Changes in Global Environment and HR Strategies of Microsoft and IBM

Impact of global environment on Microsoft and IBM

Identification and evaluation of the impact of changes in the global environment

The goals that act as primary objectives for many multinational companies are profitability and brand identity. Among such companies are Microsoft and IBM.  The influence of global changes in the environment of Microsoft influences the macro and the remote setting of the firms (Kah Chon 2019). Microsoft’s investment and performance have increased due to the opportunities created by the political stability of the market forces. The increasing support of the government for the automation gives opportunities to Microsoft to enhance its computer technology through government clients. The increment in international trade has developed a macro environment, which has benefited the sales of Microsoft. The economic stability and high growth of many developed countries create opportunities for Microsoft to boost its business (Rothaermel 2016). Due to the growth of the disposable income of middle-class crested opportunity for Microsoft to increase its revenues.  The growing attitude of the customer towards leisure products creates opportunities for the company to develop such products that meet the expectations of the customers. Increased cultural diversity has affected the environment of the company because its product satisfies only the biggest groups.

The technological changes in the global environment is like a rapid increase in mobile technology, online transactions, and increase business opportunities in the automation sector gives a stable environment to Microsoft to increase its business. However, these changes also act as threats to the company. The competitors take these as an opportunity to enter the market. Growing demand for sustainable products in the global market creates a chance for the company to develop environment-friendly products and introduce green energy in business operations. Nowadays, there is an increasing demand for the recycle products in the global market, Microsoft should use those materials that can be recycled, in its hardware and software products as well as in the packaging of the products (LIU 2017). The changes in the global market give plenty of growth opportunities for the company to achieve a competitive growth. Some of the legal factors in the worldwide environment like patent laws, electronic waste disposable regulation and energy consumption act as an opportunity as well as a threat to the company. However, these regulations impose additional costs in fulfilling the environmental factors of the business environment. At the same time, the improved patent laws facilitated Microsoft’s development by eliminating several problems, for example, software piracy. Microsoft can adapt diversification for its business to increase its potential growth. The company can achieve this by increasing its hardware products to increase its revenues (Nguyen 2017).

HR strategies of Microsoft

International Business Machine (IBM) continues to grow its business despite the changes in the global environment through its organizational capabilities. IBM has succeeded in the market by its developing competencies and by exploiting the opportunities and overcoming the threats in the global environment. The movement of the government sector towards digitalization has created a chance for IBM to bargain such material expertise products that cater to the needs of the government organizations (Rubow 2016). The company can take advantage of the political support for the e-technologies in the macro-environment by enhancing its innovation processes. The demand for online products in the market helps the company to target online demand and market for its product and growth. Technological integration is one of the external factors that IBM faces in the global environment. This act as a barrier to the growth of the industry because it attracts competitors from other industries. For example, some manufacturing computing multinationals customize their products to compete with IBM. Cybercrime is another factor that affects the online infrastructure of the company. The demand for renewable energy, reusable products and sustainability in the market creates opportunities for the company to grow its commercial business in the global marketplace. The fluctuations in the interest rates have brought stability in the worldwide market, which has lowered the interest rate of credit to the customers of IBM. The increase in the expenditure of the customers and uplift in the economic slowdown after the recession allowed the company to gain new customers and increase market shares (Rubow 2016).

HR strategies, policies and practices of selected organizations 

Every organization has some HR policies, strategies and practices that are based on certain principles to play the game fairly. This includes the fair rules and the decisions that affect each member of the organization in an equal manner. In every organization, the manager implements HR policies with the help of HR consultants. The executives practice performance management system to develop the strategies for the organization and evaluate the ability of the team to form a positive environment, climate and relationship inside the organization (Yano 2017).

Microsoft is one of the successful organizations worldwide. From the point of view of human resource, the company is employee-driven enterprise. Since, most of the company’s success depends upon technological advancement, innovative products and different manufacturing techniques (Buckley, 2019). Apart from these key factors, Microsoft’s success depends upon the efficiency of its employees. The company values the workers and knows the importance of the workforce. Since the company values its manpower, it seeks to preserve, recruit and retain the talented and huge workforce. The company has around 93000 employees from all over the world (Warner 2019). To sustain such a huge labor force, the company is composed of around 1500 experts in human resource from over 100 countries around the globe. The human resource generalist assists the business regularly, and the center of excellence by the company designs the programs of the human resource generalists. The company takes advantage of low-cost technical labor, and it recruits both fresher’s and experienced graduates in the IT sector. Some of the important HR practices and policies in Microsoft are career management, flexible work shifts employee retention, leap year acceleration program and many other such practices for the well-being of the employees (Warner 2019).

HR strategies of IBM

IBM recruits those employees who are hardworking and can add value to the organization. HR resource responsibilities include counseling multiple initiatives of workforce optimization and recommend solutions for employee relations and HR issues. For the company, human capital plays a vital role in gaining competitive advantage. The HR practices like strategic deployment and motivation is a part of the human resource strategies of IBM. Some of the HR policies of the company are compensation, research and development plans, operational flexibility, staffing and many more.  IBM has implemented many innovative HR programs, practices and policies that help in sustaining the employees (Jörn 2016). Some of them are the open-door policy of the organization, employee opinion surveys, interpersonal communication, and think magazines, announcements on the daily bulletin board, intranet and many other programs. Its HR policy goes through some transformation like the policy of the job sharing, flexibility in the working hours, global teamwork, around thousands of human resource procedures, part-time employment, mass collaboration and many more.

Stakeholder Analysis and Environmental Audit of the selected organizations 

A stakeholder is a distinct or a group that takes an awareness in a project or an organization and are directly affected by the occupational processes and its consequences. Stakeholders of an organization can be either internal or external.  The stakeholders that are affected by the business procedures and its consequences are employees, customers, stockholders, communities and suppliers. The stakeholders who provide guidelines and influence the business operations of the organization are government and non-government organizations, regulatory authorities and the civil societies (Buckley 2019).

Microsoft has developed sustainable relations with its stakeholders; both internal and external. Customers are valuable shareholders at Microsoft organization as they are the major source of revenue generation and a driving force for sale in the organization. The organization should develop those products that meet the expectations of the customers. Microsoft fulfils its customer's demands and expectations regarding the quality service products. The enterprise is continuously improving its efficiency to serve its customers better. To safeguard the rights of the depositors, it is the responsibility of the Panel to sustain their privileges like the right to vote, right to obtain the facts on time, right to receive payments, pre-emptive right, and the right to assessment. The Board of the company should make sure that the organization should timely disclose the quantifiable evidence and dealings that affect the market value of the organization’s dividends (Buckley 2019).

Stakeholder analysis of Microsoft and IBM

Microsoft is fully dedicated towards the growth and the well-being of its personnel. To build a high-performance culture in the organization, employees are trained regularly, and development programs are carried so that they achieve excellent performance. These profession growth programs are developed to safeguard continuous growth of the employees through job enrichment opportunities, performance management, learning and growth and appraisal system. Microsoft takes initiatives for the development of the community and improves the lives of the people of the communities (Gürel, and Tat 2017). The company fulfills it through its corporate social responsibility scheme and engages their employees through volunteer’s initiatives. To be a responsible citizen of the society, Microsoft contributes towards building a sustainable society with the partnership of the government establishments, non-government organizations and many public administrations. They work on a project that promotes education, entrepreneurship and development of surroundings.

Microsoft built a volunteer program “save a soul for better tomorrow”. The enterprise maintains a mutually beneficial relationship with the suppliers those perform with fairness, integrity, accountability and transparency while conducting business. Microsoft maintains the list of those suppliers who serve the requirement of the company from expenditure to the operating expenses and the service requirements. Before doing business with Microsoft, the supplies undergo through the accreditation process to become an authorized member for doing business with the company. The criteria used for the authorization are capacity for continuous business operations, legitimacy in the business operations, quality and prices of the commodities, track record, complying with the legal laws and maintenance of transparency in the relationship while conducting business with the enterprise (Eyring and Consuegra 2017). The purchases of Microsoft are made based on bidding through the support of recognizable and qualified suppliers.

Contribution of leadership theories towards organizational strategy and goals

The fate of any organization is dependent on the type of leadership and management of the style. The management and leadership styles are revealed through both long term and short term policies of the establishment. There are many leadership theories suggested by the theorists for the success of the organization. Some of them are trait and behavioural theory, contingency theory, participative theory, transformational and transactional theory. Some of the leaders consider teamwork as the best solution for the company, and some prefer the charismatic personality of the leader for the success of the organization.

Every organization has some objectives to succeed and gain a competitive advantage. The leaders set directions and goals to lead the organization on the right path. By keeping in mind the aims to achieve, different management theories are adopted by the leaders to support the vision and mission that defines the style of the administration in an organization.

The leadership theory followed via the leader of Microsoft and IBM is the transformational leadership that defines four things creativity, clarity, energy and success of the organization. This theory has four components encouragement, charismatic personality, intelligence and personalized attention.

The leaders are aware that the organizations respond to the inner and outer dynamics of the environment that can also affect the strategies and policies of the organizations to change. The factors may include economic slowdown, increased competition, inflation, demand, technological change and many more (Winn 2018). These changes can turn the organization upside down or lead to success. Therefore, it can be transformational or incremental. For organizations like Microsoft and International Business Machine, every strategy toward the management of change requires transformational leadership. Every project in an organization leads to some changes in the company. Therefore, the leader must know how to lead the change by avoiding the pitfalls. In the field of informational technology, the success of the transformational projects is dependant primarily on the people rather than the technology. The major challenges reported in the application of the transformational leadership are the changing mindsets of the employees, attitudes, beliefs and corporate culture are the major challenges that come in the path of managing a change in the organization (Bratton 2020).

The leader of Microsoft defines three things that every leader should possess-clarity, energy and success. The leader of Microsoft, Nadella, has a mindset of growth philosophy. The leader explores how the individuals and the teams can grow and thrive, rather holding them back. This is the only philosophy that Microsoft believes that success and the key learnings can be found in any situation inside the organization. The philosophy of the company’s leader is to practice positive leadership tools and techniques, which will create extraordinary results. The change at Microsoft is achieved through the transformational leadership that inspires the employees and increases its productivity. To follow this strategy, the leader has to decide to get the start and figure out what are the strategies and interventions that can be designed for the process.

Similarly, transformational leadership at International Business Machine (IBM) can be seen at all the levels of the establishment. With the efficacy, influencing power and the capability to motivate the employees helped the company reinvent its processes that could lead to the era of development and assist in driving the company towards the new business value. The International Business Machine develops leaders from managers to senior executives. Transformational leadership and authoritative style help the information technology giant create innovative, practical and experiential resources and learning opportunities that develop an understanding of the role and the purpose of change in the organization (Kunnanatt 2016). Transformational style leadership helps the members align with the goals of the organization by preparing the members for the change that will be collaborative, agile and self-directed. Through this, the company introduces man landmark innovations in the development of leadership. In the year 2015, International Business Machine defined the means of being a transformational leader.  The leaders used thought leadership of the senior leaders, the trends of the specialists from the leadership and supervisory development teams and defined the behaviours that helped IBM in redefining its strategies and goals. The company decided to step away from the competency model that was used in the past by the company and adopt a model that is dynamic and fits into its new transformational change journey.

The world is changing at a faster pace, and the organization are affected by global changes. So they need to be adaptive and transform itself into a global leader by applying the leadership model that is well suited for the current scenario of the organization, as the companies will progress the behaviour changes. For such organizations, transformational leadership framework plays a significant role in aligning and building an agile culture inside the organization and pivot the company for cognitive and cloud solutions. With the support of the top executives, the two IT giants launched the leadership model within and across the organizations. The companies embedded the leadership theory into the existing and new development programmes to be adaptive and gain competency in the market. The companies are energized by the rapid progress due to the leadership and change management and also the leadership development programmes through the use of the transformational leadership framework.

HR leadership strategies for the management of change

Any change that is introduced in the organization faces the problem of resistance. However, the resistance to change is a natural phenomenon by the employees towards the widespread organizational changes human resource department can overcome with these issues by applying certain strategies like the implementation of the changes in stages, engaging the teams in the change process, communicating the change and the after-effects of the transformation. The driving forces behind every transformation are the organizational need and the leadership but to make sure that the changes will be positive; the transformation has to start from the bottom. The human resource strategies must be rooted at every level if the organization wants the strategies to be successful. One key role of the human leadership tactics selected establishments for the administration of transformation is to ensure that both the organizational strategy and the culture has to be aligned together with the goals and objectives of change because without aligning these two, no matter how better the inventions are it will likely to cause failure in the leadership programme.

Ethical strategies for HRM and HRD in selected organizations

The human resource management looks after the manpower planning of the organization while the development related activities are looked at by the human resource development. Both are major parts of the human resource of any organization.

The ethical strategies and the HR department should recognize the importance of collaboration and work together. The ethical strategies human resource help the organization embed the valuable culture in the organization. For the ethics that is to be followed inside Microsoft is followed by certain ethical programs like the Microsoft’s compliance program, code of conduct for the business, the standards, values and cultural programs, commitment toward the employees, government and communities, programs against corruption and bribery and environmental compliance. To prevent the issues sing from the compliance, the human resource department focuses on promoting the culture of integrity and ethics in the organization (Jain and Jain 2017). The HR department achieves this by building a compliance culture throughout the organization and implementing the business conduct of standards, training and policies inside the organizational environment. The HRM and HRD also implement data analytics, risk assessment, investigations of the processes, third party vetting and many other compliances to minimize the risk of failure. The department detects the risk through several methods including audit group, monitoring the process through the compliance analytics program and analyzing the trends by the legal compliance. The Human resource department is accountable for the ethics and upholding the standards of the Microsoft team and its reporting concerns. The HRM and HRD assess the root cause of the problem and implement the processes that minimize the risk of failure. The department disciplines the employees who are responsible for the violation of the policies and standards and the company stops doing business with those suppliers and partners who do not fulfil the ethical standards of the company. The ethical practices like applying the culture and values for building and preserving the trust with the government, customers, partners, investors and other partners who are directly or indirectly associated with the company (Anderson 2017).

Disciplinary actions are taken by the HR department against those employees who do not comply with the rules and violates the strategies or the code of conduct of the organization. This can even lead to the termination of the employment of the employees. The standards of the company reflect its culture and values and even the principles that guide this behavior. The employees make use of the standards and decide what is required of them. The department provides help to the employees when needed and builds trust that empowers the employees and the stakeholders to achieve more productivity towards the organization. Microsoft’s commitment towards building a culture of integrity, ethics and trust not only depends on the human resource department but also on the employees. The human resource department provides multiple ways to report concerns. Whenever a concern is reported to the department, the department treats it fairly and seriously and actions are taken promptly. For its fair code of conduct ad HR practices, Microsoft was honored with positive recognition for the work in ethics, compliance and its corporate social responsibility.

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