Two PhD students at Stanford University founded Google as a research project in the late 1990s.
Although it is still a relatively young company, it has become a household name synonymous with conducting a Web search. The tech giant's ambitious mission statement is ". . . to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," and for years its motto was, "Don't be evil." Google's parent company, Alphabet, employs over 200,000 contract and full-time employees in over 70 offices spanning more than 50 countries. For over a decade, Google has consistently been ranked among the top places to work in the United States. This competitive environment attracts and retains a very intelligent and highly engaged workforce that enjoys unparalleled freedom. Google employees are given a high level of discretion over how they spend their time. Moreover, company leadership treats the organization as a democracy, soliciting regular employee feedback and prioritizing transparency. Workers report reasons they enjoy working at Google as including engaging in work that matters, great benefits for their families, highly intelligent co-workers, office perks, and vast career opportunities. Early on, Google empowered employees to speak out about issues involving the company.
Employees enjoy access to internal message boards and social networks where they are encouraged to challenge management and colleagues about products and policies. In recent years, this has led to a considerable amount of activism on the part of Google employees. As the company has evolved and the number of employees has grown, more and more employee activism has been evident.
In April 2018, thousands of employees signed a letter protesting the company's involvement in a Pentagon program that uses artificial intelligence to interpret video imagery and could be used to improve the targeting of drone strikes. Then, in 2018, over 20,000 employees staged walkouts in offices around the world to protest the way the company reportedly handled sexual misconduct issues among male executives. Shortly after that, hundreds of employees joined a global campaign against Google developing a censored search engine for use in the China market.
These examples illustrate a trend toward employee activism at Google that is perhaps fueled by the company's radically transparent culture that embraces and to some extent even encourages productive conflict between employees. However, in 2019, when two workers were put on administrative leave, some employees accused the tech giant of retaliating against vocal employees critical of the company. Balancing the goals of employees and their employers has always been a challenge and this chapter will address ways to help manage those tensions effectively.

Questions

1. Do you think Google’s approach to empowering its employees encourages productive conflict for the organization? Why or why not?
2. How might employee activism impact company operations and performance at Google? How might it impact organizational culture?
3. In what types of organizations do you think Google’s model of empowerment would work well? How about organizations where it would not work well?
4. Do you think Google will continue to empower employee activism going forward? Why or why not?
5. Based on what you just learned, would Google be an ideal place for you to work? Please explain why or why not.

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Multimedia Extension-"Brotopia": Emily Chang on How Employee Activism is Changing Tech Company Policies View in the online reader THIS OCBS MORNING