Organisational Culture: Google - Case Study Example

Organisational Culture: Google Introduction Organisational culture is simply referred to a set of shared values that guides human behaviours in an organisation’s day-to-day workplace context. Generally, the concept of organisational culture represents the firm’s vision, values, systems, beliefs, norms, and habits. Organisational culture significantly influences the way individual employees and groups interact with each other, with clients, and with other stakeholders. Every company has its own unique culture that affects employees’ identification with that particular organisation. In today’s corporate world, the term corporate culture is often interchangeably used to refer to the concept of organisational culture. This paper will explore the organisational culture of Google in detail and determine what cultural changes the firm require to respond to a situation of declining market demand. Overview of the Company Google is an American based multinational corporation delivering internet-related products and services to its millions of clients worldwide. The corporation’s products and services include Google search, cloud computing, online advertising technologies, and software. In addition to offering internet-related products and services, Google has also a strong business presence in computer software and telecoms equipment industries. Currently Google search is the world’s largest internet search engine, and the company derives most of its profits from AdWords. The company was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998, and now it is headquartered at Mountain View, California. Although Google initially focused only on its core search engine, the company gradually expanded its business to include a chain of products through acquisitions and partnerships. Today Google is well known for its services such as Gmail (e-mail service), Google Drive (cloud storage service), Google Docs (office suite), and Google+ (social networking service). Organisational Culture Google follows an unusual organisational culture which was specifically designed to foster both loyalty and creativity. The increased emphasis on employee creativity and innovation assisted the company to develop many significant products including Google search engine, Google Maps, and Google Chrome during the last 16 years of its corporate life. The company does not create a worksite environment for its employees but a place for fun where the workers are encouraged to come up with their innovative ideas and thoughts. The organisation considers its workforce as the most valuable asset, and therefore the management strives to keep its employees satisfied by providing them with various services and facilities such as free cafeteria food, subsidized massages, afternoon volleyball breaks, bowling alleys and basketball courts. When it comes to Google’s organisational culture, it is important to discuss the 70/20/10 rule. Under this rule (cited in Steiber, 2014), Google employees are expected to devote 70 percent of their daily work to the projects that were assigned to them, 20 percent of the work to new projects or ideas relating to their core projects, and the remaining 10 percent to any new idea they want Google to pursue regardless of to whatever it is related (p.50). This rule is the driving force behind the development of many of Google’s innovative products and services because programmers, salespeople, and even executives are encouraged to be creative. Transparency and open door environment are two prime features of the firm’s corporate culture. The Google management promotes information sharing through weekly meeting called TGIF to establish transparency in the office, and thereby create an open door environment where everything is up for debate. The company’s organisational culture is based on the notion that encouraging employee involvement in decision making and keeping them updated about where the company is headed would influence employees to feel a sense of belongingness, which in turn may contribute to loyalty and creativity. Signs of the Culture Google has showed the signs of this unique organisational culture in several ways. The company strives to trigger its growth and achieves constant progress by investing heavily in satisfaction and comfort of its employees. The organisation always expresses its commitment to seeking employee feedbacks because the company strongly believes that employee creativity is the key to product innovations. The company has developed a mechanism called Google-O-Meter to gauge the popularity of employee suggestions. In addition, Google maintains culture clubs comprising of groups of employees who come together to discuss cultural issues within their country or office environment and think how to improve the situation. As the Google promotes a flat organisational structure characterised with a shorter chain of command, managers and lower level workers can make decisions more independently. Hence, there is a vested effort to promote the value of the Google employees who are considered the core of the company’s operations. Google states that “it is really the people that make Google the kind of company it is” (Google: Our culture). The company is willing to hire smart and determined people, and prioritises ability over experience. This global internet giant tries to maintain the open culture which is often associated with start-up firms in which every individual employee is a hands-on contributor and feels comfortable about sharing ideas and expressing opinions. Google’s offices and cafes are designed to foster active interactions between its employees and to spark conversations among them about work as well as play. ‘Don’t Be Evil’ is the unofficial motto of the Google, and many of the company’s policies and corporate decisions are in line with this motto. According to a 2005 New York Times article, Google employees opined in an interview that they felt a sense of being personally invested in the organisation’s mission and sense of future success. Why the Organisation Pursued this Culture? Google embodies this particular organisational culture because the founders Page and Brin decided at the time of the firm’s establishment that their focus would be on employees. Such a corporate vision influenced the company to follow an employee-friendly organisational culture. Google team knew that they wanted to be different in their management approaches and corporate practices so as to deliver unique products/services and shopping experience to the clients. This distinctiveness is clear while analysing the company’s employee hiring strategy. Google’s interview questions are extremely hard, and they particularly intend to measure the intelligence level of candidates. These questions may seem unnecessary to many because they do not examine the subject knowledge of candidates. However, the Google management deploys those interview methods to identify the smartest and most thoughtful candidates who are capable of changing the face of the company. Market analysts indicate that Google wants to run an extraordinary company and therefore the firm’s idea to hire extraordinary people could be justified. According to ‘The Guardian’ report written by Mace (2013), Google does not respond to the culture and logic followed by the rest of the business world simply because the company desires to offer something extraordinary to its clients. It is clear that web software are changing very fast, and therefore it is necessary for the Google to follow a flexible corporate culture so as to respond to fast changing customer needs effectively and to remain competitive in the industry. Considering the fast evolving nature of the internet sector in which Google operates, the company cannot think in terms of long-term detailed plans. The company’s unique organisational culture benefits it to focus more on rapid response than rigid planning. As Google officials point out, this particular corporate culture has assisted the company to avoid worksite conflicts and other unwanted employee behaviours like absenteeism and insubordination to a notable extent. Recommended Leadership Style Considering the organisational culture and corporate vision of Google, it is advisable for the Google management to adopt an innovation leadership style to manage its business operations efficiently. In the words of Dundon (2002), “innovation leadership is about encouraging people to look for new ways, to work outside the parameters of what has been done before to seek out new possibilities” (p.24). Under this leadership approach, leaders synthesise various leadership styles in the workplace environment to influence their audience to come up with creative ideas, products, services, and solutions. As the Google gives particular focus to encouraging employee creativity, the innovative leadership approach may best suite the organisation to support the unique organisational culture it has adopted. This leadership style can assist the company to create conditions or context for occurring innovations, which in turn would enhance the firm’s market competitiveness. According to Porter-OGrady and Malloch (2010), it would benefit the organisation to implement the roles, partnerships, decision making structures, technology, and networks necessary to support creative thinking. Under the innovation leadership approach, leaders would be courageous enough to bear risks or comfortable with risk taking (p.41). Hence, motivated the staff may take revolutionary work decisions that in turn may entirely change the way the company operates. As the Google’s business sustainability is related to technology, it is inevitable for the company to enhance technological innovations to obtain an edge over its market rivals and to maintain the current dominating status in the market. In addition, the innovation leadership can really aid the organisation to seize and capitalise on the emerging potential market opportunities. Under this leadership approach, leaders would always seek innovative ways to relieve and satisfy their followers by implementing policy changes and deploying various techniques. Conclusion Once there is a decline in the demand of products or services supplied by Google, some changes in the organisational culture may be necessary to respond to that particular situation. Since Google operates in the technology sector, a decline in the demand of its products or services indicates that the company fails to meet changing customer expectations and loses its market share to competitors. More precisely, the organisation is not competitive enough to dominate its market rivals. Under this circumstance, it is essential for the organisation to review its organisational culture to understand why the management fails to influence its employee behaviour properly or to enhance technological innovations. Such an assessment may assist the company to identify the proper changes required in organisational culture to improve the situation. In the light of Google’s organisational culture, it is recommendable for the company to bring some regulations over its employees if the company faces a decline in demand for its products or services. Currently, the company adopts extremely liberal policies toward its employees so that they are free to work or to spend a significant amount of leisure time in the worksite. By regulating such leisure facilities, the Google management may force its employees to be more creative and to concentrate more on their projects. The company management must also examine whether the leaders are effective in influencing their followers or there is any conflict among the personnel. Finally, the company should ensure that its employee hiring system is still potential enough to hire smartest and innovative candidates. References Dundon, E. (2002). The Seeds of Innovation: Cultivating the Synergy that Fosters New Ideas. US: AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn. Google: Our culture. Retrieved from http://www.google.co.in/about/company/facts/culture/ Mace, M. (2013). Google logic: why Google does the things it does the way it does. The Guardian, 9 July. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/jul/09/google-android-reader-why Porter-OGrady, T & Malloch, K. (2010). Innovation Leadership: Creating the Landscape of Healthcare. US: Jones & Bartlett Publishers. Steiber, A. (2014). The Google Model: Managing Continuous Innovation in a Rapidly Changing World. US: Springer Science & Business Media. Read More