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Googles Working Environment

Chandler Rosas, Mackenzie Rivera, Christane Truitt, Landon Rogers, Deborah White, Alex Sulka
College of Business, Liberty University
BUSI 472: Organizational Ethics
Dr. John Obradovich
June 25, 2021

Benefits to Those Involved

. Google is a well-known company that has created a positive impact around the globe in their day-to-day operations. Google has a culture of innovation that has become part of its employee life and permeates through the organization. Its culture was not built overnight but has taken the company many years of hard work to reach where it is today. The positive innovative culture and a free work environment that Google provides to its employees makes them happy at work (Alsubihi, 2015). The environment in which we work in play a significant role in how we engage in the work itself and with those around us and it also leads to higher performance levels in the organization. Google offers many great benefits to their employees which make them competitive to other agencies that they compete with. A good work environment promotes a healthy work life balance and Google has taken a significant amount of time to ensure this happens for their employees. Google’s various offices and campuses around the globe reflect the company’s overarching philosophy, which is nothing less than “to create the happiest, most productive workplace in the world,” according to a Google spokesman, Jordan Newman (Stewart, 2013). Google employs a large number of employees, and they ensure when hiring these employees that they are driven, dedicated, ecstatic, and just all around outgoing and fun people to work with. They create a team-based culture that strives to work together to complete tasks and even though tasks can be rigorous and daunting, they still try to make it fun and enjoyable to complete. They believe that the culture they create is also the brand they are creating for their Google name, and they strive to continue to see it have a positive impact when people think of them.

Harms to Those Involved

The way that Google’s atmosphere creates harm to those involved is how laid back the company seems to be when it comes to their working environment. Since the goal of Google is to be the number one search engine as well as prospering in many different ventures that they are involved in failure is not an option. The potential that employees and consumers can be harmed due to the atmosphere can increase, when the employees are working in this environment work can become secondary and the work production has the potential to fall which can affect the consumers in this regard. Google has an unusual work environment to say the least because of how the work areas are arranged. Google setup there work environment to make employees feel at home due to the amount time that employees spend there. In a way that is understandable, but at the same time the work environment seems like a giant funhouse. One would wonder how anyone is supposed to be able to get anything done with so many distractions. Yes, the benefit of having such freedom brings out the employees’ creativity but having this much could causes people to react to this freedom in an unproductive way. This not to say that having fun is bad by no means but having too much fun can have the potential of reducing that amount of production that a group is able to produce. The authors of the article is Sage Journals stated that, the key implication of this finding is that too much fun has adverse consequences where productivity is concerned. (Tews, Michel, & Stafford, 2013, p. 379) Google had a policy where employees were allowed to spend 20 percent of the work week doing their own projects. The authors of our text showed that, in 2013 the 20% time policy was largely discontinued after Google determined it was splitting its focus among too many projects. (Fraedrich, Ferrell, & Ferrell, 2017, p. 463) The focus is not producing the turn out that they wanted so Google did what was needed to reach their goal. Google Is any interesting and positive company to work for as the text states. Doing what they can to make Google a better company to work for and to lead the world in innovation but the desire to be the best is not enough, if everyone is not on board with process and are not able to separate the fun side of work from the work that is needed to be performed, Google will end up like so many other companies before it, a thing of the past.

Financial Rights of Those Involved

Google started out in the 1990’s as a small company who was driven on giving and providing a free system for everyone involved with using their platform. However, they are now growing into the billions in revenue and profit. From the article of Taylor & Francis online (Damien Geradin, 2021), Google is stuck somewhere in the middle of trying to run their company as free platform but there are many loopholes and ways for them to make money and become a new and different type of Billion-dollar company. The article goes into detail that would like to run their platform with the mindset of socialism business instead of a capitalistic company. What drives googles revenue is the online advertising, when you are search on google you may see adds pop up within your cookies on your browser. This is a different company paying google to be able to be on their website in that exact moment with the mindset of trying to get users to go to their website and their product. What goes with the case study is the concept of how your privacy with what you search the computer algorithm is trying to learn your habits to ush more adds for things you would be interested in searching for.
Googles biggest competitor is Facebook, they were able to capture over 61% of the total add space in the revenue for media online as whole. Google still finds ways to raise the revenue to be a big powerhouse. What is interesting is the profit of privacy for these companies, google and Facebook are selling our interesting while being online to markets to put adds in front of us that would be interesting and easier for us to spend money on them.

Economic Impact on Society in General

Many businesses utilize different methods for better marketing practices and getting their business name out in the open. It is no question that Google has helped with this process immensely with its exceptional Google search engines and advertising tools. Amazingly, you can locate anything or specific information through a simple search for anywhere locally, nationally, to even worldwide. However, Google is not only utilized for big chain organizations, and small businesses, but also used by companies that primarily utilize the world wide web for any business practices.
Google helped provide $111 billion of economic activity for over 1.5 million American businesses and nonprofits across the U.S. in 2013. Varsity Tutors, a business located out of Missouri, is one example of a successful business that Google as helped to connect with potential and existing customers. Being one of the fastest growing tutoring companies in the online education industry today. Growing from just two tutors in 2007 to over 3500 in over 30 major metropolitan cities for in person tutoring, and online tutoring platforms country wide by 2013. Google has assisted in this successful transition by providing easier streamline processes at an affordable cost, thus resulting in the business passing those savings to their clients. Bottom line, these savings can and are an positive cycle that is generating through many businesses resulting in a healthier economic society.

Economic Impact on Those Directly Involved

Many are not aware that Google is not owned strictly by “Google.” Due to a complete restructure, Google is now actually a subsidiary of the company Alphabet Incorporated. Valued at well above $500 billion, Alphabet Inc is a collection of many individual businesses (Rocha, 2017). In 2015 Alphabet lost around $3.6 billion due to its investments in their other developments such as their self-driving cars, and space exploration. However, Google being its largest and most successful business platform has brought in much revenue and profits (The Economist, 2016). Most of Google’s products are offered for free to its consumers. Most of its main profits comes from Advertising. AdWords, AdSense, and Search Advertising, which made up to 86% of its 2017 revenue, with additional revenue coming in from apps, cloud offerings, and hardware. In fact, as of 2017, Alphabet continued to cultivate and had an overall revenue of $110.9 billion with a 23% year on year growth rate (Witzenburg, 2018). Google is one, if not the biggest, search engine competitors in the technology industry today. It is of no question that with Google’s continued success, and competitive partnerships this company’s economic impact will continue to flourish positively.

Propose Convincing Moral Solution

According to Hosmer, it is imperative to know “exactly who is going to be benefited and who is going to be harmed, and then who is going to be able to freely exercise their rights and who is going to be prevented from an equally free exercise of their rights” (Hosmer, 2011, p. 6).  In this case, the apparent beneficiaries of Enron’s financial gains were the executives and employees who received premium stock options and monetary bonuses. Likewise, the stockholders and general public suffered great financial harm through the company’s actions. As proven by the fall out of the company, “shareholders in the Enron era did not have the power to assure that their interests were fully taken into account by senior management” (Heath & Norman, 2004, p. 248).  An ethical turning point was reached when Vice President, Sherron Watkins, testified before Congress about the inner-workings of Enron and exposed the company’s improprieties.
            With Enron’s final collapse, the executives were forced to admit the company’s falsified records and deceitful practices. Top executives were compelled to face criminal and civil actions, including testifying before Congress. Congress utilized the testimonies of Sherron Watkins and others to create better regulations to prevent another company engaging in the same unethical practices such as strengthening the regulations for insider trading through Section 5 of the Securities Act and reexamining the use of Rule 144.
In conclusion, the Enron scandal, one of the biggest of its time, has given new significance to the word “partnership” and shined light, not only on controversial accounting procedures which helped the company look more profitable than it really was, but also raised questions of morals and values of its corporate culture. It made the public inquire about the safety of their investments and lose faith in the American system. Enron controversy influenced market conditions in the energy and natural gas industry, as well as legal requirements that have been put into effect after the scandal.

Legal Rights of Society in General

When thinking of legal rights that society have in general it is important to think about where these ideas originated from, so there is a good idea of why these legal rights exist at all. One line of thought for legal rights to citizens is captured in a book that attempts to analyze all of society and examines great text that could be used as rationale for decision making for society. (Pattaro, 2009, p. 100) The works in question include Plato, Heidegger, Thomas Aquinas, the Bible, the Qur’an, and many other books that were the building blocks of society. (Pattaro, 2009, p. 100) What the significance of these books entail is that they set legal precedent for the rights we have in society which is defined as legal norms or morals. (Pattaro, 2009, p. 101) The reason that legal rights are important to have and understand the origin is due to when companies like Google attempt to use information they have gathered in an unethical way and attempt to push decisions based on information a legal citizen has given them. What the concern is, is that there is an increasing push for globalism in society by larger corporations, so that there is a larger swathe of income to gain and to assert dominance in the domain that they are attempting to perfect. As with colonialism there are similarities the ideology of globalism share with it, like “With a propensity to overstate the singularity of the present, these often posit a radical discontinuity between contemporary social life and that in the recent past.” (Randeria, 2007, p. 4) So, the combination of globalization and the review of legal origin for many cultures is the starting point of how society has and instills their legal rights when attempting to protect themselves against unethical business decisions made by companies like Google and will use these protections against other corporations as well.

Legal Rights of Those Directly Involved

The legal rights of those directly involved with those making decisions for Google and of those experiencing the consequences of Google often differ based on their actions and where they live. For example, in 2012 the Spanish Supreme Court ruled that the decision makers for Google had a right to store data from there consumers via a cache system. (Alejandre, 2012, p. 83) The Ethical issue surrounding this court case was that Google had copied an entire website to their cache and was eventually reproduced by Google to eventually have more control of the website but did not intend to assume authorship of the website. (Alejandre, 2012, p. 84) So, the legal rights to each of these parties were recognized in this instance in the Spanish Supreme Court and ruled that the decisions made by Google were ethical and were using the information gathered appropriately. Another issue that has occurred with Google is “Search Engine Liability” which is what would help protect consumers and help steer decisions made by Google to use information collected to be more ethical. (Mitchell-Rekrut, 2015, p. 863) What the search engine liability court case had brought to the attention of Google and the decisions they make about what search results pop up for certain things and the accuracy of the search result. As an inaccurate search result could be the difference in a person’s livelihood and affect how they are perceived to the public. (Mitchell-Rekrut, 2015, p. 866) So, in totality the business decisions made that determine the ethical use of information can have legal ramifications against Google when thinking of things that could affect consumer’s livelihood and perception of certain aspects of a person’s everyday life.

References

Alsubihi, Q. (2015). Working environment of google. Retrieved from https://www.grin.com/document/314226
Alejandre, G. M. (2012). Google cache is legal in Spain – Spanish Supreme Court, 3 April 2012, The Megakini.com v Google Spain case. Queen Mary Journal of Intellectual Property, 81-89.
Damien Geradin, D. K. (2021). Google as a de facto privacy regulator: analysing the Privacy Sandbox from an antitrust perspective. European Competition Journal .
Fraedrich, J., Ferrell, L., & Ferrell, O. (2017). Business Ethics: Ethical Decisons Making and Cases 11th Edition. Boston, MA: Cengage learning.
Google’s Annual Economic Impact Report Features Varsity Tutors. (2014, July 29). Entertainment Close-up. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A376305873/BIC?u=vic_liberty&sid=summon&xid=ddb
Mitchell-Rekrut, C. (2015). Search engine liability under the LIBE data regulation proposal: interpreting third party responsibilities as informed by Google Spain. Georgetown Journal of International Law, 861-891.
Of profits and prophesies; Alphabet. (2016, February 6). The Economist, 418(8975), 59(US). Retrieved from
https://bigalecom.ezproxy.liberty.edu/global/article/GALE%7CA450846323?u=vic_liberty&sid=summon
Pattaro, E. (2009). Law, Brain, and Society. International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, 99-109.

Randeria, S. (2007). The State of Globalization: Legal Plurality, Overlapping Sovereignties and Ambiguous Alliances between Civil Society and the Cunning State in India. Theory, Culture & Society , 1-33.
Rocha, M. (2017). Corporate credit report of alphabet inc (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from https://run.unl.pt/bitstream/10362/25872/1/Rocha_2017.pdf
Stewart, J. B. (15 March 2013). Looking for a lesson in google’s perks. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/16/business/at-google-a-place-to-work-and-play.html

Tews, M. J., Michel, J. W., & Stafford, K. (2013). Does Fun Pay? The Impact of Workplace Fun on Employee Turnover and Performance. Sage Journals, 54(4), 370-382. Retrieved from https://doi-org.ezproxy.liberty.edu/10.1177%2F1938965513505355

Witzenburg, M. (2018). Google Strategic Audit. Retrieved from https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1043&context=honorstheses