Introduction
Google Inc. is one of the leading providers of internet-related services and products in the global market. The firm was founded in September 4, 1998 as a privately held company by Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University while pursuing their PhD program. These two scholars started a project of developing search engines that can rank results based on how frequently a question is asked and how often a web page is visited.
In what they called Page-Rank, Larry and Brin developed algorithms that can determine the relevance of a given websites to any person who is online. The search engine would rank the results based on the relevance and how frequent a given site is visited. The two realized that their project could be commercialized and in 1998, they started commercial operations. Since then, Google has grown to become the most popular search engine in the world. It has expanded through acquisitions, and currently it offers numerous products and services to clients all over the world.
According to Balu, Google currently employs over 57,148 people from various parts of the world. Its top engineers and other experts are located at the firm’s headquarters. Other experts and marketing officers are stationed strategically in various countries in Africa, Europe, Asia-Pacific and South America to address critical issues that may affect the normal operations of the firm and distribution of its products. This company, according to Balu, has been keen on identifying talents and hiring them to promote innovation in product development and marketing. The top management at this firm has been keen to develop a unique organizational behavior to help in its normal operations. Its open-door policy enables junior employees to share their unique ideas with top managers to help promote efficiency and innovation.
Analysis of Organizational Behavior
The world is changing in various respects and technology has been at the forefront in influencing this change. Firms such as Google are at the center of technology as a unique industry that influences all other industries. These technological firms are under great pressure to remain innovative as a way of managing competition in the market. To them, understanding what customers need is no longer an issue. Their concern is to understand and start developing what customers will need in future, while still offering what is currently needed in the best way possible.
The experts at Google must always think of the future while still living in present. Achieving this requires a unique workforce that is willing to work for longer hours to get results that others may think is unachievable. This has forced the management to develop organizational behavior that can help inculcate a unique desire among the employees to achieve more even when that seems to be impossible. In this analysis, the researcher will focus on two areas of organizational behavior where this firm has achieved excellence.
Emotions and Moods
Gedde defines emotions are short-lived feelings which are caused by known environmental factors. On the other hand, moods refer to prolonged feelings whose point of formation may not be clearly understood. It is important to understand that moods and emotions may have direct impact on the quality of work environment hence the output of employees. Emotions and moods can either be positive or negative based on their triggers. Negative emotions can slow work progress and quality of output from the affected employees at a given time. When such negative feelings are not put into control, they may develop into moods. It is easier to deal with negative emotions by eliminating the stressors than dealing with moods.
At Google Inc, the management has created an enabling environment where employees can express their feelings freely without any fear of intimidation. The top management has created a policy that encourages equality and respect for all employees irrespective of one’s position at the firm. When an individual feels that he is dealing with an emotion caused by a trigger within the firm, there are clear channels that he can follow to address the issue. Such an employee is allowed to seek intervention of the top managers to address pressing issues that may affect their operations. For instance, the firm has created a system where employees can review their immediate supervisors based on the nature of relationship they have with him and other factors.
The review is not meant to intimidate the supervisors. In the contrary, it is meant to create a two-way review system where employees review their supervisors and supervisors also review their employees to ensure that any issue that may bring misunderstanding within the firm is addressed in the best way possible. According to Gedde, the firm also promotes the need to address negative stressors as soon as they are detected before they can affect the employees negatively. For instance, employees outside the United States were once concerned that the firm was ignoring the need to support innovativeness in their countries. The management acted swiftly by creating incubation centers at various regions in Europe, Asia, and Africa to support innovation at these regional headquarters.
According to Gedde, one of the most common causes of negative emotions and moods is poor decision-making by the management. When the junior employees feel that they are not involved in making decisions that affect their work environment, they may become stressed or even angered by the management. This firm has been keen on avoiding such circumstances. The management currently involves its junior employees in decision-making processes. A good example is in the development of the firm’s marketing strategies. The top managers always encourage the junior marketers to make their opinions known to the senior officers. The senior officers will then develop marketing strategies based on the opinions given by the employees.
Promoting positive emotions and moods is one of the best ways of improving quality of employees’ output. Google Inc is one of the firms that have been keen to promote positive organizational cultures amongst employees as a way of motivating them. According to a Forbes survey conducted in 2013, Google was ranked one of the best employers in the United States. The level of employee’ motivation was above the market average. Most of the graduates at various institutions of higher learning within the country also noted that they would prefer working at Google after their graduation.
They cited a positive working environment at this firm where interests of every single employee are taken into consideration regardless of the position one holds. Managing emotions and moods of the employees require deep understanding of the cultural differences of the workforce, especially for a firm that operates in the global market. Google Inc’s management is very flexible when it comes to dealing with these cultural differences. Although the firm has a unique organizational behavior that it is promoting in all its branches, it is also conscious of the fact that some areas may require special treatment based on the exceptional local environmental forces.
Creativity
Miller defines creativity as “The ability to perceive the world in new ways, to find hidden patterns, to make connections between seemingly unrelated phenomena, and to generate solutions.” This definition brings out very important characteristics of creativity that have been witnessed at Google Inc. To be creative, one must strive to solve existing problems by perceiving the world in a new way, find patterns which might be hidden, and make relevant connections. This may seem to be a simple series of steps that one can easily follow, but Miller warns that creativity may not be as simple as some may believe. One must first understand what should be achieved. In many cases, human beings easily conform to the environment. They adapt to the existing environmental forces to live in harmony with natural forces. However, creativity seeks to challenge these forces by making them embrace what human beings find comfortable. Sometimes creativity may involve defying existing environmental forces.
At Google Inc, the management understands the need to embrace creativity and innovativeness in its operations. The firm was created out of an invention by the two founders. They developed a product that did not exist at that time. The unique algorithm that could rank online searches based on their relevance to the clients was one of the biggest successes in the internet industry. However, the management knew that it was not enough to come up with this single product to a market that is highly dynamic. It was necessary to continue modifying the product and developing other related products to maintain competitiveness in the market. That is why the firm developed incubation centers at its headquarters and in regional head offices around the world. These centers are meant to facilitate idea generation, testing, and possible commercialization if it is viable.
Creativity at Google is slowly moving from the incubation centers to the actual workstations of individual employees. The management has not eliminated the centers, but emphasis is now laid on the new ideas generated out of the work experience. The research by Walker shows that employees who interact with customers are in the best position to determine what their future needs may be and how a firm can meet such needs. That is what this firm is currently doing. Lorraine Twohill, Google’s vice president and head of global marketing, once stated that worth of an employee is determined by his ability to deliver results today and find possible solutions to future problems.
The open-door policy at the firm is one of the most important ingredients of organizational behavior that has helped in promoting creativity at the firm. In the past, most organizations had rigid communication system where a junior employee had to communicate with the immediate supervisor even if the message targeted the top managers. In such cases, it was common to find that the message failed to reach the intended audience. In case it did, then it would be so distorted that its original meaning would be lost. Promoting creativity in such environments is almost impossible. At Google, employees have a virtual environment where they can share their ideas with relevant stakeholders who can help in its development. The barrier to communication that existed before between top managers and junior employees has been eliminated by this virtual environment.
According to French, Google Inc. is one of the few global firms that have embraced talent search in institutions of higher learning across the world. Talent search is common in the field of sports, especially football. However, firms have now realized that they also have to search for talents instead of waiting for them at their doorsteps. Google has bought a number of ideas from their original owners at impressive prices. Besides buying these ideas, the firm would employ the innovators to help in developing and commercializing the ideas. Academic excellence is what every student seeks to achieve at the college. However, Google looks beyond such excellence. The firm is keen to identify employees who can think of unique ways of addressing existing problems.
Conclusion
Google Inc is one of the largest firms in the world in terms of brand value and revenues generated out of its operations. One of the most important reasons why this firm has remained successful is its unique organizational behavior. The top management has created an enabling environment where junior employees can easily interact with their seniors to address issues that may affect the firm’s normal operations. This environment has made it possible for the employees to be innovative in their respective workplaces making the firm very successful.
Bibliography
Balu, T, Digital Marketing using Google Services: Make your website visible on Google Search, LSDP Limited, New Delhi, 2015.
French, R, Organizational behavior, Wiley & Sons Hoboken, 2012.
Gedde, B, Advanced Google AdWords, John Wiley & Sons Publishers, New York, 2014.
Miller, W, Libraries and Google, Routledge, New York, 2014.
Walker, A, Organizational behavior in construction, Wiley-Blackwell, West Sussex, 2011.