Systems Thinking Theory And Practice Culture Of Google

Discuss about the Systems Thinking Theory and Practice Culture of Google.

 

 

Introduction  

The following essay focuses on the organizational structure and organizational culture of Google. It is known to all that Google is the most informative web organization in the world and the entire world depends on Google regarding every matter. Here in this segment, the topic of discussion is to identify the sources and prime factors through which Google can lead to its success and developing new innovation processes. Innovation is a very slow process that takes a lot of patience and hard work and thinking of the creative processes to make some results that will be out of the box. An organization like Google has to keep various things on mind to make new innovations that would be adopted by users. The technical and the managerial infrastructure have to be properly set up so that it can achieve its proper goals. The innovation has to be taken into job descriptions and its innovation is completely dependent on the software developers, Google engineers, mash up creators and open source communities. They have to follow various ways like they have to establish a product-development network, extending value of Google’s tools and technology.

Discussion     

Control is a very important matter in terms of achieving the goals in every project. As per the case study, all the aspects regarding ‘control’ have to be understood and it has to be linked with the basic innovation models so that a relation between the two can be associated. Control systems are divided into two forms that are open loop control and closed loop control. Problem solving is an integral part of the system because it requires control over the things. The application of the control model is very effective in case of choosing the goals in promoting innovation. In order to innovate, the organization to set their goals first so that they can identify their ways in which they would proceed. Both the form of goals i.e. Hard and Soft must be utilized and the staff morale must be increased so that they will be motivated enough to go for new innovations through new models and setting new goals in the industry. The goal must be specific, it should be processed for the output, and then the output must be converted into a feedback to be compared directly with the goal. Thus, setting the goals and objectives will lead the organization in promoting innovation by the concerned people.

Role of organizational culture

In this part of the essay the central part of the discussion is about the organizational structure. Before proceeding further, one must have an idea about the organizational structures and its role in assessing the performance of the organizations. Apart from that, the role of organizational culture is also very important in setting the tones for a perfect organizational performance.

Organizational structure is a term that has many interpretations all over the world. An organizational structure is an integral part of an organization’s setting. It is about setting the hierarchy of an organization. The organizational hierarchy or the structure has many works. Some of them can be identified as recognizing each job, its functions and its limitations and to whom the employees should report. The goal or target of every organization is to make a future growth in its sphere of working. This structure has to be developed so that the organizations can adopt proper strategies of its operations. There are several types of organizational structures in different organizations. These structures help to provide an assessment of the employees in various job descriptions and their roles in it.

Organizational structure has a huge role in the performance of the organizations. It judges the various roles of the various employees in achieving the goals of the goals of the companies. Various departments are divided to attain the objectives of the organization and these departments can include the managing departments, technical departments, accounts and finance departments and others. One of the most important roles of organizational structure is to be efficient all the time.  Proper communication has to be made through all the departments. There should be a smooth understanding in the organizational structure. If the organizational structure of an organization is not set properly, the impact of it is surely on the negative side. A poor organizational structure can result in miscommunication between the departments that could lead to a customer dissatisfaction and bad strategic management. The damage control system is going to be harmed by this as well. Poor organizational structure can also lead to a decrease in productivity of the organization that can result in downfall of the organization’s reputation. The conflict between the employees and the management can also be a result of this.

The organizational structure that Google follows is the matrix structure. It is generally a cross-functional structure. The organizational structure of Google comprises of three main stages that are function-based definition, product-based definition and flatness. The function-based definition helps Google to divide its employees into different teams like Sales Operations team, Engineering & Design team, Product Management team and others. These teams help to gain a better productivity with smooth communication between them. Employees are divided into teams for product-based definition as well where the teams deal with different products and expertise on them. The flatness in the structure helps the employees to meet directly with the CEO regarding their problems and report to him. Employees are also allowed to meet other teams to share information about works. This helps to have good co-ordination between the employees and keeps the good reputation of the firm alive all the time.

Role of organizational culture in shaping organizational performance  

The role of organizational culture is very crucial in determining the organizational performance. Organizational culture deals with the behaviors of the employees at the workplace (Alvesson 2012). The culture of an organization has a lot to do with the performance of the employees. According to the organizational cultures set in the organizations, it sheds either a positive or a negative effect on the employee performances.

At the beginning, it should be remembered that the employees are an integral part of the entire working process. The working environment or culture must set in a way that the employees see themselves as individuals who are very essential for the organizational needs. Employees must feel that they are active participants in the growth process of the organization. They set their individualistic goals merging them with the ones of the organization thinking that it is their responsibility to bring about positive changes in the organization. The question of job satisfaction is quite crucial because it gives one the opportunity to like the organization he is working with (Yücel 2012). Proper rewards and recognitions related to the good performances motivate them and they feel to do better in difficult circumstances so that it benefits the organization. The hierarchy including the management has to support them and letting them achieve a positive effect on the organizational culture (Alvesson 2012)..

There are some organizations where the hierarchy and the management department impart a huge amount of pressure on the employees and they live every minute with fear, is very much detrimental for the growth of the company. The employees do not understand their works by heart and as a result they do mistakes. This creates a negative impact about them on the minds of their managers and the working culture is destroyers because of this. In the case study provided, one gets to learn that organizational cultures have some specific functions to perform; These things include decision making of the hierarchy members, control of a centralized system, reduction of communication problems between the employees, the employees get committed to the organization feeling they are attached to it emotionally. Also, the employees get a justification of behavior by implementing the organizational culture theories (Zohar and Hoffman 2012).

There are some clear roles of organizational culture of Google in its performance level. Google follows the matrix structure so it has the openness in their organizational culture. According to the case study, it can be said that the interaction between the structure and culture works as an influence behind the achievements of the organization. One of the most prominent features of Google is Innovation (Drucker 2014). When an organization sets goals to innovate new things in the field, it has to set a culture where the employees can freely express their views and ideas. Excellence is one vital aspect of innovation and the employees should be recruited keeping that in mind so that they can cater to the creative innovation of new ideas. The employees of Google come from all spheres of the society and they are smart and innovative, creative. In Google, the open culture is always followed where the employees always are always comfortable with sharing their ideas with the people of all the senior people (Scott and Davis 2015). The teams are divided according to their capabilities and they always best possible outcomes from wherever they are through café and their offices. The results of this work culture, openness and innovation has led Google to launch the products like Google Chrome web browser, Google search engine and Google maps (Purcell, Brenner and Rainie 2012).

Organizational learning is an area of learning (Argote 2012). In this field of learning, the entire focus rests on the organizations. An organization is generally an institution which focuses on its growth regarding achieving the goals set by this. The particular goals or objectives have to be reached through a collective attempt by the members of the organization. The process is not an easy one but in order to grow, the organizations have to adapt many changes. Organizational learning is the area where the organizations learn to adapt about the various changes by applying the various organizational theories (Shafritz, Ott and Jang 2015). Organizational studies are an important part of the organizational learning. The organizational studies include the studies of factors that are involved in the organizational settings. People tend to interact with many organizations and they come across various situations (Cummings and Worley 2014). The study of these situations is called the organizational studies. The society is going through changes almost every single day. So, the impact of these changes is vast and it falls on the social, economic, personal aspects. The organizations have to deal with various aspects so that it has to learn to change and adapt to those changes so that it can keep its place in the race. (Benn, Dunphy and Griffiths 2014).

In this part of the discussion the role of Google in the field of organizational learning has to be discussed (Argote 2012). As per the case study, the central theme of the organizational learning, organizations have to learn to adapt to new changes while striving to retain its place in the competitive market. Some critics have opined that Google is still a search advertising company and their new products has not been able to impact on the minds of the majority portion of world population. A recent example of this is the introduction of the new smart phone invented by Google, named Google Pixel (Wee 2017). This fact targets to attract more customers. Another example is that Google is trying hard to become a reputed media company where they are inventing media platforms like Google TV & Nexus Q media streamer. These are instances of organizational learning. Its targets are no more confined within the searching advertising markets. It has extended its operating areas to media operations, pushing very hard to capture the market from big rivals like Amazon and Apple (Apple.com 2017).

Principles of systems thinking         

The final segment of this section deals with the ideas of systems thinking, problem solving and decision making. These are the key aspects of this part are the study of the systems thinking and linking its relations with problem solving and decision making. At first the concept of systems thinking should be clarified before further proceedings.

Systems thinking is a management discipline that is concerned with the understanding a system properly by going through linkages and interactions with the components (Brandstädter, Harms and Grossschedl 2012) Decision making is the process, in which the best option is picked from the various alternatives after the options are identified, comparing the costs and benefits of the given options and gathering all the concerned facts about it. There are mainly two processes of decision making like the rational process and the shared model. There are other processes as well to make a positive decision making from thinking about the matter systematically.

Problem solving is another aspect of the process where the solutions to the problems have to be found after a critical thinking (Paul and Elder 2014). Problems have to be recognized, then the probable solutions should be generated after a detailed analysis on the following. Next, all the alternatives have to be discussed and the best possible option have to be implemented. These things have to be done after a systematical thinking about the topics.

The principles of systems thinking have a basic difference with the principles of strategic management (Hitt, Ireland and Hoskisson 2012). Strategic management is the process when an organization takes some strategies after going through its probable resources and then planning something to attain the goals so that the strategy can be implemented properly (Rothaermel 2015). The members of the hierarchy of an organization decide these plans. The principles of the systems thinking goes through critical planning and taking some decisions. These decisions have to be taken after judging the best possible options to solve the problems. The system thinking is very much effective for management as it involves critical thinking on various topics to solve managerial issues of the organizations.  The systems thinking theory is a very important theory indeed that helps to a proper decision making. The rational process and the shared model should be followed properly so that the process of systems thinking should be understood properly. It is generally a theory that utilizes the concepts that help to develop the understanding of the various structures of the dynamic system. These systems are generally dependent on each other. There are two clear variables of the systems thinking theory that are open thinking theory and closed thinking theory. Closed systems have clear external boundaries and the open systems are linked with the environment. The open system is much more realistic than the closed system. The systems can be allowed to be chosen and defined at different levels and then they can be operated alongside each other and also they can be operated hierarchically. These are very important ideas.     

Conclusion

In the concluding part, it can be said that the organizational culture is a very important thing in the realms of global business. Employees seek for a good working environment and they always thrive for better prospective. The role of the organizational culture is very important in the organizational performance because the employees are mainly responsible for the performance of the organization. The role of the performance of the employees depends fairly on the organizational performance. The importance of systems thinking theory is also very important in the organizational culture. The role of organizational learning is important in the sense of the evolution of the companies.

References

Alvesson, M., 2012. Understanding organizational culture. Sage.

Apple.com. (2017). Apple Info - Apple. [online] Available at: https://www.apple.com/about/ [Accessed 29 Apr. 2017].

Argote, L., 2012. Organizational learning: Creating, retaining and transferring knowledge. Springer Science & Business Media.

Benn, S., Dunphy, D. and Griffiths, A., 2014. Organizational change for corporate sustainability. Routledge.

Brandstädter, K., Harms, U. and Grossschedl, J., 2012. Assessing system thinking through different concept-mapping practices. International Journal of Science Education, 34(14), pp.2147-2170.

Cummings, T.G. and Worley, C.G., 2014. Organization development and change. Cengage learning.

Drucker, P., 2014. Innovation and entrepreneurship. Routledge.

Hitt, M.A., Ireland, R.D. and Hoskisson, R.E., 2012. Strategic management cases: competitiveness and globalization. Cengage Learning.

Paul, R. and Elder, L., 2014. The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking-Concepts & Tools. The foundation for critical thinking.

Purcell, K., Brenner, J. and Rainie, L., 2012. Search engine use 2012.

Rothaermel, F.T., 2015. Strategic management. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Scott, W.R. and Davis, G.F., 2015. Organizations and organizing: Rational, natural and open systems perspectives. Routledge.

Shafritz, J.M., Ott, J.S. and Jang, Y.S., 2015. Classics of organization theory. Cengage Learning.

Wee, A., 2017. Google: Pixel 2 will remain with its flagship price tag.

Yücel, ?., 2012. Examining the relationships among job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and turnover intention: An empirical study. International Journal of Business and Management, 7(20), p.44.

Zohar, D. and Hofmann, D.A., 2012. Organizational culture and climate.