Microsoft Company’s Organizational Change

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Table of Contents

Proposed Change Initiative
People Involved
Impact of the Initiative on People, Processes, and Products
From Change to High Performance and Excellence: Focusing on People
Recommendations
Conclusion
References

Organizational change is a buzzword in professional organizational communication. Thousands of large and small businesses pursue change, because it is fashionable, popular, and real. Unfortunately, few of them realize the true implications of organizational change for the quality of their performance. No less challenging are businesses’ perceptions of the way organizational change influences various stakeholders. For Microsoft, one of the most successful companies in the global software market, change represents a relevant means to update and refresh its principles of work.

Change reflects the company’s striving to be responsive to the needs of customers while, at the same time, creating a solid basis for the pursuit of organizational excellence. Just a few years ago, Microsoft underwent major organizational restructuring that had to enhance the company’s competitiveness in the long run. As of today, one of the most serious issues to deal with is achieving and maintaining a reasonable balance of customer and employee engagement. Yet, Microsoft will have to be particularly careful in its striving to satisfy the needs and interests of all stakeholders.

Proposed Change Initiative

Just a few years ago, Microsoft went through massive and extensive organizational restructuring, which had to create a firm basis for pursuing the company’s strategic and tactical objectives. That was one of the toughest periods in the history of Microsoft, when the company had to do everything possible to enhance its performance and productivity. However, even an organization as successful as Microsoft cannot use restructuring as the sole factor of organizational improvements in the long run.

As an open system that receives regular feedback from the market environment and positions itself as being receptive of and responsive to environmental shifts, Microsoft needs to balance the calls for greater employee engagement with the need for increased customer involvement. At present, the company requires a change initiative that will help to improve the patterns of cooperation with customers, while ensuring that employees do not feel betrayed and isolated from the decision making process.

People Involved

In order to understand how the proposed initiative will influence people, the most important stakeholders of the proposed change need to be identified. In relation to customer involvement and employee engagement, customers and employees will be primarily affected by change, followed by communities and shareholders. The quality of such effects is likely to become a driver of further changes and, possibly, improvements within Microsoft.

Although Lundkvist and Yakhlef (2004) confirm the importance of effective conversational approaches to consumer relations with companies, not all employees may be happy about the inclusion of customers in decision making processes within the organization. It is not until the most suitable balance of customer and employee participation is achieved that the company and its stakeholders will have enough opportunities to utilize the growth potential of Microsoft to its fullest.

Impact of the Initiative on People, Processes, and Products

People-stakeholders

Saks (2007) writes that the main reason why employee engagement initiatives are so popular among organizations is because they have positive effects on the quality of organizations’ performance. An emerging consensus is that employee engagement leads to better bottom-line results (Saks, 2007). From the perspective of employees, increased engagement is likely to diversify workers’ experiences and make them more satisfied with their obligations and tasks (Saks, 2007).

Engagement is believed to create better conditions for self-fulfillment and personal growth in the workplace. Employee engagement represents a relevant model of developing trust and loyalty that eventually result in mutual company-employee commitments (Saks, 2007). Most likely, the proposed change initiative will increase workers’ congruence with the nature of their workplace and organizational environment, as well as reduce their desire to quit (Saks, 2007).

As companies rethink the ways of generating new ideas, products, and services, their relationships with customers undergo serious changes. Companies reconceptualize the meaning of customers as potentially productive sources of innovative product ideas (Lundkvist & Yakhlef, 2004). With the ever growing costs of R&D, customers gradually become a quality alternative to conventional research and development models (Lundkvist & Yakhlef, 2004).

However, roles which customers are likely to play within Microsoft may vary from “co-producers” and “users” to “products” and “buyers” (Lundkvist & Yakhlef, 2004). Obviously, a company that seeks to translate customer engagement into a value-added process should treat every customer either as a co-producer or a source of innovations and creativity (Lundkvist & Yakhlef, 2004). Customers, as well as employees, should be actively involved in idea generation and development, for the sake of creating and implementing innovative product and service solutions.

Processes

Needless to say, Microsoft will have to adjust its processes to the new requirements of customer involvement and employee engagement. Gemmel and Verleye (2010) write that customer-employee encounters in organizations are associated with emotional outbursts. On the one hand, both customers and employees are emotionally attached to Microsoft. On the other hand, none of them is willing to give up a share of power for the sake of achieving the most promising goals and excellence results.

Most likely, Microsoft will have to develop new processes to reinforce the existing customer-organization and employee-organization linkages and create a synergy of their commitments that will work for the advantage of the entire organization and its stakeholders. That is likely to become one of the most complicated elements of the proposed change.

Products

Since customers are treated as integral participants of organizational decision making and a source of creative and innovative ideas, it is possible to assume that customer engagement will drive the development of new products and services, as well as present the image of Microsoft as being highly responsive to customer requirements and needs. Any customer engagement initiative is likely to benefit the company. Yet, these benefits will become available and realistic, only when Microsoft manages to create the most appropriate balance of customer and employee involvement in product and service development. Therefore, the company needs a well-developed strategy to ensure that the values of customer and employee engagement are closely aligned.

From Change to High Performance and Excellence: Focusing on People

The proposed change initiative will enable Microsoft to achieve high performance and staff excellence, if two essential conditions are met. First, the company must be ready to overcome resistance to change. Second, Microsoft must be able to align the results and advantages of customer engagement with those of employee involvement. In terms of resistance, it is certainly an inevitable component of any organizational change.

People are willing by nature to preserve their status quo by all possible means. Even when the change promises to result in substantial quality improvements, many people will keep resisting it. Successful change is impossible without effective employee cooperation and support, and any resistance is likely to impede the implementation of even the most prospective change initiatives (Thomas & Hardy, 2011).

Resistance often comes in waves or layers, particularly when employees disagree about the nature of the problem and, later, the nature of the most suitable solution (Umble & Umble, 2014). In case of the proposed change, resistance may come on the side of employees, who may not want to see customers as active agents of decision making at Microsoft. Simultaneously, customers may not be active enough sharing their ideas with the company, fearing disagreement and unreasonable critique on the side of employees.

In most situations, holding a general meeting to explain the nature and purpose of change could alleviate the burden of disagreement and bring the diverse parties together to work towards common goals. However, in the given situation, Microsoft will have to make another effort to bring together and balance the customer engagement and employee involvement priorities.

Apparently, the proposed change initiative will entail the development of new communication and exchange forms, which will allow translating employee engagement and customer involvement into long-term relationships with customers (Yuan, Lin, Shieh & Li, 2012). The company is equally interested in keeping employees and customers engaged in product development and organizational decision making.

While employees are formally responsible for the development of quality products and have the professional experience and expertise needed to implement product ideas into practice, customers see the world in a diversity of colors and want to know that their product ideas and wishes are accepted, evaluated, and used by Microsoft. Using the words of Gemmel and Verleye (2010), “companies must remake themselves into places of engagement, where people are committed to one another and their enterprise” (p. 89).

Recommendations

To ensure that the proposed change initiative paves the way to excellence and outstanding employee performance, Microsoft will first need to learn how to translate resistance into a competitive advantage. Afterwards, the company will need to develop systems and processes that would help to balance the calls for greater employee engagement with the efforts to involve customers in organizational decision making.

In this context, Microsoft should first decide how employee engagement will be conceptualized. Among its numerous meanings, the best one is that which positions engagement as the instrument of psychological empowerment (Macey & Schneider, 2008). As a concept, psychological empowerment means the sense of responsibility, authority, and autonomy in the workplace (Macey & Schneider, 2008).

Employees who are empowered to be creative and contribute to product and service development are likely to develop an enhanced sense of self-efficacy and professionalism, while being self-determined to work in accordance with the company rules. Such empowerment can manifest through the implementation of communication channels that motivate employees to express their ideas more openly, coupled with relevant reward systems to guarantee that the most prospective ideas are rewarded according to their contribution to organizational performance.

As Microsoft expands the presence of customers in its processes and decisions, a continuous dialogue between them and employees should be facilitated and improved. Employees should realize that customer involvement will not discriminate against their efforts to develop effective products and services, whereas customers should see employees not as competitors but as their allies in the development of the most successful and profitable products and services. Grove (2014) speaks about the value of social communication tools in tying customer involvement to employee engagement and balancing their priorities.

Nevertheless, it seems that social communication tools alone will never suffice to bring Microsoft to the desired change results. Personalization is what the company needs, as it is trying to bring together the diverse parties of the proposed change. Employees should know the customers, with whom they are likely to cooperate. Simultaneously, holding a common meeting to let the customers and employees develop a balanced cooperation and engagement solution/principle could speed up creative product and service development through the implementation of the proposed change initiative.

Conclusion

Microsoft is truly one of the most successful global providers of quality software. A few years ago, the company underwent one of the major restructuring changes in its history. However, restructuring alone can never guarantee sustained profitability and excellent performance. As of today, Microsoft faces the challenge of balancing the calls for greater employee engagement with the need to involve customers in organizational decision making and product development. The proposed change initiative will affect primarily employees and customers, followed by communities and company shareholders.

To make the change effective and achieve excellence, Microsoft will have to develop new communication and exchange forms, as well as bring together customers and employees to let them develop a balanced system of cooperation. Personalization and social communication tools will facilitate the implementation of the proposed strategy and speed up the creation of new products and services in the atmosphere of cooperation and collaboration among employees and customers. Employees and customers will create an atmosphere of creativity that is likely to become a major source of sustained competitive advantage for Microsoft.

References

Gemmel, P. & Verleye, K. (2010). Emotional attachment to a hospital: Bringing employees and customers into the engagement zone. Journal of Applied Management and Entrepreneurship, 15(3), 78-93.

Grove, H. (2014, March). Tying customer engagement to employee engagement. MIT Sloan Management Review, 1-7.

Lundkvist, A. & Yakhlef, A. (2004). Customer involvement in new service development: A conversational approach. Managing Service Quality, 14(2-3), 249-257.

Macey, W.H. & Schneider, B. (2008). The meaning of employee engagement. Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 1, 3-30.

Saks, A.M. (2006). Antecedents and consequences of employee engagement. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 21(7), 600-619.

Thomas, R. & Hardy, C. (2011). Reframing resistance to organizational change. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 27, 322-331.

Umble, M. & Umble, E. (2014). Overcoming resistance to change. Industrial Management, 56(1), 16-22.

Yuan, B.J., Lin, M.B., Shieh, J.H., & Li, K.P. (2012). Transforming employee engagement into long-term customer relationships: Evidence from information technology salespeople in Taiwan. Social Behavior and Personality, 40(9), 1549-1554.

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