Organizational Culture of Google Essay

The term "culture" has been used more and more recently but what exactly does it mean? Some have even regarded culture as "the most central problem of all social science" (Malinowski, 1939). According to Merriam Webster (2016), culture is defined as the arts and other manifestations of human achievements. If culture was as simple as Merriam-Webster defines it then the lives of anthropologists, sociologists, and psychologists would be much easier. As we know, culture varies greatly across religion, countries, and some cases in just states; the difference between the north and the south. We can conclude that culture is a set of shared thoughts, values, and cognitions (Geertz, 1973). With culture in itself varying tremendously based on values and location, then surely organizational culture is no simple concept either. The term "organizational culture" has just recently become to be used more (Barley, 1988). Though there may be disagreements on defining culture universally, researchers tend to agree that culture is of vital importance in an organizational context, whether that organization is a company or a government (Kilmann, Saxton, & Serpa, 1986).

Organizational culture could almost be considered the roots of a company. The way a company’s employees think, the way the customers feel, and the company’s decisions are made are all based around the culture that the company has laid for itself. An employee’s values, thoughts, and actions should reflect those stated in the company’s mission. Southwest Airlines and American Airlines, while both attempting to create a culture that is comfortable and pleasing to their

“Culture consists of the symbols, rituals, language, and social dramas that highlight organizational life, including myths, stories, and jargon. It includes the shared meanings associated with the symbols, rituals, and language. Culture combines the philosophy of the firm with beliefs, expectations, and values shared by members. It contains the stories and myths about the company's founder and its current leading figures. Organizational culture consists of a set of shared meanings and values held by a set of members in an organization that distinguish the organization from other organizations. An organization's culture determines how it perceives and reacts to the larger environment (Becker, 1982; Schein, 1996). Culture determines the nature

Organizational culture is the personality of the organization. Culture is comprised of the assumptions, values, norms and tangible signs (artifacts) of organization members and their behaviors. Members of an organization soon come to sense the particular culture of an organization. Culture is one of those terms that are difficult to express distinctly, but everyone knows it when they sense it. For example, the culture of a large, for-profit corporation is quite different than that of a hospital which is quite different that that of a university. You can tell the culture of an organization by looking at the arrangement of furniture, what they brag about, what members wear.

The organization culture as a leadership concept has been identified as one of the many components that leaders can use to grow a dynamic organization. Leadership in organizations starts the culture formation process by imposing their assumptions and expectations on their followers. Once culture is established and accepted, they become a strong leadership tool to communicate the leader 's beliefs and values to organizational members, and especially new comers. When leaders promote ethical culture, they become successful in maintaining organizational growth, the good services demanded by the society, the ability to address problems before they become disasters and consequently are competitive against rivals. The leader 's success will depend to a large extent, on his knowledge and understanding of the organizational culture. The leader who understands his organizational culture and takes it seriously is capable of predicting the outcome of his decisions in preventing any anticipated consequences. What then is organizational culture? The concept of organizational culture has been defined from many perspectives in the literature. There is no one single definition for organizational culture. The topic of organizational culture has been studied from many perspectives and disciplines, such as anthropology, sociology, organizational behavior, and organizational leadership to name a few. Deal defines organizational culture as values,

Organizational Culture is based upon a system of shared meaning, held by a group of members that distinguishes one organization from the other. Therefore Google’s culture was and still is based upon its foundation, in

One of the tops 100 companies in America for Diversity is Google. They have been on the top spot for six consecutive years being the country’s best companies to work for. Google is in the information technology industry the company founded in 1998 and their headquarters is located in Mountain View, California having a total of 72,053 employees. Google is a great example of company culture, in how they treat their employees with free meals, trips, parties, financial bonuses, gyms, a dog-friendly environment and so on. Google is known to be driven, talented and among the best of the best. And with this success even the most successful company needs an evolving culture that can grow along with the company. It has been a challenge for the major

Organization culture is the matter that holds a company intact. This is what makes each

An organization’s culture governs day to day behavior. This type of power may be seen as a control mechanism, which businesses use to manipulate internal and external perception. Every organization has a set of assumed understandings that must be adopted and implemented by new employees in order for them to be accepted. Conformity to the culture becomes the primary basis for reward by the organization. “The role of culture in influencing employee behavior appears to be increasingly important in today’s workplace, as organizations have widened spans of control, flattened structures, introduced teams, reduced

The core of this culture lies in the Founder’s philosophy. Google is ruled by its founders. In the book ‘What would Google do?’ by Jeff Jarvis, there is wonderful line that goes like “There is an inverse relationship between control and trust.” Trust is established in the process of attracting people to the site and more people that come, the more companies flock to the internet and thus the search engine. This is called a two sided network effect. One cannot survive without the other.

When discussing the organizational culture within a company such as GE, we can break management concepts down into three categories. According to Argenti (2002), organizational behavior in organizations is usually broken down into three main areas:

Garvin’s article How Google Sold Its Engineers on Management describes Google’s unique approach to management. Google prides itself with having the best, most highly satisfied employees in the industry. A majority of its employees are engineers that prefer spending time creating and building, which makes it difficult for management to exist. Many of Google’s employees are also highly independent and do not like being micromanaged. Garvin (2013) described a 2002 experiment where Google made their organization flat, eliminating engineering managers, the company realized that managers do more than just manage projects. Managers contributed to the company, “by communicating strategy, helping employees prioritize projects, facilitating

Edgar Schein, a famous theorists dealing with organizational culture, provides the following definition for the term: "A pattern of shared basic assumptions that the group learned as it solved its problems that has worked well enough to be considered valid and is passed on to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems." (organizationalculture101) However, organizational culture is more than sharing assumptions used by a group to solve problems; it is the combination of the points of view, ineffectual processes, education, backgrounds of all the staff which are part of an organization way of doing things. Corporation culture should uncover from the board of the directors to the rest of

The shared characteristics and, in some cases, perception of employees create what is known as organizational culture. A strong culture constructs a unified employee atmosphere, whereas a weak culture lacks a shared sense of distinction between employees. An employee’s heritage or individual culture, although different than, affects the overall organizational culture of companies. Like society, sub-cultures exist within organizations. Formed by departmental function, geographical location, and/or the personalities of employees, sub-cultures include employees who continue to adhere to the organizations’ overall culture, but have additional independent characteristics. Employees’ individual heritage, along with the culture and

Google has a unique approach of keeping an effective organization culture by keeping innovation running and going through employee empowerment. According to an article from Forbes, Google’s secrets are empowering employees and creating as many channels as they can in order for manifestation, distinguishing different people and ideas (Google 's Secrets of Innovation, 2013). Furthermore, in order to create a strong culture Google has an open culture where employees have the ability to directly email the company leaders. Hence, Google enriches their innovative leadership by enhancing the ability to encourage interactions between top leaders and subordinates. Another fascinating channel Google uses to boost company culture is through Google Cafes. Typically, when employees have a place, topic and motive new ideas spur and innovative interactions are stimulating. Secondly, Google’s management system and their eight pillars of innovation has lead them to maximize their full