ORGANIZATIONAL ISSUES AND SOLUTIONS
3
Assignment Preparation: Amazon
Student’s Name: LaShandra Brooks
Course Name: Leadership and Organization
Course Number: 520
Professor: Dr. Tillman
Due Date: January 24, 2022
Assignment Preparation: Amazon
The company I selected is Amazon. Amazon.com, Inc is an American technology company that specializes in cloud computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and digital streaming. Amazon is among the leading technology companies in the United States alongside Meta (previously known as Facebook), Google, Apple, and Microsoft (Fortune, 2021). It has been considered the most valuable brand in the world and one of the most influential cultural and economic forces in the universe. As of 2021, Amazon was the largest online marketplace, the top internet company, the leading cloud computing provider, and the largest artificial intelligence provider in the world. It outshined Walmart to become the world’s leading retail seller outside the Chinese market (Weise & Corkey, 2021). This was mainly driven by the two hundred million Prime subscribers that the company amassed in 2021.
I will be analyzing Amazon’s organizational culture. For several years, Amazon work culture has been described as “harsh” for both low-level and high-level employees. Most employees complain of unrealistic performance expectations, lack of recognition, absence of employee benefits, lack of fairness in ranking systems, unhealthy competition between workers, and management insensitivity, among others. Generally, a harsh, combative, bruising, and pushy work culture is considered old-fashioned. Today’s popular notion is that a healthy workplace needs to be encouraging and nurturing, and managers, as well as other organizational leaders, need to be friendly and kind to employees. But Amazon seems to ignore this belief.
Poor organizational culture is a hindrance to organizational efficiency. It demotivates the employees, consequently, reducing the overall organizational performance (Zhao et al., 2018). Poor work culture can also result in low employee engagement, high employee turnover, and absenteeism. This can result in inefficiency, and eventually, poor performance.
References
Fortune. (2021). Amazon. Retrieved from: https://fortune.com/company/amazon-com/
Weise, K & Corkery, M. (2021). People Now Spend More at Amazon Than at Walmart. The New York Times. Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/17/technology/amazon-walmart.html
Zhao, H., Teng, H., & Wu, Q. (2018). The effect of corporate culture on firm performance: Evidence from China. China Journal of Accounting Research, 11(1), 1-19.