Google's Organizational Culture and Success
In his book Organizational Culture and Leadership, Schein defines the culture as: “The climate and practices that organizations develop around their handling of people, or to the espoused values and credo of an organization”.
We can analyze Google’s organizational culture thought Ouchi’s framework. Ouchi studied three different company’s culture and saw that the differences between those explained a part of the company’s success. Depending on his theory it seems that Google Inc. is the type Z US firms.
Cultural characteristics Type J (Japonese model) Type A (typical American model Type Z (credited American model)
Commitment to employees Life contract Short term contract Long term contract
Evaluation Slow and qualitative Fast and quantitative Slow and qualitative
Careers Large and not based on specialty Very narrowed and specialty based Moderately based on specialty
Control Implicit and informal Explicit and formal Implicit and informal
Decision making Grouped and consensual Individual Grouped and consensual
Responsibility Collective Individual Individual
Concern for people Holistic (firm and family) Narrowed (individual tasks) Global (individual at work)
Google tries to retain its employees and evaluate them in a quantitative but also qualitative manner. In fact, the company made its work environment colorful and vehicles the image of a fun place to work through what it proposes. For example, employees can have free snacks or bring their pet at the office or go to the gym etc... Employees can benefit from flexible working hours and have some time for their self-directed projects which shows the importance of the creativity and innovation from each and in every departmen...
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...ip rotating…etc. They have also set up the self directed projects. Employees can thus spend a part of their time in creating and developing their own projects. Larry and Sergey based themselves on their own experience and permitted to their employees to have also a personal project. They also gave a big autonomous to their project teams, that participate to provide horizontal communication, and thus the share of experiences.
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.
“Because they had the original idea, they will typically have their own notion, based on their own cultural history and personality, of how to fulfill the idea” (Schein 2004 p.227)
Google’s corporate environment has always been groundbreaking and cutting edge since the company was founded. A significant portion of the company’s success must be given to the far out ways in which it develops it products and services, therefore, standard business practices probably will never work for Google.
Influencing a group of individuals to achieve a common goal is leadership in its simplest form and the three people responsible for this are Dr. Eric Schmidt, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer; Larry Page, Co-Founder & President, Products; and Sergey Brin, Co-Founder & President, Technology. Overseeing the company's technical and business strategy since 2001, Dr. Schmidt’s leadership has helped the company grow from a startup to a global enterprise while maintaining a culture of strong innovation. Larry Page the founding CEO grew the company to over 200 employees and profitability before moving into his role as president of products. Sergey Brin directs the research efforts of Google with areas of focus in search engines, information extraction from unstructured sources, and data mining of large text collections and scientific data. However Dr. Eric Schmidt, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin all share responsibility for Google’s day-to-day operations (Google Management, 2010).
Google is leader in global technology, and it has concentrated in making sure it improves how information is organized, and retrieved. This is through creation of search engines, which help users to locate information with ease, and quickly. Google has incorporated innovation in search engines, and advertising. This has made Google to be one of the leaders in internet, maintaining its lead in online index. It has always been competing with Yahoo, Microsoft and Bing in search engines, and Facebook in online advertisements (Google.com, 2010).
Organizational culture is the essence of any company. It is the way a company separates themselves from the market and especially, from their competition. According to an article in Business Insider, “Corporate culture is the personality of a company and it can’t be faked” (Schawbel, 2013, Cultural research section, para. 1). For the purpose of this paper, I will be investigating the corporate culture of Google Incorporated. Google was founded in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin who met at Stanford University in 1995 (Google Company website).
INTRODUCTION The Google company has engaged the controlling location and position in its industry since the launch due to its unique product which is a result of its unparalleled working location. Google has moved out on to achieve the largest share of online search engines as it affords its users with a product that is difficult to find even though there are a lot of challenges. By analyzing and examining the internal and external environment of the company, it is obvious that Google company is running an efficient machine, giving attention to the most of its customers and it ensures that it offers a quick and reliable product to its customers. Origination structure at Google :
Culture can be defined as “A pattern of basic assumptions invented, discovered or developed by a given group as it learns to cope with its problems of external adaptation and internal integration that has worked well enough to be considered valid, and therefore to be taught to the new members as the correct way to perceive, think and feel in relation to those problems”. Schein (1988). Organizational culture can be defined as a system of shared beliefs and values that develops within an organization and guides the behavior of its members. It includes routine behaviors, norms, dominant values, and feelings or climates. The purpose and function of this culture is to help foster internal integration, bring staff members from all levels of the organization closer together, and enhance their performance.
Eliminating friction at every turn: ensuring change can happen quickly and efficiently Google’s approach to innovation is highly improvisational. Any engineer in the company has a chance to create a new product or feature.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin, both were brought up with a different teaching platform in Montessori school. Therefore they learn to be different by asking question to themselves and others why things have to be done this way and not the others, where the creativeness and innovation was spark up by all this unusual question that create a difference in thinking. Hence, creating a room of thinking of self independent towards creative talent in Google. (Steven Levy, 2011)
Organizational culture can be defined as the glue that holds an organization together through a sharing of patterns of meaning. The culture focuses on the values, beliefs, and expectations that members come to share (Siehl& Martin, 1984). Organizational culture helps to contribute towards achieving the organizational goals, decision making processes, job satisfaction, employee motivation etc. It helps in uniting the employees of an organization.
The Google Culture Google's corporate culture is based on a number of principles that lay in the foundation of the company's success. First of all, members of the Google workplace are seen as equals. Of course for organizational purposes there are managers and those they manage, but this doesn't create any kind of barriers as communication flows swiftly back and forth and...
As any other company that managed to rise to fame, it was successful due to an exceptional organizational belief and value, Google company is no exception. Google Inc. practices a routine type of working condition for the scalability and its storage solution, managing the large scale application, as well as making a new platform. It is well known that a routine work is more stressful than any other work.
Since, Google primary is functional; however, it also includes a few geographical organizations. Google’s culture breeds innovation by their workforce. Their policies promote their employees to step outside of the base box and provide new ideas that would draw ...
Its persistence and incredible energy are definably the keys of success. The first model created inside the company was focusing on the users, and the rest will be followed achieved. Also, the company figured out that being great at one thing was going to be the right path to follow. Plus, especially when dealing with technology, being able to provide a fast service was going to gain numerous customers. Moreover, Google’s model was based on democracy and ethical behavior. It is not necessary to become evil in order to be successful. Information is precious and a company like Google is always in need of information. There is plenty of information out there waiting to be found, and it only needs someone to look in the right place. Dressing like a professional does not make a person one. It takes skills, abilities and education. Finally, progress will never stop, and when someone thinks that he or she had reached the top, something will come up. In order to be successful, a person or a company should not stop
Employee focus (Google has a unique culture and policies to promote innovation. The company strives to employ the most qualified applicants and reward the greatest contributors, in order to promote good performance and facilitate hiring and retention)
Google’s internal structure stability can be influenced by external factors. To ensure the right decisions made, they must complete external and internal analysis. Google’s must contend with external environment influences, which are political, economical, and a technological. Day after day must be able to understand how the external environment influences can provide advantages to obtaining opportunities but on the downside expose the threats that Google has to overcome to be successful. For Google to maximize the market opportunities, Google must recognize its internal value, rarity, and organization. To exploit the company’s strength and weakness, Google must comprise an SWOT analysis. When Google accomplishes the SWOT analysis, they will understand the company’s strengths and weaknesses. It will also demonstrate the environmental opportunities and the threats that are facing in this competitive market. Once this analysis completed, Google can plan strategic plan to utilize their strengths, improve upon their weaknesses, maximize their opportunities, and eliminate threats that can endanger their growth as a company.