Organisation Design and Development

Posted: January 4th, 2023

Organisation Design and Development

Student’s Name

Institutional Affiliation

Organisation Design and Development

Contemporary organisations operate in a fluid, highly competitive and complex business environment that threatens their ability to compete and survivability. Therefore, firms need to have capabilities, capacities and strategy that provide them with a sustainable competitive advantage. While organisational strategy is often well articulated in a firm’s vision, mission and values, it is executed through the organisational structure and culture. Organisational design and development helps firms align the various organisational elements that contribute to the realisation of the vision and mission. Organisational design focuses on the structures, policies and processes within an organisation, while organisational development emphasizes the business and humanistic needs of the organisation (Chivaka, 2019). Therefore, as companies grow, they continuously align their structures, policies, processes and human capital with their strategies as is dictated by the business environment (O’Neill, Beauvais, & Scholl, 2016). However, the presence and nature of organisational capabilities and the receptiveness of its human capital determine the adaptive capacity of a firm.    

As organisations grow, they learn how to perform their business better and are able to identify the changes needed to improve the accomplishment of their objectives. Therefore growth and change are synonymous in the lifecycle of organisations (Benzer, Charns, Hamdan, & Afable, 2017). Organisational learning is a crucial component of the growth and change trajectory of successful firms because it contributes significantly to the competitive advantage. Organisational learning is valued more so in the creation, management and use of knowledge in contemporary firms (Kolarić & Petrović, 2013). Knowledge resides in the human capital of the firm and its creation, development and application is dependent on the organisational structure and culture. However, how well an organisation learns and adopts new knowledge in its structures and operations determines the learning curve (Jaber, 2016). Besides, the learning capacity of the organisation can dictate the immensity of the changes the organisation can undertake without disrupting operations significantly or causing the firm to become dysfunctional. Organisational culture is a soft tool that is used by organisations to entrench the desired behaviours, such as the learning culture in firms, with the organisational structure playing a facilitative role (Wahyuningsih, Sudiro, Troena, & Irawanto, 2019). Google Inc. (Google) epitomises the model learning organisation from its reputed learning culture and structure. This firm provides a case through which organisational design and development can be studied in contemporary settings. This paper discusses the application of organisational design and development principles in Google, and explains how organisational learning is an integral component of the firm’s global organisational design and development strategy.

Theoretical Perspective

Organisational learning is a crucial component of the organisational design and development in modern companies. Organisational learning helps companies build up their competitive advantage by developing competencies that are imitable and are valued by clients. According to Kolarić and Petrović (2013, p. 96), organisational learning facilitates firms to review themselves, innovate and enjoy first mover advantages. A large and enhanced knowledge repository is an indispensable firm-specific resource for creating value and facilitating organisational learning (Kolarić & Petrović, 2013). Contemporary organisations operating in the knowledge economy strive to have solid and extensive knowledge repositories to enable them to navigate the highly competitive, ever-changing and complex business environments. Besides, successful organisational learning process is dependent on human resource management, leadership, culture, structure and strategy; and organisation culture links these factors (Janićijević, 2015). Therefore, organisational learning and organisational culture are intertwined and inseparable in successful firms. 

Organisational culture theory can explain organisational learning during the organisational design and development process. According to Schein (2004), organisational culture is,

 “…a pattern of shared basic assumptions that was learned by a group as it solved its problems of external adaptation and, that has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems.” (p. 17).

This definition highlights the aspects of learned assumptions, problem solving, external adaptation, and member orientation that are pertinent to organisational culture in the learning organisation context. Learning organisations are able to confront and solve problems through communicating openly, collaborating, allowing autonomy and valuing of all members therein (Sprouts, 2017). In today’s context where intellectual assets are a valued source of competitive advantage, organisational culture facilitates creativity, knowledge management, participative management and leadership, which are pertinent for a modern learning organisation (Őnday, 2016). Therefore, organisational culture theory emphasises the shared characteristics necessary for entrenching a learning culture.    

Charles Handy’s model of organisational culture explains how learning becomes entrenched into a firm’s DNA and facilitates the organisational design and development process by influencing the organisational structure. Handy advanced a structural perspective of organisational culture by identifying four types of organisational culture, based in power, role, task and person (Cacciattolo, 2014). The task culture facilitates organisational learning by emphasizing internal and external sources of knowledge, and teamwork as the context in which learning occurs. It also advocates individual empowerment and open communication to encourage organisational responsiveness and innovation (Korsakova, et al., 2016). Therefore, the task culture utilises single-loop learning for corrective purposes, double-loop learning for generative reasons and adaptive learning for transformative purposes (Cross & Israelit, 2009). Handy’s model of organisational culture is applicable in modern knowledge-based firms like those in the technology industry.    

Google’s corporate culture is the task culture when it is categorised under Handy’s model. Having grown from a small start-up that was founded in 1998 to the huge, successful multinational technology company it is today, Google has embraced organisational learning at all times (Alphabet, Inc., 2019). Google learnt from its early days, the value of highly-skilled employees and the usefulness of teamwork in driving the innovation agenda continuously. Google’s knowledge management strategy is using human resource management for attracting and retaining an expert human capital, acquiring additional capacity through acquisitions, and responding to the needs of customers all over the world (Alphabet, Inc., 2019). Therefore, Google open culture is aligned to the task culture advanced by Handy’s organisational culture model.

Application of Theory

Creating a learning organisation requires organisational restructuring to enable the creation and diffusion of knowledge. The key features of a learning organisation include generating and sharing knowledge, learning continuously, thinking using the systems approach, and valuing employees (Cross & Israelit, 2009). These attributes help create and entrench a learning culture in an organisation, and a supportive organisational structure and culture leverages these characteristics. The flat organisational structure supports the task culture and helps to create, entrench and support learning organisations (Amiri, Haghgooyan, & Mohammadi, 2014).

Google’s vision is ‘to provide access to the world’s information in one click’ (Thompson, 2019b). Similarly, its mission is ‘to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful’ (Alphabet, Inc., 2019). Moreover, the company has core values that guide its operations, such as, prioritizing members, taking intelligent risks, valuing relationships, demanding excellence, acting like an owner, and being constructive, honest and open (Meir, 2017). Google’s task culture and organic structure are aligned to its vision, mission and values, which give the company a strategic purpose and direction. The task culture and flat structure are compatible because they allow the formation of networks that are needed to accomplish complex tasks that require specialised expertise (Handy, n.d.). Therefore, the company has aligned its vision, mission and values to its culture and structure, which emphasise the organisation and dissemination of information globally, by facilitating the same internally.

The organisational culture at Google is characterised by innovation, openness, support, hand-on approach and smartness, which are articulated by the company’s core values. This culture drives every member of the organisation to think smart, innovatively, and independently, while embracing teamwork and quality. Everyone at Google thinks about the customers and how their experiences can enhanced through creating, availing and sharing of information. Therefore, the company is in a constant innovation and development mood, going by the numerous projects it undertakes simultaneously (Thompson, 2019a). These characteristics underpin learning under the task culture by encouraging exploitation and exploration (Kim & Atuahene‐Gima, 2010). In the organisational context, exploitation is taking advantage of existing resources in a firm, while exploration involves the seeking of new ways of delivering value to the customer (Chiva & Habib, 2013). Altogether, the Google has adopted the task culture to facilitate continuous learning from internal and external sources and spur its innovation strategy.  

The task culture characteristics enhance Google as a learning organisation in several ways. For instance, openness facilitates adaptive and generative learning at Google by promoting the sharing of valuable ideas and knowledge among employees to support innovation. The company encourages its employees to interact continuously by structuring the workplace layout to support open communication at all organisational levels (Smithson, 2019). Besides, a warm work environment encourages social interactions among employees, thus optimising ideal generation and internal communication (Smithson, 2019). This atmosphere allows the company to leverage the rich and diverse explicit, implicit and tacit knowledge to support its strategies (Serrat, 2017). Google derives its competitive advantage majorly from innovation. 

Innovativeness at Google is guided by the needs in the market. Employees are encouraged to think unconventionally using internal and external knowledge sources to develop new solutions to the needs of a multinational market (Kim & Atuahene‐Gima, 2010; Smithson, 2019). By providing translated versions of the Google Search platform, the company addresses the language needs of its non-English-speaking customers. In this regard, employee diversity provides valuable knowledge when dealing with the multicultural aspects of the company’s products and services. Google nurtures experiential learning as an effective approach to improving abilities, skills, and knowledge (Cacciattolo, 2014). Employees learn from their successes and mistakes to supplement the extensive professional development programs at the company (Smithson, 2019). As such, experimenting is a crucial feature of Google culture and employees are not apprehensive of failing because such experiences are learning opportunities about what works and does not work. Besides, the training programs at the company aim at motivating continuous improvement among employees and promoting excellence through smartness (Smithson, 2019). These learning opportunities conform to the adaptive and generative learning processes where existing knowledge is used in new ways, while new knowledge is used to create radical and discontinuous change through innovative products (Serrat, 2017). Overall, the corporate culture at Google summons the different types of knowledge and disseminates them throughout the organisation using the knowledge sharing structures in place. The culture also spurs continuous improvement of the company’s processes, products and services by supporting teamwork and collaboration towards a common goal.

The flat organisational structure facilitates a learning organisation by facilitating knowledge management. Organisational learning progresses through knowledge acquisition, sharing and utilisation (Cross & Israelit, 2009). Therefore, Google’s structures facilitate organisational learning by allowing information to flow freely through all the ranks in the organisation. A flat structure eliminates bureaucracy and bypasses middle managers to allow free communication between employees and senior executives. Also, it facilitates teamwork, which enhances innovativeness in an organisation (Gurd & Helliar, 2017). Goggle has high-performing and autonomous teams comprising of highly-skilled and diverse team members drawn from among the employees and managers. Such teams can be created in a flat organisation because the focus is more of technical ability and expertise rather that hierarchical positions in the firm (Gurd & Helliar, 2017). Moreover, flat organisations enable autonomy, which encourages employees to think independently without much supervision (Gurd & Helliar, 2017). Flatness in the organisational structure enhances flexibility, adaptability and innovativeness because it engages employees in decision-making and facilitates the firm to make better decisions and implement them swiftly, courtesy of the flawless communication (Gurd & Helliar, 2017). This work environment is created by the human resource management at the company to enable it to achieve its vision and mission, and confront the headwinds in the technology industry.  

Google has reorganised its corporate structure as it continually adapts to the ever-changing business environment, and has used its human resource management to actualise its vision and mission. The organisational design and development journey of Google has seen it adopt flatness in its organisational structure to support its innovation strategy. Google has a matrix organisational structure that has a significant proportion of flatness, thus making it a cross-functional organisational structure (Smithson, 2019). Google’s organisational structure also has function-based and product-based features that complete the cross-functional structure (Smithson, 2019). The business functions groups the resources and processes, with executive managers heading the different functional groups. Similarly, the company has product-based groups to address the different product/service segments such as, artificial intelligence and cloud operations. Executive managers also head these groups. To support its innovation and growth strategies, Google has adopted a flat organisational structure to eliminate organisational bureaucracy, diffuse authority and power, and facilitate communication between the employees and senior management (Smithson, 2019). The functional structure also facilitates the two-way communication between the employees and company executives within the function group, while helping to resolve the issues encountered at different levels in the organisation.

To facilitate the efficiency of the organisational structure, Google’s human resource management focuses on recruiting, retaining and awarding highly-skilled personnel at all levels that can engage in the complex tasks in its numerous projects. Besides, to facilitate learning, the human resource management at the company has aligned the jobs with the organisational structure to ensure that the firm remains task-oriented and performance-driven (Smithson, 2019). Employees’ efforts are inspired, recognised and rewarded by the company, which explains the many employee-based innovations at the firm. For instance, Gmail was developed by Paul Buchheit in 1998, while off duty as an employee of the company. Buchheit utilised the 20% time provision in Google’s policy for using work hours for personal projects to develop the product, which he pitched successfully to the company’s executives (McCraken, 2014). This innovation is indicative of the tacit knowledge possessed by the company’s employees and the diligent work ethic that is entrenched in the organisational culture. Similarly, Google Maps was created by two employees of Where 2 Technologies, who pitched it as a web-based product when Google acquired the company in 2004 (Hutcheon, 2015). Google Maps has grown into an invaluable companion for travellers that are unfamiliar with their travelling routes and destinations. Also, Google Maps allows customers to contribute data to the application, thus enriching the platform. These contributions show that Google is open to internal and external ideas to improve its existing offerings and create new ones (Raj & Srivastava, 2016).

All in all, the organisational structure and culture must be strategically aligned to achieve the desired goals. In this regard, a flat organisational structure supports an open organisational culture, which is crucial for a learning organisation. Handy’s organisational culture model supports Google’s cross-functional structure by advocating a trade-off between the opportunistic nature and market focus, and organisational capabilities. This resource focus trade-off helps in balancing the challenges from internal integration and business environment adaptation that are often experienced by modern businesses in a global setting (Wahyuningsih, Sudiro, Troena, & Irawanto, 2019). Google has flattened its tall organisational structure to foster creativity and innovativeness.

Evaluation of Global ODD Strategy

Google is a global company that employs a global organisational design and development strategy to deliver its organisational strategy. The current strategy of the company is differentiation, based on Porter’s model (Thompson, 2019a). This competitive strategy drives the innovation agenda at the company, which is supported by developing unique capabilities for creating unique products for the global market (Hernández-Perlines, Moreno-García, & Yañez-Araque, 2016). The product portfolio includes a search engine, desktop and mobile applications, operating systems for mobile devices, and hardware (Alphabet, Inc. 2019). These products are offered for free to the public, and in return, Google obtains valuable information to drive its advertising business. The offer compromise allows the company to receive continuous feedback about the performance of its products and how they can be improved. Thus the company crowdsources ideas from developers and users, and therefore, learns continuously by exploiting the collective knowledge from its external environment (Devece, Palacios, & Ribeiro-Navarrete, 2019). The differentiation strategy is in response to the rapid technological advancements, the robust and aggressive competitiveness in the technology industry and the uniqueness of customers’ demands.

Besides, the differentiation strategy is accompanied by several intensive growth strategies that seek to cement Google as a leading brand and market leader in the information and advertising industries. The intensive growth strategies comprise of market penetration, product development, market development and diversification (Thompson, 2019a). In market penetration, Google seeks to wrestle market share from its competitors outside the United States that provide search engine and advertising services. The innovative products it develops help the company to compete favourably in the global market (Hernández-Perlines, Moreno-García, & Yañez-Araque, 2016). The product development strategy focuses on creating new products through innovation. Internal capabilities and external sources foster product development by anticipating the needs of the market and addressing these needs (Kim & Atuahene‐Gima, 2010). Therefore, the company continues to develop its mobile applications and cloud services to create new revenue streams. Moreover, the market development strategy focuses on creating new markets and enticing customers into these segments (Kim & Atuahene‐Gima, 2010). For instance, Google offers cloud services to application developers and other users who may not have the technical and informational reserves (Alphabet, Inc. 2019). Cloud services can be accessed from any geographical location that is covered by the internet. Further, the diversification strategy pursues growth into new business areas to expand the product and service portfolio. Google undertakes mergers and acquisitions (M&As) of entities with capabilities that lack in the company. Most of these M&As are integrated in product or services lines already existing in google, like Android, Chrome, Google Maps, Google Cloud Platform, and Google Analytics and many more (Alphabet, Inc. 2019). Google acquired YouTube in 2006 to enter the video-sharing market, to commence its acquisition spree (CB Insights, 2019). In 2019, Google bought Fitbit, which is upcoming wearable health technology manufacturer, for $2.1 billion to bolster the Wear OS product line and compete favourably with Apple and Samsung (Carey, 2019). To Google, the M&A strategy is a significant growth driver, with the company having entered into more than 200 deals to date. Therefore, M&A play a substantial role in Google’s global organisational design and development strategy because the company has to integrate the new acquisitions into its organisational structure and culture. These strategy choices are by Google’s focus in staying ahead of competition by consolidating existing markets and expanding into foreign markets through engaging in continuous innovation, investing in strategic acquisitions, and a focusing incessantly on capturing the mobile advertising market as the main revenue source (Alphabet, Inc. 2019). Google is continuously learning from its diverse markets and the progressive technologies that exist today, and from the new knowledge brought in by the acquired businesses, keeping the company in a perpetual innovation spirit. Therefore, Google has entrenched the learning culture and created an organisational structure that is open to new knowledge, which has made the company adaptive, responsive and accommodative to change.  

Conclusion

Google, Inc. is a technology company that has leveraged the global organisational design and development strategy to spur its growth and performance. Google focuses unwaveringly on innovation and has developed a supportive organisational structure and culture. The firm capitalises on the internal and external sources of knowledge to improve its capacity and capabilities. While it facilitates creativity and seamless information flow within its ranks, Google also crowdsources knowledge from the public in return for the free use of its basic services and products. Similarly, it engages in an aggressive acquisition strategy to bring in new knowledge and capabilities to plug existing deficiencies and venture into new business areas. Therefore, the company is a learning organisation that is ready to continuously evolve in the highly competitive and fluid technology industry. Through its flat organisational structure and task culture, Google is sure to remain a top contender for the industry leadership as it ventures into the global market.     

References

Alphabet, Inc. (2019). Form 10-K. United States Securities and Exchange Commission. Retrieved from https://abc.xyz/investor/static/pdf/20180204_alphabet_10K.pdf?cache=11336e3.

Amiri, A., Haghgooyan, Z., & Mohammadi, F. (2014). Identifying and prioritizing affecting components on creative organizational culture. International Journal of Academic Research in Economics and Management Sciences, 3(5), 53-68.

Benzer, J. K., Charns, M. P., Hamdan, S., & Afable, M. (2017). The role of organizational structure in readiness for change: A conceptual integration. Health Services Management Research, 30(1), 34-46.

Cacciattolo, K. (2014). Understanding organisational cultures. European scientific journal, 2(1), 1-7.

Carey, S. (2019). Notable technology acquisitions 2019. Retrieved from https://www.computerworld.com/article/3412327/notable-technology-acquisitions-2019.html.

CB Insights. (2019). Infographic: Google’s biggest acquisitions. Retrieved from https://www.cbinsights.com/research/google-biggest-acquisitions-infographic/.

Chiva, R., & Habib, J. (2015). A framework for organizational learning types: generative, adaptive and zero learning. Journal of Management and Organization, 21(3), 350-368.

Cross, R. L., & Israelit, S. (2009). Strategic learning in a knowledge economy. Routledge.

Devece, C., Palacios, D., & Ribeiro-Navarrete, B. (2019). The effectiveness of crowdsourcing in knowledge-based industries: the moderating role of transformational leadership and organisational learning. Economic research-Ekonomska istraživanja, 32(1), 335-351.

Gurd, B., & Helliar, C. (2017). Looking for leaders: ‘Balancing’ innovation, risk and management control systems. The British Accounting Review, 49(1), 91-102.

Handy, C. (n.d.). Managing the dream: The learning organisation. Retrieved from http://www.ourfuture.com/arts02.htm.

Hernández-Perlines, F., Moreno-García, J., & Yañez-Araque, B. (2016). The mediating role of competitive strategy in international entrepreneurial orientation. Journal of Business Research, 69(11), 5383-5389.

Hutcheon, S. (2015). The untold story about the founding of Google Maps. Retrieved from https://medium.com/@lewgus/the-untold-story-about-the-founding-of-google-maps-e4a5430aec92.

Jaber, M. Y. (2016). Learning curves: Theory, models, and applications. CRC Press.

Janićijević, N. (2013). The mutual impact of organizational culture and structure. Economic annals, 58(198), 35-60.

Janićijević, N. (2015, September). Impact of organizational culture on organizational learning and knowledge management. In 2015 ENTRENOVA Conference Proceedings.

Kim, N., & Atuahene‐Gima, K. (2010). Using exploratory and exploitative market learning for new product development. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 27(4), 519-536.

Kolarić, B., & Petrović, S. (2013). Relationship between organizational design and organizational learning. Journal of Process Management. New Technologies, 1(4), 96-100.

Korsakova, T. V., Chelnokova, E. A., Kaznacheeva, S. N., Bicheva, I. B., Lazutina, A. L., & Perova, T. V. (2016). Transformation of corporate culture in conditions of transition to knowledge economics. International Journal of Environmental and Science Education, 11(11), 4690-4698.

McCraken, H. (2014). How Gmail happened: The inside story of its launch 10 years ago. Retrieved from https://time.com/43263/gmail-10th-anniversary/.

Meier, J.D. (2017). Brilliant examples of company values (Amazon, Google, Microsoft and more). Retrieved from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/brilliant-examples-company-values-amazon-google-microsoft-j-d-meier.

Őnday, Ő. (2016). Organization culture theory: From organizational culture of Schein to appreciative inquiry of Cooperrider & Whitney. Elixir International Journal, 92, 39002-39008.

O’Neill, J. W., Beauvais, L. L., & Scholl, R. W. (2016). The use of organizational culture and structure to guide strategic behavior: An information processing perspective. Journal of Behavioral and Applied Management, 2(2), 132-152.

Raj, R., & Srivastava, K. B. (2016). Mediating role of organizational learning on the relationship between market orientation and innovativeness. The Learning Organization. 23(5), 370-385.

Schein, E. H. (2004). Organizational culture and leadership (3^rd ed.). John Wiley & Sons.

Serrat, O. (2017). Dimensions of the learning organization. In Knowledge Solutions (pp. 865-870). Springer, Singapore.

Smithson, N. (2019). Google’s structure & organisational culture (an analysis). Retrieved from http://panmore.com/google-organizational-structure-organizational-culture.

Sprouts (2017). The learning organisation: Characteristics of a modern enterprise. . Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40meQNZl3KU.

Thompson, A. (2019a) Google’s generic strategy (Porter’s) & intensive growth strategies. Retrieved from http://panmore.com/google-generic-strategy-intensive-growth-strategies.

Thompson, A. (2019b). Googles mission statement and vision statement (an analysis). Retrieved from http://panmore.com/google-vision-statement-mission-statement.

Wahyuningsih, S. H., Sudiro, A., Troena, E. A., & Irawanto, D. W. (2019). Analysis of organizational culture with denison’s model approach for international business competitiveness. Problems and Perspectives in Management, 17(1), 142-151.