Introduction
Microsoft is the world’s largest corporation in software and technology industry. William Gates and Paul Allen founded it back in the year 1975 and for about ten years, it became a multi-million company. The core objective of the company at early stages was to ensure, “there is a computer on every desk and every home.” The culture of the business is critical to all corporations. Culture influences almost all the operations of an organization throughout the life cycle of the firm. Culture would dictate to management when it comes to decision-making like for example, how are decisions made in the organization, business response to its surrounding, who is responsible to whom and how the employees should relate in the business premises among other issues. This paper would offer an analysis of Microsoft corporation culture. To be precise, the employees and the business, structure of the company and the cultural environment.
The industry that Microsoft is operating in is indeed very competitive thus; it requires innovative employees, especially the management team so the company can stay valid and relevant in the market. The operation of Microsoft uses the classical theory of the Directorate. Hence, it can be deduced that the key concepts that which are very useful in the day-to-day running of the business at Microsoft. These concepts as explained by the classical theory include the formal structure of the enterprise, the standard principles of the organization and management hierarchy structure. Microsoft Corporation is having a reputation and a share value that is declining for the last ten years. The management has incorporated new structure to improve performance. The new structure introduced is no longer appreciating culture.
Company culture
The culture of the company has been diverse since it deals with the various community in the delivery of their products. The company culture regarding stock exchange is that the corporation has been fairing very well in the stock exchange market. The company has been trading in the stocks market since 1986. Currently, the business is super for Microsoft. It is in the third position in the-the USA stock market capitalization having 175 million shares in the year 2014 (Microsoft.com. para 23). This value is very high as compared to the value of its competitors.
The company can improve performance through upholding efficiency in the business operations. According to Barreiro (para. 6), the theories that are critical in achieving efficiency include planning, command, coordinating, organizing and control. The arguments are valid to Microsoft Corporation because it is operating in a controlled setting where hierarchical structure is the order. The only aspect that is not illustrated adequately in these theories of management and seems to be critical is the personality aspect. Due to the stable regime that exists when it comes to classical theories that Microsoft is operating in, the company has deviated a bit to incorporate social factors as part of the company culture.
Employee motivation is a strategy to achieve efficiency in enterprises. As demonstrated by Schunk and Barry (14), motivation is critical to all business. Furthermore, Schunk and Barry (15) highlight that money is the most important thing that can motivate people best. Motivation does not largely apply to Microsoft because the driver of the company is not making money but attaining a sustaining market leadership in the technology industry. However, Microsoft Corporation seeks to motivate its employees with other non-monetary incentives rather than giving money to motivate them. Microsoft was the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory by taking the first two levels of needs. Although Maslow presumed that all employees seek satisfaction from their jobs from the bottom level towards the top level, Microsoft took the top two levels to improve efficiency (Cummings and Christopher 91). This kind of business culture has helped Microsoft have the most competent and innovative team of personnel. Microsoft believes in job rotation and influencing new skills through recognition of any achievement that the employees do. The allowances that the employees at Microsoft receive are more as compared to the net salaries. This motivates the employees more since their extra efforts are rewarded.
According to Drucker (para. 5), making operations in the company industrious for all staff to attain something is indeed an excellent tool to accomplish the business objective and purpose. Drucker in this statement is focusing on the people to be essential in any business. The company culture is the type of individuals that the enterprise is working with. For Microsoft, the performance of the employees is associated with the high standards that are similar amongst the employees. All staff recruited for Microsoft have similar features, which are paramount to achieve the company mission and vision. Some characteristics that seem similar amongst all Microsoft personnel include integrity and honesty, self-critical and committed to excellence in self-improvement and company appraisal (Hill, Gareth, and Melissa 361). Other features include accountability for realized results, willingness to take big challenges and a continuous passion for customers, technology and partners to the corporation. When a company is dealing with technology like Microsoft does, bright minds, very creative and innovativeness is key to the workforce for greater results.
With the Enterprise CEO Steve Ballmer, change is possible to the culture of the enterprise. He has seen culture be evolving day after day. Something that if embraced at Microsoft, the smart and ambitious minds of the company personnel can do their based all situations that they face to make the company better. There is need of cultural initiatives that found the company culture to make the culture of the company evolve. Brian Collins who is a director at Microsoft, the culture of the company is intense, innovative; fast paced and with smart people who measure if what they are doing regarding the impact it would have rather than simply doing it. Maintaining some of the values of a company completely unchanged gives the company great foundation in its culture (Schunk and Barry 19). Embedment and flow of culture are evident in the culture of Microsoft, but some values like honesty, integrity, passion for work, respectfulness and accountability remain constant since the company was started. Some changes that are evident in the culture of Microsoft is that some processes that were individualistic such as software process have evolved to become collaborative efforts of different people. Being agile in the operation of the company has led to more efficiency. The new culture of collaborating and partnership has achieved bigger results at Microsoft.
Employee Training and Development at Microsoft as part of Culture
The workforce is very critical at Microsoft. The culture at Microsoft regarding personnel is that employees are thrown into normal business operations right from the moment they are recruited to be part of the workforce of the company. The method that the HR has been using since the foundation of the company is “learn as you move on.” This strategy has helped the company achieve better results since employees are learning through what tasks they are doing rather than having trained to do something. The fresh recruits at Microsoft come directly from colleges and universities. This has been the trend since their minds are fresh are ready to learn every day.
In the recruitment of personnel, the company looks into four very vital qualities in the candidates. This has led to having 2 to 3% recruits among millions of applicants securing a job at Microsoft (Barreiro para. 2). The qualities that the expertise team of the employer looks for in a candidate include IQ, ambition, business judgment and the technical know-how that the candidate has. This strategy gives the flexibility in recruitments making the team get the best of the best. Upon hiring, the new employees are assigned to various groups to start projects under a very close supervision. Through the initiative of 2000 Microsoft skills, the gap between the available expertise and the needs of the company has been reduced. It helps employees to know particular responsibilities and tasks that they are supposed to do for the enterprise.
Measurement of Organization Culture
At Microsoft, the culture is measured using the Microsoft Annual Poll termed as MS Poll in short form. The human resource team of the company has the mandate to conduct this because they are the group the deal with personnel and their interaction within the organization. The department of HR performs this measurement through looking at some things within the company and categorizing them into sections our strategy, the company itself, groupings, their performance, and levels at different periods among other categories. Various groups with varied tasks will achieve different results. Within these groups, performance is measured over a specified period usually one financial year. There has been a correlation between the MS poll scores and workplace merit sites.
The new Structure at Microsoft
The new structure that Microsoft is currently using is positive as it brings more revenue to the company. The new structure is on reporting where it offers enhanced visibility in the Windows monetization, cloud growth, and MS Office transition. The structure aims at new reporting of revenues and cash flow of the corporation (Greene para. 5). The new structure breaks the Microsoft Company into three segments that are productivity and enterprise processes, intelligent cloud and the more personalized computer systems.
According to Greene (para. 6), productivity and Enterprise segment encompasses the Office and Office 365 for all commercial activities. The target consumers of Microsoft products are part of this as their particulars are addressed by the specifications they give. This segment is enhancing more collaboration and as the business has gone online with the dynamics of customer needs driving the operation of the firm. The intelligent cloud segment is concerned with services of the corporation. The system center, windows server, Azure, and the SQL Server demonstrate high creative value at Microsoft. The personalization of computing systems segment is paramount for ensuring that all the Microsoft products are genuine (Microsoft.com para. 40). It involves licensing of all the MS Windows operating systems and all other devices, which belong to Microsoft.
The new structure is encouraging performance and innovation through the creation of divisions in the structure of the corporation. The unit structure has enabled Microsoft to focus more on customers so that they meet their needs better than competitor companies. The structure will help the management to have an easier coordination of the cross products that the corporation is current offering. The organization chart has led to better monitoring of the employees too (Greene para.4). The interactive structure of the firm is supporting innovation and more satisfaction of the customers.
The coalitions that have power at Microsoft include the coalition with other giants of technology like the Amazon, eBay, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo and Netflix to challenge the Federal Communication Commission threat on the issue of net neutrality. Net neutrality, e means that the internet that is offered need not be limited or restricted to some content and software applications. It should allow access to all sites and allow a view of any information to everyone (Sottek para.3). This was affecting the security, and online business of Microsoft thus taking part in challenging the FCC is a great coalition to Microsoft. The other coalition is that of social responsibility where the company has invested millions of dollars in a project that they are collaborating with Facebook. The multi-billion project would offer clean, renewable energy of up to 60 Gigawatts by the year 2025. The project needs a lot of capital. Thus, many partners are contributing towards it. The biggest shares in the coalition are the Microsoft and Facebook.
Works cited
Barreiro, Lou. "Inside Microsoft: An Insider’s View of the Company’s Culture and Space (Part 1)." Chicago Creative Space. N.p., 2016. Web. 27 May 2016.
Cummings, Thomas, and Christopher Worley. Organization Development and Change. Cengage Learning, 2014: 87-103.
Drucker, Peter F. Management (Rev Ed). Zondervan, 2008.
Greene, David. "Microsoft CEO Reveals New Corporate Structure." NPR.org. N.p., 2013. Web. 28 May 2016.
Hill, Charles, Gareth Jones, and Melissa Schilling. Strategic Management: Theory: An Integrated Approach. Cengage Learning, 2014: 359-376.
Schunk, Dale H., and Barry J. Zimmerman eds. Motivation and Self-Regulated Learning: Theory, Research, and Applications. Routledge, 2012: 13-21.
Sottek, T.C. "Huge Coalition Led By Amazon, Microsoft, and Others Take A Stand against FCC on Net Neutrality." The Verge. N.p., 2014. Web. 27 May 2016.
Microsoft.com. "Microsoft 2015 Annual Report." N.p., 2016Retrieved on 27 May 2016 from https://www.microsoft.com/investor/reports/ar15/index.html
