Introduction
The corporate governance structure is considered the company’s administrative structure, design, and overall management. The corporate management process involves several processes, which entail supervisory and market systems and the relationship between the company management and the company stakeholders (Chen, Zhang & Pifer, 2019). The company management structure aims to ensure that the company achieves the firm’s goals. In the contemporary corporate framework, the external stakeholders affected by the firm include the clients, shareholders, suppliers, debtors, the community in which the company operates, and the creditors of the company. The internal stakeholders affected by the firm’s operations include the company board, the company management team, and employees.
The company managers depend on the decisions made by the board, and the decision-making processes help the company maintain its codes of conduct among its employees, thus upholding integrity in the running of the company and boosting performance. Amazon Inc. uses a vertical governance structure to govern its operations globally. The vertical governance structure has enabled the organization to increase its market share and retain its status as the e-commerce leader. The company governance structure has the top leader as the chief executive officer. On the other hand, it relies on a traditional hierarchical corporate structure, unlike Amazon. The company has upper management, middle managers, supervisors, and employees at the bottom. The google governance structure has some elements of a matrix structure. It borrows the elements from both functional and project or project-based organizational structures.
Corporate Governance Structure and Security Posture
Corporate governance is important to the organization because it fosters transparency on issues relating to the company board and management’s role, responsibilities, and obligations, which boosts the stakeholders’ confidence. Google and Amazon are two tech giant companies with unique corporate governance structures, which has led the two companies into immense growth (Chen, Zhang & Pifer, 2019). Currently, Amazon is the biggest e-commerce company in the world. The company has employed over one million employees globally within its sub-branches. The company uses a vertical governance structure to govern its operations globally.
The hierarchical management structure gives the company widespread control over its operations globally, from the top to the junior employees. This allows the company to increase its market share and retain its status as the e-commerce leader. The company has a chief executive officer at the helm of its management. After the top leader, the company has a senior management team that reports directly to the chief executive officer (Wu & Gereffi,2018). The chief executive officer works with the senior management team in setting goals and performing other critical functions such as; disseminating the ideas of the company CEO, shaping the organization’s culture, and aiding in solving the problems in the company.
The senior management team comprises the finance manager, human resource manager, corporate affairs manager, Amazon web services manager, worldwide consumer manager, Amazon device and digital manager, worldwide operation manager, and the company legal secretariat. Many may argue that the hierarchical management structure is rigid and resistant to a large organization like Amazon; however, this has not been a challenge to Amazon. The company is known for its flexibility and adaptation, making it a market leader in e-commerce due to its hierarchical management structure.
The hierarchical governance structure adopted by the company has ensured that the company utilizes small teams to handle tasks. Thus, the team spends most of the time doing what is required to be done. These methods have enabled the team to meet the company’s long-term and short-term goals since they have access to the resource. For instance, the product can be added without meeting with the project, process, and logistic teams.
On the other hand, Google is also a tech company, and the company utilizes a traditional hierarchical corporate structure. The company has upper management, middle managers, supervisors, and employees at the bottom. The google governance structure has some elements of a matrix structure. The company has a functional group comprised of sales, engineering, marketing, legal, finance, and products. An executive manages each group accountable for the company-wide strategy direction and decision-making. The artificial intelligence and cloud operation team at the company is responsible for innovating products and developing the company’s competitive advantages. They are also responsible for fulfilling their mission, statement, and corporate vision. The company also relies on a team-based management approach where the company employees are also allowed to participate in an active role in decision-making.
This makes the company employee feel valued and that their contribution to the company is considered part of its success story. The company governance structure emphasizes an individual’s intelligence and not seniority, thus enabling the exchange of information and skills between workers. The flatness and employee autonomy at google have helped create. Like the Amazon two pizzas rule, Google also came up with their own rule of management known as the 70/20/10, which employees and management must adhere to (The 70-20-10 Rule for Leadership Development). In other words, the company employees are dictated by the rule to spend 70 percent of the workday on the projects assigned to them by the management and 20 on new ideas which have a close relationship with the projects given to the employee by the management and the 10 percent on new ideas of their choice.
Security posture
An organization’s security posture can be defined as the company’s overall organization cybersecurity strength to respond to dynamic cyber threats quickly. The company’s overall security posture entails the company networks, data security, information security, internet security, data breach prevention, security awareness training for the company stakeholders to prevent cyber-attacks, and other controls, including vulnerabilities and penetration testing (Kemper, 2019). Because cyber threats are also dynamic, the organization’s security posture is also ever-changing to respond to new cyber security challenges and threats. Social engineering is one of the largest vectors for cybersecurity attacks. In some cases, cybercriminals lure employees with phishing emails containing links, revealing their login credentials to the employees. In extreme cases, they scam people through phone calls to disclose their personal information.
People and businesses need to be trained in cybersecurity to protect themselves from threats and keep their details safe from criminals. Both Google and Amazon train their employees on cybersecurity. Amazon designed a digestible brief course for their employees, businesses, and people to educate them about possible cybersecurity threats. The company offers this course free of charge to the public, businesses, and employees. The Amazon training is regularly reviewed and updated as the cyber threats evolve. On the other hand, Google has mandatory security training for its employees as part of the orientation process. The employees must agree with the company codes of conduct to keep the customers’ information private and secure during the orientation process.
Depending on the role at the company, the employees are again subjected to additional training. For instance, the company’s new engineers are subjected to additional training by the information security team on ethical issues like secure coding practices, product design, and automated vulnerability testing tools (Kemper, 2019). The company engineers are also taken to a technical presentation on the security issue and newsletters updated with new threats and mitigation techniques. Apart from the stakeholder’s and employees’ training, Amazon also utilizes multi-factor authentication to protect the highly sensitive data it collects from its clients through the AWS accounts. The customers are provided with MFA devices to provide extra security. On the other hand, Google practices a zero-trust approach that enforces access to important information based on the device user, states, and associated users.
Conclusion
The corporate governance of any firm usually targets to prevent the inconsistencies that may arise from any stakeholders, thus solving issues that may cause the improper functioning of the organization. Amazon Inc. uses a vertical governance structure to govern its operations globally. The governance structure has also enabled the organization to increase its market share and retain its status as the e-commerce leader. The company governance structure has the top leader as the chief executive officer. Google is also a fine tech company, but unlike Amazon, the company relies on a traditional hierarchical corporate structure. The company has upper management, middle managers, supervisors, and employees at the bottom. The google governance structure has some elements of a matrix structure. It borrows the elements from both functional and project or project-based organizational structures. Both Google and Amazon rely on training to ensure that cyber criminals do not trick their consumers and employees.
References
Chen, G., Zhang, J. J., & Pifer, N. D. (2019). Corporate governance structure, financial capability, and the R&D intensity in Chinese sports sector: evidence from listed sports companies. Sustainability, 11(23), 6810.
Kemper, G. (2019). Improving employees’ cyber security awareness. Computer Fraud & Security, 2019(8), 11-14.
The 70-20-10 Rule for Leadership Development. (2020). Center for Creative Leadership. Web.
Wu, X., & Gereffi, G. (2018). Amazon and Alibaba: Internet governance, business models, and internationalization strategies. In International business in the information and digital age. Emerald Publishing Limited.