(TIỂU LUẬN) assignment 3 individual case study of amazon student information

BUSM4557 Contemporary Management Issues and Challenges Assignment Individual case study of Amazon Student Information Student name: Tran Xuan Cuong Student ID: s3931079 Lecturer: Brian O'Reilly Table of Contents I INTRODUCTION II PROBLEM ANALYSIS a Physical and Mental’s exhaustion b Lack of supportive, interpersonal workers’ relationship 4 III RECOMMENDATIONS a Participative leadership and emotional intelligence training for managerial position b Mental-health supporting program for workers 6 IV POTENTIAL RISKS V CONCLUSION VI REFERENCES VII APPENDIX I INTRODUCTION Amazon Inc is unquestionably one of the most successful business models in history This retailing giant has continuously innovated its products and services, from the famous profitable 10 Kindle to the competitive streaming platform Amazon Prime The key to Amazon’s remarkable achievements attributes to the word-famous customer-centric strategy by the company’s founder Jeff Bezos However, to create the idealistic, optimal organizational culture for speedy growth, Amazon reportedly neglected such human resources issues in their warehouses According to Just Capital Company Ranking (2022), Amazon’s scores on stakeholders’ accountability and Worker Health & Safety are concerningly lower than the industry standard More alarming, the company’s rating on ethical leadership cannot reach 50% of the expected standard (Figure 1) This information undoubtedly indicates Amazon’s inefficiency in HR management Witnessing the severe damage caused by COVID-19 last two years, Amazon must seriously evaluate their situations and make an effort to elevate HR implications since these are the irreplaceable piece to unlock both the short and long-term organizational goals (Collings et al 20201) Therefore, this report aims to provide an in-depth analysis of the roots, challenges, and implications of Amazon’s HR issues mentioned in provided cases news Also, this paper will include multifaceted recommendations for the struggles Amazon is facing II PROBLEM ANALYSIS Given Amazon’s controversial, heated news in the case study, this massive internet-based enterprise is struggling to solve the challenge of creating a sustainable working environment while maintaining optimal performance and skyrocketing revenue The primary company issues, directly blocking Amazon from achieving human resource competencies, are the stringent and high-achieving organizational culture The concept of Organizational culture elaborates predetermined beliefs and values mindfully constructed by the organization (Wilson 2001) These components can directly navigate an enterprise’s activities toward different stakeholders in today’s economy Most importantly, there is no universal model for the most effective organizational culture since every company operates in a diverse, complicated market direction As a result, business owners must prioritize corporate culture’s aspect that complements their growth strategy (Hofstede Insights 2021) Therefore, adjusting Amazon’s stringent organizational culture is extremely complicated since the company’s success was built on Jeff Bezos’s dedication to excellent customer service Amazon’s customer-centric culture is articulated in the eloquent statement of the company’s owners “You can work long, hard, or smart, but at Amazon, you can’t choose two out of three”, or inculcated in their employees’ guidelines (AWS 2016) Nevertheless, such implementations of this achievement-obsessed culture have sacrificed both employees’ physical and mental health Also, due to this aggressive, competitive working culture, collaboration and supportiveness among workers are becoming unrealistic at Amazon a Physical and Mental’s exhaustion Employees’ health deterioration and unbearable stress are from the detrimental goal-oriented characteristic of Amazon’s working culture This characteristic can be detected from such signature performance management methods of Amazon The most criticized example of Amazon's product-oriented culture is the “Always-on” spirit With the 'always-on’ mentality, Amazon expects employees to be present at all times and devote themselves to the benefit of the company As a result, employees’ work-life has been negatively impacted by the requirement for 24/7 connectivity, 80-plus-hour workweeks, and no real vacation or holidays, even on special occasions For example, there was a case where a warehouse employee was required to work through Christmas and sacrificed family time due to her schedule (Alfred 2020) Another example of Amazon’s detrimental goal-chasing mindset is the TOT (Time off-task) policy This supervising model is created to motivate warehouse workers to “work vigorously” and “speed matter”, which are the written core principle of Amazon’s performance-oriented culture in their Global Career Site (2019) Without proper breaks, workers often suffer from strenuous physical labor, dehydration, and constant mental pressure (Jabsky & Obermauer 2019) The abovementioned problems are undoubtedly damaging to employees’ condition and performance The stress from a company’s high expectations and pressure can be quite beneficial in boosting work enthusiasm since the majority can accept that challenge (Lockwood 2003) Nevertheless, intensive pressure and strict regulations might limit employees’ potential performance and discipline (Putri et al 2019) Even worst, when people continuously and involuntarily exchange their lives for company duties, they will exceed their stress tolerance level, leading to undesirable consequences for either themselves or the company b Lack of supportive, interpersonal workers’ relationship The US culture might affect the uncollaborative and aggressive attitude among employees They receive a high score in individualism but a low rate in long-term orientation, according to the Hofstede test (2017), which can be related to prioritizing personal’s advantage and hesitation on bonding at the workplace Acknowledging the lack of a team-oriented mindset, Amazon’s inflexible culture has neglected this aspect Still, for optimal performance, the company has many programs that produce intense competition between workers, such as the “rank and yank” performance management system or “purposeful Darwinism” Ironically, these systems have increased the dishonesty, rigid and aggressiveness for both manager and worker levels In the given case, an employee wished to negotiate with her boss on her working schedule to spend more time with her infant child Still, her request was denied solely because she received negative anonymous peer feedback from her coworkers Even more, white-collar employees must prepare, read, and absorb 50 to 60 pages of reports containing thousands of data points for routine "business review" meetings Employees are frequently quizzed on specific numbers by their managers during these review meetings, and it is not uncommon to hear managers call responses "stupid" or tell workers to "just stop it." It can be clearly seen that an authoritative leader/manager or coercive attitude is typical in Amazon Although this managerial style can generate subsequent revenue growth in difficult economic situations, which fits Amazon’s orientation (Huang et al 2015), This autocratic leadership mentality has eliminated the employees’ enthusiasm and innovative mentality for works by heavily criticizing their mistakes or imperfection Moreover, lack of fair, emotional consideration and proper communication in systematic employees’ appraisal tools, like the 360 and “rank and yank”, is not only demotivating staffs at all levels contributing their best performance but also igniting disunite, mischief inside the company III RECOMMENDATIONS From the issue’s identification and implementation analysis in section II, the core HR problem for Amazon is the stringent, inflexible, and imbalanced achievement-oriented cooperate culture If the lack of a people-oriented essence in Amazon’s culture is not properly fixed, the company will suffer from a shortage of talented workforce and lose many competitive advantages in the economy To tackle this dilemma, my primary emphasis in this recommendation section will be initiating positive changes to Amazon’s cooperate culture The first change I’m aiming for is to complement the employee-oriented deficit in Amazon’s cooperate culture Secondly, my target will be integrating more mental-health awareness into the organizational development journey However, due to the limit of this report, I will focus on the two key practices for achieving my set goals in the next section a Participative leadership and emotional intelligence training for managerial positions To effectively create positive change to organizational culture, the company must invest in five critical change-enabling leadership behaviors (Yukl & Carlopio 2014) The first requirements for the managers to execute this model are having a high, patient belief in staff’s potential, contagious positivity, and great employees’ compassion, which is also the advantage of leaders who express high Emotional Intelligent (EQ) Two of the four key pillars from high EQ leaders, which are sufficient self-control and solid relationship management, can directly meditate the aggressiveness and high individualism in Amazon’s culture With high self-control ability, managers can maintain their honesty, prevent negative outbursts in the workplace, and develop resilience, flexible mindset With this characteristic, there might be potentially fewer people “crying on the table” or people yelling “just stop it”, “stupid” Moving on to good relationship management, Amazon’s managers can help eliminate the fallacy of “rank and yank” performance by being both logical and compassionate to employee evaluation cases Also, high relationship management implementation in the Amazon office and warehouse can be a strong foundation for fostering teamwork (Goleman 2020) Last but not least, no matter what levels of the employees are, training to improve emotional intelligence will elevate your psychological well-being state, which results in a remarkable increase in performance and job satisfaction (Carmeli, Yitzhak-Halevy & Weisberg 2009) To practice positive EQ at Amazon’s workplace, there are several options for not only the management level staff but also the workers at warehouses For high-level and committed staff, Amazon can integrate professional Emotional Intelligence training or workshops into their company’s monthly routines Such programs, like EQ Matters Workshop from Careerstone Group or interactive self-learning EQ short-lessons from website Skillsoft, can provide fresh insights and practical guidelines to improve staff’s individual EQ, as well as their impact on organizational’s culture (Ackerman 2018) Besides that, Amazon can actively organize more bonding activities for their employees after stressful, important projects for both offices staffs and blue-collar workers to develop better connections Besides EQ’s integration, the Participative leadership style is another vital key component to reach the people-oriented goals for organizational culture Participative leadership style can complement the low-responsiveness and innovation-motivating nature of Amazon’s authoritative, hierarchical leadership preference Moreover, as the industrial landscape is changing rapidly, leading to unanswerable, never-experienced obstacles, companies must utilize their collective intelligence to decipher these complex issues However, collective intelligence can only emerge through strong interpersonal relationships between departments, which is exactly what participative leadership can form (Bingham 2020) Participative leadership can be implemented by firstly changing Amazon’s traditional presentation or meeting facilitation The company needs to replace unnecessary 50 to 60 - page paper reports, especially the micro-managing methods like reciting all the numbers, with more interactive, constructive, and proactive presentations from the employees b Mental-health supporting program for workers To mitigate the negative impact of the undeletable stressful and work-life imbalance’s nature in the world’s fastest-growing company, Amazon can implement the following programs into their office and warehouse environments: Dynamic workload monitoring, Healthy Boundary-Setting, and Constructive group reflection With the employees’ health deterioration due to overtime at Amazon, Dynamic workload monitoring programs can assist the team to rebalance each member’s workload and create a supportive, shared responsibility for the team in difficult projects With Amazon’s cutting-edge technology, this program can be well-executed to create a better working strategy for warehouse workers Along with that, human-powered uses of dynamic workload monitoring, such as the team stand-ups with work for the day adjusted to suit capacity, can be surprisingly useful and worth trying (Carmichael, Lander & Steele 2021) Regarding several burn-out cases that long-existing in Amazon, Healthy Boundary-setting programs are vital rules that the Amazon’s executive board must implement to the company's code-of-conduct since this will not only protect talented, core-team workers from burnout but also gain employee’s stronger commitment, dedication to the company (Selva 2018) Such boundary-setting activities the director’s people at Amazon can provide are no email reply or work allocation after 9:00 pm, better self-reporting project management system, and advanced communication with clients on respecting the workers’ health Finally, constructive group reflection includes face-to-face, aggressive word restrictions, transparency, and a judgment-free environment These attributes can be integrated as an extra reflection stage into the 360 performance appraisal tool or the “rank and yank” system These changes not only assist the manager in more accurate evaluation but also indicate Amazon’s readiness in adjusting the bad reputed hierarchical to a more constructive, collaborative goaloriented one Without it, a positive, people-oriented organizational change can hardly be created (Hofstede Insights 2020) IV POTENTIAL RISKS There are two severe scenarios if Amazon decides to postpone or neglect the stated issues above, which are the rocketing increase in human resources cost and negative publicity Currently, it can be agreed that economically wise, Amazon has been performing at a profitable rate Also, the wages are still acceptable since the company has provided many incentives, such as insurance (The Economist 2018) However, the majority of Amazon’s warehouse workers are under 35, unskilled and inexperienced, which will not commit long or even worse, cause damage to the company Moreover, with Amazon’s current bad reputation on the strict, authoritative working environment, Amazon will highly suffer from a shortage of an energetic, innovative workforce Because the upcoming human resources will mainly from Generation Z, which values uniqueness and requires a democratic environment, which is the opposite to Amazon’s culture (Somech 2006) Lastly, the massive complaints and criticism from the public or newspapers will not only lower the Amazon images in the customer’s perspective but also directly affect the collaboration decision of investors and partners into Amazon (Kantor, Weise & Ashford 2021) V Conclusion In the quest to greatness, hardly can we not make mistakes Striving for the leading position in this chaotic and unstable era, Amazon has unfortunately created an “optimal, idealistic” organizational culture that turns out to be a stringent, inflexible, and detrimental high-achievement one This culture has resulted in unreasonable HR policies, severe damage to workers’ health, and an aggressive, non-collaborative working environment However, Amazon has initiated small but impactful changes, such as renovating the “Time off Task” metrics (Hamilton 2021) and maintaining many communities, employee support regardless of the pandemic Implementing more people-oriented characteristics to a pure product-obsessed Amazon’s culture will be a long, challenging battle for the retailing giant Nevertheless, with the resilience and achieving small milestones suggested for a positive culture change, Amazon can seize the advantage and continue creating its impact to the world VI REFERENCES Amazon’s Global Career Site 2019, Amazon jobs, Ackerman, CE 2018, How to Improve Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace, PositivePsychology.com, viewed 16 January 2022, Alfred, J 2019, Amazon: What does ‘peak season’ mean for employees?, The Entrepreneur Fund, AWS 2016, Elements of Amazon’s Day Culture | AWS Executive Insights, Amazon Web Services, Inc., Bingham, S 2020, How HR Leaders Can Adapt to Uncertain Times, Harvard Business Review, Carmichael, A, Lander, F & Steele, R 2021, Out of the shadows: Sustainably improving workplace mental health, McKinsey & Company, McKinsey & Company, Carmeli, A, Yitzhak-Halevy, M & Weisberg, J 2009, ‘The relationship between emotional intelligence and psychological wellbeing | Emerald Insight’, Journal of Managerial Psychology, Collings, DG, Nyberg, AJ, Wright, PM & McMackin, J 2021, ‘Leading through paradox in a COVID ‐19 world: Human resources come of age’, Human Resource Management Journal, vol 31, no 4, pp 819–833, viewed 12 January 2022, Ellyatt, H 2021, There are millions of jobs, but a shortage of workers: Economists explain why that’s worrying, CNBC, CNBC, Goleman, D 2020, Emotional Intelligence Skills for Handling Crises, Kornferry.com, Hamilton, I, A 2021, Amazon changes ‘Time off Task’ productivity metric, which workers fear, Business Insider, Insider, viewed 16 January 2022, Hofstede Insights 2020, Flexible Organisational Culture - How you create it?, Hofstede-insights.com, Hofstede Insights 2021, What is the Perfect Organisational Culture?, Hofstedeinsights.com, Huang, X, Xu, E, Chiu, W, Lam, C & Farh, J-L 2015, When Authoritarian Leaders Outperform Transformational Leaders: Firm Performance in a Harsh Economic Environment | Academy of Management Discoveries, Academy of Management Discoveries, Jabsky, M & Obermauer, C 2019, PRESSURE, PAIN, AND PRODUCTIVITY AT AMAZON TIME OFF TASK, nycosh.org JUST Capital 2022, Amazon.com Inc - JUST Capital, JUST Capital, JUST Capital, Kantor, J, Weise, K & Ashford, G 2021, ‘Inside Amazon’s Worst Human Resources Problem’, The New York Times, 24 October, viewed 16 January 2022, Lockwood, N 2003, Work/Life Balance Challenges and Solutions, Research Quarterly Mead, W, R 2020, The Pandemic Is a Dress Rehearsal, WSJ, The Wall Street Journal, Putri, EM, Ekowati, VM, Supriyanto, AS & Mukaffi, Z 2019, ‘THE EFFECT OF WORK ENVIRONMENT ON EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE THROUGH WORK DISCIPLINE’, International Journal of Research -GRANTHAALAYAH, vol 7, no 4, pp 132–140, Selva, J 2018, How to Set Healthy Boundaries: 10 Examples + PDF Worksheets, PositivePsychology.com, viewed 16 January 2022, The Economist 2018, What Amazon does to wages, The Economist, The Economist, viewed 16 January 2022, United States Department of Labor 2021, Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary 2021 M11 Results, Bls.gov, Wilson, A, M 2001, ‘Understanding organisational culture and the implications for corporate marketing | Emerald Insight’, European Journal of Marketing, Yukl, G, & Carlopio, JR 2014, ‘Chapter 10: Managing Change’, in Sustainable leadership: Creating the future through people, technology and design, A Pearson Australia custom book for RMIT students, pp 260-289 VII APPENDIX Figure 1: Amazon’s ranking and data on JUST Capital Company Ranking ... Human resources come of age’, Human Resource Management Journal, vol 31 , no 4, pp 819– 833 , viewed 12 January 2022, Ellyatt, H 2021,... Australia custom book for RMIT students, pp 260-289 VII APPENDIX Figure 1: Amazon? ??s ranking and data... analysis of the roots, challenges, and implications of Amazon? ??s HR issues mentioned in provided cases news Also, this paper will include multifaceted recommendations for the struggles Amazon is