Amazon Unethical Case Study - Business Ethics

Running Head: Business Ethics
Business Ethics
Amazon Unethical Case Study

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Business Ethics
Contents
Introduction and Background......................................................................................................................2
Stakeholders or Actors of the case study....................................................................................................2
Ethical Theories...........................................................................................................................................3
Utilitarianism...........................................................................................................................................3
Kantianism...............................................................................................................................................3
Virtue Theory...........................................................................................................................................3
References...................................................................................................................................................5

2
Business Ethics
Introduction and Background
Amazon is a very well known firm across the world. It sells absolutely everything through its
Ecommerce business. In the year 2012, some of the workers came forward to discuss their
experiences if working with Amazon in the warehouse located in Breinigsville, Pennsylvania.
Those were the former employees of the company. There was a man named Neal Heimbach who
filed the case lawsuits against Amazon (Umbro, 2018). The major complaint was that Amazon
failed to reimburse the workers who worked in Amazon on hourly basis for the time they spent
waiting in the security check lines everyday at the end of their shifts and in the lunch breaks.
This time was usually noted as 20 minutes per day. Every employee got a 15 minute break yet
they claimed that the supervisors continuously monitored them with the help of the computer
screens.
Stakeholders or Actors of the case study
The stakeholders or the actors in the case are employees and their family, users and the sellers of
Amazon. The employees were the most affected stakeholders. They were the ones who were
treated unethically directly (Ghosh, 2018). Due to this some of the employees also suffered from
the medical conditions by working in the warehouses and because of such medical conditions,
their families were also impacted.
Other stakeholders are the customers. However the customers would never come to know as to
what exactly went in the warehouses. Yet the employees were the ones who packed the packages
and the customers were being affected by the whole process because the contribution of the
employees was half hearted and the process of delivering and packaging was taking longer than
usual (Agerholm, 2017).
Other stakeholders are the sellers. People who sell the items on Amazon were also getting
connected to the customers and the employees too.