Will Microsoft be aimless without Bill Gates?

Bill Gates will step away from the day-to-day activities at Microsoft in about a month to focus his admirable intellect and energy on his nonprofit work, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He will remain chairman of the company. As the figurehead, spiritual leader and most forceful personality at the company he founded in 1975, Gates will be missed in some of the daily skirmishes and debates over technology issues and how Microsoft wages its battles with Google, Apple, Oracle, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the European Union. But, Gates gave up the CEO title to Steve Ballmer in January 2000 and his chief software architect title to Ray Ozzie in June 2006.

In her new book, Microsoft 2.0: How Microsoft Plans to Stay Relevant in the Post-Gates Era, Mary Jo Foley wrote that "a Gates-less Microsoft is going to be a directionless Microsoft at least for the near term. The existing set of to managers is too mired in old thinking and old ways to turn the Redmond ship quickly." "If Microsoft were still the company it was 10 or 20 years ago, with the simultaneously ruthless and cautious Gates at the helm, I'd have no qualms predicting that the Redmond vendor will be successful in its next decade-plus transition. But can a company that is becoming more and more MBA-heavy (not to mention employee heavy, with a workforce approaching 100,000 when/if the Yahoos are added) be guaranteed of continued success in an ever more technology-driven, nimble and Web-centric world.

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Parties To Corporate Governance

Parties involved in corporate governance contain the regulatory body. Other stakeholders who take part include suppliers, employees, creditors, customers and the community at large. In corporations, the shareholder delegates decision rights to the manager to act in the principal's best interests. This division of ownership from control implies a loss of proficient control by shareholders over managerial decisions. Partially as a result of this separation between the two parties, a system of corporate governance controls is implemented to assist in aligning the incentives of managers with those of shareholders. With the major increase in equity holdings of investors, there has been an opportunity for a reversal of the separation of ownership and control problems because ownership is not so diffuse.

A board of directors often plays an important role in corporate governance. It is their responsibility to support the organization’s strategy, develop directional policy, appoint, supervise and remunerate senior executives and to make sure the accountability of the organization to its owners and authorities. The Company Secretary, known as a Corporate Secretary in the US and often referred to as a Chartered Secretary if qualified by the Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators (ICSA), is a high ranking professional who is trained to support the highest standards of corporate governance, effective operations, compliance and administration.

All parties to corporate governance have an interest, whether direct or indirect, in the efficient performance of the organization. Directors, workers and management receive salaries, benefits and standing, while shareholders receive capital return. Customers receive goods and services; suppliers receive compensation for their goods or services. In return these individuals provide value in the form of natural, human, social and other forms of capital. A key factor in an individual's decision to participate in an organization e.g. through providing financial capital and trust that they will get a fair share of the organizational returns. If some parties are receiving more than their fair return then participants may choose to not continue participating leading to organizational collapse.