MANAGMENT PRACTICES PROJECT

Management Practices Project



Management Practices of MicrosoftIntroduction

In today's rapidly changing business environment, the role of management practice is vital for the success of any business, especially in technology and software business. Business strategy can be defined as setting up the overall direction of a business that allows the business to develop a long-term plan in order to achieve its particular goals (Baye, 2009). In other words, the business strategy directs the company for how to conduct its business and attain the desired goals. It is important to know that developing a management practice is a crucial as well as vital management function. In addition, it is also equally important to understand that strategy creation is not enough for the success of any business. This means, it is also essential to ensure proper implementation of the strategy to achieve business goals. This paper is aimed to analyze the management practice of Microsoft.

Microsoft

In less than 40 years, Microsoft has become a worldwide leader in the field of technology. Today, the company operates on 5 major divisions or segments: Devices Division and Entertainment, Microsoft Business Division, Online Services Division, Server and Tools, and Windows Live Division & Windows (McKay, Marshall, 2004).

Past five years result of Microsoft shows that the organization has been profitable (+33% on operating income; +20% on revenue) between the year 2007 and 2011 (Gurau, Ranchhod & Hackney, 2001). Nevertheless financial reports indicate that each segment has not supported profit equally. Therefore, as the management team, which recommendations for Microsoft could be done for 2012 and beyond for each segment?

The Management Style

Nathan Myhrvold, chief creative thinker "Microsoft", said: "Bill is not afraid of smart, but stupid people." Although the founders of the "Microsoft" has already crossed the threshold of middle age, Gates still like to hire young workers. The average age of an employee at "Microsoft" is thirty four years. Former maykroserf Rob Glaser at the age of thirty-one years has transformed the campaign "Microsoft" in cash and received fifteen million dollars to start their own business. He is a typical representative of the other propeller heads "Microsoft," says journalist of a magazine (Chaffey, 2009):

"Like" Microsoft, "[it] is a smart, young, perhaps a little tough and confident in the correctness of their judgments on many issues. But this is encouraged in the company, everything is happening too fast for careful management coaching." You can read the "Art of Computer Programming" by Donald Knuth. Already published three volumes and more are on the way. If someone is so sure of himself that he thinks that he knew everything, Knut will help him to understand that the world is complex and deep.

Journalist Randall Stross, beginning to study the book of "Microsoft" strongly doubted the stories of brilliant abilities of the company. But after three months of dating Strauss wrote: "When I studied the methods of action" Microsoft "from the inside, I was more impressed than its share of the market, but intense, pragmatic reasoning of accompanying all of his ...