Microsoft in innovation strategy at Microsoft: clouds on the horizon case study

Microsoft in innovation strategy at Microsoft: clouds on the horizon case study

In order to achieve it company objectives, Microsoft makes use of millions of people since it also has about 90,000 users everyday from all over the globe. In terms of being able to have a more radical initiation, t is a simple task for the company to develop the subsequent version of office o the windows. However, over the years, the company has struggled to achieve its goals. It tends to face a high rate of competition from other companies that include Apple and Google, which threatened its business model with which it has been able to deliver an immense rate of success for over 25 years.

In this case, some of the strategic challenges that are faced by the Microsoft Company including the dilemmas are highlighted. They revolve around the supplies insights into the organizational, operational and leadership issues. For this reason, these should be addressed in order to be in a position to define a successful strategy in one of the most renowned companies in the world.

For this reason, in relation to the standards for ethical conduct for management accountants (IMA), the three potential ethical dilemmas at Microsoft are the aspects of competence where the employees are expected to maintain the appropriate level of professional expertise. This is seen when the company expects their employees to continually develop their knowledge and skills. In particular, it has made an effort to achieve this through the use of the grassroots programs that help in the sharing of ideas between the employees. In particular, it has made use of the Think Week and Quest for the senior executive managers and the Ide Agency for the other employees. Although it managed to enhance the level of skills that they had through the ability to be presented to the project sponsors who would choose the best for the projects, there was the challenge that the employees were only willing to present the ideas that fell within their organizational duties. Microsoft company believes that it has the most intelligent and best employees in the world. For this reason, they expect nothing but the best from them as they soar higher to the greater heights. However, this ability is limited by the fact that there is a lot of pressure resulting from the placed level of revenue that is expected from each of the product groups to deliver every year for five years. In this case, therefore this dilemma is related to the level of employee competence and their ability to provide the information that supports the decisions of the corporations in a clear, concise, accurate and timely manner since they seem not to have the sufficient ability to do so when compared to other placed targets. This is also the case with the expectations that are placed on the employees to offer their commitments and evaluations. Because of the pressure that is laced towards the achievement of the stated goals, the employees are in fear of placing their commitments in areas that tend to fall outside their objectives. This is also because evaluations are offered based on the ability to fulfill the commitments in areas that fall under the particular commitments of the employees. Thus, they only choose to focus on their areas as opposed to having to make commitments in other areas that will give them low performances that will lead to tough consequences since the “commitments are translated into strict financial goals” (62).

The other dilemma that the company is likely to face is related to the aspect of integrity on whether to retain the same kind of leadership and communication or to develop new leadership strategies. It is mainly associated with the organization and the structure at the corporation. This is evidenced by the clash in the manner with which to run the technological aspects of the company by some of the technology experts and those who are not experts in the field to find out the “value that was being generated from the grassroots innovation” (60).  Moreover, some more conflicts arise with the need to communicate the company culture as it results in conflicts between the senior executives and the business managers. The other elements in relation to employee handling has been the idea of compensation where the company initially did not compensate for the talent but expected by they would be motivated by the impact they were able to create through their work. In essence, the company faces challenges on how to deal with the different ideas from the groups in order to incorporate them in the three business divisions of “platform products and services, Microsoft business and the entertainment and devices” (61) in order to make them a  success.  This is mainly because the implementation of the relevant components into these divisions is based on the ability to communicate and collaborate in an effective manner.

It is evident that without the ability to work on the dilemmas, they will create a negative impact on the company in the sense that the company has to be both credible and respect the aspect of confidentiality. These would include the discouragement of the employees from taking part in the challenges since it appears that the target is on the financial results. As such, the rate at which decisions will be given will decrease to the extent that the project and innovative levels will also be minimal. In this case, Microsoft Company will not be in a position to implement the required changes that enable them to make the desired levels of profits. The other consequence would be the lack of focus on a particular organizational culture between significant employees. Hence it will decrease the level of productivity and lead to the decrease in the activities by the company. The conflicts between various leaders are likely to demoralize some of the people who will no longer be free to give their opinions on issues. It will result to a decrease in the number of ideas and thus the reduction in the level of innovations. The idea of not emulating some of the strategies implemented by the other companies would lead to minimal growth that could in the later years see its drop in the market

Therefore, it is possible for Microsoft to deal with them by being able to select the right course of action to follow. For instance, in the case of employee involvement in decision making, it is important to strike a balance between the financial outcomes and the need to involve the employees in the overall company growth. As such, as much as targets should be set, room should be given for commitments outside the objective areas in order to reduce the pressure in performance. With regards to the leadership and decision making at the senior level, a strategy should be incorporate the different ideas that would lead to the establishment of a strong business model and the proper use of the grassroots innovation tool. In addition, there should be proper communication between the different groups in order to facilitate a better understanding and provide a stronger base on which to perform the operations of the company. Moreover, Microsoft must revise and review its operations and activities to retain its productivity and innovation levels. In essence, this one relates to the need to adopt most of those practices that are implemented by the competitive companies in order to succeed or the need to improve on the business model to retain its position in the competitive market. It is clear that in the recent past, most of the developments that have been done by the other companies such as Apple, Yahoo, Amazon and Google has resulted in immense success by increasing their revenue amounts. However, the company should resist from getting involved in illegal practices that would lead to court cases, fines and the destruction of its image.