Organizational Behavior: Strategic Management at Alphabet Inc.

This report offers a strategic management analysis of Alphabet Inc., formerly Google. It begins with an introduction to strategic management and its application to Alphabet Inc. The report examines the company's vision, mission, and core values, followed by a detailed SWOT analysis, identifying strengths like web dominance and brand recognition, and weaknesses such as its position in the cell phone sector. An analysis using Porter's Five Forces is conducted to assess the competitive landscape, followed by a discussion of Alphabet's competitive advantages, including technological capabilities and a large customer base. The report then provides strategic recommendations for Alphabet Inc., including diversification and acquisition strategies. It concludes with a discussion on becoming an ambidextrous organization and evaluating the actions taken. The report emphasizes the importance of adapting to a changing environment and identifying emerging business opportunities for continued success.

Running head: ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOUR
ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOUR
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Discussion..................................................................................................................................2
About the organisation:..........................................................................................................2
SWOT analysis:.....................................................................................................................2
Porter’s Five Forces analysis:................................................................................................4
Competitive advantages:........................................................................................................5
Recommendations for Alphabet:............................................................................................6
Ambidextrous organization:...................................................................................................6
Evaluation of actions:.............................................................................................................7
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................7

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Introduction
The formulation and execution of significant goals with initiatives adopted in an
organization on the basis of considering the rate of existent resources and with the analysis of
both external and internal environment are known as strategic management. The purpose of
the paper is to construct strategic management recommendations for a business venture of
Google, Alphabet Inc. The paper will frame the recommendations based on the grounds of
sustainability, ethics and social responsibility. The paper will also consider the assessment of
external and internal analysis for generating a sustaining plan aligned with a competitive
advantage. This paper will adopt the competitive and operational strategy plan. The
organization will The paper will be concluded by summarising the complete strategic
management plan.
Discussion
About the organisation:
Vision- The vision of Alphabet Inc. is to offer the ease of accessibility of technology to this
world with a trusted platform.
Mission- The mission of Alphabet Inc. is to construct the world with universally useful and
accessible offerings.
Core values- Due to the association of Google and Alphabet, the core values intersect with
each other and aim at adopting a user-centric approach with faster, accessible offerings.
SWOT analysis:
Strengths-
 Dominance over the web: The internet company Alphabet Inc. competes amongst the
online advertising marketing and web search along with the technological assistance

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to various projects. The main source of advertising business has been maintained by
Alphabet by generating around 95.375 billion US dollars or around 87 percent of the
total revenue and around 86 percent of the overall alphabet revenue.
 Alphabet being associated with Google offers a wide range of offerings through
technological interface.
 Equity and Brand recognition: Alphabet has become the next phase of responding to
the competition and the challenges derived with respect to the privacy and increasing
technological innovation.
 Focussing on the continual innovation process: Alphabet, irrespective of being
comparatively newer to the business has excelled by incorporating technological
innovation. Alphabet Inc. invests around 15 percent of the total revenue in the
research and development section (Eccles & Krzus, 2018).
Weaknesses-
 Alphabet’s positioning in the cell phone sector has been very weak amongst the other
competitors.
 The legal and privacy issues for Google has incorporated challenges in online
advertising game challenging due to the dependence on user data and advertising
services.
 The dependency of Alphabet Inc. on some markets may shake the strategic position
due to the increasing vulnerability in legal and economic changes in the market.
Opportunities-
 Diversification: The opportunity of diversifying into various newer areas of
businesses may lead to faster growth.

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 Growing through acquisitions: Rather than partnerships, acquiring smaller
businesses may result in better efficiency.
Threats-
 Regulatory and legal pressures: The pressure arising from the IT sector requires the
company to take immediate action for privacy concerns.
 Competitive threats: In recent years, the growth in the IT sector has been evident with
the inclusion of competitors such as Facebook, Apple and Yahoo.
Porter’s Five Forces analysis:
Threat of new entrants- Medium threat of new entrants with the incorporation of newer
technological innovation and lower price strategy for value proposition affects the strategic
implications of the technology-based company Alphabet. The challenges of entering may
arise through stricter regulations and high capitalization. The company can respond to the rate
of new entrants by answering to the innovative opportunities of diversification and
acquisitions by maintaining a secure interface.
Bargaining power of the suppliers- The bargaining power of the suppliers is low, especially
for the big and large scale technology-based companies as a large number of suppliers are
dependent of the few leaders of the technology-based company, which includes Alphabet.
Although the bargaining power is low, the Alphabet still needs to handle the situation by
building a secure and effective supply chain and determine the number of processes for ease
of switching at the time of high price.
Threat of substitute- The threat of substitute for Alphabet is moderate. The switching cost
of the customers is comparatively low for using various search engines and the applications
of advertising platforms. Although, the large market share of Google will not hamper the

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position of Alphabet Inc., but the company still needs to incorporate more focus on service-
oriented approach and increase the value proposition for elevating switching cost.
Bargaining power of the buyers- The bargaining power of the buyers in the IT
technological industry is high, due to the changing demand of the user groups in terms of
flexibility and value addition. Alphabet is a mature company that invests in the continual
improvement innovation initiatives for responding to the customer base. Higher bargaining
power can increase the rate of offerings of Alphabet Inc. The company should develop and
diversify the range of products and services for building and maintaining a large customer
base.
Rivalry amongst competitors- The rivalry rate is high due to the presence of the major
players such as Apple, Facebook and Microsoft along with emerging start-ups. The strategic
action for responding to the competitors can be to collaborate with the competitors or perform
acquisition of smaller IT start-ups.
Competitive advantages:
The competitive advantages of Alphabet Inc. are:
 Technological capabilities: Search engine assistance efficient analytics and a strong
advertising platform.
 Another competitive advantage is the large portfolio for global customers (Glowik,
2017)
 The positive brand image of Google contribute to the growth of the Alphabet
 A large customer base contributing to the revenue of 136.8 billion in 2018 (Dulhanty,
2017)
 A directed focus on the HR management functions by motivating the key stakeholders
of the company.

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Recommendations for Alphabet:
Alphabet Inc. has diversified its product portfolio by entering into various businesses
and value proposition. The initiative of Alphabet in designing Nest with the association of
Amazon Echo will instigate competition amongst the divisions of the company. However, the
company should target in utilizing the strengths of each division and use networking for
growing the overall business.
 The company can invest more in acquisition for developing a series of expertise,
which will restrict the inter-departmental competition (Dess et al., 2019).
 Stepping foot at the areas of transportation, healthcare and cloud for addressing
various global markets with the strength of AI
 Focussing more on the fields like hardware products and digital commerce.
Ambidextrous organization:
Alphabet should become a complete ambidextrous organization as the changing
external environment and challenges due to new entrants and stricter rules in the IT industry
demands the technology-based company to adapt to the consumer demands to maintain the
large customer base and responding to security issues.
To build an ambidextrous firm or maintain ambiguity in Alphabet Inc., the organization can:
 Identifying the key assets of the parent company that enables exploration to increase
the competitive advantages.
 Offering the senior management with the support of the exploratory team.
 A separate team for identifying and nominating Emerging Business Opportunities
(EBOs) (Rothaermel, 2016)
 Clear goals and milestone for aligning the assets to the EBOs

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Evaluation of actions:
 Reviewing the bases of the strategic implementation by assessing the alignment of the
goals and actions for an ambidextrous organization.
 Setting metrics for evaluating the actions:
 Productivity of exploratory team
 Setting achievable goals and milestones depending on a stricter time frame
 Investing in the research of the available resources and assets
 Employee engagement
 Top-down and bottom-up communication approach
 Investment in newer assets for compensating the gap of the value proposition
Conclusion
Therefore, it can be concluded that Alphabet Inc. needs to focus more on acquisitions
and collaborations for elevating the strengths of the association between Google and
Alphabet Inc. The company needs to incorporate the ability to adapt to a changing
environment by investigating Emerging Business Opportunities.
References

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Dess, G. G., McNamara, G., Eisner, A. B., & Seung-Hyun, L. (2019). Strategic management:
Text & cases (9th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Dulhanty, A. (2017). Google inc./alphabet inc.: Privacy in the business of personal
information. SAGE Publications: SAGE Business Cases Originals.
Eccles, R. G., & Krzus, M. P. (2018). Constructing Alphabet Inc.'s 2017 Mock Integrated
Report. Available at SSRN 3206290.
Glowik, M. (2017). 4.5 Case study: Alphabet. Global Strategy in the Service Industries:
Dynamics, Analysis, Growth, 139.
Rothaermel, F. T. (2016). Strategic management: concepts (Vol. 2). McGraw-Hill Education.