Final Research Paper Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Final Research Paper - Essay Example Organizations are also measured by how much operations are differentiated or integrated: Differentiation is the extent to which jobs are specialized, whereas integration shows the extent to which different work units cooperate. how authority is distributed throughout the organization. If that authority, such as over hiring and spending, is concentrated in the upper echelons, the organization is known as being centralized; if it is spread out, it is considered decentralized. No one organizational scheme is better than another; the contingency approach to studying structure deems that "successful organizations develop a structure consistent with the pattern of goals and the strategy established by senior management" (Schermerhorn et al., 2005, 516). During the Reagan era, Microsoft was the scrappy underdog whose staff openly laughed at the moribund IBM. The company went public in 1986. The Office suite of productivity applications for the workplace first appeared in 1989; Windows 3.0 operating system debuted the next year. The young Microsoft fostered an aggressive business environment centered on the personal computer both in the home and in businesses. When the market exploded in the 1990s, the company quickly became so large and so dominant that in 1998, the U.S. Department of Justice sued the company for monopolistic practices. The settlement in 2001 split operations along the Windows and Office lines and forced the company to accept partnerships with rivals like Sun and Netscape (Greene, et al. 2004). The case in and of itself did not hinder Microsoft's growth: The Windows operating system runs on 330 million personal computers around the world, about 90 percent of the PC operating system market. Windows is installed by mo re than 300 PC manufacturers and helps run thousands of peripherals like printers, scanners and increasingly, portable music players. Thousands of software programs by independent developers run on Windows (Lohr & Markoff, 2006). New versions of Windows and Office are scheduled to debut in the near future and the company's new entry into the console gaming market, X-Box 360, debuted last year to generally good reviews. The company is still dealing with antitrust charges in the European Union, though it has recently promised to deal more fairly with competitors (Buck, 2006). Microsoft's policy has been to go through periodic reorganizations, sometimes as often as every two years. Founder and Chairman Bill Gates has said this is a necessary part of the company's strategy. "Even though reorganizations are expected, they still create anxiety for almost everyone, including me," (Bateman & Snell, 2003, p. 267). Though Gates stepped down as chief executive officer in 2000 and handed the reins to current CEO Steve Ballmer, he remains the face of