Google's Organizational Culture

The layers of organizational culture are very apparent within Google.  According to Google’s co-founder Larry Paige, “We don’t just want you to have a great job. We want you to have a great life. We provide you with everything you need to be productive and happy on and off the clock.” This quotation is the culmination of Google’s observable artifacts, espoused values and enacted values that are crucial to the success of Google as a multi-national franchise.

            Observable artifacts are extremely important to the success of a company because they are tangible items that allow employees to become a part of that company’s organizational culture. In K&K, it defines observable artifacts as “artifacts that consist of the physical manifestation of an organization’s culture.” With regards to Google, the observable artifacts found at Google’s various offices around the world explicitly tie into their organizational culture. Some of these observable artifacts include:

• Every office on Google’s campus is geographically named and decorated as the country they represent. Each office has pictures and specific cultural furniture tied with that specific geographical location
• Hundreds of bikes and scooters are placed around campus to make it easier to travel to and from different offices
• Very few solo offices were built so that Google can help promote entrepreneurial group thinking
• Laptops and internet access are found everywhere throughout the campus so employees can work in any sort of setting
• There are multiple cafes around campus that serve breakfast, lunch and dinner to employees
• There are multiple gyms, beach volleyball courts and heated pools that are all free for employees to use

The observable artifacts found at each of these campuses are the reason why Google was named the 4^th best company to work for in 2011. With that said, the observable artifacts help promote a strong organizational culture that makes Google more than just a place to work

Espoused values are also very important to a company because they are essentially the framework of how management wants their company to run. As stated in K&K, espoused values are “explicitly stated values and norms that are preferred by an organization.” When it comes to Google, the company is extremely forthright when displaying their values. According to Google’s blog, they believe that to act in the best interest of the company every employee should follow the following ten values:

1. “Focus on the user and all else will follow     
2.  It’s best to do one thing really, really well
3. Fast is better than slow
4. Democracy on the web works
5. You don’t need to be at your desk to need an answer
6. You can make money without doing evil
7. There’s always more information out there
8. The need for information crosses all borders
9. You can be serious without a suit
10. Great just isn’t good enough”

Espoused values are very important because it provides employees a way to see what the corporation deems important for them to be sustainable into the future. In all, espoused value are how a company attempts to mold organizational culture.

Enacted values are also extremely important to the success of a company because they are essentially how a company’s culture is today. In K&K they define enacted values as “values and norms that are actually exhibited or converted into employee behavior.” Just because Google states their espoused values, this doesn’t mean that the employees strictly abide by them but in Googles case they do. Google employees are the culmination of their espoused values. The company has always created an extremely entrepreneurial environment where its employees can create new products that are simple yet innovative for their users. Throughout their campus, they purposely created very few solo offices so that Google employees work together on projects. In addition to this, they give each employee an hour in the middle of the day to work on a project of their own. Through this process called dogfeeding, some of Google’s greatest products such as Gmail have been produced. In all, enacted values are the way a company acts albeit the observable artifacts and espoused values.

In all, these layers of organizational culture seem to be very strong at Google. As Larry Paige said, he wants his employees not to hate coming to work every morning and by providing a very strong organizational culture, Google has turned into one of the most powerful technology companies on the planet.

This model of organizational culture is something that I hope I will be able to experience when I work after college. When I graduate, I want to do investment banking which requires long hours, little to no sleep and almost no free time. I don't plan to do this for long, but my reasoning for doing it at all is that it has multiple exit opportunities to almost any industry after 2 years. Working at Google is definitely appealing to me because if I want to be happy with my job for a sustainable period of time, I will need an environment like Google. In all, the culture that Google fosters is set as an ideal that all other organizations should try and emulate. 

Works Cited

http://www.google.com/corporate/culture.html

http://www.google.com/intl/en/jobs/joininggoogle/hiringprocess/index.html

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2005/10/google-corporate-values.html

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/bestcompanies/2011/index.html