Google
Google Inc., a multinational technology company, was founded by Sergey Brin and Larry Page in 1998. The Google headquarters, Googleplex is located in Mountain View, California. Its mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally useful and accessible. The company specializes in Internet related services and products such as cloud storage, online productivity software, web browsing applications, search tools, online mapping, social networking service, electronic gadgets manufacture, mobile applications, mobile operating system and the others (Google, 2016). Sundar Pichai is the CEO of Google since Google has formed a parent company named Alphabet in 2015 (Rajghatta, 2015).

Google practices people orientation as its organisational culture. In a people oriented company, decisions made by management are taken into account the effects on people within the organization (Management Transition, 2016). Instead of having Human Resources department like other companies, Google forms a People Operations team that is dedicated to developments, staffing as well as inclusive and clear culture. The team has created a distinctive work environment to keep employees cheerful and retain productivity (Google, 2016). Hence, Fortune magazine rated it as the number one “Best Place to Work For” for seven times in ten years (Fortune, 2016). Moreover, Project Oxygen was launched to help managers in improving their competencies and adopting good managerial traits in early 2009. This program is not only includes hands-on guidance but also identifies measurable management traits and brings them to real life. That is why the managers put down their scepticism and join the program actively which leads to significant improvements in managerial performance. The project team finds that most of the successful managers in the company spend significant time in building individual capabilities and capabilities of their team (Hall, 2014). In short, this project manages to train managers as good coaches and let subordinates feel that they are working in a team towards common goals and always being motivated.

Another organizational culture practiced by the company is innovation and risk taking. This organizational culture can be defined as the degree an organization encourages their employees to be innovative and to take risks (Management Transition, 2016). Employees in Google are conditioned to present innovative ideas as innovation is the heart of the company. Therefore, employees’ involvement in experiments and projects is often supported by the company. Employees are offered to spend twenty percent of their time to engage in projects which are not related to their daily job. The management believes that the time for innovation is the time invested but not time wasted. Surprisingly, half of the Google’s newly introduced services or products were produced during this “free time” (Noviantoro, 2014). Furthermore, this company encourages employees to make impossible become a reality by taking up risk. For instance, Google X develops technology for self-driving car which was formerly led by Sebastian Thrun. Although this project is still in development, the driverless cars have successfully travelled across the Golden Gate Bridge and twisty Lombard Street in San Francisco without any accidents (Wojcicki, 2011).

The external environment which has influenced Google is political factors. It is classified as activities which relates to administrative practices and policies of a government (Tyrocity, 2013). Google has been criticised that too much flow of data and information is being controlled over by it. Social scientists, Ronald E. Robertson and Robert Epstein claimed that the result of 2016 US presidential election could be influenced by Google’s Search results. When a surfer logs into Google and types in the name Donald Trump who is a party's presumptive presidential nominee, articles and news about the latest campaign trail of Donald will appear. This means some paid advertisings and the most popular search results for Donald would be seen by the surfers easily (Daniel, 2015). It may cause stricter government oversight or nationalization of Google are being conducted in the future. Besides, the company could not enter China market due to political reasons. The main issue is China has rules and regulations relating access to sensitive information. It limits future growth of the company in potential market (Makos, 2015).

In addition, external environment that is affecting the company is technological factors. It is concerned with scientific innovations and covers research and development area. Technology alters inputs into outputs or it can describe as converting resources into services or products (Tyrocity, 2013). In this digital age, people have changed their way access to the Internet. They tend to use mobile devices such as tablets and mobile phones to surf the web instead of using desktop computers which causes Google faces competition. For example, Apple electronic gadgets have their own search engines so people may not want to use Google to look for information. Moreover, rapid growing of instant messaging and high popularity of social networking is the threat Google is facing as most of the Google applications are computer based. Social media solutions such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp are more convenient to contact with each other when compare to gmail and Google+ because words messages, videos and audios can be sent out easily at anytime and in anywhere. WeChat, a mobile application even allows users to make financial transactions (Makos, 2015). In short, there are many companies designing software or applications to fulfil customers’ demands and needs but Google as a well-known technology development company, has slow responses to new technological development in electronic gadgets market.

In a nutshell, Google strives to operate based on its founders’ principles and its operation principles change and improve with times. Its organizational culture is probably one of the most positive, innovative and productivity inducing the world ever had. This unique work environment attracts, inspires and retains the smartest people to work for it. Even though Google has faced the external environment challenges, it does not affect the continuous growth of the company. Therefore, if the company can clear the obstacles successfully, it could be more profitable and more influential in the world.