Organisational Design Google Report IBMS 206

7/29/2019 Organisational Design Google Report IBMS 206

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Organizational Design and

Process ManagementReport Google6/25/2013

Mary Ann Ponson 0844484

Varisha Ramsoedh 0838791

Shang Han 0844061

Tatoom Zhang 0844259

Chichi Lam 0851502

IBMS 206


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ContentsIntroduction. ........................................................................................................................................... 2

The history of Google .............................................................................................................................. 2

Product/service profile Google ................................................................................................................ 3

Issue ........................................................................................................................................................ 3

Rationale problem solving.4

Googles organizational structure ............................................................................................................ 5

Decision making process.......................................................................................................................... 6

Main ethical issues of Google .................................................................................................................. 7

Power centers and types of political manipulation................................................................................... 8

Evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses ......................... ............................ ....................... ................ 8

Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................... 9

Appendix ............................................................................................................................................... 10

Bibliography .......................................................................................................................................... 13


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Introduction

Everyone knows what Google is and what it does, but people who are using Google are mostly unaware

of the things that happen behind the scenes. Why is censorship a big deal within some countries? And

what part does Google play in it? There are so many things that people dont know and in this report we

will find out what happens to censorship and how Google handles it.

Company profile

The history of GoogleGoogle was founded on the 4th of September 1998 as a limited liability company. The founders of Google

are Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Googles headquarters is situated in California, United States of America.

It all started in 1995 when the 22-year old Larry Page was considering going to study at the University

Stanford, after he graduated from the University of Michigan. There he met Sergey Brin. In 1996, one

year after meeting each other, Larry en Sergey started to work together on a web search engine. At that

time they were both postdoctoral students of Computer Science at Stanford. They called their search

engine BackRub. Students of the University of Stanford used this search engine for several years, but

Larry and Sergey decided to end the search engine because it used up too much bandwidth.

A year later, Larry and Sergey decide to give their search engine another name. They then came up with

the Google. This word looks a little bit like googol. Googol is a mathematical term for a 1 with 100

zeros. They gave their search engine this name because it represents infinity; Infinity of information on

the internet and that is what Larry and Sergey aimed for. Google really started to grow in 1998. They

had gotten their first office, which at that time was still just a garage. In September of 1998 Larry en

Sergey registered as a limited liability company and also opened up a bank account for the company

Google. A few months later, in December, PC Magazine wrote that Google is: creepy good at returning

extremely relevant results (Company History ). They also were the best search engine of the 100 best

websites of the year 1998.

In the time between 1998 and now, there have been a lot of developments that lead to Google being

this big search engine we now know. Googles office has moved from a garage to a big building since

they have grown so much. Google gets new versions of other languages then English and they win their

first Webby award in 2000. In the year 2013 Google has started to work together with their former rival

Yahoo! They also start to work together with Yahoo! Google currently provides more services and other

programs then just a search engine.


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Product/service profile GoogleWhile most of the people using Google know that the search engine is the most frequently used service,

Google has many more products and services. The table below presents the global products and servicesdivided in different categories. Within these different products and services there are many sub versions.

1. Web-based products Search tools

Advertising services

Communication and publishing tools

Development resources

Map-related products

Statistical tools

2. Operating systems Operating systems for mobile phones

Operating systems for web applications

3.

Desktop applications

Web browsers Photo organizer

4. Mobile applications: Mobile web applications

Mobile standalone applications

5. Hardware Mobile phones

Project glass

6. Services

Google Ideas

Google Crisis response

Google person finder

To give a better indication about their products and services you can see in the in figure 1.2 in the

appendix the list of the top 10 products and services that are currently used from the company.

Issue

Nowadays, internet censorship is implemented by every government in different extent. It is an

effective way to control the inciting public opinion and avoid people to fall into unnecessary panic

blindly. Internet censorship is also helpful to keep the social harmonization, monitor internet

environment and maintain a good investment environment. Chinese government is considered to beone of countries that have most extensive internet censorship. The RSF (Reporter without Borders) from

IFEX (International Freedom of Expression eXchange) has claimed that China ranks at last 7 in Press

Freedom Index of 2013 (Press Freedom).Therefore, how could these companies, such as Google, survive

under the extensive internet censorship would be a difficult issue.

For expanding Chinese market, Google Company created a new search engine, Google China in 2006.

Google China search engine is the only product in Google Company that has been localized in order to

operate under Chinese internet censorship.


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However Google China has been in a tense relationship with China about the online censorship of their

products and services since 2006. As we know China is governed by a Chinese communist party and

Google China has to obey the rules set by the government by blocking websites which were considered

inappropriate. These situations even led to Google pulling their services out of China on the 8th of

December 2012. So with this difficult situation the following research question would be:

What are the adjustments that Google will have to make in order to avoid internet

censorship in China?

Rationaleproblemsolving

Google China and the government of China have not been on the same page with each other about their

products and services (mainly their search engine). The internet censorship is a big issue and it is mostly

almost impossible to censor inappropriate words, websites, articles and services. However Google did

try to filter everything that the government opposed which led too many websites were either censored

or could be accessed with restricted options. However after Google China was hacked by a Chinese

organization, the company decided to not filter willingly what the government demanded which led to

considering to discontinue their operations in China.

As per January 2013 the BBC news stated the company made the decision to turn off the censorship in

China by stopping notifying the Google China users that were searching for censored websites or words

and afterwards claimed it to be self-censorship. This decision did not go un-notified by the Chinese

government and the great firewall of China blocked the function.

Looking at this situation it seems that because of the strict policies and laws about internet censorship

had made it very difficult for Google to operate efficiently. The company has been trying to assess

different options to solve the censorship problem by negotiating different options to keep doing

business in China like filtering. Other than filtering they have also suggested to replace words (whentyping in the search engine) in order to prevent more problems to rise. However when these solutions

failed, the company made illogical decisions by letting the censorship down. This decision about letting

censorship down and playing the cat and mouse game with the Chinese policies and laws are to this day

still unclear.


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Companyanalysis

Googles organizational structureGoogle has a cross functional organizational structure. Cross functional structures are made off two

different types of organizational structures. These structures are the matrix organization and the project

organization. What this entails is that the company has different departments working together towards

the same end goal. The intention of the cross functional structure is to break down functional barriers

among departments and create a more effective relationship for solving ongoing problems. Google in

total has 4 levels in the organization. The first level are the board of directors, then comes the executive

officers, followed by the senior leadership and as last are the rest of the employees divided in their

branch within the organization.

Googles organizational structure is not like the organizational structure of other corporations. No one

has total power over Google. In 2001, Google hired a CEO to give experienced leadership, but his actual

role is more a role of a chief operating officers than of a CEOs. He has been said that he handles the

day-to-day stuff,making sure that the right people are talking and reaching out the right partners. The

CEO has also divided Googles employees into teams based on product or function. For example, you

have employees working on the android software, and other employees working on maintaining the

sites.

All of Googles engineers are free to work on their own projects. The managers of Google almost never

tell their enginers which projects they should work on. Instead, there is a list that the executives of

Google keep that is called the Top 100 priorities list. What is then done is that the engineers are able

to choose which of the items on the list interst them the most, form working groups and work on that


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particular item. These working groups can last several weeks or even months. Management at Google

believes that if its employees operate without sufficating constraints and with very little bureaucracy

this will encourage them to develop better ideas at a faster rate.

The executives of Google believe that the companys unrestrictive management style is an advantage to

the company instead of it being a liability. Googles organizational structure has allowed the concepts of

innovation and creativity to become part of Googles method of working. This kind of organization has

also improved the approval of Googles partners and customers. Whereas before, teams that were

constantly shifting members took care of a single customer. Today, each customer has one contact at

Google. Issues are dealt with straight away and also more efficiently.

As a result, Googles organizational structure has helped create a fruitful atmosphere that advocates

generating new outcomes that are in line with financial objectives and outcomes.

Google has a culture that is tremendously dedicated to innovation, the company prefers that every

employee is comfortable and is open to share their thoughts and opinions about projects with other

members of the organization. Every employee is a hands-on contributor, and everyone has more than

one task that they are responsible for. Google believes that each and every employee is equally

important towards their success. Google has a very diverse workforce, and this is incorporated in their

culture. The recruiters at Google are very inclusive in the culture. At Google, recruiters are assertively

all-encompassing in their hiring. The recruiters favor ability over experience. Currently Google has

offices all over the worldd and many langauges spoken by their employees. This has lead to a very

culturally diverse team that mirrors the global audience it serves.

Employees are given all the freedom to express their ideas and voice their concerns. As a result, creative

and innovative thought are never suppressed and almost always make it to a manger. Google also has

specific corporate values that encourage creativity and innovation. Googles ten things constitute a

signficant part of Googles philosphy and their curlture in the organization. These main core doctrine

sum up all the roles, values and assumptions that both managers and employees should stand for.

The management aides their staff to meet the objectives that the employees have set for themselves,

instead of the managers setting the goals. The company sees its managers as leaders who facilitate

inspiration and empower employees. All goals are evualted on a quarterly basis. Googles employees

see the supervisors more as leaders since they are the ones setting the benchmark that the employees

have to meet.

Decision making processGoogles aim is that decisions will be made based on data, analytic and scientific experiments and

almost every decision that Google has made in the past has been based off of quantitative analyses.

Types of decisions being made in Google are various. Depending on what decisions are made, the

company assigns specialists of the company to assess the gathered data and to make decisions based

after the results.


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To give more insight about the decision making process of Google there was a problem that Google had

was that they were wondering if managers actually did matter. Because the founders of Google were

wondering what contribution the managers made. The People analytics department took on the project

do managers actually matter? And used already existed data like performance reviews and employee

surveys to do their research. The People analytics department took all the data and made a graph out of

it. The graph resulted that managers were actually perceived good. But since the graph was not clear

enough the department chose to divide the data. When the people analytics department split the data,

a big difference was shown and they came to the solution that teams were working better with better

managers and would be more likely to stay. So Google wondered why there was such a difference a

came up with a new research question: What makes a good manager? And they collected new data

through various researches to give them more insight on the situation.

And the end result was that Google actually got rid of all the managers and made each of them

contributors. However the after effect that all the managers were made into individual contributors did

not work and afterwards the managers were resigned to their old position.

So from the decision making process we can see that Google has a hierarchic decision style. The people

analytics department first used existing data to do their research and because the answer was too vague

they chose to look deeper into the situation and came to another question. In order to dig even deeper

they chose to obtain new data by doing various research and from there when the final conclusion is

clear they made a decision (whether it was a good or a bad decision). And if the decision is badly taken

the company restores the situation or comes up with different options.

Main ethical issues of GoogleThe main ethical issues that Google has are the privacy and trust of its Google users, avoiding paying

taxes and censorship issues within some countries like China. Since Google is a search engine it does not

make enough money alone from its users to run the company. The company makes 95% of its money

from its companies placing advertisements. When searching something in Google, the Google database

will remember the times you have visited and give you relevant searches, so each time you search

something, the database will remember. The problem is now that the Google users have never given

Google the permission to use their information even if it is for their own use, nor has Google ever given

that option. An example is that Google had used the data from Apple users who were searching

something on Google on their electronic devices for advertisements. Over 100 Apple users had suedGoogle for tempering with security software to access their information to bombard the people with

advertisements by e-mail, telephone and magazines. Within the organization an IT expert Bradshaw said

it was a program error. Which the opposite party believed it was obviously a lie.

As for the avoiding paying taxes Google has been condemned as immoral by avoiding paying 200

million taxes in 2011 by pushing their revenues off shore. But this issue has been going on for a much

longer time since Google is trying to find loopholes to pay taxes.


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Power centers and types of political manipulationThe power centers within the organization are working environments and managers. Seemingly from

the problem: do managers really matter. That is because good managers of each department canstimulate the employees to work harder and more efficient. The company has tried to contribute the

managers individually but that did not work therefore we can see that the managers are really needed

in the company. As for the working environment the employees of Google has a relaxed working

environment to stimulate their productivity, as they have the freedom to innovate new ideas.

Google has an inducement political behavior which means that they give something in return of

someones support. For example: the company needed permissions of the governments to create the

application Google maps (where the user can see the street in view of a person) and in return they could

give the opportunity for the people travel more efficiently. As stated before in the rationale problem

solving problem after letting the censorship down and they were confronted by the Chinese government

the company stated it was self-censorship. However when comparing the most used search engine, the

top used search engine Google has 900 million visitors per month and on the second place Bing with 165

million visitors per month (figure 1.3 in the appendix), the difference is huge. Google uses its use of

power because it is the most used search engine in the world by using the freedom of speech by

defending itself to particular issues involving the governments of different countries with the help of its

users.

Evaluation of the strengths and weaknessesThe strengths of Google are that they are the market leader of their sector which can be seen in figure

1.3 in the appendix. The share off Google searches remains a stable 66 % within the United States and

their advertising rate is three times higher than normal advertising firms. Because the company is so

well known throughout the world they have established a house name. This means that Google has

become a common phrase. Moreover they have mostly all access to data and most of the services are

free to use for people which makes it more attractive. However as we can see from figure 1.1 the

process mapping in the appendix the company spends a lot of time and consideration with executing an

idea to a real product or service so this means that mostly the products will not completely fail.

The weaknesses of Google are however with the mobile monetization that although consumers may use

their products and services they are not likely to purchase anything from the mobile applications which

is not valuable to advertisers. Google has too many initiatives and have problem focusing innovations

because having so many ideas. One of their weaknesses is that they do not know the boundary of

consumer privacy as stated in the examples before.


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Conclusion

Looking at the given situation between Google and China the conclusion to the research question:What

are the adjustments that Google will have to make in order to avoid internet censorship in China? is

that if Google wants to operate in China that it has to follow the laws and policies about online

censorship. We can see that Google is in trouble with the freedom of speech and personal freedom

within China. However we would advise Google to continue doing business in China because of the

benefits that out weights the negative. Moreover they have been censoring since the establishment and

pulling their business out of China will only be a waste of their effort and will have a negative effect on

their costs. We have seen from the previous examples that although it is difficult, it is possible. Also we

think that they have to respect one another. Because reading the articles it seems that the battlefield

between China and Google has led un-respectful decisions. So instead of being indecisiveness to each

other they need to strengthen their relationship by going through the available options and

opportunities.


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Appendix

Figure 1.1 Process mapping


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Figure 1.2 top 10 most used product and services of Google

1. Google search. Launched in 1997 and available in 124 languages! It is known as the best search

engine.

2. Gmail. Launched in 2004 and available in approximately 54 languages. Gmail has 425 million

users all over the world. Gmail took over Yahoo mail and Hotmail in less than 3 years!

3. Google Maps. Launched in 2005. Millions of people do not get lost because of this app.

4. Android. There are 900 million android activations all over the world. This operating system is

based on Linux software.

5. YouTube. This is used to stream more than 4 billion videos every day. It is a platform to share

and explore original videos.

6. Google Chrome. Launched in 2008. This is the most used web browser. Google Chrome has 33%

of the total market share. There biggest competition is Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox.

7. Google advertising. This is a platform for online advertising which is used by advertisers and

publishers. It even is the biggest source of income for millions of these people today.

8. Google Docs. A very productive tool, which is used by millions of people.

9. Google Translate. This useful program helps people from all over the world to understand and

do business with each other. Which is very helpful with the globalization. It now supports 64

languages. It also helps a lot of students with their homework.

10. Blogger. This program is a platform where work can be shared. It is mostly used by creative

people. They can publish work in 20 languages.

Figure 1.3 statistics top 5 most used search engines in the world

1 | Google 900,000,000 - Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors

2 | Bing 165,000,000 - Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors

3 | Yahoo! Search 160,000,000 - Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors

4 | ask 125,000,000 - Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors

5 | Aol Search 33,000,000 - Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors


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Work plan of the team covering coming 7 weeks

Week 1 1. Choose a subject

2. Division of the tasks

3. Appointed responsibilities

Week 2 1. Cover page must be done

2. Table of contents must be done

3. Introduction must be done4. Company profile must be done

Week 3

From week 3 and onward the group will

discuss with each topic what relevant is for

the report and what can be left out.

1. After the second Pinksteren we all

must have found a good topic andrelevant articles.

2. With the information that we found

we will make Problem decision (issue+ research questions)

Week 4 1. Rationale Problem solving Approach

must be done

2. The analysis must be done

Week 5 1. The intervention must be done

2.

The conclusion must be done

Week 6 1. Make Appendix

2. Make reference list

Week 7 1. Finish report (check grammar andspelling mistakes)

2. Check report on plagiarism

3. Hand in report


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Bibliography

BibliographyArun. Top 10 Most Popular Google Products. sd. Top Yaps.

Campell, Peter. Google is sued by dozens of customers after 'snooping on 10million iPads and mobiles'.

3 February 2012. Daily Mail.

Chambers, Brett. ETR500. 6 September 2012. BrettChambers Blogspot. June 2013.

Company History. sd. .

Heller, Steven. The Motley Fool. 31 October 2012. Heres What Googles SWOT Analysis Revealed.

June 2013.

Lomas, Natascha. Google Quietly Removes Censorship Warning Feature For Search Users In China. 4

January 2012. Techcrunch.

Marr, Bernard. Analytics at Google: Great Example of Data-Driven Decision-Making. 23 November

2012. Smart Data Collective . 2013.

Press Freedom. 2013. June 2013. .

Roberto, Michael. Larry Page Reforms Decision-Making at Google. 24 January 2012. Professor Michael

Roberto's Blog.

Technology. 7 January 2013. BBC news. 2013.

wu, jingchen. Google vs. China, what happened? 13 January 2012. Hardboiled. 2013.

Organisational Design Google Report IBMS 206

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