Intel Company Overview: Ethics, Decision Making, Organizational Culture And Leadership

Ethics

The company Intel stresses the importance of following its code of conduct and living by its core values. There are five core principles that Intel stands by to ensure that the working environment is healthy, productive, and honest. The first core principle is to conduct business while being honest and working with integrity. This means displaying honesty and having high ethical standards when working with anyone. This goes for colleagues, customers, distributors, and suppliers. Everyone is to be treated as equal and to be given the utmost respect. Furthermore, employees are to act with professionalism and relentless integrity.

The second core principle to follow in order to maintain Intel’s standards is to follow the letter and spirit of the law. It is essential for the business to make all decisions in accordance with laws and regulations that may apply to to the various countries that Intel works with. Having a strong and respectful relationship with foreign partners is vital for growth of the company and expanding the market.

The third principle that Intel follows is to work as a team and treat everyone fairly. This goes without question, as having a cohesive unit of workers that respect and trust each other will only help with becoming more efficient and productive. In addition, having people that you can trust helps a great deal when overcoming conflicts and trying to come up with a solution to a problem. Working with people that are trustworthy and respectful is the foundation to building a successful corporate culture. This allows for the company to work as one healthy body and execute its tasks daily to the best of its ability.

Another principle that is a very important part of Intel’s code of conduct is to act in the best interest of the company and avoid any conflicts of interest. This means keeping personal and family interests separate from the company’s interests. This allows for the people of Intel to have the company’s best interests in mind, and be able to make sound decisions to the best of the business’s ability.

The final and possibly the most important principle that the people of Intel must follow as part of their code of conduct is to protect the company’s assets and confidential information. This includes physical assets, intellectual property, confidential information, and the reputation of the brand as a whole. In addition, it is necessary to protect the confidential information of the employees, suppliers, and customers. In order to do this, it takes a group of respectful and trustworthy individuals to be able to work for Intel. Everyone is treated fairly and even the upper positions must follow these principles completely.

Nearly a year ago, Intel had an ethical dilemma where previous CEO Brian Krzanich violated the company policy and was forced to resign. There was an investigation that was done to determine that he had a past consensual relationship with an employee of Intel. It was confirmed that this was true, Krzanich had violated Intel’s non-fraternization policy which goes for all managers. Although Krzanich contributed to much of Intel’s growth since being appointed CEO in 2013, it was only right to follow Intel’s ethical standards and execute the appropriate punishment. Doing this shows the people of Intel that there are no exceptions and there are consequences for unethical actions. While it may seem as a big loss to the company, it reinforced the idea of no toleration of these kinds of actions amongst the employees.

Decision Making/Planning/Strategy

Ever since Brian Krzanich was promoted to the CEO of Intel, the company has gone through a massive reshaping of its strategy and business as a whole. When he became CEO, Intel was in the midst of a declining PC market. This meant that in order to stay relevant in the tech industry, Intel needed to adapt beyond its computer business. Prior to the changes made in the company, PCs made up 80 percent of the business. PCs currently make up a much smaller portion of Intel’s business, however, it has been able to remain relevant and continue to grow despite a decline in the PC side of the company.

Krzanich saw opportunities in emerging markets such as cloud computing, autonomous vehicles, and 5G wireless networks. These markets all produce a lot of data, which is where Intel comes into play. Intel began reshaping itself into a data center company, producing the chips that analyze and process the data.

Another major part of Intel’s planning and strategy is expanding into other areas and creating manufacturing facilities. Intel has been in the planning phase for manufacturing facility expansions in Oregon, Ireland, and Israel. All across Israel, Intel is creating development centers for all sorts of technologies. In the city of Haifa, Israel, Intel has began the construction of a development center for hardware and software processors. In addition they are adding a focus on artificial intelligence. In Petah Tikvah, Israel, Intel has created a development center for communication and artificial intelligence solutions. Additionally, Intel has created a global development center for autonomous cars, a development center for communication, software, and cyber security solutions in Jerusalem.

However, the biggest addition to the Intel expansion has been its manufacturing center in Kiryat Gat, Israel. Kiryat Gat is home to Intel’s most advanced manufacturing facility. It is one of the most advanced manufacturing facilities Intel has throughout the world. In addition, Israel hosts Intel’s largest development center in the world. Having these facilities makes them a significant location for the development of technology and one of the leading companies in the Israeli market, particularly in the production of 7th and 8th generation core processors.

Adopting a globalization strategy has helped Intel further grow its business by having an international influence and allowed its revenue to not be confined to its borders. Furthermore, having an international presence allows Intel to help contribute to foreign economic development. Intel has done this in Israel by employing 12,800 people across five centers and acquiring products from local suppliers. Doing this is mutually beneficial for Intel and Israel, as Intel is lowering its costs and maximizing profit, while boosting economic growth all across Israel. It is an important time for Intel, as the strides they are making are completely changing their company, the tech industry, and the world as a whole.

Organizational Culture

A company’s organizational culture displays the values and norms that are shared by the members of an organization. This helps in shaping how employees work and make decisions. The components that make up an organizational culture can be classified as visible and invisible. Visible is the part of the culture that can be seen at the surface level. These are things such as artifacts, how you dress, the office layout, symbols, slogans, and ceremonies. The invisible level is described as the deeper values and shared understandings held by the members of the organization. Both are key components to what makes a cohesive and successful organizational culture. And it is this successful culture that allows for businesses to learn and adapt to challenging situations.

In Intel’s case, their organizational culture is used as a way to ensure the company’s abilities through the competition and challenges in the tech industry. Intel’s culture helps to fulfill their mission statement and vision statement, as well as act resilient in a challenging and rapidly changing environment. Additionally, the organizational culture is used as tool for generating employee motivation and morale. For example, Intel has human resource programs that promote the development of camaraderie and rapport among employees. This creates a motivated workforce that satisfies the goals of the business. This in turn helps lower employee turnover and relative costs. It is this organizational culture that makes Intel the leading business of their industry.

What makes Intel’s organizational culture so unique is its values. These values are what define Intel’s culture. Intel’s culture is considered to be a meritocracy, which hires people on the basis of talent, effort, and achievement. This type of culture sets Intel apart from competitors while maintaining a high-end brand. Furthermore, it influences the employees of Intel to adopt a technologically efficient mindset. Some of the key values that Intel stresses are risk-taking, discipline, result orientation, and quality.

While there are many benefits from Intel’s organizational culture, it has its disadvantages. The one downside of Intel’s culture is the limited amount of emphasis placed on rapid innovation. Although risk taking is an important part of the culture, it does not promote all employees to adopt an innovative thinking mindset. One recommendation would be to have a stronger focus on promoting innovative thinking, which is vital to overcoming challenges in a competitive industry and rapidly changing market. By instilling an innovative thinking mindset in its employees, Intel can greatly improve their organizational culture.

Leadership

As previously mentioned, Intel has recently dealt with a leadership change. Former CEO Brian Krzanich was forced to resign after he violated Intel’s non fraternization policy. This was a pretty big deal for the company, as a lack of clear leadership would only add to the uncertainty of the business’s long term vision. Having a period of time without a clear leader caused Intel to announce a one year delay in the production of its ten nanometer chip. This made Intel more vulnerable to its top competitor AMD.

In early 2019, Intel promoted CFO Robert Swan to CEO as the interim and became the 7th CEO to lead the company. After seven months of working as the interim CEO of the company, he was officially named CEO.

Swan joined Intel in 2016 after working for General Atlantic LLC, a global growth equity investment firm. He worked closely with the firm’s global portfolio companies and helped them with growth objectives.

Before he joined General Atlantic, Swan worked nine years as the CFO of eBay. Prior to working as the CFO of eBay, he was the CFO of Electronic Data Systems Corp. and TRW Inc. He also was the CFO, COO and CEO of Webvan Group. Swan started his career at General Electric, working there for fifteen years and holding several senior finance roles. Swan had much experience working as part of a leadership role of a business, making him the perfect candidate to lead Intel.

Intel places a strong emphasis on its leadership by utilizing its accelerated leadership program. This program is a MBA leadership development initiative that gives associates the opportunity to be mentored by senior management. It teaches associates what it takes to become a leader and the challenges that come with it. After completing the program, associates are given the opportunity to pursue a position at the senior management level if they wish to. This is a very effective program, as it prepares up and coming associates for the potential to take on a management role in the future.

Having the right type of leader is key to any successful business. It is the leader’s job to set the tone for the business environment and cultivate a strong corporate culture. A good leader is one that has a clear vision for the company and motivates and inspires action from its employees to work towards that vision. Without a strong leader, there will be a negative and non productive work environment.

The style of leadership that most resembles Intel is a democratic style. This is an effective style of leadership, as it allows and encourages employees to have a more participative role in the decision making process. Furthermore, a democratic leader offers its employees more work satisfaction and encourages innovation and creative thinking in order to solve problems. It is this type of leadership that works for Intel as a company, and has allowed them to expand their business and grow in the midst of a declining PC market.

Organizational change and innovation:

As Intel has transitioned from being primarily a single product company to a more diverse one, it has had to adopt a more forward thinking mindset and change the way it works. Further, Intel has had to embrace new methods and approaches of work in order to drive innovation.

One of the ways that Intel has embraced change is through a concept known as agile development. Agile development is an approach to software development in which goals and solutions evolve through the collaboration of organized and cross-functional teams and their consumer. This allows for people to come together to work in a focused and collaborative manner in order to effectively solve problems.

Another change is that there has been an emphasis placed on nonroutine work. Intel has recognized that repetitive work will continue to become increasingly automated, and that truly valuable work comes from creativity and collaborating with others. Intel has been able to establish a form of hyper-connectedness, where employees can work in a rich ecosystem of partners, and work outside of corporate norms.

Intel has been able to virtualize the workplace, as it understands that work is not limited to just a place that people go. Work is a way of life, and can be done anywhere at anytime. This is especially true when working in the technology industry, as technology is always at one’s disposal. This creates for a flexible work environment, that empowers people to work without any limitations.

It is evident that in order to achieve innovation, it goes beyond technology. Innovation is a result of a change in the mindset of workers, and a change in how people work. If you can not create change in the employees of a business, the technology that changes around them will not make a difference. Successful companies today that are innovative, are innovative because they promote and embrace new styles of working. This proves to be effective when new working methods are supported throughout the entire business. New working methods and practices should be promoted by the organizational development department and the human resources department especially. It is this way of organizational change that is an important driver of innovation.

Conflict and negotiation:

Part of the somewhat recent conflict that Intel has been dealing with has to do with their use of conflict minerals in their products. Conflict minerals are known as natural resources that are taken from “conflict zones”, areas that are currently undergoing extreme violence and war. The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a well known conflict zone, where many armies and rebel groups are profiting off of mining these materials and adding to the war and violence. Extracting these minerals will only fuel the fighting and lead to a greater conflict. The four most common conflict minerals are cassiterite which is used for tin, wolframite which is used for tungsten, coltan which is used for tantalum, and goldore. These four minerals are used in the manufacturing of a variety of electronic devices. While there has been legislation put in place to make an effort in combating the use of conflict resources, it is difficult to determine for certain that all electronic devices are conflict mineral free.

It is Intel’s mission to raise awareness about the use of conflict minerals and allow consumers, suppliers, and manufacturers to be proactive about being conflict free. Reason being that the situation in the Congo is concerning and Intel does not want to contribute to the problem; instead they want to help fix the problem. Additionally, Intel received a letter from a group of non governmental organizations and socially responsible investors that were concerned about the use of conflict mineral use, and the impact it was having socially on conflict ridden countries.

It was challenging to immediately fix the problem, as there were no already existing systems that could track minerals from the point of mining to the rest of the supply chain. In addition, manufacturers were unaware of where their metals were coming from. It was decided that creating a smelter validation system would be the best option, as the people processing the metals are an important choke point in the supply chain. Intel also gathered information from their suppliers about the materials they were being supplied. This would give enough assurance that Intel would not be further contributing to the problems in the Congo.

Another notable conflict that has been affecting the tech industry as a whole has to do with weaknesses in the design of their products. Known as Spectre and Meltdown, these are flaws in how the processors and chips are made, which lead to performance issues and security weaknesses. They affect how processors manage data and more importantly, allow a rogue process to read all of their memory, even when they are not authorized to. This is a problem that affects all of the leading manufacturers, including Intel, AMD, and ARM. Spectre and Meltdown have been able to point out weaknesses in the design of chips for nearly two decades. This requires a fix much more than just a simple software patch, but rather rethinking how processors and chips are made. Since these weaknesses have been brought to Intel’s attention, they have used a hacking team to help by issuing their own attacks and have continued to find exploitable weaknesses in their products.

Motivation:

Analytics firm VisionMobile created a survey for software development companies to figure out their employee’s motivations and goals. It was comprised of 6000 participants from 115 different countries. The survey determined that money was the prime motivator for about half of the people surveyed. 53% of developers said that creativity and a sense of achievement were their primary motivators. 33% of people said that their main goals were to gain knowledge, have fun, and make strides towards self-improvement. It is evident that most software development companies look for more than just people who work for them for the money, they want people that are looking to grow as individuals and are motivated to get things done. This is especially evident with Intel.

As mentioned earlier, Intel’s human resource programs are a huge driver of motivation in the way they create camaraderie and rapport amongst the employees. Other motivating factors that draw people to the company and make them want to stay with the company is through numerous perks and benefits. Intel offers bonuses, stock options, and generous time off. They also offer sabbaticals, which is a granted leave of absence for study or travel where pay is still given. Other perks include on site fitness centers and private transportation.

Some other ways that Intel motivates its employees is through grant programs and awards. Intel created the Sustainability in Action grant program, which gives employees the opportunity to create company projects that are different from the typical Intel project. All that is required is the employee find a source of funding. Some examples include a water conservation garden project that was created in Folsom California and solar labs that were made in Costa Rica. Having grant programs like these allow for employees to show their passion for a certain cause and do something about it.

In relation to these projects, Intel also created the Intel Environmental Excellence Awards. These awards are given to employees who create projects that help reduce the overall environmental impact of the company. This could be anything from recycling initiatives, to waste reduction, to energy conservation. An example of this is shown in Ireland, where scanner tools were modified to reduce the number of times water was filtered. This ended up saving 350,000 gallons of water and over $500,000 in waste reduction for the company. It is projects like these that give employees intrinsic motivation to work at Intel. Intel gives people the platform to work for a desired goal and and feel a sense of personal accomplishment. Projects that help the environment and become a cleaner company provides a lot of satisfaction and motivation for everyone.

Teams:

Intel is comprised of many segments that all play an important role in the company. Ever since the company began its expansion into newer markets such as cloud computing, autonomous vehicles, 5G wireless networks, and artificial intelligence there have been many newer team additions to the company.

There is the cloud computing group, which produces hardware components that are used in desktop and laptop computers. This segment was responsible for over half of Intel’s revenues in 2016. Intel has placed more focus on cloud computing, as they decided to cut 11 percent of their global workforce in order to evolve from a PC company to one that powers the cloud and is supported by smart computer devices.

Then there is the data center group, which is responsible for producing hardware components that are used for server, network, and storage platforms. This segment generated 29 percent of Intel’s revenues in 2016. With the amount of markets that are so heavily reliant on data, this segment is expected to account for most of Intel’s growth in the years ahead.

Next is the internet of things group. This segment offers platforms that are designed for retail, transportation, industrial, and home use. This is one of the smaller revenue-generating segments, only accounting for five percent of Intel’s revenues in 2016. However the internet of things team is very important in providing connectivity support while also protecting the data and systems they produce.

There is also the nonvolatile memory solutions group, which manufactures NAND flash memory and 3D XPoint, which are non volatile memory storage devices. Nonvolatile means that it can hold and retrieve saved data even if the power is turned off. This type of storage is especially important for storing data in the long term. This group was responsible for four percent of revenues.

Another important segment of Intel is the security group. This team produces security and antivirus software. This group is comprised of many divisions that have been acquired by Intel, such as McAfee, BNamericas, and more. It is essential to have a strong security team that can protect systems, networks and mobile devices for business and personal use for employees and all consumers of their products. This segment generated four percent of their revenues in 2016.

Finally, there is the programmable solutions group. Intel programmable solutions group is responsible for manufacturing programmable semiconductors, which are essential components of most electronic circuits. This segment accounted for three percent of revenues in 2016.

For any business, having a team that gets along and works well together will have the most success. Forming a solid team is one of the most important steps to creating a successful business. It is important to surround oneself with like minded, honest people. Having people that share in the same values, drive, and vision allows for a strong culture within the business. This helps a company learn and adapt to challenging situations and have the most success within the business. This is what makes Intel a very successful, cohesive, and prestigious company.