The Strategic Contribution of Corporate Social Responsibility to Google
Company Background
Over the last decade Google has become one of the largest and most successful global firms. Founded in 1998 and beginning as an online search engine, Google has evolved into a multi-faceted technology giant. Their success is evident in indicators including; revenue, market share, and brand value.
Google success can be seen in its staggering revenue figures. Google announced $55 billion in total revenue for 2013, which is 189th on Forbes 500 list, the majority coming from advertising (Google Investor, 2014). On top of this their profits exceeded $15 billion. Despite a narrow revenue stream, Google’s broad product range is also a measure of their success. Part of the strategic developed of the company has been through diversification. This has been achieved through commitment to a policy of bold and aggressive acquisitions, currently they hold over 100 products in their portfolio. This gives them broad awareness, vast economies of scale and sustainability across their product-lifecycle and Boston matrix (Hooley et al 2008).
As a result of their huge number of sub-brands, assessing the market share of all their operations is difficult. In their key markets they hold the following shares;
Search Engine Android Smart Phones Digital Advertising
66.9% (comScore, 2013) 79.3% (clark & Connors, 2013) 33.2% (Efrati, 2013)
In each of these markets these percentages indicates that Google is an influential market leader and by definition holds monopoly powers. Research shows that high market share benefits and increases firms' profitability (Kekra & Srinvasan 1990).
The company also consistently scores highly in terms of brand value; 5th on Forbes list...
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... would be able to benefit if they truly began to appreciate the responsibility they have to their stakeholders.
This means shifting towards the ‘social innovation’ paradigm where stakeholders are seen as opportunities, not charity cases. (Dess et al, 2012). To do this the company must begin to understand itself and its actions in a virtuous context, and avoid the rational oversimplified justification of its actions through the notion maximum utility (Moore, and Beadle, 2009). Developing such an ethos requires; properly defined values, stakeholder balance, process integrity and a long-term perspective (Ardichvili et al 2009). Doing so will allow them to develop synergistic relationships with their stakeholders and develop their business in a sustainable way. In this sense I believe that CSR has a very valuable role to play for google in their strategic development.
...e graph to contrast Gmail and Yahoo!’s email user was found to be surprisingly difficult and provided unrelated results: a link to “A List of Mergers and Acquisitions” on Wikipedia popped up as the second choice when typing in the key words “google vs yahoo email graph” into the search bar. When one searches for maps, Google presents Google Maps in 1 in 13 search results, while MapQuest and Yahoo! Maps seem nonexistent. Additionally, Youtube (which was acquired by Google in 2006) and Google Video enjoy higher ranks while Bing Video is 6th in line. Google’s market share over the search industry has increased rapidly over the last decade, but that doesn’t mean the results it provides are reliable. Google therefore is characterized by monopolistic traits because its increasing influence and control allows it to manipulate markets to further promote company popularity.
Google was founded by two University of Stanford graduate students Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Their main objective of founding the company was to be able to retrieve specific data from massive amounts of information. The two developed a proprietary technology that would become the ultimate search engine. Initially the pair worked out of their dorm room, then a garage, and once they had quickly outgrown these "facilities" they had moved on to a much larger facility where they reside to this day. It seemed to be a matter of time before they had conquered the continental United States, and had begun to eye the lands across the pond.
...as not only been reliable when it arises to offering a product of the highest and excellence, nonetheless is also continually developing, adjusting, but more meaningfully revolutionizing the industry. Also, what creates Google’s invention so matchless in assessment to its challengers is the attention that it offers to consumer requirements in order to offer a consistent and difficultly substituted the product rather than concentrating on exploiting its profit with each given chance which may cooperation the quality of its search consequence its product. Having examined the company’s internal and external environment it is obvious that Google earnings care and attentions even to the smallest detail to guarantee that it will be the leading company between many other online search engines and has been able to create loyal customers that are continually growing.
The leaders of Google have well understood the means to make Google’s company different to the other companies. They established since the beginning an original way of work, controlling the recruitment of the new members, and imposing their vision on the employees.
A corporations CSR should be shaped in order to fit the goals of the corporation, although every corporation’s CSR should differ, since most have different goals and different communities behind them. The CSR should be molded into fitting the corporation’s goals in order to make it easier on the corporation in giving back to the community while achieving its goals. For example, a corporation located in a desert wishes to be more efficient, by reducing water usage it is not only creating lower costs, which result in higher revenue, but also helps the community by not taking up so much water. Taking this into consideration, it is critical that the corporation goals and values are established and clear throughout the corporation, they should be developed by the board or directors and CEO, and the highest managerial level should stress their importance to the rest of the corporation. By making the goals and values at the top branch of the corporate hierarchy, it will be simpler for the corporates community to develop in order to nurture those goals and values. Therefore, a corporation can reach the “shared-value,” a value for both its shareholders and community in a simpler manner that can result benefiting the corporation in the end as well. Throughout the article many examples are given of actual corporations that have benefited and changed their CSR in order to fit their goals, therefore, providing solid proof that these methods work. Nevertheless, as acknowledged by the author’s themselves, most of the corporations taken into consideration where one’s that Harvard CSR students were employed
The first and more important implication was downsizing the workforce trying to keep the most skilled workers and relocate them in the areas of need. Some of the threats for Google were trying to keep up with the competition, which it was aggressive. Many companies were trying to the same road of connecting people with information on the web. The biggest competitor for Google was Microsoft Corporation with its search engine Yahoo. Moreover, other companies were competing against Google from start-ups to well formed companies that were trying to develop search technologies. Also, had high competition in the advertising area where pay for performance was a great way to acquire new customers. However, the best service that Google launched was the language service offering fifty foreign
Unit VII Mini Project Disney By: LaVita Fleming Strategic Recommendations Positioning Product positioning is what comes to mind when a company target market thinks about the company product compared to its competitor’s products. According to Jan Welborn-Nichols, Positioning is where ones’s product or service fits into the marketplace. Having effective positioning assists with the product or service being number one with consumers. According to Keller, A positioning analysis should consist of Points of Parity, and Points of Difference. The Points of Difference are the benefits that a consumer strongly associates with the brand and they believe that they will not find the same attributes with another brand.
As Google expands the reach of their projects they also expand their competition. Market competitiveness is one of the largest threats to Googles success. “I used to have this debate with Steve Jobs, and he would always say, ‘You guys are doing too much stuff,’” says Page. “He did a good job of doing one or two things really well.” While the formula worked wonders for Apple, Page says his vision for Google is different: “We’d like to have a bigger impact on the world by doing more things.”
Google Inc. is a company that started in 2002 and has gradually grown to become an international technology company. Google’s business is mainly focused around vital areas, like advertising, search, operating platforms and systems and platforms, hardware products and enterprise. The company produces its revenue mainly by distributing online advertising. Google also produces revenues from Motorola through selling products. The company offers its services and products in over 100 languages and in over 50 regions, territories and countries. The company assimilates various features in its search service and gives dedicated search services to aid users modify their search. Google also gives product-listing advertisements, which comprise of product information, like price, merchant information and product image without needing ad text or extra keywords.
The corporation feels as though CSR has a direct and positive impact on the people in the communities and even in our backyards, and around the world. However, the company believes that the communities in turn and their continuing engagement with Microsoft services contributes the to the company’s business achievements and profits. Further, the communities are amongst the most important stakeholder groups in the Microsoft’s corporate responsibility strategy throughout the country. Microsoft, is also concerned about the rights of humans which are the main thrusts in Microsoft corporate social responsibility programs (Smithson, 2017). Stakeholders are important for their direct effect on Microsoft Corporation’s organizational performance through human resource competency and productivity (Smithson,
Google continues to grow and innovate. Google focuses on the user and all else will follow. Since the beginning, they have focused on providing the best user experience possible, and take great care to ensure that they will ultimately serve their customers(Google.com n.d.). In relation to market development and product development the core values “Its best to do one thing really, really well (Google.com n.d.),” fits in with these strategies. “You don’t need to be at your desk to need an answer (Google.com n.d.),” describes Goggle’s innovation to mobile platforms. “The need for information crosses all borders (Google.com n.d.).” Google company has grown and has offices in more then 60 countries, maintaining more then 180 internet domains, and serve more then half of their results to people outside of the United States, and this relates to concentrated growth strategy. “Great just isn’t good enough(Google.com n.d.).” Google continues to strive to reach for better ways of doing things, through innovation and integration, continue to improve things in unexpected ways (Google.com n.d.).
The strategy of Google seems to focus of innovation. Innovation providing superior user experience makes the user promote the application because the customer just love it. This gives rise to more usage, which in turn gives rise to more advertising revenues for Google. More and more products of Google are coming into the lifestyle of user and the strategy appears to completely dominate internet and eventually dominate desktop as well. All Google needs to do is to edit their motto related to categorization /classification of information.
Google is a multi-billionaire company that was founded by Larry Paige and Sergey Brinn in September 1998. Google housed more than 40,000 employees and it is now still increasing. In 2014, the company has 53,600 employees. There are several products created by Google, some of the well-known are Google Search, Google Scholar and Google App.
First of all, where does the word “Google” come from? The name "Google" originated from a misspelling of "googol,” which refers to 10100, the number represented by a 1 followed by one hundred zeros. It found its way to the English language, now the verb "Google", was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2006, meaning, "to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet." Their search engine was originally nicknamed "BackRub" because the system checked back links to estimate a site's importance. /// The start of Google was pretty much like the start of every website. It was a research project to these two Ph.D. Students where they hypothesized that a search engine that analyzed the relationships between websites would produce better ranking of results than existing techniques, which ranked results according to the number of times the search term appeared on a page. It was first related to the university’s domain, but then the traffic was so heavy that the university asked them to move their website to a domain outside the university. What made Google this popular was the speed it pulls out information, which is counted in parts of seconds. And also, the size of their data base, according to the instructor of our instructor in MIS class only 60% of data you found on Google are in other web search engines.
Business organizations regularly run into demands from various stakeholders groups when conducting day-to-day business. These demands are generated from employees, customers, suppliers, community groups, governments, and shareholders. Thus, according to Goodpaster, any person or group of people that can shape or can be shaped by attainment of the objectives by an organization is considered a stakeholder. Most business organizations recognize and understand their responsibilities to these groups and endeavor to honor and fulfill them. These responsibilities are often communicated to the public by a statement of principles or beliefs. For many business organizations, corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become an essential and integral part of their business. Thus, this paper discusses the two CSR views: the classical view and the stakeholder view. Furthermore, I believe that the stakeholder view has brought ethical concerns to the forefront of businesses, and an argument shall be made that businesses would improve both socially and economically if CSR, guided by God’s love, was integrated into their strategic planning.