The history of humanity is replete with various aspects of change along political, social, and technological lines. In this sense, change is not new to the world. However, the pace of change in the current dispensation is unprecedented. The industrial revolution provided the basis for it, and with the technological revolution that attends to the current age of information technology, the pace of change is bewildering.
Murthy (2007) concludes that the kind of management stategy that fits in this context is “management by crisis” (p. 17). He argues that the pace is too fast to allow for methodological approaches to change management, which can easily lead to desolation. This view relates closely to that of Kanter (1997) who identifies change and leadership as the two main challenges that organizations face today.
The role leadership plays in any organization is the identification and promotion of a vision, compelling enough to attract and retain the interest of all stakeholders. In fact, the chief role of leadership is mediation of change. The management on the other hand works out the processes required to accomplish the vision, ensuring in the process of pursuing the identified vision that the organization has the right balance of risks and rewards.
In this case, leadership seems to have the distinct role of identifying the future for the organization and inspiring followership. This puts the responsibility of facilitating the process of identifying the forces of change on the organizational leadership, after which they develope and implement appropriate responses to those forces.
In order to examine the place of leadership in change management, there is need to use a model that captures the process of change. Murthy (2007) proposed the following stages as the defining characteristics of the change process.
- Creating a sense of urgency
- Forming a guiding coalition
- Developing a vision and strategy
- Communicating the change vision
- Empowering broad based action
- Generating short term wins
- Consolidating gains and producing more change
- Anchoring the new approaches in the culture
This model shows that there are leadership actions required before tackling change. Initially, the actions listed call for an inclusive process, and finally efforts meant for achieving sustainability come into play. The leadership of change is therefore not a preliminary application but a sustained input throughout the change process.
The preliminary environment requires the infusion of a sense of urgency to mainstream the need for change. Introduction of change initiatives in an environement where the need for it is not yet felt leads to poor uptake of the initiatives and hence the process may fail. Changes in the internal and external operating environments are good incentives to anchor the awareness for a change process.
Changes in the operating environement, if major, will normally have the attention of all the stakeholders. Therefore getting them to participate in change initiatives on this basis requires lesser effort. Change initiatives have a higher change of success if the organization has a high degree of stakeholder commitment.
The three characteristics underpining this commitment include, “a strong acceptance of the organization’s values and goals, a willingness to exert considerable effort on behalf of the organization, and a strong desire to maintain membership in the organization”. It is crucial to bear inmind that the prospect of change is a source of stress for many employees. This calls for careful planning from the leaders of the change process.
The formation of a guiding coalition builds on the principle of participatory change. While top management normally has access to resources and influence to direct change, they are perceived as custodians of the system and hence they may not be successful in inspiring change in attitudes among lower cadre staff.
A change committee with representatives from all levels comands a greater following since everyone feels included. This team occupies the best position to scrutinize the change vision presented by the leadership and to become its chief advocates. They provide invaluable support in the selling of the vision to ensure compliance by all the members of the organization.
The actual change in the organization will manifest in individual workstations. It is at these points that workers will apply new technologies, new attitudes, and undertake new assignments for the organization. This thinking underguards the proposition by Murthy (2007) that change needs to be brought about by “broad based action” (p. 209). It is from such places that the leadership can see the gains of the change process.
It is the role of leadership to consolidate these gains. Once new systems are functioning, the leadership must phase out the older systems and let the new ones take their place fully. In order to spur on the change process, it is imperative for leaders to identify short term wins and to reward their promoters. This ensures that the staff remains focussed on the change agenda.
Over time, any change initiative dies down as the organization settles down on the new operational paradigm. Leadership must remian vigilant to areas of complacency or slow growth in order to generate more change options for these. In this manner, the organization extablishes an enduring change culture and has a better chance of surviving the future demands on it to change even further.
Ethics
One of the inevitable consequences of the steady process of globalization that characterized world affairs in the latter half of the twentieth century to the present is the amalgamation of world cultures. Previously, the import of culture was a very slow process using shipping routes and following trading patterns.
However, with growth in the information technology and transport sectors, the current speed with which different cultures interact does not allow time for the dominant culture to subdue the others. The result is a mish-mash of values. Some of the consequences of this interaction include “corruption, favoritism and nepotism, deterioration of human values, series of scams in business, government policies, and society”
The sources of ethical constructs in any society relate closely to the sources of moral constructs. Religion plays a big role in the determination of morality in a society. A key difference between moral imperatives and ethical ones, therefore, is that moral laws are transcendent and are unchanging over time.
Since their sources have a claim to supernatural origin, it is impossible to repeal them. Ethics on the other hand is a conditional recognition and application of these values but drawn purposefully to allow for meaningful relations between various culture within a society or organization.
At the core of culture is the moral code of each society. In an attempt to bridge the cultural differences manifesting as different moral codes, business ethics has emerged as an important part of business in an intercultural trading field that world markets have become. While morality deals with the rightness or wrongness of issues, ethics deals with the acceptable behavior in a particular context.
Various specializations of ethics that are of interest to leaders in the current dispensation include environmental ethics and business ethics. Environmental ethics stems from the need to care for the environment to mitigate the effects of pollution and global warming . Organizations that do not care for the environment risk a perception that it is environmentally unethical.
Business ethics seek to define the acceptable behavior of business within the communities within which they operate. The boundary of a community varies depending on the business model in use. While there is no single universally acceptable code for all businesses to use, a body of international norms guiding global human relations is emerging.
These norms, such as the respect of human rights, tolerance, and the avoidance of discrimination based on creed, race, or gender, underlie the tenets of ethical relations between communities interacting in the international arena. This, does not by any means, imply that all countries agree on these issues. Rather, they are aspirations that have found universal acceptance although the degree of enforcement varies.
The interplay of ethics cascades from this international arena to the organizational one, and stops at the individual level. The organization wants to appear as a responsible member of the community that respects societal norms and upholds the values of the community. The actions that the organization undertakes must not interfere in any way with the lives of the community or the environment.
In fact, the values of the business should conform to the generally acceptable standards of the community within which they do business because that is where they derive “social approval”. Looking inward, the organization must enforce a code of ethics that sets the rules of social engagement between its members. A code of ethics reflects an “organization’s primary values, norms, beliefs, and ethical rules of operations”.
In this case, the rules define the acceptable limits and modes of interaction between various members of staff. Leaders normally carry more than just ethical responsibilities but also a moral one since they have authority over their juniors and hence can take advantage of them. In fact, their personal conduct in their personal lives play an important role in their moral obligations towards the society.
This comes out quite well when we consider leadership roles in international organizations such as the United Nations and the World Bank. Their personal conduct in private affairs matters morally even if they have no ethical obligations in certain contexts. This is despite the fact that morality is personal while ethics is institutional .
All organizations maintain a certain kind of written code that defines acceptable behavior. It is incumbent upon new members to subscribe to these codes. Apart from the business policies and processes, an organization’s code of conduct is an ethical construct whose presence or absence does not impinge directly on the business processes, but affects the quality of relationships between various stakeholders.
A community may reject the products or services offered by an organization even if they are desirable if they feel that they their production uses unethical means. Internally, employees may feel insecure working for an organization that does not uphold high ethical standards because it exposes them to the risk of mistreatment from their colleagues.
Google is a relatively young company for an establishment of its size. The company’s incorporation in 1998 marks its beginning as a formal entity. The company grew out of the market demand for an internet search engine that would make looking for information in the internet more organized.
The solution to the problem of meaningless search results that web surfers encountered came by way of the optimized search results provided by Google’s search engine that two PhD students at Stanford University developed.
Google comfortably occupies the market leader’s position in the search-engine service provision sector and internet advertising. Other big players in the field include Yahoo and Bing. Bing is Microsoft’s response to Google search after unsuccessful attempts to take over Yahoo. In China, Google faces competition from Baido, which enjoys the State’s support.
Google currently offers a wide range of search related services. It earns its revenue by selling advertising opportunities to companies. Along with the entire technological innovation that Google search is, Google managed to develop a very innovative advertising model that allows advertisers to target their advertisements at the specific people who are interested in their products and services.
This way, Google offers information search services free of charge to all users worldwide. The service range that Google offers includes the flagship Google search and its email service, G-mail.
In addition, Google offers specialized services such as Google scholar targeted at academicians and a blogging service for users interested in maintaining blogs, among other services. Google’s growth has had its share of challenges, some common to all startups and others related to its structure and composition.
The key challenges that Google’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin faced included managing talent, raising capital, managing growth, and environmental challenges. Initially, the pair did not have much in terms of financial incentives that they required to attract and retain the kind of talent they needed to make Google a success.
The talent they needed put them in direct competition with entities like Microsoft, to say nothing of the demand for the same talent in the greater Silicon Valley in which Google operated. This exemplifies the general challenge of raising capital for their operations.
Google relied on borrowed capital and venture capitalists to get through the initial phases of its growth and development. While the founders showed extreme innovation and adaptation to the needs of their clients, they frequently ran into situations where they needed more money to facilitate expansion.
The management of growth characterized by a desire for close control of the company proved a challenge to the founders too. They were very calculated and guarded in their interaction with potential sponsors and associates. While both of them had strong credentials in technology, they lacked the prowess to offer operational leadership for the organization.
This becomes clear with the entry of Eric Schmidt as the CEO of Google when he provides the much-needed balance to the highly innovative duo at the helm of the fledgling company. They only gave in to the incessant requests by the capital venture firms that bankrolled Google’s critical growth stages to relinquish operational control to a CEO.
Despite its short time in operation, Google has dealt with two serious economic crises in the greater economy and survived. The first one was the IT bubble that burst in early 2000 and led to massive layoffs among the high tech firms of Silicon Valley. The other one was the economic meltdown in 2008 caused by a meltdown in the real estate sector. Google defied odds and came out of both crises stronger.
The keys strengths that Page and Brin have include innovativeness, strategic focus, and well reasoned risk taking. Their knack for innovation shows in the design of Google search engine to solve a prevailing problem, and providing the conditions required for the maturity of the idea. Secondly, they show a lot of focus as they adapt to changing conditions and requirements by stakeholders.
In any case, their philosophy of keeping their business fairly simple and straightforward and relinquishing control in very measured ways point to their depth of strategy and focus in the development of Google. They approach situations in unconventional ways and have been very successful as a result. The final key strength visible from the pair is their calculated risk taking.
They did not abandon their studies but took a study leave. They did not move straight into a business complex but grew from a student room to a garage before renting their first office. In addition, the decision to go public through an IPO came at a time when they had developed a considerable lead in the search engine business hence their potential rivals would not have an easy time catching up.
The two key recommendations to leaders based on the lessons of the growth of Google is the need for innovation and adaptability. Brin and Page did not invent internet search.
What they developed was a solution to search problems, and innovatively built a business around it. Secondly, organizational leaders need to maintain an aura of adaptability to the environment. This quality will allow them to survive pressures in their environment.
References
Burns, J. M. (1979). Leadership. New York, NY: Harper & Row.
Gavai, A. K. (2010). Business Ethics. Mumbai: Global Media.
Hartley, R. F. (2009). Google-An Entrepreneurial Juggernaut. In R. F. Hartley, Marketing Mistakes and Successes (pp. 11-28). Hoboken NJ: John Wiley and Sons.
Kanter, R. M. (1997). World Class: Thriving Locally in the Global Economy. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.
Kille, K. J. (2007). The Secular Pope: Insights on the UN Secretary-General and Moral Authority. In K. J. Kille, UN Secretary-General and Moral Authority: Ethics and Religion in International Leadership (pp. 337-353). Washington DC: Georgetown University Press.
Murthy, C. S. (2007). Change Management. Mumbai: Himalaya Publishing House.
Paliwal, M. (2006). Business Ethics. New Delhi: New Age International.
Rosenthal, S. B. , & Buchholz, R. A. (1999). Rethinking Business Ethics. Cary NC: Oxford University Press.
Vakola, M. , & Nikolaou, L. (2005). Attitudes Towards Organizational Change: What is the Role of Employees’ Stress and Commitment? Journal of Organizational Change Management , 18 (1), 163-176.