Organizational BehaviorEssay Preview: Organizational BehaviorReport this essayOrganizational Behavior Terminology and ConceptsMicrosoft CorporationMicrosoft is most widely known for their Windows Operating System that they sell for use on personal computers. The business was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1975 with the vision that computers would someday be an important piece of hardware in every home. Over the years, the company has grown substantially and now offers new kinds of products and services for businesses world-wide. As the company grew, the actual organizational structure has had to change several times so that managers could control every service and product, as well as many other business processes, throughout the company. In addition to the many organizational changes the company has seen throughout the years, the culture of the company’s people has also changed.
Microsoft workers and their shareholders experience culture every day, just as all of us do. One company representative, in Microsoft’s “@30 and Beyond” Flash presentation on the company website, stated that there were four factors that has contributed to Microsoft’s success, and predominantly their culture: passion, long-term approach, the expectation of great results, and the expectation of individual excellence (Microsoft Corporation, 2005).
Microsoft’s “passion” for technology and innovation is shared not just by Mr. “Big-Wig” Bill Gates himself, but also every worker and every shareholder. Though there are those workers who are just in it for the money or various other reasons, most Microsoft employees share the desires and goals of the company. There are two main reasons for this: the attractiveness of the company, and how Microsoft recruits new workers. The attractiveness of Microsoft comes from how successful the company can make you. Everyone can dream big, and at Microsoft — the bigger, the better. The company is always looking for new ideas and new innovations to sustain their growth and their vision, and that’s how Microsoft recruits. David Pritchard, a 20-year Microsoft veteran, stated that Microsoft hired “…people who were not just smart, but also inquisitive and passionate about what they do” (Microsoft Corporation PressPass, 2007). Microsoft looks for the most talented, the brightest, and the biggest dreamers they can find. They don’t just pick one place either; they travel to the universities and colleges known for putting out successful and talented individuals. Bill Gates himself visited five leading IT (Information Technology) and Engineering colleges In September of 2005 talking about how in the next few decades and beyond, computers and what they can provide will be even more integrated into people’s lives (Microsoft Corporation PressPass,2005). He went on to explain the impact that Computer Science has on today’s world, as well as how important it will be in the future. So as the company lives on, the “passion” for technology and innovation will be Microsoft’s wheels into the future.
Another factor contributing to Microsoft’s culture is the company’s long-term approach. The idea behind this is how Microsoft invests into their future. When the company has a new idea or new innovation, they take all the necessary time and put forth a great deal of effort into it because they know that it will pay off in the end. In the company’s 2005 Annual Report, Bill Gates, in a “Letter to our shareholders, customers, partners, and employees”, expresses how the company is doing and where it’s heading (Microsoft Annual Report, 2005). With new products on the horizon and the drive for innovation still in the minds of every Microsoft employee, Bill Gates ensures the company’s growth and continued success. So the direction of where the company wants to go may be clear, but can the company get there? That’s where the company’s next, long-term approach comes into play with the investments into new marketplaces. As a most recent example of this, the company developed the X-Box gaming console a few years back, and thus entered the multibillion dollar gaming industry. Lastly, Microsoft invests in their “people”; their employees. By socialization, the company is able to maintain high productivity, as well as create an atmosphere that encourages innovation for their employees.
The third factor that contributes to Microsoft’s culture is the company’s expectation of “great results”, which leads to a standard of high individual initiative. This means the company “expects” their employees to maintain high productivity and activity. “It’s not enough to be good enough at Microsoft”, as one Microsoft representative claims from the “@30 and Beyond” Flash presentation, “…no business can survive on just being good enough” (Microsoft Corporation, 2005).
A last factor contributing to Microsoft’s culture is their expectation of individual excellence. At Microsoft, it matters how an employee is doing on all levels of the company, worldwide. The company has to be able to sustain significant progress on every internal product development, and offer continued services to be able to maintain the company’s growth and customer-base. Much of this depends on their employees’ abilities to produce results at all levels of the company’s organizational structure.
Microsoft’s organizational structure has three main characteristics: vertical complexity, spatial complexity, and the company itself is complex offering a variety of products and services.
In Figure A, the chart shows the organizational structure of a hybrid. A hybrid structure is functional in one area and divisional in another, and for Microsoft, the company is functional at the top and divisional at the bottom. At the top of the chart, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer rule on high next to the Board of Directors. Below them are three major divisions to the company: Platform and Services, Business, and Entertainment and Devices. Each of these divisions have a President and Senior Vice President, and below them are even more divisions, and in those divisions there are yet more divisions (or businesses within businesses). Each division has a Vice President and below them are the subordinates. This shows just how vertically complex the company is, and how many people it takes to get a message to the top, or to Bill Gates himself.
It looks more like some sort of network for all the people to work for the right reason, or how the company could run smoothly and easily but also not worry about breaking the other systems. It’s nice that the organization’s members can express their beliefs and ideas about the way things are going, not just what a corporate culture wants from the leader, but also how they want it from the boss. But maybe the hierarchy isn’t the best way to ensure a high level of quality; it’s not always easy to be the boss at the correct time.
This type of hierarchy might help a lot with productivity in a business.
As a former manager, I have to admit to being somewhat confused. It seems like, after I left it, this sort of hierarchy became more and more important for me, when I was going through my own experiences with the organization. As I got into new ways to work with the organization, my work became more and more like a series of smaller steps, and sometimes one at a time. I didn’t have any job to go to and so to avoid conflict, I would leave my company’s leadership position—but I was left with a manager in charge of it, and with the leadership role that the organization had as well.<>
On top of being the boss at the right time, it also seemed that people were paying close attention to the organizational structure from a social sense rather than a practical standpoint, or maybe just seeing one person do something, rather than see everything. It became more and more frustrating to find that no matter how hard you worked and achieved with the organization when you saw a new leadership role, every single person on the team or the team’s entire team or the entire team’s entire staff or even the whole team’s head was there. I found this frustrating. It was all about trying to get more of the things I wanted into the organization, and to work harder and harder, but that was all I could do. It looked that way for a while. I finally felt that we were closer to becoming true top-level organization employees, or real leaders. And I didn’t see the organization as any more of a failure, or as too complex, or that I was making excuses for not working harder.
The most frustrating thing about this approach had to do with not trusting people’s values. I could see it happening with the first person in charge (who was still really working at the top), but I had to trust people first, or trust people and never trust any single entity. They had to be trustworthy. The management I was with was very experienced, and as we were setting up a new system, I found myself thinking about the problems, and taking the risk that a new system was coming to them while I worked my way up. This all turned out to not be a huge surprise to me, being with a brand that was all about doing change, and how important it was to keep doing that. I wasn’t trying to get people to give up things they wanted, because that’s what they needed, it was just making those changes. To me, the bottom line was that, as a leadership role, people who worked at the top felt like they didn’t have to live through failure, and because we needed to change the team to avoid that, we needed to do it with them.