Strategic Management Action: A Swot Anaalysis Of Google Inc (Essay Sample)

STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT ACTION
Student’s Name
Course
Professor’s Name
University
City (State)
Date
Case study:Google
Introduction
Google is an American international technology corporation that specializes in internet computer software, and related products and services. Notably, Google was initiated by two computer technology researchers known as Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998 (Girard 2009, pg.34). Currently, Google has dominated the computer service providers on the international market including the prominent Microsoft and Yahoo corporations. Besides, the services that Google provides includes online advertisement, search software, and cloud computing (Anghelache2010, pg.95). Moreover, Google services shifted from being luxurious and become a daily solution to all questions in human life no matter the discipline. Further, the rapid growth of the company since 1998 is directly influenced by its strategy development frameworks, which at times misguides it to create an amicable ground for the Google competitors to flourish. Nonetheless, the discussion below intends to identify and critically analyze the strengths and weaknesses of Google in respect to contemporary strategy theory.
Strengths
Strategic leadership
Strategic leadership is the most important element of contemporary strategy theory, which influences the performance of Google. Notably, contemporary strategy theory emphasizes strategic leadership as one of its core values that if a company is to realize its objectives, it must have well established and knowledgeable leaders who can easily make productive decisions to influence the performance of the company positively. Besides, Google employs well highly experienced people to different posts in the company. For example, to qualify to be an engineer in the company, the applicant must hold either master's or doctorate in the related discipline from the world widely recognized University as well as being in aposition to present the broad experience in engineering before the candidate is allowed to assume the responsibilities on behalf of the company.
Further, Google lightened the workload for the managers, as well as reducing the expenditure spent on employee salaries, and allowances. For instance, a single manager supervises over 20 employees, which is less costly in contrast to other Unites States companies that employs using management ratio of 1:10, which is so expensive according to the strategic leadership perspective(Bosma et al 2011, pg. 47). As a result, the leadership that Google use makes it realizes enough profits and attains a competitive advantage over its close competitors; Yahoo and Microsoft. Therefore, the contemporary strategy theory element of strategic leadership that Google embraced is its strong arm regarding management.
Systematic organization
The contemporary strategy theory gives an insight that the organization systems that Google embraced created a fertile ground for its success. As a result, Google used this idea to organize the company departments of operation systematically to ensure that they produce the projected outputs (Durkheim 1997, pg. 79). For example, Google is divided into various small units of engineers, which function to control the quality of the products produced under peer review and not at any time unless otherwise management supervision (Hunt2014, pg.56). Further, the forces of the theory influenced the founders of the company to hire a well-qualified chief executive officer (CEO) Eric Schmidt, which led to the division labor among them(Greig&Turner 2007, pg.87). Nonetheless, hiring of the CEO directed the company to effective organize the company as each of the top directors has his specific responsibilities, an event which contributed to the current quality flow, legally responsive and exhibiting ethical responsibilities hence, a good relationship with its current and potential customers. Therefore, the move that Google made to organize systematically the company was at the stage of setting a competitive advantage against its competitors who never thought of embracing contemporary strategy theory.
Creating an innovative culture
The approach by Google management to create a working environment that allows employees to have spare time for their personal innovations is accountable for the success of the company. Notably, the field of the business that Google is participating in,requires daily innovations in order to remain on the top in the market. As a result, the Google management allowed the engineers in their respective fields to spend about 20 percent of their time handling their individual projects, and some sources say that they spend almost 30 percenton thelabor of their own choices, which gives the company an opportunity to accumulate new ideas (Cummings& Worley 2008, pg.115). As a result,Google over competes for its rivals in the computer technology international and local markets.
Weakness
Disjointed company structure
Despite the fact that Google achieved several benefits in the ecosystem organization structure that it employed due to the influence of contemporary strategy theory, the company is limited from achieving its maximum potentials. Notably, the ecosystem approach which is sometimes known as the highly organic organization is designed to meet the objectives of small business like small scale advertising companies, but not the a multinational corporation of Google’s caliber(DeRue&Workman 2014, pg.78). Further, the approach meets qualities of the companies with small workforce like 300, which is not bureaucratic. However, when the company like Googleemploys more than 16000 individual embraces an anti-bureaucratic organic organization, its capacity to deliver quality services and quality flow from the employees at all levels(Meadows 2014, pg. 56). Therefore, Google should embrace a highly structured an...