The Microsoft Corporation was founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, two MIT students. According to crunchbase.com (2011) Microsoft is known for its “Microsoft Windows operating system and the Microsoft Office suite of productivity software,” as well as other products such as the Xbox, Zune, and the Bing search engine (par.1). What started as a garage company has blossomed over the years into an 89,000-employee software conglomerate. Aside from their internationally recognized products, I attribute the success and longevity of Microsoft's market reign to the fact that they are a combination of an organic and mechanical organization. The average of the organic components appears to be higher than that of the mechanical components. In his interview with Microsoft employees Kreitner reveals that the general internal attitude at Microsoft is one of non-compliance. Employees are encouraged to be themselves and given the tools and environment to be creative and productive. There seems to be little strict supervision, but rather a sense of everyone working towards the same goal in groups across different divisions. Employees have the opportunity to express their creativity and test products internally to see the initial response as a test before presenting their ideas to management or other product development groups. While Kreitner's (2008) case study "A Country Called Microsoft" primarily describes Microsoft as a very flexible organization, there is evidence of rote procedures, "...developers and testers come together to enumerate and evaluate hundreds of bugs and potential bugs..." (p. 191). This is one of the essential processes for every product created by Microsoft and they are repeated over and over again. Microsoft's key mission is to provide products... middle of paper... purely symbolic behavior by creating a calm, fun and stimulating work environment for its employees without being forced to do so. He realized that employees can only reach their full potential if they are given the space to grow. It's no surprise that Microsoft is the largest software company in the world. Microsoft has recognized that employees are a company's most important asset and treats them as such. Works Cited Kreitner, R. (2008). A country called Microsoft. In Management Fundamentals, Basics, and Best Practices (pages 190, 191). Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. Microsoft. (2011). Retrieved May 28, 2011, from crunchbase.com: http://www.crunchbase.com/company/microsoftn.a. (n.d.). History of the Microsoft Corporation. Retrieved May 28, 2011, from Fundinguniverse.com: http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/Microsoft-Corporation-Company-History.html