Google’s Innovation and Recruitment Management

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Table of Contents

Background
Innovation management
Recruitment management
Senior management’s role
Agents and spokespersons
Calling phones from Gmail: adequate resources allocation
References

Background

The current cultural and technological bifurcation has seen many well-established corporations adopt new management styles by changing their management models in order to improve overall performance. Google Inc. has from its inception been able to transform its management practice to encounter the growing demand for excellence in products and other services provided. As this paper examines, besides key changes in its recruitment management, it is without a doubt that its greatest innovation in the last decade has been innovation management (DuBois et al., 2015).

Innovation management

Innovation management as a change in its management style has received much support from management scholars for the reason that it supplies managers with the ability to introduce new products, processes, and ideas. It also offers a set of tools necessary for deploying creative capabilities that respond to internal and external business opportunities. In Google, innovation management is a pushed process through which it seeks to find the fresh and profitable application of its new and existing inventions. It also pulls its processes to find solutions that can meet the diverse needs of its clients. Agreeably, innovation management is a strategy that has seen the company increase its management strength and immense growth witnessed in organizational and product innovation. The management of the company has been massively improved with more product line planning, product life cycle management and integration of technology advanced (Yu-Feng Lin, 2014).

Innovation management also involves changing an organizational leadership structure to incorporate leaders with new ideas and creativity. Steiber and Alänge (2013) point out that most corporations are yet to embrace change in their business leadership practices. Surprisingly, their vast global enterprises are still run by a single mature CEO. The latter presents numerous impacts. For instance, it illuminates destructive leadership that lacks efficiency and equally outdated. Google has been able to demonstrate changes through the moving out of Eric Schmidt as Google CEO and coming in of Larry Page (Steiber & Alänge, 2013). The changes have also seen transformations in leadership witnessed in the B-I leadership-Bi-Generational management and Boomer management. The later has changed over time to Gen-X and Gen-Y management.

Additionally, Google’s preference for Larry Page is a brilliant model of bi-generational leadership. This startup model replaced adult supervision by Eric Schmidt, which was an older Boomer management style that integrates Gen Xers to younger Gen Y. However, as Finkle (2012) indicates, the consideration for young leadership as an effective model of facilitating longer service has come under great criticism. One such criticism is that by closing out older candidates, Google Inc. could lose out on the experience and block important innovations that would otherwise be used to make major breakthroughs.

Recruitment management

Another key change in Google management practice is its recruitment process. Yu-Feng Lin (2014) argue that qualified and experienced employees form strong pillars that determine how an organization performs. Google has been able to establish better recruitment policies as its core pillar for management. Since its inception, it has only sought to recruit the best engineers; a consideration that has made it often to be referred to as a company of geeks. Indeed, unlike other companies that strongly rely on job boards, Google has deviated from the above method of recruiting even though it has been guided by recruiting the best highly qualified professionals. Accordingly, its B-Y leadership has been very effective in enhancing its performance, speed, and growth. Though the method of working with Gen Y is an idea that is lauded by many as a highly effective mechanism that ensures a young and energetic set of leadership, the same focus as Riaz and Khalili (2014) suggests may soon become a core problem in its operations.

To concur with their view, Yu-Feng Lin (2014) highlights that by failing to incorporate diversity and experience (which are critical in management), Google might lack “adult supervision” and eventually hamper innovation. Besides, when this flows to employees, there could be the removal of a large number of Boomer employees and this might result in throwing the company off-balance. First, the negative culture towards elderly employees might easily be up-taken by employees; a consideration that would greatly reduce their productivity. At such a time, to partly agree with the above view, the company may find it very difficult to address the issue because its structures and especially the top management has already been synchronized and polarized against non-Gen Y employees.

Senior management’s role

Blau (2015) elaborates in the article Apple and Google hope to slide into the driver’s seat that the transformation of Google’s leadership from Boomer to Gen Y leadership is a “teaching moment”. Agreeably, a lot can be learned from the seamless transition of leadership from Erick Schmidts to Larry Page. It is imperative to highlight that Erick Schmidt’s leadership in the last decade provided managerial guidance or “adult supervision” as Blau (2015) claims. However, questions have been raised on whether the Boomer at the top together with co-founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, had their roles strictly delineated and whether decision making was shared. Blau (2015) points out that their roles have been shared and that above all, Boomer’s role, in this case, has been to mentor and establish Pages and Brins generation. As such, and in agreement, the Boomer system really modeled Gen X and Gen Y cofounder and transitioning leadership were easy and seamless.

Agents and spokespersons

Google Inc. has in recent years continued to experience exponential growth attributed to the use of agencies and spokespersons. This has come from the need to expand its services and to carry out more advertisement and consulting services. DuBois et al. (2015) indicate that the use of agents has, however, have come with cost issues as the company has been forced business to incur greater costs while conducting operations such as marketing. Therefore, the Google management team have been tasked to rethink their strategies along with the use of agencies and adopt those that have seen their sales increase, they remain profitable and competitive. Policies have been put in place to foster the use of advertising agencies and spokespersons to conduct marketing, a factor that has seen it gain popularity and experience exponential growth.

The article Transformational, transactional leadership and rational decision making in services providing organizations: the moderating role of knowledge management processes by Riaz and Khalili (2014) explores the role of agents in the growth of a business. The authors claim that even with the little payments that agencies charge, the massive gain is made from the use of agencies as they link clients to products and services a company offers. Google Company has continued to use agents to boost their sales and incomes. Its management works with many advertising agencies. The effect of this has been creating awareness of its new formats and technologies. These agencies as Riaz and Khalili (2014) narrate have been key in co-marketing with Google, have aided in research funding, creative development, technological assistance as well as measurement. However, it is important to highlight that agencies and media owners can also be crafty in their dealings withholding and clients. Riaz and Khalili (2014) are of the view that even so, the benefits of agencies to Google have been cash flow as money exchanges hands, advisory service, raising of consulting fee, research, first access, and inventory.

Google’s leadership has formulated policies on advertisements by agencies whereby it considers offering financial incentives. The effect of this as Yu-Feng Lin (2014) indicates is accelerate advertising programs.

Calling phones from Gmail: adequate resources allocation

One of the great innovations rolled out by Google is the calling phones from Gmail (DuBois et al., 2015). This is a feature that will have positive impacts on both clients and employees of the company. Since most of them spend huge chunks of time on computers, they will be able to call anyone straight away from Gmail. To achieve this, careful resource allocation as a tool for empowering employees to realize this idea is crucial. To achieve this, Google management must allocate adequate resources to its employees and facilitate their effective use as an empowerment platform. DuBois et al. (2015) point out that lack of resources mortifies employees’ drive for creativity and innovation. Therefore, there will need to establish a formula for this through a resource allocation policy that is guided by the formula 70/20/10 (Blau, 2015). For clients, resource allocation will improve business products and services that extend core products and other ventures respectively. The advantage of resource allocation as Yu-Feng Lin (2014) suggests will enable employees to work on their projects with the understanding that they would get full support from the management to make creativity yield highly effective results.

References

Blau, J. (2015). Apple and Google hope to slide into the driver’s seat. Research Technology Management 58(4), 4-6.

DuBois, M., Koch, J., Hanlon, J., Nyatuga, B., & Kerr, N. (2015). Leadership styles of effective project managers: techniques and traits to lead high performance teams. Journal of Economic Development, Management, IT, Finance & Marketing 7(1), 30-46.

Finkle, T. A. (2012). Corporate entrepreneurship and innovation in Silicon Valley: the case of Google, Inc. Entrepreneurship: Theory & Practice 36(4), 863-884.

Riaz, M. N., & Khalili, M. T. (2014). Transformational, transactional leadership and rational decision making in services providing organizations: moderating role of knowledge management processes. Pakistan Journal of Commerce & Social Sciences 8(2), 355-364.

Steiber, A., & Alänge, S. (2013). Do TQM principles need to change? Learning from a comparison to Google Inc. Total Quality Management & Business Excellence 24(1/2), 48-61.

Yu-Feng Lin, L. (2014). When Google meets Xiaomi: comparative case study in Western and Eastern corporate management. Journal of International Technology & Information Management 23(3/4), 75-90.

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