Organisational Structure and Growth of Microsoft Corporation

This report discusses the factors influencing the organisational structure of Microsoft Corporation, its characteristics, and the ways in which Microsoft manages the dynamic processes that shape their growth and evolution. It also covers the positive relationship between organisational culture and the growth of the company, and the role of leadership in achieving organisational goals.

Case Study

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
Factors which influence the organisational structure of Microsoft........................................1
Characteristics of the organisational structure of Microsoft..................................................2
The ways in which Microsoft manages the dynamic processes that shape their growth and
evolution.................................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7
Online-.............................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Organisational structure is the way in which the organisation is arranged to conduct their
operational activities. With the help of organisational structure, a employee can identify to whom
they must report and to whom they can order for the task (Luong, 2020). In simple words,
organisational structure will help the company to identify the roles and duties of employees as a
colleague and as a boss of subordinates. There are 4 main organisational structure like functional,
divisional, flat and matrix structure. Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational
company which produces computer software and other related services. This company was
founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen. It is headquartered in Redmond, Washington, US.
The following report will cover factors which influence the organisational structure of Microsoft,
Characteristics of the organisational structure of Microsoft and the ways in which Microsoft
manages the dynamic processes that shape their growth and evolution.
MAIN BODY
Factors which influence the organisational structure of Microsoft
There are various kinds of factors which can impact upon organisational structure of a
company such as organisation size, product type division, geographic segment and many others
(Kurbanova, Korableva and Kalimullina, 2018). In context of Microsoft Corporation, their
organisational structure stresses the importance of business output. The organisational structure
of Microsoft Corporation helps them to gain competitive advantage. As per the case study,
Microsoft Corporation has a product type division organisational structure. It means that the
organisational structure of the mentioned company is based on the hardware and software
products which they produce. Here, their product will decide the allocation of resources within
the company. The features of their product will also decide the responsibilities of different
departments to serve best products to their customers. For example, the mentioned company has
separate division for Intelligent Cloud products and separate division for other products. The
most important factor which impact upon organisational structure of Microsoft Corporation is
their product development. They are having various kinds of departments for each type of
product which they manufacture. For example, in case they manufacture computers or other
hardware system then the research and development department of hardware products is different
from the research and department of their software. Their organisational structure also divided
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into geographical structure for example, the human resource in US is different from human
resource in China or any Asian country. Secondly, Global Corporate Groups are also one of the
biggest factor of organisational structure of chosen company. As per the case study, the corporate
global groups are marketing, finance, human resource, business development, technology and
research, legal and many others. This shows that the organisational structure of Microsoft
Corporation is also influenced by grouping of activities. For example, marketing activities are
grouped in a single department called marketing department where the main task of the
employees to identify the marketing conditions by conducting survey and researches which
further help them to analyse the preference of their customers. Secondly, the task and activities
related to managing people and other essential resources of the organisation are grouped in
human resource department of the organisation.
Characteristics of the organisational structure of Microsoft
Under divisional organisational structure, companies segmented their employees based on the
nature of their product and market (Kreiss and McGregor, 2018). Some of the characteristics of
the divisional organisational structure is mentioned below-
 Divisional organisational structure help the organisation to focus more clearly upon their
product and services and analyse the ways to influence customers to use their products
and services. Therefore as per the case study, Microsoft Corporation reflects the need of
computer hardware and software business in their dynamic market especially due to this
organisational structure.
 It also ensure long term success for the company. Therefore, mentioned company will
make sure that they will make changes in their products and gain their organisational
objective of gaining competitive advantage by innovative changes within their products.
Under matrix organisational structure, team members are supposed to report more than one
leader for their task and activities within the organisation (Chofreh and et. al., 2020). Here,
employees are supposed to report their project manager as well as the head of their department.
As per the case study, it is found that the organisational structure of Microsoft Corporation is
product type divisional structure where more than one leader is supposed to instruct their
employees to focus on producing innovative hardware and software which will further help them
to satisfy their customers and gain competitive advantage. In context of Microsoft Corporation,
their geographical segmentation of company will describe that the company's operations are
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grouped on the basis of geographical region. Hence, the employees need to report their project
manager as well as manager managing them in their geographical location. Global corporate
groups which is one of the common organisational structure of chosen company also states that
employees within the department are supposed to work according to their head of department as
well as by concerning objective of organisation as a whole. For example, their human resource
employees are supposed to manage their employees and resources as mentioned in their roles and
responsibilities but they also focus to achieve their organisational goal as whole by
communicating with other department employees to analyse their needs and wants.
The ways in which Microsoft manages the dynamic processes that shape their growth and
evolution
Organisational culture is collection of values, expectation, behaviour of employees and
many others which conducted within the organisation (Asatiani and et. al, 2021). For example, a
good or bad relationship of employees with their management team and will define the
organisational culture.
Handy's model of organizational culture-
Power culture- This type of organisational culture mentioned that the power to make decisions
for organisational growth is in the hand of few selected employees of the organisation. This
employees are the one who enjoy special privilege due to their high position and power to make
decisions.
Task culture- This is the organisational culture where teams are formed within the organisation
to solve their main issues and achieve organisational goal and objectives (Charles Handy Model
of Organization Culture, 2022). Here, a single team is made up of group of individuals who are
having same specialization.
Person culture- This is the organisational culture where employees feel that they are more
important than their organisation and due to this reason they always make decisions for
achieving their personal goal rather than for organisational profit.
Role culture- In context of this organisational culture, the employees is given roles and
responsibilities according to their skills and specialization.
As per the case study, there is a positive relationship between the organisational culture
of Microsoft Corporation with the growth of the company. They are following task and role
organisational culture where they build teams in different departments which are having similar
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skills and talents. Secondly, they are provide role and responsibilities to their employees
according to their skills and qualification. They make sure that their employees will have full
accountability regarding the task given to them for organisational growth. Here, they provide
training to their employees in different departments so that they will conduct their task and
responsibilities with effective and productive efforts. They also train their employees to generate
new ideas and concepts for organisational growth by modifying their software. '
Leadership is the action of leading a group or a organisation to achieve organisational
goal (Adeyemi and Popoola, 2020). A leadership in organisation will help the company to grow
well.
Contingency leadership theory- This theory of leadership states that the effective leader
should not stick to one leadership style to resolve their multiple organisational situations and
tasks. There are many organisational structure within the company and a effective leader are
considered by adopting different leadership style to solve different organisational structure.
Transformational leadership theory- This leadership style will define the relationship
of leaders and followers within the organisation (Mielniczuk, 2020). This leadership theory states
that the leader of a organisation must be inspirational and charismatic to encourage their
followers to perform their task effectively to achieve organisational goal (7 Major Leadership
Theories Every Manager Should Master in 2022, 2021).
As per the case study, the leaders of Microsoft Corporation are having various roles gain
the organisational growth. They allow the participation of their employees in all-employee
survey and reward and recognition programs. This will help the employees to generate
accountability actions within their task and help them to perform better quality of work because
they know that they are accountable regarding their task. This will further motivate employees of
the Microsoft Corporation to adhere to their rules and objectives to produce quality hardware
and software of computers. The leaders of the mentioned organisation also train their employees
to enhance their skills and talents. This training is consider to develop the skill for employees to
regarding customer feedback. Here, their leaders make sure that their employees will gain
customer feedback and understand whether customers like their products or not to make
corrective actions to mitigate the negative feedback of customers. The leaders of the company
also make sure that their employees will participate in decision making process and the
employees get rewarded in case they provide any innovative growth strategy to the company.
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Hence, all this leadership activities in the Microsoft corporation will help them to grow their
company well.
It is also essential for the organisation to focus on adopting innovative ways to grow
within the market and gain competitive advantage.
Diffusion of Innovation theory is one of the most popular theory of innovation which
describe how and at what time a new innovation will took to spread by a population or social
system (Mkoba, 2022). This theory suggests that the people will adopt new idea, process and
product very quickly in the market if they found any benefit regarding the new concept. Some
group of people adopt innovation more quicker than others. There are five categories in this
model which are mentioned below-
Innovators- They are the individuals who want to be the first to try innovation (Diffusion of
Innovation Theory, 2019).
Early adopters- They are the individuals who know about the innovation and they adopt new
innovation after recognising whether innovators gain success or not by adopting the new idea.
Early majority- They adopt new ideas before the average person. They want to see whether the
innovation will provide profit to their organisation or not.
Late majority- They are the individuals who adopt innovation after majority of people adopt it
to ensure that most of the people are gaining benefit with the innovation.
Laggards- They are the individual who do not adopt any kind of innovation and they are stick to
their traditional way of performing business.
As per the case study, Microsoft Corporation gain competitive advantage by their
innovations. They are the first who adopt innovation within their industry regarding hardware
and software. Their innovation in software and hardware describe the features integrated in the
company's organisational culture. They invest in their research and development department to
analyse the factors for their product's improvement to bring new and innovative changes within
their new software. They also provide rewards to their employees regarding their innovative
ideas which they provided to company's growth. Hence, this will motivate employees to focus on
enhancing their innovative skills which can further help the company to grow well and gain
competitive advantage.
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CONCLUSION
From the above information it is concluded that organisational structure will define how a
business is arranged and managed appropriately to achieve their organisational goal. There are
various factors which influence organisational structure like geographical location, size of
organisation, product diversification, chain of command and many others. Divisional
organisational structure is the structure which divide their employees groups on the basis of
product and market requirement and matrix organisational structure states that the employees
will have two or more leaders to report their performance. The relationship between
organisational culture and the growth of organisation is positive which means a effective
organisational culture will lead to organisational growth. Handy's model of organisational culture
has four components such as task, power, person and role. Secondly, leadership also plays a
important role in the growth of organisation.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Adeyemi, E.A. and Popoola, S.O., 2020. Organisational Culture, Interpersonal Trust and
Incentives as Predictors of Knowledge Sharing By Healthcare Providers in Gombe
State, Nigeria. African Journal of Library, Archives and Information Science, 30(1),
pp.61-69.
Asatiani, A. and et. al, 2021. Constructing continuity across the organisational culture boundary
in a highly virtual work environment. Information Systems Journal, 31(1), pp.62-93.
Chofreh, A.G. and et. al., 2020. Development of guidelines for the implementation of
sustainable enterprise resource planning systems. Journal of Cleaner Production, 244,
p.118655.
Kreiss, D. and McGregor, S.C., 2018. Technology firms shape political communication: The
work of Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, and Google with campaigns during the 2016 US
presidential cycle. Political Communication, 35(2), pp.155-177.
Kurbanova, E., Korableva, O.N. and Kalimullina, O.V., 2018, January. Enhancing the
effectiveness of asset management through development of license management system
on the basis of SCCM 2012 program by microsoft company. In ICEIS (2) (pp. 171-178).
Luong, H.T., 2020. The organisational structure of transnational narcotics trafficking groups in
Southeast Asia: a case study of Vietnam’s border with Laos. Trends in Organized
Crime, 23(4), pp.385-411.
Mielniczuk, H., 2020. Norwegian organisational culture. A case study from a Norwegian
organisation. Research Papers in Economics and Finance, 4(4), pp.7-14.
Mkoba, E.S., 2022. Organisational Culture Attributes Influencing the Adoption of Agile
Practices: A Systematic Literature Review. Journal of Information Systems Engineering
and Management, 7(1).
Online-
Charles Handy Model of Organization Culture, 2022. [Online] Available Through :
<https://www.managementstudyguide.com/charles-handy-model.htm/>
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7 Major Leadership Theories Every Manager Should Master in 2022, 2021. [Online] Available
Through :
<https://www.simplilearn.com/top-leadership-theories-every-manager-should-know-article/>
Diffusion of Innovation Theory, 2019. [Online] Available Through :
<https://sphweb.bumc.bu.edu/otlt/mph-modules/sb/behavioralchangetheories/
behavioralchangetheories4.html/>
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