Companies like Amazon, Facebook, and Google are often described as great companies because they create products or provide services that have a positive impact on consumers. These companies are innovators and the products that they produce provide a benefit to society. However, a great company in the eye of the consumer does not necessarily translate to a great working environment for employees. Companies are not perfect and at some point choices are made that lead to problems within a company. This happened to Amazon. The problem with Amazon is that employees are not valued. Instead, the customer has top priority and the need to please customers drives Amazon more than anything. This is not necessarily wrong, but it comes down to how employees …show more content…
The New York Times article interviewed over 100 current and former Amazon Employees. Many described a stressful work environment, where ideas were criticized and employees cried at their desks. Another aspect of Amazon’s culture that has contributed to a negative work environment is the reporting system. Employees are encouraged to report on the good and bad actions of colleagues, which leads to undermining and false reporting (Kantor and Streitfield). While this system might help make personnel decisions, it places stress on Amazon employees and creates conflict in the …show more content…
Amazon follows the ethical principles of reliability, fairness, and responsiveness. The goal is to please customers, which helps the company’s shareholders. The company’s number one leadership principle is customer obsession (Amazon.com). Amazon does this by keeping promises to its customers, dealing fairly with its customers, and responding to the claims and concerns of its customers. When one entity is obsessed over, others are forgotten. Amazon’s obsession of customers led to poor employee treatment. Without employees, Amazon would not be able to accomplish anything. The company’s executives might believe that they are doing what is best for the company by having a singular focus on customers, but this is not the case. While Amazon cares greatly about its customers, the principles of fairness and dignity are not as important to the company when it comes to employees. Some stakeholders, customers, are treated more ethically than others, employees. This is a problem and Amazon’s lack of care for employees has hurt the company
The article,¨Amazon.com Is a 21st Century Deal with the Devil¨, by Amy Koss talks about how Amazon is the Devil in the 21st century.The main idea of this article is why and how Amazon is the Devi in our century. I can see why that Amazon is the Devil because Amazon is taking away jobs from people. It also says that we don't want to interact with people and we don't want to go places. I also agree with the Koss because we just met people online and don't talk to people outside of our homes. The article says that people just go out then go back home and order it on Amazon. Amazon are destroying small independent bookstores. Amazon is also toying our sloth and make us want to buy things that we don't even need.
History”, n.d.). But the unbelievable pace at which Amazon added new products and new customers proved to be a formidable barrier for any competitors. Within the first 10 years Amazon accomplished an unbelievable feat; it had 49 million customers and 6.9 billion dollars in revenue, and it had done so by selling some products at a loss to build market share (Rivlin, 2005). At times it was difficult leveraging so much capital to grow market share, but Jeff Bezos’ focus on the customer and long term growth of the company proved to be the real reason Amazon didn’t fall prey to the .com bust like so many other internet
Amazon has Corporate Governance, which includes a Code of Business Conduct and Ethics. This code addresses twelve different aspects of their business including, compliance with laws, rules, and regulations, conflicts of interest, insider trading policy, discrimination and harassment, health and safety, price fixing, bribery, recordkeeping, and financial integrity, questions, periodic certification, board of directors, and waivers. Basic guiding principles of how their employees should conduct business in reference to these aspects are included in the descriptions. While these guidelines are kept quite brief, extra emphasis is placed on Conflicts of Interest. A heightened sense of concern is placed on whether employees use their personal benefits on family members or affiliates and if position in the company or relationships with outside affiliates interferes with employee’s objective business judgment. A common theme found throughout this code is an emphasis on cautionary business, including many laws that employees are expected to comply with to ensure that they do not interfere...
Treanor, T.. (2010). Amazon: Love Them? Hate Them? Let's Follow the Money. Publishing Research Quarterly, 26(2), 119-128. Retrieved February 24, 2012, from ABI/INFORM Trade & Industry. (Document ID: 2377177581).
Amazon’s macro-environment is made up of six external factors: political, economic, environmental, technological, social, and legal conditions. These factors are important because they shape how the company operates and you must know each piece to be able to compete within the retail and eCommerce industry. An evolving political factor are the efforts the government has made toward punishing offenders of cyber-crime. This kind of thief wasn’t walking into your store, but hacking into your computer. This type of crime wasn’t possible before the internet. The government has started to take these crimes more serious as technology evolves. Technology is a factor that Amazon.com must invest heavily in. They are reliant on having top of the line technology to survive against cyber-crime and to stay relevant in the tech world. ECommerce is everywhere now and competition is very high. This brings in legal conditions; Amazon must know what laws exist in which countries because they are a
Customer service is paramount at Amazon and Bezos consistently reminds employees that their focus needs to consider the impact and feeling of the consumer. He is known to be an outside the box thinking daring to be bold and go against the norm. Utilizing drones to reduce delivery times while minimizing costs display Bezos focus on customers and stakeholders (Amazon Prime Air, n.d.). Bezos is a task-oriented transactional leader, who Brad Stone in his book “The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon”, described Bezos as a micromanager who does not value the opinion of his employees (Stone, 2013). These individuals excel in achieving goals and positive outcomes but need improvement in human relations. Bezos tends to be bold and brash and not warm and fuzzy, and empathy is a critical component to others buying into your vision (Schwartz, 2015). He often becomes frustrated at his employees and berates them publicly; an unusual approach for an individual who built an amazing company. A company built on fear and stress looks beautiful from the outside but internally could quickly collapse if Bezos does not address his communications approach. Corporate culture is vital to the long-term future of business and Bezos needs to recognize how he leads the internal customer will translate over to the external consumer. Managing through fear and
A usual work day at Amazon is busy with non-stop problem-solving and process improvement. The pace is quick and the work challenging. Organizational discipline, time-management skills and the ability to dive into something without a clear solution, in order to determine the best way forward are necessary qualities for a successful employee. Bezos has often been criticized for his unusual leadership style but more often praised on his ingenuity in the growth of Amazon. His leadership style is said to be unconventional, and sometimes ruthless. With a clear focus on where he is going, he micromanages his team. He has a history of managing his team in an autocratic manner within a closed systems approach. Open systems theory
Another part of Amazon’s retail strategy is to serve as the channel for other retailers to sell their products and take a percentage of cut of every purchase. Amazon does not have to maintain inventory on slower-selling products. This strategy has made Amazon a ‘long tail’ leading retailer, expanding its available selection without a corresponding increase in overhead costs.
Amazon has been able to maintain sustainable competitive advantage based on three operational strategies. These are low cost-leadership, customer differentiation and focus strategies. Low cost-leadership is pursued by Amazon by differentiating itself primarily on the basis of price. By offering low prices to customers Amazon ensures its future success. Partially modifying the costs of lowering prices over time through achieving higher sales volumes, negotiating better terms with suppliers, and achieving better operating efficiencies. Amazon makes sure that it offers the same quality products as other companies at a considerably cheaper price. Another strategy that Amazon has is its fast delivery service and there are many delivery services that one can choose from. With Amazon Prime, there are certain, but many products that have free two-day shipping. Also, with Amazon Prime, there are many offers specifically for people that have Amazon Prime. For example,
When Amazon.com first began in 1995, as strictly a book retailer, Bezos knew he had discovered an excellent company. After all, a physical bookstore cannot stock anywhere close to the number of books Amazon can offer online. Within a year, the company had a customer base of approximately 340,000 consumers and daily site visits were huge as well. But Bezos wanted to expand the company to offer music and DVDs, because he realized there was little or no barrier of entry. In the next years Amazon would emerge as a marketplace, expanding the company globally offering products from toys to kitchenware. Because of the relatively cheap prices Amazon was offering and also the growing number of online shoppers, the company was doing tremendous amounts of sales and creating profits.
Amazon.com creates value for its customers by offering customers broad array of products to select from through their website and ensuring timely delivery of products to exhibit high level of commitment towards their business and customers
Amazon has recorded a magnificent success in its business throughout the years that it has been in operation. It has attracted almost all people to use it when necessary. Amazon has built its success in business methodically and slowly. Amazon has made much success because of its ability to read market trends and diversify its operations. It started as an online book selling company. However, it changed its operations and started selling other products. Currently, many large retail shops use Amazon to host and power their websites, for instance, sears and virgin megastores. Amazon now attracts over fifty million visitors in a period of one month. Amazon has tried to make their services fit each individual user. It has based its services on the end user. It has shipping discounts, customer product reviews and a credit card with bonuses. It also has prime membership, product forums and 1-click ordering system among other services. The company has tried to make a remarkable experience for customers and visitors (Thomas, 2006).
Technological factors. This is very important factor for Amazon therefore the success of the business depends on that. Amazon has to face a lot of technological challenges and to find a way to be ahead of the competitors.
Firstly, Amazon.com employed the cost leadership strategy by offering products and services at lower costs than competitors. The key to making this strategy successful were the economies of scale that allowed the company to offer the largest range of products to its customers.
Employee stakeholders have another story. The discrimination lawsuits ranging from female employees not getting equal pay or equal positions, to disabled employees, class-action lawsuits stating that Wal-Mart doctors questionnaires to prevent disabled workers from applying, Wal-Mart does not rank very high with these employees. Lawsuits stemming from Wal-Mart’s failure to monitor labor conditions at oversea factories and hires illegal immigrants add to the rift in relations between the employees and the company. Wal-Mart continues to deny charges...