Organisational Change Project: A Study on Amazon

Organisational Change Project
A study on Amazon

Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Description of the organisation........................................................................................................3
Outcome/s expected from this change project.................................................................................3
Current reality and the underlying reasons......................................................................................4
The gap between current reality and expected outcome/s...............................................................5
Description and details of the proposed change..............................................................................6
Resistance to or other barriers for change.......................................................................................6
Identification of the change agents and assessment of their willingness.........................................7
Feasibility and implications of the change, both positive and negative, considering evaluation of
the effectiveness of the post-change organization...........................................................................9
Overview of change theories...........................................................................................................9
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................10
References......................................................................................................................................10
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Introduction
Organisational change is a crucial factor which makes a huge impact on the growth of a business
organisation. A company goes through a number of changes before it succeeds in leaving a mark
in the business industry (Matos Marques Simoes & Esposito, 2014). These changes are not
always positively effective; change management can turn out to be negative at times. An
ineffective change management can be disastrous for a company, making negative impact on its
reputation as well as workforce; whereas implementation of effective change management can
result in an upgraded organisational performance (Al-Haddad & Kotnour, 2015). In this report,
the required changes in Amazon will be discussed briefly.
Description of the organisation
Amazon is a renowned company having its outlets in almost every developed and developing
country around the globe. Ever since its launch in 1995, Amazon has undergone a lot of changes
to develop as one of the biggest e-commerce sites in the world. Based in Seattle, Amazon only
sold books in the initial years. It took numerous change theories and strategies for Amazon to
climb up to such a prestigious position. From selling only a particular type of product category
i.e. books, to selling more than 200 million products to the customers, Amazon has come a long
way (Van der Voet, Groeneveld & Kuipers, 2014). Despite of all these changes Amazon is
facing certain issues related to office environment and customer care. Amazon is making
outstanding progress in the other sections, but they are yet to strengthen their customer care
support system. Also, as termed by many employees, the office environment needs to undergo a
set of changes to create the proper work ambience.
Outcome/s expected from this change project
The change project is aiming to improve the work ambience by withdrawing the open office plan
of Amazon and providing every department and significant employee or group of employees
their personal cabin. For past few years Amazon is following their open office plan in Australia,
hence all the employees are working in a gigantic room. The motivation behind this
implementation was assumed to be the improving employee relations and make all the
employees aware about different operations within the organisation. But this idea is causing
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hindrances for most of the employees and they are expressing their dissatisfaction over it. It is
expected that removal of open office plan will improve employee satisfaction level, therefore,
increasing their effectiveness in the organisational functions.
Another weak part of Amazon Australia is their poorly handled customer care system (Van der
Voet, 2014). In accordance to the survey completed by customers of Amazon in Australia, it has
been found that most of the customers are having serious complaints against the customer care
executives. Therefore, customers are finding it hard to get their queries answered or their
problems solved. In such a scenario, the company is introducing an AI powered customer care
system which will act as a medium between customer care executives and the agitated or upset
customers. This way, the company is expecting to see a reduction in the dissatisfaction level
among the customers. Hence, both the changes are expected to improve the satisfaction level of
the employees and the customers as well, in a different way.
Current reality and the underlying reasons
Currently the Australia office of Amazon is doing well, but has serious concerns regarding to
work environment and customer care segment. Firstly, the work environment should be
discussed. Two years prior, the company implemented open office plan for its Australia based
office to meet certain goals. Being a huge company with numerous employees and a vast number
of offices around the globe, Amazon has employees belonging from different religious and
cultural backgrounds. As different communities has different culture and way of talking,
employees having different cultural backgrounds often find it hard to get mixed up with the local
workforce (Belias & Koustelios, 2014). So the company implemented open office plan to bring
employees closer and improve their relations in order to eliminate unnecessary conflicts.
Although, with time, company as well as employees became aware of intercultural
communication skills, that problem with communication is almost sorted. Hence the open office
plan is of no use now, in the previous context. However, the open office plan is experiencing
new trouble as employees are facing issues like noisy work environment, lack of privacy etc.
Working in a single room is never easy for the employees of a company as huge as Amazon. The
employees are unable to concentrate on their work due to noises and also facing problems while
making official phone calls peacefully. Lack of privacy is creating hindrances as the act by other
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