Microsoft Leadership Case Study

Microsoft

Leadership

1.0 Interdiction

Microsoft is The world's leading software company based in Redmond Washington United State, found in April 4 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen the Microsoft founders, It's an American multinational company, known as one of the most innovative companies in the world, and the worldwide leader in developing software products and services (Matt, 2011). The current Microsoft's employees are more than 92,000 people in more than 60 countries, and its revenue around US$ 73.72 billion in 2012 (Microsoft, 2012). Microsoft today is the leader in the computer operating system market and office suite market. Almost 90% of the world computers operate by Windows, as it is one of Microsoft's product, Windows has many versions starting from the first version Windows 1.01 in 1985 till Windows 8, the latest version of the Windows operating system (Microsoft Website, 2012). Microsoft have 5 different groups for Microsoft products, each groups handle different products, Windows and Live Windows group 27% of overall turnover of Microsoft, they handle the computer operating software system and Windows consumer products, the internet sever software its responsible of Server Software group, also there is Online services which responsible of bing search engine as well as the online advertising, and the business Microsoft group 31% of overall turnover of Microsoft, responsible of develop business related software and servers, the group of entertainment and devices are handling the Xbox, Zune and the other software (Hildebrand, 2007).

The history of Microsoft says the initial idea to Allen who then contacted Gates perceived of a software entity. Then they started a small company together by creating small applications for local customers. Gates realized the prospective of the language to run on the computers at that time. Thus both of them had worked hard on the developing of the programming language BASIC. They made it compatible with MITS Altair, which was released in 1975, and had successfully sold BASIC to MITS Computer for the use on the Altair. As the sales shot up for Altair Basic, they have registered their partnership agreement under the name of Micro-soft in 1976 (with the hyphen) in New Mexico with the vision "a computer on every desktop and in every home".

In 1977 Gates and Allen re-registered the company under the name Microsoft Corporation. Gates was the President while Allen was appointed as Vice President. However, Allen left the post of VP but remains on the board in 1983. Gates had added few developments to the products. The MS BASIC, which was much easier compared to Altair BASIC, was sooner renowned by big companies such as GE, CitiBank, etc. It became more popular than Altair Basic. Besides that, the company had released two more high level programming languages which were FORTRAN and COBOL. With the boosting of demand, Microsoft Corporation opened its first international office at Japan in 1978 by collaboration with the ASCII Corporation of Japan. The New Mexico office took care of new software establishment and enhancement whereby the ASCII took care of sales. By the end of 1978 Microsoft had 13 employees, a sales subsidiary in Japan, and $1 million in revenues. Later Microsoft came up with MS DOS (Disk Operating System). On top of that, it created few other commands (small applications) such as UNDELETE to retrieve deleted data. All these commands were an extension to MS DOS. The potential of MS DOS was soon recognized by IBM, one of the leading PC manufacturers who approached Microsoft for applying MS DOS on all its machines. This bought about a major change in the history of computing as well as the history of Microsoft. In response, Microsoft concentrations on a new functional system--the software that acts as the foundation programs to run the computer programs. They named their new operating system "MS-DOS." o be a better way to build an operating system. The end of 1982 again renamed Microsoft renamed to Microsoft Inc, operating from Washington with over 220 employees worldwide. With over fifty PC vendors marketing its products in the international market, mainly the MS DOS and several programming languages as the public was still considering Microsoft as the BASIC software and operating system designer. Around 1983, in alliance with many companies, Microsoft created a home computer system, MSX, which confined its own version of the DOS operating system, entitled MSX-DOS; it became very popular in Japan, Europe and South America. Later, the market saw a flood of IBM PC clones after Columbia Data Products successfully cloned the IBM BIOS, quickly followed by Eagle Computer and Compaq, The deal with IBM allowed Microsoft to have control of its own QDOS derivative, MS-DOS, and through aggressive marketing of the operating system to manufacturers of IBM-PC clones Microsoft raised from a small player to one of the major software vendors in the home computer industry. With the release of the Microsoft Mouse on May 2, 1983, Microsoft continued to expand its product line in other markets. It was the creation of MS DOS that acted as a stepping-stone for the success of Microsoft. While studying the history of Microsoft, we also take a look into the history of Windows. The reason behind the success of Microsoft lies in its vision. The main strategy of Microsoft is to stay prepared for changes in technology so that it can implement changes in computing. Another reason for success of Microsoft is the strategy of Microsoft to keep the communications open between the users and MS' PRs.

2.0 Microsoft leadership

''The role of leader is vital for the survival and progress of an organization. Leadership helps in developing the organization's objectives, values and vision. Leaders, which measure up to the standards of cultural elements, are able to accomplish organizational effectiveness. Organization develops culture from its leadership and culture has also seriously affected on leadership. The leadership behavior and competence have consistent relationship with organization effectiveness and performance. The organizational culture also plays very important role in developing and shaping the leadership style. Leaders involve influencing personnel to encourage them to achieve the organizational objectives. Moreover, effective heads not only influence subordinates, but also ensure that they achieve their highest potential performance. As a pivotal component of the system their behavior is one of the basic stimulants to make organization more effective'' (UK Essays,2011). Since its establishment, Microsoft has presented a high level of leadership within the industry while