Microsoft Corporation’s Organizational Culture & Its Characteristics

Microsoft Corporation’s organizational culture ensures workforce resilience and capability to

address business needs in the dynamic market for computer hardware and software products. A
company’s corporate culture refers to the values, traditions and behavioral expectations among
employees. Microsoft uses its organizational culture to facilitate innovation and customer
satisfaction. As one of the leading firms in the IBM PC-compatible operating system market, the
company must maintain cultural characteristics that suitably promote innovation and high quality
output. Microsoft’s long-term success partly depends on this organizational culture and the
corresponding competence of the company’s human resources. Microsoft Corporation benefits
from its organizational culture, which facilitates human resource competence. This
organizational culture is essential to Microsoft’s success in the computer hardware and software
market.
Features of Microsoft’s Organizational Culture
Companies have distinct cultural characteristics based on the nature of their businesses, industry
situation, labor market conditions, and internal business processes. Microsoft Corporation’s
organizational culture has the following main characteristics:
Accountability
Quality and Innovation
Responsiveness to Customers
Growth Mindset
Diversity and Inclusion
Accountability. Microsoft describes its corporate culture as a culture of accountability. This
cultural feature ensures that every employee understands that his actions have consequences in
the company’s context. To ensure accountability, this characteristic of Microsoft’s organizational
culture is applied in the form of all-employee surveys and reward and recognition programs. For
example, an employee is evaluated for accountability based on Customer Partner Experience
(CPE) criteria and related feedback. Such institutionalized accountability contributes to the
ability of the organizational culture to motivate workers to adhere to Microsoft’s rules and
objectives for its computer hardware and software business. Quality and Innovation. As a
technology business, Microsoft needs to innovate to maintain its competitiveness against other
computer hardware and software firms. Innovation and quality are features integrated in the
company’s organizational culture. For example, Microsoft heavily invests in research and
development efforts for product improvement and new product development. Such efforts are
linked to the company’s organizational culture through emphasis on quality standards and
innovativeness among employees. In addition, Microsoft rewards workers for their innovative
contributions, based on feedback from customers and business partners. This characteristic of the
corporate culture supports the company’s needs for innovation-based competitive advantage.
This cultural characteristic facilitates Microsoft’s generic strategy for competitive advantage.
Responsiveness to Customers. To ensure customer satisfaction, Microsoft Corporation includes
responsiveness as a feature in its organizational culture. Responsiveness is achieved through
training, so that employees effectively consider feedback from customers and partners. For
example, Microsoft maintains feedback systems to allow employees to know what customers
think and experience in using the firm’s computer hardware and software products. In addition,
the company trains employees to listen to such feedback, instead of just reading or delegating
them. To ensure that this cultural feature is integrated in its human resources, Microsoft uses a
variety of tools, such as product support services and social media. The resulting information is
applied in innovating product areas, such as the Windows operating system and Bing. This
feature connects the organizational culture to Microsoft’s mission and vision statements, which
focus on empowering customers and business partners. Growth Mindset. Growth is a necessary
part of every business. Microsoft uses its corporate culture to grow its computer hardware and
software business. For example, the company trains employees to identify potential avenues for
new business growth, such as new ideas and solutions. Workers are rewarded based on their
contributions in this regard. This characteristic of its organizational culture affects Microsoft in
terms of continued growth and resilience despite competitive rivalry in the global market.
Diversity and Inclusion. Diversity and inclusion is now seen as an essential factor in business
development. Microsoft applies these factors in its organizational culture through appropriate
training programs. Also, the company’s human resource policies for recruitment and hiring
ensure a high level of diversity and inclusion in the organization. This organizational cultural
characteristic provides a means for Microsoft to maximize human resource competence based on
diverse ideas and unity among employees.