These include collaborative platforms including Facebook private pages, Wikis and enterprise content management (ECM) portals used for managing content so it is available on a 24/7 basis. Microsoft has an inherently difficult problem to solve internally about ensuring more opportunities for their talented off-shore programmers to participate in the most challenging and professionally rewarding projects based in the U.S. This ethnocentric attitude has been viewed at times as unethical by programmers located outside the United States. Another aspect of Microsoft's ethical dilemmas is the pricing of software specifically developed in Redmond, Washington where development expenses are at their greatest, yet sold at very aggressive prices in 3rd world nations. Microsoft's pervasive use of bundling which began in response to Netscape's competitive threat (Clements, 2002) continues today in 3rd world nations and is a frequently used strategy for ensuring operating systems and server products are competitive in these nations. Microsoft however has paid development expenses for many of these products in the U.S., and uses their development centers for localization.
The ethical aspects of this on team dynamics are obvious (Lysecki, 2006) with many developers in these other nations insisting that they should be given the opportunity to create these applications, operating systems, and server-based applications entirely in their native nations. Microsoft counters that their quality management of coding in Redmond, Washington is superior (Cusumano, Selby, 1997) and that it is essential for team dynamics that core areas of applications be developed and tested in Redmond. The effects of this from a team dynamics perspective continue to be felt in how global teams are managed and motivated. The fact that the Chinese market is by far the most promising from an operating system standpoint has the 5,000 member development and R&D Center in Beijing (Buderi, 2005) focused on how they can earn credibility and ascend in the Microsoft corporate culture.
Summary
In developing high performance teams within high technology companies such as Microsoft, credibility and technical expertise, or expert power, are far more important than position power or legitimate power. The catalyst of what keeps these companies competitive is the extent to which they can continually grow new leaders who have a strong depth of technological ability, yet also have the ability to motivate through example. The...
Externally there is the challenge of managing products' pricing in foreign countries so they are competitive yet also ethically priced and not deliberately low-priced just to gain market share. Microsoft has the many challenges of managing global development teams ethically for their globally-based employees while also ensuring their pricing is ethical and not deliberately low to just drive smaller, less financially viable competitors from the market.
References
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(Buderi, 2005)
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