Google Company: Organizational Structure and Design

Google is a unique company that uses a matrix of organizational structure considered as a hybrid between functional and divisional. Google group its activities through specialized functions such as sales, human resource, marketing and even information technology. It also groups itself into self- contained division based on geographical location or products and services (Google Inc, 2014). Based on the analysis, Google has a cross-functional structure with a significant degree of flatness. It, therefore, has three different qualities namely functional based definition, product based definition and flatness.

In Google Company, function is used as a way of bringing all the workers together, for example, sales operation team, product management team and others (Smith, 2013). In this case, a function is used by Google to ensure that employees that perform a given role are grouped together. In addition, it also uses products to group its workers. For example, Google formed a team of workers to produce Nexus devices. Furthermore, other workers also form a group to conduct Fiber business (Claver-Cortes & Molina-Azorin, 2012). Finally, Google organizational structure has flatness which means that the employees can report directly to executives without passing through middle-level management. The employees are also not restricted from sharing information with each other or a cross different teams within the company. For example employee, in sales department can meet and share information with another employee from human resource department.

There are some challenges that Google experience through the use of flat organization structure. There is no specialization because there is cross- training (Google Inc, 2015). In this organization structure, workers consume much time learning related jobs and this prevents specialization in a given task. It is right to follow this path because it makes communication faster and easier. It also increases employees motivation thus increase organizational returns on investment (Alvesson, 2012). The only thing that makes organizational structure unique is that many employees share responsibilities and tasks. It also allows employees to work directly with customers. Furthermore, it gives an investor an opportunity to source information from any other employee.

References

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

file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/martin/Desktop/OCultureasatool.pdf

Claver-Cortes, E., Pertusa-Ortega, E. M., & Molina-Azorin, J. F. (2012). Characteristics of organizational structure relating to hybrid competitive strategy. Journal of Business Research, 65(7), 993-1002.

http://panmore.com/google-organizational-structure-organizational-culture

Google Inc. (2014). Google Inc. Form 10-K, 2014.

http://www.practical-management.com/Leadership/Analysis-of-Google-s-Organizational-Design.html

Google Inc. (2015). What we believe Ten things we know to be true.

https://bizfluent.com/about-6692920-google-s-organizational-structure.html

Smith, J. (2013). The Companies With the Best CSR Reputations. Forbes.

http://www.businessinsider.com/google-new-operating-structure-2015-8