Leadership

There are three learning objectives of leadership that students should know, which are definition of leadership, traits and behaviors of leadership and the different approaches to leadership.

Leadership is the process of influencing others to achieve group or organizational goals. (Williams & McWilliams, 2010, p.277) Firstly, the role of leaders can be described as architect, because they always lead the direction of operate a business or organization. Also, leadership is a position that based on a long period. Therefore, leaders should concern about the change and outcome of the organization. In addition, one of the responsibilities of leaders is that inspiring and motivating the employees. However, some leaders do not pay enough attention to coming up with a smart decision to lead the organization, while they focus on completing the tasks without mistakes.

Secondly, in general, the effective leaders usually are successful with the similar set of traits or characteristics. Such as, they desire to lead and drive the whole team and members. Also, leaders must be educated, so they possess the professional knowledge of business. And therefor, leaders are strong at cognitive ability. The emotional of leaders should be stability, and the personality of leaders is important. For example, they should be self-confidence, honesty and integrity. On the other hand, a leader structures the roles of followers. Such as set goals, give directions, set deadlines and assign task. And the consideration of a good leader can depend on that is the leader friendly, approachable, and supportive and shows concern for employees. Also, a good leader is capable of adapting and fitting the different situations.

Thirdly, there are two different types of leadership, charismatic leadership and transformational ship. In charismatic leadership, the relationship between leader and follower is very strong. This kind of leaders model values consistently with a clear vision. And they expect the employees to perform efficiently and display their confidence by communicating with employees. However, transformational leadership focuses on generating awareness and acceptance of group’s purpose and mission. The followers usually can achieve the performance more than they intended or thought possible. This type of leadership constituted with charisma or idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration.

Google is an American multinational corporation specializing in internet-related services and products. The major revenue of Google is from advertisement. Google made great achievements in search engine. Also it made success of other products, such as Gmail, Android and Google Translate. Google is well known by everyone all around the world, it has an informal corporate culture. And it the most attractive corporation for the graduating students would like to work. Google encouraged their employees to spend 20 percent of their work time on projects that interest them. (Wikipedia, 2013) This approach did work. Google also has many philosophy principles. For example, “you can be serious without a suit”, and “work should be challenging and the challenge should be fun”. (Wikipedia, 2013)

In my opinion, Google should be identified as transformational leadership. Google has more and successful innovations by carrying out the intellectual stimulation. Also, it promoted the performance of company. Google is an idealized work environment for many graduating students in universities.

Leadership is important for the organization, because a great leader can inspire followers to have confidence. Therefore, it can influence the efficiency of group’s performance, and then achieve the goals.

Reference

“Our Philosophy”. Google, Inc. Retrieved June 20, 2010.

Mediratta, Bharat (October 21, 2007). “The Google Way: Give Engineers Room”. The New York Times. Retrieved June 20, 2010.

Google new mobile search service

EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT

External environment are the forces and events outside a company that have the potential to influence or affect it. Google Inc. is an American multintional corporation secializing in internet – related services and products. These include search, cloud computing, software and online advertising technologies. Most profits are derived from Adwards.(Google ,2010)

Although the US is currently in a period of recession, Google Inc. is affected lightly because search and advertisment based on internet have become a staple to the world society and economy. ” Look particularly well – positioned to weather the downturn. Google’s focus on highly targeted, measurable advertising makes it more recession – proof than many other businesses in tech.” (Schiffman, 2008)

As we all know, internet technology and technological development bring opportunities to Google Inc. to enter the market. It  provides a powerful website search platform for the public which creates countless wealth for Google Inc. However, the dual nature of technological factors also bring new problem: with the changing needs and the internet technology updates, more and more potential competitors and alternatives appear, Google Inc. must identify future trends and new market segments it could exploit, so that it can operate more effectively in the technological environment.

As for socio – cultural environment, Google seems to become an indispensable part of life. 500 years ago, Gutenberg invented the modern movable type printing machine, since then, books and science books greatly reduced prices, to enter the ordinary families. Today, Google gives the public the power to change the way people obtain information. This change is more profound than the change that any other kind of new inventions brought. By google search interface, google respond hundreds of millions of search requests quickly and accurately which  revolutionized the way people access information and keep abreast of the latest information on the way. Every day, millions of people in 100 different languages using the Google, for them, Google is equivalent to the Internet. Via the Google search network on a computer or mobile phone, people can instantly get information about anything  and every piece of an information. Men, women and children have a sense of dependence on Google, people can not imagine what life would be like without Google.

Other than that, Google Inc. is  also affected by legal environment. As its online activities develop, Google was sued because it was likely to violate copyright and privacy. Therefore, Google Inc. is recommended that takes steps to respond quickly to copryright or privacy complaints so that it may positively enhance its brand image in matter of this regard.

Reference list

B.Morrow (2008)., Google’s Success., Retrieved from http://zh.scribd.com/doc/16062744/Googles-Success

Management Topic -Motivation

Motivation is the force that initiates, directs and makes people persist in their efforts to reach goals, it is also called as a driving force. Motivation is important as how much effort employee put into their jobs depend on how motivated they are (Williams & McWilliams, 2010). Google Inc is an American multinational corporation specializing in Internet-related services and products. These include searching, cloud computing, software and online advertisement technologies.(Google, 2009)

Google Inc motivate their employees by their unique culture, rewards, and perks.  Google Inc. have structured their leadership to provide the best environment to motivate their employees with intrinsic and extrinsic rewards.  (Google, 2009) Google,Inc provides a lot of services and areas for their employees to enjoy while on their breaks(Google, 2009). For example, there are numerous snack rooms, cafes, gyms and even a 24 hour doughnut shop for free, this makes employees feel happy while they are working for Google. They work harder when they feel happy. Other than that, Further training and education is also a motivation for employees who want to develop and learn new skills. More than that, Google provides different fringe benefits to different employees depend on their specific needs.  For example, Google,Inc provides their employees financial assistance in the adoption of a child for employees who plan to adopt child.These intrinsic reward is a good motivator to motivate employees according to McClelland’s Learned Needs as employees will be motivated when they feel belongingness to the company..

“Work should be challenging, and the challenge should be fun.” said Google, Inc.’s CEO, Erin Schmitt (Google, 2009). Google Inc provides challenging goals for their employees ,it helps employees to feel fun that comes from doing an interesting , challenging and engaging task and it makes employees to put in more effort.  Other than that, they have chance to learn something new therefore it will motivate them to work. When they reach the challenging goal, they will feel fulfill and self actualization which is the highest need of Maslow’s Hierarchy. Challenging work is a good motivator for Instrinsically motivated behaviors employees, which are performed out of interest and satisfy their psychological needs for competence and autonomy are the prototype of self-determined behavior. (Ryan, Deci 2000).

Although intrinsic motivation is clearly an important type of motivation, but there are some extrinsically motivated behaviors as well, therefore Google also pay good salaries to their employees, Google had $209,624 in profit per employee in 2008, which beat all the other large tech companies as they believe people are the best investment (Datamonitor, 2009). This is extrinsic reward Google use to motivate their employees as money is the best motivator to extrinsically motivated behaviors employees.

Other than that, Google does not have a formal hierarchical system in place which mean all employees are positioned at the same level, it will help to encourage for better teamwork as they are more likely to give their opinions and contribute. According to Equity theory, employees will be motivated when they feel that they are being treated fairly.

Google provides both intrinsic and extrinsic rewards as they understand that humans are not motivated by pay incentives alone(Google, 2009). Google Inc. believes good motivation to employees and good company culture is the key to make company success. Google provides everything for what employees are looking for in organizations to motivate their employees.

Reference List

Richard M.Ryan,Edward L.Deci. (2000).  Instrinsic and Extrinsic motivation :Classic Definitions and new directions (Volume 25, Issue1) Pages54-67

Google. (2009). Google Benefits. Retrieved May 21, 2011, from
http://www.google.com/support/jobs/bin/static.py?page=benefits

Google Benefits. (2009). Retrieved November 4, 2009, http://www.google.com/about/jobs/lifeatgoogle/benefits/

HOW DOES GOOGLE PLAN?

Planning is “A management fuction that involves defining goals, establishing strategies for achieving those goals and developing plans integrate and coordinate activities.” (Robbins, Bergman, Stagg & Coulter, 2009, pg246) To be more specific, it consists of five steps. Setting goals, developing commitment, developing effective plans, tracking progress toward goal achievement and maintaining flexibility. The most important part amongst the five is developing effective action plans because it is meaningless if we leave our plans on tthe paper.

planning is an indispensible and important part of management, not only because it provides us direction but also it leads to persistant and intensified effort. Obviously, having a plan can motivate employees to work harder and therefore, it is a benefit for an organisation. The business environment is now changing, organisations should also change themselves to meet the changing needs of society, this is relying on planning.

The first step of panning is to set goals. There is a method called ‘smart” that helps setting goals, that is, specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely. This is how goals should be set ideally. But it is useless if nobody cares the goals, so we need to develop commitment to goals next. A simple way to do that is to set goals with employees. Then generate action plans, which should involve specific steps, people, resources and time period. It is important to track progrss at times so that they could stay in the way towards succeed. Last but not the least, it is not advisable to follow the plans rigorously in case of unexpected situation. In other words, maintain the plan flexible.

As we know, Google is a famous international company from America, and is a leader in the IT field. Even though it has a large number of uers and makes a lot of money, it is still adapting itself to the changing needs of users. Google’s mission is known as “organize the world’s information and make it universally accesible.” In order to achieve that, it is now setting a new goal: “improve its mobile search sevices by automatically deliver information you couldn’t think to search for online.” Consequently, Google started to cooperate with Android so it can guess what you need by mobile devices via GPS chips and other sensors. Google is trying hard to provide any information needed at any time now. Actually, it has already “offered unsolicited directions, weather forecasts, flight updates, and other information when it thinks you need them. In addition, Google glass has already been developed. It is a multifuctional glass with an integrated display which provide useful information and it is hands-free. This could avoid the incovenience of taking out the phone from the pocket. Further more, Google now has already “combines location data with real-time feeds.” It is possible to find arrival time at the bus stop by pulling out our phone now. In the future, there will be more marvellous functions on our phones according to Google’s plan.

Reference list:

retrieved September 1, 2013, from http://www.technologyreview.com/news/507451/how-google-plans-to-find-the-ungoogleable/

Stephen P, R. (2009). Foundations of management (3rd edition) French Forest, N.S.W.: Pearson Education.

Management class-Internal environment

Internal environment is one of the essential factors in company management, and it includes the employees, managements and phenomenon in the company. In addition, the main point of internal environment is the organization culture it creates, which affects what the people think, feel and behaviour in their works. Consequently, the organization culture is also defined as the values beliefs and attitudes shared by the members in the group.

The reason that it is important to keep a good internal environment is because it can indirectly motivate the employees and help the company becomes more attractive and creative. For example, some of the managers make effort to construct a comfortable environment that working in the company just like staying in the house. Therefore, the staffs can work happily and will not plan to quit when the company provides such an appropriate workplace. Additionally, the internal environment also involves the sense of participation, which is an indispensable factor in company foundation. If the managers promote higher levels of staffs participating in decision making, the staffs will feel a sense of ownership and become more responsible for their duty. In this case, it can eventually generate benefits return to the company. What is more, as internal environment is mentioned, it is necessary to understand that the company founders perform indispensable roles in it. What the company founder acts will deeply affect the culture in the company and establish the company’s development direction. For example, people who founded Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, have designed a successful internal environment for Google.

In fact, Google was not Google in the past, it was googol which meant a number. However, in 1998, two Stanford students, Larry and Sergey,  changed googol into Google and launched it as a company’s name.Since then, googol and Google has became the world’s most widely recognized name. (Smith, 2010.)

However, how can Google become so successful? It is because that Google has owned incredible internal environment since it was founded while other company just starts to try hard to change. What is more, the reason that Google maintain such an excellent internal environment is that Larry and Sergey have focused on this area since a long time ago. With their founders’ lead and contribution, Google has become one of the most powerful and credible company in the world. T

In the journal ” A 10-step guide to using the “Google effect” to engage employees”, in order to make it easy to collaborate and let its employees feel a sense of participation. One  of the methods Google used is to establish a platform for its employee. “Create guidelines that encourage employees to post online. Provide best practices and off-line communities where interested employees can learn about the potential and technology, and how they can easily participate”. (Rudnick & Kouba, 2006, p.8 ) What is more, another way to encourage employees is to offer a convenient and interesting environment to them. At lunch time, Google offers plenty of free food and drinks and snacks for employees at its cafeteria, and it also has out door seating with sunshine for them to take a rest. In addition, to amuse employees, Google usually has entertainment center in each company, and it consist of something like bowling, video games, ping pong tables, swimming pools, yoga and dace classes. With this sort of internal environment, Google finally become one of the most successful companies in the world.

Reference list

Google website- About Google.

retrieved from  http://www.google.com.au/about/company/

Smith, Roger. 2010. “GOOGLE MEANS EVERY”. Research Technology Management 53, no. 1 67-69. Business Source Complete, EBSCOhost.

Rudick, M., Kouba, W., 2006~2007. “A 10-steps guide to using the Google effect to engage employees”. The business communicator, Dec 2006/Jan 2007; 7, 7; ProQuest Central.