Balancing cooperation and competition. Strategic planning in the Assignment

Balancing cooperation and competition. Strategic planning in the public sector - Assignment Example Balancing cooperation and competition. Strategic planning in the public sector Today, organizations are focusing on how to survive amidst emerging challenges in their external environment. This has led to such organizations developing adaptability measures that facilitate their survival and success in the long run. In spite of this, organizations are forced to strike a fit between cooperation and competition, in the industry in which they operate in, as well as their own survival is to be sustained in the long run. This study explores how Microsoft has stricken a fit between cooperation and competition in its operations while at the same time collecting feedback to identify and support emergent behavior. In the past two decades, Microsoft has been faced by increasing level of competition in its software and web based solutions market. The organization understands that in the technology industry, cooperation is inevitable. For instance, the organization faced a lot of competition from SAP and Siemens. These two organizations went ahead and launched patent battles with Microsoft. While down playing their views and purely taking a legal and competitive approach could have granted Microsoft short term success, the organization opted to cooperate and collaborate with the rivals, resulting to a cross licensing arrangement. This significantly enhanced the ability of the organization to continue using such rights through cooperation while at the same time enhancing its competitiveness in the market. The experience boosted Microsoft’s ability to enhance cooperation in other areas of operation including marketing for mutual benefits. (Vidal, & Nossol, 2011). Microsoft has remained stead fast in promotion of cooperation with its customers. In 2006, the organization adopted a more collaborative approach in the industry, something that enhanced its access to unique technology from rivals while at the same time empowering them to establish more product lines that the organization was not focused on. One of the outstanding occurrences towards this end by Microsoft with competitor is the collaboration with Linux, a product developed by a competitor to the organizations Microsoft word among others. This increased interoperability of Linux with Microsoft word (Microsoft News Centre, 2008). This implies that Microsoft customers of windows could open Linux using such windows while Linux customers could enjoy Microsoft windows in opening of Linux documents. This resulted to mutual benefit between the two organizations and minimization of patent disagreements and legal battles between the firms. In the past two decades, Microsoft has relied on employee, customer and competitor feed back to enhance its success in the industry. By collecting feedback from its competitors such as Samsung and the Linux software developer company, the organization was able to identify emerging needs and opportunities that could be served through collaboration (Microsoft News Centre, 2008). The organization thus fostered a two way form of communication between such firms and the organization. In an effort to ensure that such viable environment positioning is sustained, the organization always focus at hiring the best employees in the industry in terms of skill and engages them in periodic appraisal (Tyler, & Blader, 2003). In situations where performance is found to be low, such employees are engaged in skills development. In fact, the organization has adopted a culture of continuous learning. All these moves have enhanced sustainability and success of the organization in its dynamic operating environment (Tjosvold, & Johnson, 2003). References Microsoft News Centre (2008). Mi crosoft’s collaboration imperative. Retrieved April 11, 2013 from http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/ofnote/04-01-08GutierezIAMArticle.mspx Tjosvold, D., & Johnson, D. (2003). Can interpersonal competition be Constructive within organizations? The Journal of Psychology 137(1), 63-84.