Greg’s Organizational Culture
Organizational culture refers to a system of shared meaning that it held by members of a certain organization, which helps in differentiating the organization from other organizations. It comprises of shared norms and values of the organization. The shared norms, values, and attitudes determine the interpretative schemes of the members of an organization. Interpretative schemes enable the members of an organization to assign meaning to various activities inside and outside the organization. Organizational culture dictates the behaviors, actions, and interactions of members of an organization. Organizational culture is one of the major features that give companies a competitive edge over their rivals. Having a good organizational culture is one of the major factors that has improved the competitiveness of Greg’s and Google in the industry of operation (Cameron & Quinn, 2011).
Google is one of the most admired companies in the world. It is the most used search internet engine globally. Google has more than 1 billion internet searches daily. Google also has other innovative products such as Google Earth, Picasa, and Google Maps. It makes the software that is used to run most smart phones – android. Google has grown from a company that had 10 employees to more than 10,000 employees who operate in different parts of the world. The success of the company may be traced from principles of its founders. The company ensured that it puts users first. It eliminated all distractions that were common in most search engines. Its search page comprises of a blank page that has the company’s logo and a search box. Google also reduced pop advertisements, which are common in other search engines. This is due to the fact that the pop advertisements were annoying to users. This enabled the company to improve user experience, which was critical to its success.
Google strives to keep its employees happy. The company created a unique work environment that helped in attracting, motivating, and retaining highly skilled employees. This has made the company be one of the best companies to work for in the world. Google employees receive free gourmet food options. Employees of the company also have access to gyms video games and a child care center. Google provides its employees with a 4 months paternal leave during which they are entitled to 75% of their income. This makes employees feel they are valued by the company.
Google’s work environment is similar to that of Greg’s. Both companies ensure that they put employees first. Greg values it employees at all levels. The company puts its employees first. Catering for the welfare of its employees ensures they take care of customers who in turn take care of the business. Greg’s gives employees a certain proportion of its profits, which is payable twice a year. It strives to ensure that there is no ‘us and them’ feeling among employees. It ensures that all members feel they are vital to the operations of the company. Greg’s ensures that it includes the contributions of its staff in addressing issues affecting them. Greg’s strives to ensure that all employees part of the Greg’s family, which would enable them share the successes of the company. Greg’s has various family friendly policies, which enables employees have a flexible work-life balance. Greg’s gives its employees equal opportunities. The company also encourages diversity and ensures that no employee is discriminated against based on age, gender, disability, religion, or ethnic origin.
Google encourages its employees to take risks, which improves innovation. This is highlighted in a situation where the Google’s vice president in charge of the company’s advertisement system made a mistake that made the company lose millions of dollars. She later apologized upon which Larry Page, one of the founders of the company, congratulated her for her willingness to take risks. He claimed that it was better for the company to move quickly while doing too much rather than be cautious and do very little. The ability to take risks while acknowledging that mistakes may arise during the process is one of the major policies that make Google have a competitive edge over its rivals. Google is faced with the challenge of expanding into new fields to facilitate its growth. Therefore, to encourage new ideas, the company encourages its engineers to spend 20% of the time within the company working on their private ideas (Kreiter & Kinicki, 2013).
Risk taking is not one of the features of Greg’s organizational culture. Greg’s ensures employees abide by the laid down rules in undertaking their duties. This may be due to the nature of the company’s industry of operation. Risk taking may be detrimental to the future competitiveness of the company. This is highlighted by Greg’s desire to expand into other European countries. The expansion ultimately resulted in failure costing the company a significant amount of money.
Google makes its decisions using teams. In fact, even the management of the company is in the hands of three people. Larry Page and Sergey Brin are the founders of the company. They hired Eric Schmidt to be the CEO of the company. Together they help in running the company. They use a consensus to make various decisions affecting the company. Employees also have small teams that help in influencing decisions of the company. On the other hand, Greg’s decisions are made by the leadership of the company upon which they are implemented to down (Silverthorne, 2005).
The relationship Greg’s organizational structure and culture has a significant impact on the performance of the company. The organizational culture would impact the organizational culture. Organizational culture helps in shaping the organizational structure as it provides interpretative models of the top management of the company. This ultimately helps in shaping the organizational structure. The organizational culture creates a system that helps in guiding the considerations and reasoning of the management of the company. It also helps in guiding the decision-making process, which ultimately affect the performance of the company. From a management perspective, organizational structure is a tool that enables the management of an organization to achieve the goals and objectives of the organization. The type of tool is dependent on the ideas of the manager on the organization, its role and how it is supposed to be. As such, organizational culture determines interpretative schemes of most members of an organization. It provides leaders of the organization with a certain view of the organization, it meaning, and the most efficient method of restructuring. Organizational culture creates the frame of reference that helps in designing the organizational structure. As such, the organizational structure must be in line with the dominant assumptions of the norms, values, and attitudes as prescribed by the organizational culture. For example, if the organizational culture focuses on the concentration of power at the top, then the organization is likely to have a centralized organizational structure (Silverthorne, 2005).
If the organizational structure is not compatible with organizational culture, then members of the organizational would consider it as not legitimate. This would necessitate the organizational culture of structure to be changed. These changes would have a significant impact on the performance of the company. It would have a negative impact on the performance of the company if the changes necessitate the members of the company to work in a manner that is incompatible with the cultural norms and values of the organization. This forces employees to work in a manner they deem as not correct or useful to the organization. This would ultimately create conflict between employees and the management. The frustration of employees would have a negative impact on their productivity. This would make them strive to get out of this state as soon as possible. This ultimately increases employee turnover. This would necessitate the organization to revert to its previous organizational culture to prevent the escalation of the problems. As such, organizational culture may delegitimize the organizational structure. It makes the organizational structure be inefficient in the eyes of the members of the organization. This highlights how the organizational culture may mount an insurmountable barrier to the implementation of an organizational structure. In such an instance, the organizational structure remains as a ‘dead letter’ since members of the organization continue working as they used to in the past. This necessitates an organization to implement an organizational structure partially to reduce resistance to the structure (Kreiter & Kinicki, 2013).
Various factors influenced the behavior of Greg’s CEO. Working full shifts in various locations of the company helped him understand the issues that employees in the locations faced while undertaking their activities. In addition, it helped in improving interaction between the management and employees. Engaging in full time shifts in various locations helped in keeping in touch with employees of the company. It also enabled the CEO of the company to have a good understanding of all operations of the company. The behavior of the CEO helped in making the employees of the company open up to the management of the company. It enabled the employees to express their issues to the management of the company without fear of victimization.
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