The organizational structure of Google is very different because of the existence of numerous shareholders that participate in the activities and strategies of the company. The presence of numerous shareholders complicates it for the company to maintain its levels. The actual owners of Google are Larry Page and Sergey Brin (Frenz, 2014) and to maintain that standing, they needed to structure the organization in a unique manner. The owners established a dual-class structure of voting for the company’s public ownership so that Page and Brin would maintain firm control over Google at all times irrespective of the number of investors in the company’s stock.