Google Case Study

30th January 2014

John Lomax Castro.

Business Management.

ASSIGNMENT: CASE 2: GOOGLE.

Google is a company that has risen in the last years and nowadays acts in over a hundred countries. They can presume of being the company which has grown up more in recent history, their revenues have increased by over 500% since 1999. The founders Brin and Page have adopted a number of measures which can be considered as being avant-garde.

A new managerial philosophy is one of the key points of their exponential growth. They have created a new sense of workplace between their employees creating a cooperative and descentralyzed and non-hierarchical environment. It´s unique way of working allows the employees to administrate their time how they desire, not establishing a fixed timetable. As a result the operators are more motivated and have more freedom. On top of that “googlers” feel always heard and valued establishing a family spirit between the co-workers, building up a flat structure. Also this enterprise follows a distribution of time which they call “70-20-10” where 70% of the time is destined to devote google´s core business, advertisement and search; 20% of the working time is aimed to pursuits related with the core and 10% destined to far-out ideas.

As a result all of these unique measures contribute in an immense way to Google´s success because the “googlers” adopt another way of working establishing a strong bond between company and employees making out from these two a single unit. This is enforced with rituals which are carried out when Google milestones are developed like going out to celebrate it to Burger King or by letting the employees decorate their workplace how they wish , offering free barbecues and meals or by having a Gym in the Google-plex. On top of that another characteristic is that “googlers” can dress how ever they desire building up and informal environment.This leads to a high productivity which is later reflected in the companies growth. So Is this new form of work environment one of the keys of google´s growth?

According to google´s management it is seen that its unique and avant-garde way of developing their activity is one of the strong points of it´s success. Their philosophy is based on giving freedom to employees but these have to first pass a rigours selection process ensuring that they will be motivated and work hard in order to provide the best service to clients. The structure that they follow is based on a family spirit and since it has started it has been very successful. However reading over the site it is said that things are not so nice as it seems to be. What it is not said and brought out to us is that there is not always a familiar environment. In many occasions they assign the same project to two different groups making out of this a sense of rivalry and conflict between “googlers”. The first team to develop the project with the better outcome is the one who gets compensated.

Google may look like a perfect place to work but once you are a “googler” you may appreciate that it´s not gold what all glitters. This rivalry created by the founders to motivate employees can be seen as a negative aspect. However it´s aim is to satisfy the consumer in the best possible way. In contrast with other managerial philosophies ,by far, google´s way of working and developing projects is much more productive than pyramidal structures. Consequently this culture can be maintained in the future without a doubt but maybe they should reduce the rivalry that they create between co-workers and really make a family-like bond.

Google´s management has been so far impeccable and probably some companies will adopt this new philosophy if some have not adopted it yet. It is seen that this type of working habit turns out to give excellent results

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