Reference no: EM133305582

Assignment: Throughout Google there is a clear understanding that success not only depends on being aligned with the external environment but on taking initiatives that will shape the external environment. For example:
• Products are often launched early, in pre-mature stages, to receive input from users and developers. In this way Google learns about what the market demands.
• Many products are released 'open source' with all the source codes being shared freely with developers all over the world, so that they can build on Google's initial offering to develop a better core product and,
importantly, use this as the basis for developing components products.
In-house, creativity is fostered by allowing employees to spend 20% of their time to experiment with whatever they want to explore. This has been the source of many well-known Google products.
The value of dialogue and open communication is widely recognised. Google has developed a transparent approach to knowledge management to ensure that no opportunities are missed for learning from colleagues or joining forces with others to develop new ideas. This is helped by structures that have few layers and a culture that promotes teamwork.
The culture also encourages risk taking and learning from mistakes. Failure is not a problem, it is regarded as a sign of having explored, and it teaches the organisation what works and what does not. People are not motivated to hide failures because it is only when failures are shared that the learning is achieved.
The big question is whether Google will be able to retain this learning culture over the next ten years. Google was founded in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were students at Stanford University. In 2004, they floated Google to raise new capital. The initial public offering raised US $1.67billion, implying a value for the entire corporation of US $23billion. One implication of this development is that the company will now have to pay more attention to shareholder value. Greiner's (1972) life-cycle model posits that as companies grow and mature, they move through a predicable series of stages of development. He describes the first as 'growth through creativity'. He argues that many company founders are entrepreneurial and technically oriented and the organisation's structure, systems and culture tend to be informal. But as the organisation grows, the need for more knowledge about efficiencies, more professional systems for maintaining financial control and more formal approaches for managing and developing people can lead to a crisis of leadership. Greiner suggests that a new approach to managing and leading the business may be required, and often the way forward is for the founders to bring in a strong business manager from outside. This happened at Google when Eric Schmidt joined the company as chairman and CEO in 2001. Prior to joining Google, Eric had been the chairman and CEO of Novell and before that the chief technology officer at Sun Microsystems. Google employs over 20 000 people and is still growing, so the challenge will be how to sustain this growth without compromising the organisation's capability for double-loop learning.
Source: Hayes, 2014

Question (i) Examine the characteristic features of the learning organisation and discuss whether it might be justifiable tocategorise Google as a learning organisation.

Question (ii) Based on the extent to which Google displays characteristics of a learning organisation, discuss the importance of the creation of a learning culture at Google

Question (iii)Critically discuss how Human Capital Management can become a strategic consideration for Google in its attempt
to sustain the growth of its employees and maintain a competitive advantage