Contemporary Organization Evaluation: Microsoft

Contemporary Organization Evaluation: Microsoft Student’s Name Institution Contemporary Organization Evaluation: Microsoft Background of Microsoft and Change Process Microsoft is one of the biggest technology firms in the world today. Incorporated in 1993, the company deals with the development, licensing, and support of a wide range of software devices as well as products and services (Reuters, n.d.). The major products of the company include server applications, operating systems, business solution applications, video games, and software development tools. The company also manufactures and sells personal computers, phones, entertainment and gaming consoles, and tablets (Reuters, n.d.). As a firm operating in the software and programming industry, changes in technology affect its operations to a great extent. It is important for such company to keep up with technological changes in order to avoid losing market to competitors. It is for this reason that 40% of its 126,079 employees perform engineering roles (Microsoft, 2017). The company’s Windows operating system and Office products had a huge success in the market but the firm remained stagnant as it failed to meet the ever-changing demands of the technology market. With tuff wars between the firm’s main business units, growing became difficult as they became more of competitors than partners (Troyani, 2017). The necessary innovation was not present in the company as it relied on regular refresh cycles of its existing products. With other companies such as Apple and Google increasing their dominance, Microsoft risk collapsing (Troyani, 2017). In 2013, the then CEO Steve Ballmer admitted that the company was not selling Windows devices as it would want (Yarow, 2013). In addition, according to Weinberge (2016), promising new products were killed just because they did not support Windows business. With innovation thwarted, competing effectively became difficult. After the company named Satya Nadella as its CEO in 2014, a major restructuring that focused on doing away with competition between business units followed. The restructuring was highly disruptive as major changes had to be done on the operations of the company. The restructuring involved the company focusing on creating more personal computing, the reinvention of business and productivity processes, and setting up of an intelligent cloud platform (Troyani, 2017). In addition, 10% of the employees of the company faced lay-offs (Greene, 2014). Such changes would only have been possible with a new CEO and Nadella did well to help the company adapt to the changes. Nadella, therefore, help the company respond the dynamics brought about by the change. He focused on informing the employees the way forward after the restructuring. Strategies used by Microsoft The first strategy employed by Microsoft in its change plan is the hiring of a new CEO. The hiring of Nadella was instrumental in helping Microsoft undergo the change process smoothly. Given that the methods of the previous CEO, Steve Ballmer had proven unsuccessful, change in the management team was necessary. With Nadella as the new CEO, the company was ready to implement major changes as it sought to turn around its fortunes. The strategy was successful as it allowe...