Essay on Organizational Design Google

Google is one of the most successful companies operating in the high tech industry. In spite of certain slowdown in the business development of Google, the company has reached a tremendous success in the course of less than two decades. In this regard, the organizational design plays a particularly important role in the successful business development of Google because the effective organizational structure and healthy organizational culture contribute to the fast business development of Google. At this point, it is worth mentioning the fact that the employees’ satisfaction is one of the major conditions of the current business success of Google Inc. At the same time, the company has managed to boost its business development using its chaos management strategy but this strategy can hardly be effective in a long-run perspective. At any rate, the company is unlikely to reach a sustainable development through its chaos management strategy. In such a situation, Google still manages to maintain positive marketing performance and effective organizational structure and culture but the company is likely to face substantial problems in a long-run perspective because the company is still unable to maintain sustainable development and, what is more, the employees’ turnover is still high.

The company uses task-oriented organizational culture. Employees and small creative teams focus on specific tasks, which they have to achieve. The company funds projects and stimulates employees and small creative groups to develop their project and to create new products and services. The task-oriented organizational culture makes the company successful because employees of the company generate new products and services and improve the marketing position of the company. In terms of Hofstede and Bond’s dimensions of national culture, Google is basically individualistic and short-term oriented. At the same time, the company strategy of uncertainty avoidance is not always successful because employees cannot be absolutely certain in their future as they complete their projects or face the deficit of creative ideas. Power distance within Google is low for leaders of the company tend to eliminate barriers between them and employees. Shein’s three level model is deeply integrated within Google because employees working within the company share the common set of values established by the company and their personal interests and values often coincide with that of the company.

On analyzing the organizational design of Google Inc., it is worth mentioning the fact that Google has a complex organizational structure that depends on the employees’ performance and creativity. The company develops three thousand applications daily that makes over one million applications annually (Work in Google, 2007). In such a way, the company manages to reach the high level of development through the introduction of innovations. In fact, innovations and new products and services created by employees of the company allow Google to boost its business development and grow fast. In such a context, it is quite natural that the company was boosting record profits in the mid-2000s. The company’s growing profit was closely intertwined with new applications, new products and services developed by its employees.

The organizational structure plays an important part in the fast business development of Google because the company encourages the high level of autonomy of its employees and their high level of satisfaction. In such a way, the company stimulates the creativity of employees and the introduction of innovations. In fact, Google uses chaos management, which implies the maximum freedom of employees in their creativity and in their developments. Google Inc. focuses on the development of multiple projects and products that brings the company a tremendous success. However, it is worth mentioning the fact that many of projects developed by Google’s employees fail. Nevertheless, the company manages to increase its profits and to develop its business successfully due to the large number of projects and new products and services that the company develops.

The organizational structure is complex but it has a low level of centralization and formalization. The company develops a democratic atmosphere and its organizational structure is built upon liberal, democratic relationships, which involve democratic leadership style, which is close to steward leadership, when leaders perform the role of guides for their employees. In such a way, leaders encourage the motivation and creativity of employees, through which employees can increase the effectiveness of their performance. At the same time, the effective performance of employees increases substantially the development of the positive organizational performance. Therefore, the company keeps progressing due to the development of effective relationships between leaders and employees as well as between employees. The company attempts to create healthy organizational culture that contributes to the overall progress of the organization at large and each employee in particular.

However, the organizational development is unsustainable in a long-run perspective (Googling Out of Control, 2007). What is meant here is the fact that the company cannot keep progressing in a long-run perspective sustainably because its organizational structure is unstable. To put it more precisely, the company keeps progressing due to innovations introduced by its employees. Even though Google is one of the target places of work for employees, the company still cannot unite employees and make them working to reach the strategic goal, mission and vision of the company. In fact, each employee works on his or her own project and attempts to implement his or her own project or product. Google is a virtually perfect place, where gifted employees with innovative ideas can get funding to implement their projects and to develop new products or services. However, employees cannot generate new ideas over and over again. Instead, as employees create new products or services and complete projects they have been working on they eventually abandon the company either because they cannot generate new ideas and create new products or services or because they launch their own business. As a result, the company reaps new ideas and products but it fails to retain employees. In a long-run perspective, such unstable organizational structure cannot provide the company with sustainable developments. Instead, the company is likely to be unstable and dependent on its employees and their creative ideas. As soon as the company starts missing new prospective employees, Google is likely to face a profound structural crisis because the company does not have the system, the organizational structure, where departments work on their specific tasks and maintain specific products and services. Instead, the company boosts its business development through the introduction of new products and services over and over again, funding projects, many of which are not successful.

At the same time, it is important to dwell upon the group level of the organizational performance and development of Google. In this regard, the company focuses on the development of small creative groups that work on specific projects to maximize the effectiveness of the organizational performance. In fact, small creative teams are highly flexible and effective (Work in Google, 2007). In such a way, the company attempts to maximize the effectiveness of its performance. At this point, small creative teams are effective because they can focus on specific projects. They develop new products and services and generate new ideas, which may be implemented successfully. Small groups are more effective, when the creation of a new product or services is required. However, the effectiveness of small creative groups is relatively low, when such groups have to control complex processes. In fact, small creative groups cannot perform routine tasks effectively. At any rate, the effectiveness of their performance drops consistently as they start working on routine tasks, while the creative job increases the effectiveness of small groups because such job is interesting for team members. Therefore, small creative groups are effective in s short-run perspective, while in a long-run perspective their effectiveness decreases. Therefore, the company needs restructuring to maintain sustainable development of its business and to maintain positive organizational performance in a long-run perspective.

At the same time, the crucial unit for Google is an average worker. In fact, the company attempts to use the full potential of each employee. Google motivates its employees to introduce innovations and to develop new products and services. Therefore, the company encourages creativity of employees, which helps the company to introduce new products and services that put the company in an advantageous position in the market. The company focuses on the motivation of employees providing them with a large autonomy. To put it more precisely, employees of the company are virtually free in their creativity. They can create any product or service they like that gains the approval of the company. In such a way, employees can implement their creative ideas and they are not limited in their creativity by managers. Instead, they can and do work autonomously. The autonomy of employees is one of the most effective motivators in Google. In fact, employees, who work autonomously, feel the recognition of their importance for the company by the top executives of Google. The autonomy of employees motivates them to work more effectively because they do not suffer from the pressure of managers or top executives. They are free to work on what they like, when they like and how they like. The company does not impose strict rules and norms on its employees. Democracy and liberalism are the major prerogatives of Google and the company does not impose any code of conduct on its employees. Instead, the company allows its employees to enjoy as much freedom and autonomy as they like.

The company is oriented on young, post-graduate employees, who just graduate and transit from college or university to the Google’s workplace environment, where they just have fun (Googling Out of Control, 2007). At this point, it is worth mentioning the fact that young employees are highly prospective for the company because they can bring new ideas and concepts that the company can implement and new, young employees can form creative teams that can suggest an idea, develop and complete a project to create the product or service the group has suggested. In such a way, the company can maintain small creative groups of young employees. The age does matter because younger employees are often more creative and they have new ideas compared to older employees. In addition, the employees’ turnover is high in Google because, as it has been already mentioned above, employees working in Google cannot generate new ideas permanently and create new products and services over and over again. Instead, employees often use the company as the basis for starting the business of their own or employees just complete the project they would like to implement and they see no prospects in cooperation with Google or, on the contrary, Google does not see any potential in such employees. Hence, the high employees’ turnover raises the problem of the stable and sustainable development of the company.

The company tends to postmodernist trends as the company offers absolutely new approach to human resource management and creates virtually perfect workplace environment. For instance, employees working in Google can enjoy health care services, leisure, nutrition and many other services all for free (Work in Google, 2007). Naturally, multiple services offered by the company to its employees, which employees do not need to pay for, attract employees to work in Google. Obviously, they want to enjoy the free services the company offers to its employees. Moreover, they can work on projects they like and they can implement their creative ideas. However, the chaos management makes the work of employees disorganized. What is meant here is the fact that each employee works within his or her own team that looks like a bubble isolated from the rest of the organization. As a result, the company has a lot of employees but they cannot work as a solid unit. The organizational structure of the company turns out to be fragmentary. On the other hand, the company motivates employees to work in small creative teams and, what is more, the company is interested in creative employees. In such a situation, the company does not attract employees, who can perform regular task and maintain the stable organizational structure. Instead, the company is interested in creative innovators. Therefore, the company does not need effective managers but innovators. However, management is crucial, even for such a company as Google. Whatever innovations the company offers, it still needs effective managers. Naturally, it does not mean that Google Inc. does not have managers but what is mean here is the fact that Google focuses on the employment of creative employees, who are the major priority for the company, while managers are secondary for Google Inc.

Hence, employees with tremendous motivation, loyalty and productivity (Work in Google, 2007). They enjoy working in the company, where they can benefit from multiple free services they can receive in the company and they can develop their own projects and implement them with the support of Google Inc. The high motivation and loyalty of employees contributes to their effective performance and, thus, to the effective organizational performance.

Finally, it is worth mentioning the fact that Google has had a huge impact on the society and the role of this company in the contemporary society can hardly be underestimated. Along with ‘googling’ as generic term for using search engines, the society has learned the totally new organization that uses chaos management. In contrast to existing organizational designs, the organizational design of Google was and still is quite different. The company focuses on the development of healthy organizational structure, where each employee has ample opportunities to work autonomously and to implement his or her creative ideas. In such a way, Google influenced the society offering a new form of the organizational design, where employees can enjoy their work, whereas employees working in many other organizations suffered because they had to perform their routine job. In fact, Google has managed to change the attitude of people to work. Work has ceased to be a sort of duty anymore. Instead, work has become a pleasant activity that brings satisfaction for employees and offers ample opportunities for implementation of their creative ideas, while the company offers a variety of free services for employees.