Integrating Culture and Diversity in Decision Making: The CEO and Organizational Culture Profile
Fall 2014
1. Provide a brief (one [1] paragraph) description of the organization you chose to research.
Google Inc. is an American corporation that deals in internet search engines technology and a variety of products. It has two co-founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who were students at Stanford University. In 1998, it got incorporated as a private company. It has grown tremendously from a university project called Backrub to become one of the most renowned companies with its headquarters at Mountain View, California. It deals in a number of products and services like web search, image search, and online translations among others.
2. Examine the culture of the selected organization.
Google’s organizational culture embraces a unique corporate culture in terms of its employee handling and employees work environment. An organization’s culture is normally referred to as ‘a system shared meaning by an organization’s members that make it stand out amongst other organizations.’ A strong culture such as Google’s has values both widely accepted and considered. The organizational culture adopted by Google is explained to be unorthodox yet innovatively creative (Chen, Chung, Jun, & Liu, n.d).
The culture at Google also focuses on employee satisfaction, a fact that can be evidenced by the non-monetary fringe benefits it provides to its employees (Chen et al., n.d). An example is the provision of the Google apartment housing facilities, free transportation to and from work by Google buses, and provision of wireless network for the employees to stay connected day and night. Some of the Google offices offer breastfeeding rooms to enable mothers to tend to their children. New employees, routinely called “Nooglers,” usually get Google buddies to orient them into the Google work environment. Suon K. Cheng, a real estate planner for Google housing structures, reveals in an interview that masseuses are on call 24/7 in Google to help employees relax. All these benefits get directed towards forming a strong and innovative workforce.
Google’s structure can also be traced back to the humble company, from which it mushroomed, having begun with a few employees working directly under Larry Page and Sergey Brin. The two managed to get the company working through embracing principles such as; fun, dedication, and passion. Creativity, passion and a familiar flat organizational structure embraced by Google’s organizational culture are still incorporated by Google in a bid to retain the best aspects of the company’s original culture. The co-founder of Google double up as businessmen charged with the responsibility of ensuring the business activities run as planned and a social glue was propagating the organization’s corporate culture.
The most crucial move in ensuring heredity in transmission of Google’s culture and passing its spirit on is through recruiting. The company spends time and resources in selecting the top cream recruits from a wide pool of applicants for their workforce through a three-step process. The first step involves receiving of applications and reviewing of the resumes and the experiences by the recruiter. In case the recruiter feels the applicant suits the job, she contacts him to learn more about him and provide answers to questions he might have about the company. It is at this juncture that the recruiter elaborates Google’s culture and work atmosphere. The recruit’s skills are assessed to determine his progression to the next phase of the hiring process and a phone interview (Towers, 2006).
The strong Google organizational culture can appear to be excessively controlling. Other than the propelling force of innovative thinking, Google’s culture does plenty of thinking for its employees leaving little room for the employees to think for themselves. Moreover, the company shoulders all physical needs of the employees including housing and transport facilities to the extent that it feels suppressing. Some people believe that Google denies its employees a chance to realize self-actualization and independent thinking. (Chen et al., n.d)
3. Explain how you determined that the selected organization showed the signs of the culture that you have identified.
Google’s unique and unconventional organizational culture gets reflected on a variety of aspects found within and outside the confines of the organization’s workplace. These aspects include; the company’s provision of free food at its Gourmet Cafeterias and Snack Rooms to all Google Inc. employees at the New York offices, Mountain View offices, and other satellite offices. It also imposes a rule that advises employees against staying more than 100 feet from the source of food (Cosser, 2008).
The company also awards prizes for employees’ innovativeness and achievements in business through awards like the Founders Award that is set aside for employees who have posted outstanding performances. The awarding practice reinforces the organizational culture by motivating the employees in an attempt to spark creativity and innovativeness. It also promotes teamwork through the scheduled Friday TGIF company meetings organized to celebrate group accomplishments. (Chen et al., n.d)
The culture ensures a friendly work environment evidenced by Google’s provision of services such as healthcare services, transport facilities and housing facilities. Google provides total health care coverage for its employees and their families. Moreover, it provides housing facilities to its employees, as well as, transportation through its Wi-Fi enabled shuttle services (Google, 2014).
Google also portrays its culture through enacting of the 20% rule that encourages its employees to be creative by allowing a 20% time to spend on personal projects of their choice (Mediratta, 2007). The strategy allows the employees to explore and come up with new original products. The organizational flat structure enhances innovation. That fact gets depicted by the large amounts of duties delegated to the employees in terms of decision making on various projects. Empowering Google employees to make independent choices and implement them has led realization of competence in innovation (Schroeder, 2010).
Google’s standard of conduct that mainly outlines respect, confidentiality, and protection of Google’s assets solely focuses on its internal business activities. That is a sign of the flexible nature of Google’s organizational culture.
4. Determine the factors that caused the organization to embody this particular culture.
Google’s firm embrace of its unorthodox organizational culture is driven by factors that comprise the stiff competitive nature of Google’s line of products and services. The competition called for a working environment that would tap into the employees’ innovativeness and diversity. By allowing employees to spend 20% of their time working on personal projects, they have developed new products and services like Gmail and Google News.
Geographical factors also prompted Google’s initiative to embrace a unique organizational structure that provides housing and transport facilities to its employees. The initiative was fundamental in ensuring a conducive working atmosphere for the employees devoid of hassles from transport and housing expenses. The employee’s full potential would then be fully focused on achieving the company’s set goals and objectives (Google, 2014).
Another factor is homogeneity and inflexibility in the workplace that the company has effectively countered by recruiting employees who possess similar traits that encourage the heterogeneity (Chen et al., n.d). Google seeks recruits who are passionate and innovative, with personalities that promote diversity.
Lastly, the need to preserve and sustain the best aspects of Google’s culture also contributed to its incorporation of a unique organizational culture in terms of recruitment. It has three distinct recruitment phases that aim at employing recruits and assimilating them to form a unique and diverse workforce. Characteristics like spontaneity, creativity, and innovative thinking propel effectiveness of Google in terms of product and service delivery (Chen et al., n.d).
5. Determine what type of leader would be best suited for this organization. Support your position.
The best type of leader tailored for Google is one who embraces a Laissez-Faire form of leadership. That form of leadership would fit quite well with the flat organizational structure of Google since the employees require little supervision and its culture constitutes a low hierarchical level (Towers, 2006). Every employee is trusted to be skilled enough to make independent and autonomous decisions regarding projects that gear towards growth and development of the company. The company also engages employees in the recruitment process instead of hiring managers like other companies. The process reflects equality amongst employees that is typical of Laissez-Faire leadership style.
6. Imagine that there is a decline in the demand of product(s) or services supplied by the selected organization. Determine what the change in culture would need to be in response to this situation.
In the event that Google experiences a decline in the demand of products or services, the company would set new goals. It would also increase the number of groups obligated with the duty of coming up with innovative ideas to modify the product or service to win back customers. The company may also entice its employees by promising to reward an employee who comes up with the most innovative and effective way to win back their lost customers. The company would also divert more workforce towards solving the demand problem. It would welcome ideas from applicants directed towards providing a way forward in solving the decrease in demand for their products.
References
Chen, K., Chung, G., Jun, A., & Liu, K. (n.d). Organizational Behavior. A Case Analysis of Google. Retrieved from http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~kathyc/files/written/google.pdf
Cosser, S. (2008, February 11). Google Sets the Standard for a Happy Work Environment. EzineArticles. Retrieved from http://ezinearticles.com/?Google-Sets-The-Standard-For-A-HappyWork-Environment&id=979201
Google. (2014). Google Milestones. Retrieved from Google- Corporate Information:
http://www.google.com/corporate/history.html
Mediratta, B. (2007, October 21).The Google Way: Give Engineers Room. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/jobs/21pre.html?_r=1&
Schroeder, S. (2010, July 5). Google Employees Explain What It's Like Working at Google. Retrieved from http://mashable.com/2010/07/05/google-employees-working-google/
Towers, D. (2006). An investigation into whether the organizational culture is directly linked to motivation and performance through looking at Google Inc. Birmingham: The Birmingham Business School. Retrieved from http://mrshearingbusinessstudies.weebly.com/uploads/1/0/3/0/10303678/culture_performance_and_motivation_review_and_the_google_case_study_success.pdf
