Prepared by Justice Azunna, Jamila
Humbatli and Ayaz Aliyev

Prepared by Justice Azunna, Jamila
Humbatli and Ayaz Aliyev

Marissa Mayer at
Marissa Mayer at

Study
Study

Case
Case

This case reveals the story of Marissa Mayer’s life and work experiences at Google and how she dealt with different challenges confronting Google, specifically the gender issue which is the crucial point of the case. She was able to identify the problems and offered creative solutions. She was striving to bring more females into the field of technology and to Google in order to balance the working atmosphere and to create an environment where women and men can equally share their ideas.
We will point out and analyze the major issues presented in the Marissa Mayer’s case, and evaluate how effective her ideas were and how the need for integrating women into the workforce will become beneficial to Google. She said, “…I think you build a better product for a mixed gender audience if you have a mixed gender team.”
Marissa Mayer was also very successful at advocating the empowerment of women inside and outside of Google. She was calling all the young girls to embrace their inner geek, and promising them that they can stay “feminine” working in the technology field.

Identification
Google is one of the fastest-growing companies in the world which had turned a $1.5 million investment into $209 billion and had never encountered any problems recruiting the best of the best, but what appeared to be a major problem at Google is the small fraction of women engineers. Marissa Mayer, who holds a very important position at Google, believed it was a missed opportunity and that it was a recruitment problem since there were simply no people focused on recruiting women engineers. Mayer’s colleagues, Larry Page, who was CEO at that time, and Sergey Brin also felt that this is a big issue, especially when there was a point at which they hired 16 male engineers in a row. One of the major factors contributing to the existence of this problem is that women eliminate technology field based on their belief, perceptions and stereotypes at a very early ages, because they have been infected with general belief that technology and femininity cannot intersect at any points. In result, they don’t consider taking computer science elective courses, and forbid the thought of majoring in engineering to enter their minds. And the most critical issue which also affects the lack of women engineers was men’s negative attitude towards female engineers; men had little or no respect to women’s personalities, ideas and experiences. This is not just a problem which confronts Google; it is a broader problem which has its roots deep in society and culture. It is commonly believed that women should go into “feminine fields” such as teaching and nursing, whereas men should be involved into a harsher environment. According to Hofstede’s Dimensions of Cultural Values in countries such as Untied States, Japan and Germany masculinity is dominating over femininity. Hofstede said: “The culture values stereotypically male traits such as assertiveness and the acquisition of money and things”. As long as there are a small number of women in this field, this problem will get more serious day by day, since men are just not used to work in a mixed gender atmosphere, and can only imagine it in a parallel universe. Google has understood this was a major problem when one candidate with good technical skills had shown a negative behavior and disrespect towards women who interviewed him.
But why should Google consider this as an important issue and why should it take actions in order to solve it? Google is a product which is designed for both genders. They create engineering solutions for everyone whether it is a woman or a man, and having both genders in their team is very important when satisfying the wants and needs of a mixed audience. Men are not aware of new trends and fashion styles for feminine group, and women cannot know what “hot topics” males are talking about. Two gender groups will only supplement each other and would be able to come up with more interesting, diverse, creative and up-to-date ideas.
Analysis and Evaluation
Organizational Culture is the shared social knowledge within an organization regarding the rule, norms and values that shape the attitude and behavior of the employees. According to the Attraction-Selection-Attrition (ASA) potential employees will be attracted to organizations whose cultures match their own. One can emphatically draw that there was gender imbalance in Google however it isn't as bad as in most organizations and most technological companies. This also affected the values of the companies indirectly but for the involvement and influence Marissa Mayer had at Google the percentage of women engineers will be little compared to what it is at the moment.
However as earlier stated, this case traced the problem to some certain factors such as few women going into technological field and women being afraid to explore or lose their femininity when pursuing their passions. Mayer proved this wrong and through her life one could evidently see how she was able to make a balance and combination between her gender roles (femininity) and also passion which was love for technology.
From her young days in college Mayer was able to create this balance; she had interviewed Lady Gaga, led her high school team to a championship and was an outstanding student at Stanford University. Prior to when she began working in Google she had already tested, functioned and thrived in different levels of leadership and she proved herself by developing the competitive edge, as this was what she loved doing not minding her gender. She occupied a leadership role in Google and discovered some loopholes which were Google not being able to satisfy its demand and integrate with its culture of diversity.
The organizational socialization in Google is worth applauding in the following aspects which include the goals and values, performance proficiency, language, history, politics, except for the people. The ‘People aspect’ seems a bit shaky because according to the case not only until recently did they discover that there was a need to hire men who could respect women and be able to adapt and work with women in an environment. As Google developed resources and tried tackling this problem they discovered other peculiar issues quite related to this problem which was hiring the right kind of men who can respect women as fellow workers in the technology field. As a result of the efforts put in by Google in the technology industry to create a balance between genders and also to integrate more women into the industry, Google was ahead as compared to the technology industry when it comes to the average rating as 15%-17% of women in Google were women who functioned in technical areas. However Mayer’s target was to make that average be 30% as she believed it will give women a better voice although the strategy she wanted to employ might be viewed as partial. But since the women were already on the low side on Google it seemed justifiable for her.
Mayer felt the need to make a change in the United States for Google, the technology industry and most importantly for women. Through her leadership position she served as a perfect role model for women and she was worthy of emulation for young ladies. From her early age she excelled in her school work and was very hard working, she even skipped two grades because of high level of intelligence. In 2008 she made Forbes list of the 50 most powerful women in business despite and among all the people mentioned she was the youngest.

Mayer also attributed part of her success story and high self-esteem to her parents whom she claims were quite strict on her and always allowed her to explore whatsoever she wanted. She said her parents always made her try something at least once before dropping it. Also it’s important to note that the culture strength in Google is quite high and very much active because in Google there is a major uniting force which Mayer also stated was another essential element to her success was also her ability to focus on commonalities between her and her male colleagues and seeing herself from a different view she said ‘I am not a woman in Google I am a geek’. This shows that she didn’t allow the fact that she was female have any effect in the roles she performed or the passion she had for technology. Rather she endeavored to build a common ground between her and her colleagues and also tried developing a good relationship with them by always keeping her door open for new ideas and initiative. Her mentors during her school days were males so she had an idea on what working with the other gender was like. For instance during her days at Stanford her mentor was her computer science teacher Eric Roberts. Looking at this critically it also points back to the same void in Google, for Marissa to have looked for the geeky commonality and pushing her feminity to the side is also worth noting-because it could be viewed that her feminity could be a big hindrance but she didn’t allow it. Mayer wasn’t afraid to be a leader and she always wanted to affect women and bring about a positive change in her environment and during her 2 year in Google she had held numerous leadership positions and had launched lots of numerous new products into the industry and she also developed the culture in Google by creating diversity, and today she serves as part of the board members in various non-profits, currently became the CEO of Yahoo!. All this was possible because she pursued her passion and did not let her femininity serve as an obstacle.

Recommendations
Action plan for changing organizational culture
We can witness that an issue in organizational culture like the one described at Google is present in most of the companies, where women feel unwelcomed and hold back their opinions because they do not want to get laughed at. In order to create a working environment where women and men are equal, can share the same rights and have the same voices, Google and other companies should consider changing its organizational culture, and it is not promised to be easy. In fact, changing organizational culture is one of the most difficult leadership challenges. * One of the methods of changing the culture is changing the leadership and top executives. New leaders are most likely going to bring new ideas, values, and thoughts and thus will become a driving force for the change. Google’s culture was set and developed by its current executives like Larry Page (CEO) and Sergey Brin who co-founded Google back in 1998. Little has changed since then, and that’s why introducing Google to new leaders can be a right path on the way to a changing culture. It has long been in practice and proved very successful, because subsequent leaders leave their unique mark on the culture. * Mergers and Acquisitions.
One of the other ways to bring changes to organizational culture is a process of mergers and acquisitions. When two or more companies with diverse cultures merge together it gives rise to a brand new culture which is created out of a compromise. But companies need to consider it very seriously, because it is not known what the culture will look like after a merger. A new culture will be a function of how strong and how similar to each other these cultures are. * Using Force Field Analysis Model is also considered very useful in changing organizational culture. This model consists of 6 strategies: 1. Communication 2. Learning 3. Employee Involvement 4. Stress Management 5. Negotiation 6. Coercion * Kotter’s Eight-Step Model, which is one of the best known, also can help the organization to get to the desired state. It includes 8 steps: 1. Establish the need for urgency 2. Ensure there is a powerful change group to guide the change 3. Develop a vision 4. Communicate the vision 5. Empower the staff 6. Ensure there are short-term wins 7. Consolidate gains 8. Embed the change in the culture

* Using Rational Change Model and Network Model of Change

Action Plan for getting more female engineers to Google
The reason there is a small portion of women working at Google is directly related to a small number of women choosing to major in computer science. As long as this field remains unattractive to women, Marissa Mayer and Google will not be very successful at finding female talents or “geeks” to work for their organization. That’s why the first thing the need to consider is to find different ways and strategies they can implement in making a technological field a more desirable choice for young high school female students, which will have its pay-off in the long-run. But is it a Google issue or a global issue? The number of female computer science graduates has dropped precipitously over the past 25 years, from 40% in 1980s to 18% in 2009. As a result, only 2 in 10 programmers are women. This seems more like a global issue which needs to be solved with the help of government, schools and educational institutions. If high schools can put an emphasis on computer science and make it a required course, female students will at least get a chance to experience it and make a decision for themselves. Women have a negative perception of technology and don’t choose it as an area for study, because they feel that they don’t know much about it, it is not an interesting feel, they believe they are not going to be successful at that, and in result they just don’t envision themselves involved with it in any way. It is a much broader and major problem which needs to analyzed and solved by governmental institutions. But still, Google can find a different way of doing it, and needs to start with an action plan which will consist of defined, specific, achievable and effective goals that can help them to get to the desired state. After research and analysis of the situation, we were able to create an action plan and recommendation, which Google can employ in order to solve the stated problem.
Offer women-specific programs: Google can spot the opportunity of getting university and high school female students to attend the program (which they will need to create) designed specifically for women. This program should include computer science lectures, labs, classes that will help them to enrich their knowledge in this field, and which can also serve as a test for their capabilities. To motivate them, at the end of the program, they can give certificates of completion, which are going to be beneficial for their resumes. By attending this program, women will acquire an invaluable experience and will, in part, understand what to expect from organization. It is widely known, that experience is better than words there could be said, and with the help of this program, women will experience the environment themselves instead of believing what other say about it. The problem is that females are not aware of a wide range of opportunities that exist in the field of computer science and with the help of this program, Google can cope with it.
Extensive advertising campaigns: Google should be aggressively engaged in publicity and advertisement to target female programmers. They can visit different schools, talking about opportunities they offer such as internship programs or summer school. They should be more specific in explaining the working atmosphere at Google and how they value female talents. When women think about work atmosphere in a company specializing in technology, they imagine the picture of many men sitting in one room with their eyes on computers 24 hours a day with Doritos and coke in their hands. Google can show pictures of the environment they have at work in order to eliminate that stereotype.
They can also create fashionable and trendy advertisement which will only prove that computer science is not only about science, and that there is a room for femininity and fashion. If they get a lot of media attention about their efforts to recruit more women, it will reinforce the message that women are really wanted in that field and can increase the awareness of different programs.
Role Models: Google is very lucky to have a worker such as Marissa Mayer who can serve as a great role model for all the women out there. They need to take advantage from this situation and employ it in a creative way. Marissa Mayer has a very successful and interesting background, she has proved that women can stay feminine and succeed in this field as she is very fashionable and has a net worth of $300 million. Marissa Mayer can visit different schools and universities talking about her success story. She can give more and more interviews, or can be published in different journals and magazines, so the world can hear about her great story. What she has achieved is beyond success, and she should definitely use it for attracting more females to the field. She can also publish her “recipe” of success and give tips and recommendations for young girls and women. She needs to interact with the target audience as much as possible, so that they can feel if she could do it, they can do it. She should use her words “Embrace you inner geek” as a slogan for her campaigns.
Inviting women applicants to pre-visit Google: Just as universities have their campus visit, Google can invite women with a degree, high school female students who are about to make a decision, or university students to visit their organization. By doing this, they can show women the actual environment of workplace, make them feel welcomed, and can provide information sessions about their programs, requirements, quotas, job descriptions, responsibilities, and maybe salaries. It will have a positive effect because women will have a chance to get a sense of direction and maybe find that “perfect” place they want to work at.