Assessment of Resistance to Change Transition in Amazon

This article discusses the assessment of resistance to change transition in Amazon. It explains the nature of resistance, the importance of readiness, and the tools used by Amazon to manage change and prevent resistance. The article emphasizes the importance of effective communication and structured change management in managing resistance to change.

Human Resource Management 1 | P a g e
Human Resource Management

Human Resource Management 2 | P a g e
Table of Contents
Overview..........................................................................................................................................3
Assumptions....................................................................................................................................4
Assessment......................................................................................................................................5
Evaluation........................................................................................................................................8
Strategies..........................................................................................................................................8
Creating change baseline.............................................................................................................9
Strategies for change....................................................................................................................9
Change the measurements............................................................................................................9
Communicate change details.......................................................................................................9
Measure change process...............................................................................................................9
Future trends..................................................................................................................................10
Summary........................................................................................................................................10
References......................................................................................................................................12

Human Resource Management 3 | P a g e
Overview
Amazon is an American based electronic commerce and cloud computing company. Its
headquarters is situated in Seattle, Washington and it was founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994. Since
then, organization has embraced itself as a giant player of the e-commerce industry. Amazon was
initially operated from a garage and at that time, organization was only selling books. Later on,
Jeff Bezos expanded their company’s product offering by introducing MP3, music CDs, and
other items. Today, organization is selling millions of products and services in more than 188
countries across the globe. With regards to this, organization has acquired the title of largest
Internet Retailer across the globe in terms of revenues and market capitalisation. In terms of total
sales, organization stands on the second position after Alibaba Group. Apart from e-commerce
industry, organization has entered into various other industries such as Kindle e-readers, Fire TV
stick, online entertainment, etc. Company has recently entered into cloud computing and virtual
assistant industry. Amazon introduced Alexa in November 2014 in smart speakers named Echo
and Echo Dot. Apart from this, organization also sells certain low-end products under their own
home based brand named AmazonBasics (Amazon Inc., 2018).
Jeff Bezos has always seen as a unique and creative leader and a manager. In its initial times of
management and leadership, Jeff used to practice autocratic type of leadership and management
style due to which organization faced numerous issues such as high labour turnover, less
employee satisfaction, etc. Apart from this, Jeff used to take all decision on behalf of the
organization by his own and this lead the organization towards negative sides several times.
Later on, he realised that the major reason of regular failures of organization was his leadership
and management style and the process followed by him to take decisions for the organization.
Jeff Bezos is known as the most effective, unique as well as creative leader and a manager of this
era and this has helped Amazon to expand their functionalities at global level. Organization
believes in customer satisfaction and their vision is to “be the earth’s most customer centric
company”. With regards to the organizational vision, appropriate customer centric approaches
and frameworks have been adopted in order to enhance customer satiation. Along with the
customer centric approaches, organizational values are providing best quality and services to
their customers as this strategy is meant to be the most effective strategy in terms of retaining

Human Resource Management 4 | P a g e
customers with the organization for a longer period of time along with attracting other customer
segments (Blazek, 2016).
Jeff has always believed that change is necessary to grow and prosper because with the effect of
globalisation and tech-revolution, it has become necessary for every organization to be creative,
customer oriented as well as innovative in order to sustain in the competitive and dynamic
business environment. In relation to this, employees’ mind-set has been set as per the
organizational requirements in order to avoid resistance towards change. Regular intervention of
change has become the primary factor for Amazon in terms of attaining leading position in the
global e-commerce industry along with setting up an effective brand image and brand loyalty
amongst their customers (Goetsch & Davis, 2014).
Assumptions
Rationale of making assumptions is to attain positive outcomes along with enhancing
organizational performance rapidly in terms of moving towards sustainable growth and overall
development. With regards to the management of employees and enhancing their productivity,
organization mainly focuses on implementing employees engagement activities in order to
develop coordination amongst the employees as well as by providing them regular training for
updating their skills. This ultimately enhances organizational performance. Along with this, it
also helps the organization to move towards long term goals and objectives of attaining
sustainable growth and overall development. Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos always believes in
creativity and innovation and believes in taking his subordinates along with the organization
(Oduh, et. al., 2018). In relation to this, organization regularly conducts training and
development sessions in order to enhance their employees’ skills for the objective of boosting
organizational productivity.
Apart from the regular training and development programs, along with the CEO whole
organization believes in creativity and innovation and in order to think out of the box,
organizational management provides all required resources to its employees. This strategy has
helped organization to develop effective relationship with their employees which results in
employee retention along with aligning employees’ vision with the organizational vision (Jeston,
2014). In terms of moulding employees’ skills towards organizational vision, Amazon has

Human Resource Management 5 | P a g e
adopted change management with the objective of enhancing organizational performance along
with aligning organizational functionalities as per trends of the business market (Kamatkar, et.
al., 2018).
Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos is known as the most effective leader and manager of this era and in
very short period of time, he has made him count in the top thirty richest men across the globe.
In his success, innovation, creativity, his unique thinking and behavioural style and regular
adaptation of change has played major role. Amazon has become tech-giant with the help of their
unique and innovative strategies along with managing their employees’ in an appropriate
manner. Managing employees is very crucial for every organization as it helps in accomplishing
organizational tasks along with attaining positive outcomes. In relation to this, organization has
make their employees efficient enough to deal with dynamic situations along with accepting
change with the objective of enhancing organizational performance in order to acquire
sustainable growth and overall development (Baker, 2015).

Human Resource Management 6 | P a g e
Assessment
Before discussing the assessment tool of the resistance to change transition in terms of Amazon,
it is necessary to understand the nature of resistance. Resistance is not the stage of change or the
result of the change, but in actual it is the element of the unresolved issue or the problem which
is related to the behavior, actions, or words. There are number of researchers which believes
resistance to change has become self-fulfilling prophecy, in which it is expected by the leaders
that people will resist the change. Management of the resistance is the very first approach which
clicks the mind of leaders and managers before launching the change. Very few changes are
suggested by the mangers for prevent these changes, as they monitor the behavior of the
employees towards the change and proceed to manage the things in accordance with that
behavior (Schermerhorn, Hunt & Osborn, 2005).
Managing the resistance is an expensive approach and also time consuming, and it further drains
the natural change energy of the organization. Those changes which are managed from the
resistance approach are best in comparison of those changes which reaches the finish line but
fails to achieve the intend result of the organization.
Change is the process which is continuous in nature and it holds the patters which are
predictable. Generally changes are different from the transition because it takes place outside the
individual which means restructuring, new programs, work force expansion or downsizing. On
the other hand, transition is something which is experienced by person internally which means
confusion, uncertainty, loss, fear or anger (BBS, 2009).
It is not possible to under the resistance in change transition without understanding the readiness,
as it is the concept of willingness of individuals to engage in behaviors, activities, and attitudes
that mainly required making the transition. It mainly shows the movement of individuals through
the process of change. As stated by the Douglas Smith, author of Taking Charge of Change, at
the time when change is introduced, almost 60-80% of individuals are not ready for change or
nor resistance to change. He further states that actions or inactions of the leaders determine the
fact in which directions they go. Reediness is important in nature as it prevents the resistance, but
it must be noted that lack of resistance does not mean readiness. It mainly focuses on the

Human Resource Management 7 | P a g e
engagement of employees and further ensures the better use of the current resources. In other
words, create competitive advantage for the organization, and make it resilient and adaptive to
the business environment (Turner change, 2010.
It can be said that, prevention of resistance mainly required the shift in the thinking, and
managers need to focus on this approach only. Following assessment tools are used by Amazon
in terms of assessing the resistance to change transition in their working environment-
First step involves the assessment of the affected individuals, which mainly includes the
perception of change and also their level of change readiness. In other words, individual behavior
is assessed in this by using the different tools such as feedback forms and by conducting the
surveys.
In this context, behavior of the individuals at the time when change is introduced is assessed,
which means, managers decide the future actions on the basis of the feedback from the
employee. In terms of this following actions can be taken by the managers in the Amazon-
 Manger can use the structured change management approach from the beginning of the
assessment process (Ghany, 2014).
 Senior leaders and top management must be engaged in the change, which means, they
must be active and visible sponsors of the change.
 Managers must take the support from management which also includes the middle
managers, frontline supervisors, etc.
 Communication must be take place with the employees about the change before taking
their feedback, so that they are able to understand the requirement of change.
Second step involves the management of change from the perception and readiness of those
employees is directly affected by the change. In other words, managers need to manage the
change in terms of the perception of other individuals and not from their own perception about
the change. Through this tool, managers can avoid the much resistance to change by applying the
change management from the beginning. It is necessary for the managers to understand that
resistance is the normal reaction of human beings at the time of change, and this resistance can
be reduced by applying the good change management approach. It must be noted that, good

Human Resource Management 8 | P a g e
change management is not only the tool for managing the resistance but it is also helpful in
activating and engaging the employees in the change. It mainly includes the capturing and
leveraging of the passion and also the positive emotion which is surrounded to change, because
such emotions help in preventing the resistance from occurring. In other words, it is the power
which is utilized as the structured change management from the starting of the project.
Third step involves the listening and reply to the feedback, which means, managers need to
understand and listen the concerns of the individuals which are directly affected by the change.
After listening and understanding the concerns of the individuals, management needs to respond
to the feedback which is given by the employees in terms of change. It is the duty of the mangers
to understand the concerns of individuals and suggested those ways through which these
concerns can be resolved. In this context, managers can ask the questions from the individuals
such as whether these changes are effective in nature and whether employees are feeling
comfortable in adopting these changes. Managers can also take the suggestions from the
employees to make these changes better and effective for the clients (Lunenburg & Ornstein,
2008).
It must be noted that, if feedback is collected from the employees then such feedback must be
collected and read by the management, because these answers and reactions of the employees
can be very effective in making the changes in the plan and implementation of the plan must be
done accordingly. It is necessary for the managers to understand that two employees cannot give
same reaction on the change, and managers need to plan accordingly because similar tool does
not work with both the employees. There are number of reasons of resistance, and managers
need to evaluate the right reasons on which respond are given.
Interactive dialogues and the effective conversation are the last but not the least tool through
which assessment can be conducted by the management of amazon. Mangers before implement
the change, must community that change to those who are affected by these changes. Effective
communication with the employees is very important because it is not possible for the employees
to adopt these changes without understanding the change. Through this tool, managers can avoid
the much resistance to change by understanding the reasons of resistance from the beginning. It

Human Resource Management 9 | P a g e
can be said that, prevention of resistance mainly required the shift in the thinking, and this is
only possible with the communication (Steinburg, 1992).

Human Resource Management 10 | P a g e
Evaluation
Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos is counted in the list of top business moguls across the global
business industry. His values and passion towards his dream helped him to attain success in his
career and in the path towards success; he has faced sundry challenges and issues which took
him towards failure but his strong belief on his dream of selling everything over internet inspired
him to move towards his dream facing obstacles in positive manner. His positive attitude,
motivational skills and unique leadership style has helped him to make the workplace
environment of Amazon effective, safe as well as secure for his employees. His values, morals,
traits and skills have made him inspirational character for his subordinates (Rivet, 2017).
Every business entity is required to follow up with the change management with the objective of
enhancing organizational performance along with attaining desired goals and objectives. In
relation to this, organization has adopted change management as their priority to sustain in the
dynamic business environment. Adaptation of change management is easy but regular
intervention of change in the business process affects the whole organizational functionalities. In
consideration to this, the major factor which is required to be focused is resistance from
employees towards change because they are the people who actually perform the tasks as
planned by the top level management in order to attain desired goals and objectives (Love, et. al.,
2014). For managing resistance towards change from the employees, organization has adopted
sundry effective strategies in relevance to moulding employees’ vision as per the organizational
vision. With the effect to this, organization has made their employees’ capable enough to accept
regular changes in the business processes. This has helped the organization to constantly move
towards growth and expansion, ultimately, organization functions in more than 188 countries
across the globe and offers international shopping also in few countries where it is not yet
present (Offermann & Coats, 2018).
Organizational regular implementation of change management has been a major factor for
organizational success and with regards to the management of resistance towards change;
organization has involved their employees in the process of adaptation of change. This has not
only build confidence amongst the employees for organization but it has also made them believe
that they are crucial part of the organization. In order to analyse the resistance towards change,

Human Resource Management 11 | P a g e
organisational managers use feedbacks, surveys and one-to-one session techniques. These
techniques help the organization to make their employees sufficient enough to build appropriate
brand image in the global market along with the objective of enhancing its efficiency. Thus, the
tools used by the organizational managers have become the primary factor in relation with
making employees according to the organizational requirements (Carnall, 2018).
Strategies
In order to facilitate change management in the business in an appropriate manner, organization
requires adopting appropriate steps in order to determine the requirement of change along with
determining the strategies through which the requirements could be fulfilled. In relation to this,
following strategies could be adopted in relation with facilitating change management at
workplace:
Creating change baseline
It is necessary to determine the requirement of change, it is necessary to show confidence over
the adaptation of change in relation to the attainment of positive outcomes. Along with this,
assumptions made for the implementation of change needs to be given priority through which
relatable positive goals could be accomplished (Hayes, 2018). In relation to this, it is also
necessary for the organization to determine the list of stakeholders who all will be affected with
the implementation of change in order to adopt appropriate strategies along with gaining positive
outcomes.
Strategies for change
After analysing the list of stakeholders who all will be affected with the implementation of
change, it is important to determine the most appropriate strategy in order to attain desired goals
and objectives. It is necessary to implement an appropriate strategy through which every
stakeholder’s issues could be resolved along with the attainment of desired goals of the
organization. Strategies are being adopted for the objective of reducing gap between the
organizational requirements and current business performance. Thus, it is necessary to focus on
implementation of change management strategies which could fulfil organizational requirements
(Cameron & Green, 2015).

Human Resource Management 12 | P a g e
Change the measurements
Determining measurements is necessary as it defines the culture of organization and adaptation
of change management strategies should be one after analysing relevant changes. Apart from
this, performance standards and the benchmarks also needs to be considered while making
assumptions for implementation of relevant strategies for facilitating change (Doppelt, 2017).
Communicate change details
Communication is one of the primary factors which help the organization to reach towards its
desired goals. This is essential in terms of making effective relations between employer and
employees as well as it removes barriers between the organizational top level management and
employees through which information could be shared in an appropriate manner along with the
objective of making an effective and better workplace environment. Issues faced by the
employees could also be analysed easily with the help of effective communication channels and
in relation to this, it is necessary for the organization to regularly update their channels of
communication (Van der Voet, 2014).
Measure change process
The process for measuring change should always be same with similar benchmarks and the
standards so that the effectiveness of the process could be identified along with the help of
making organization enough to deal with the challenges as well as to sustain in the global e-
commerce industry for longer period of time. Amazon’s vision is to “be the earth’s most
customer centric company” and in relation to this, it is necessary for the organization to adopt
steps at regular intervals due to constant changes in the trends, customer preferences and taste,
and various other factors (Goetsch & Davis, 2014).
Future trends
Change management act as an effective strategy for attaining growth and relatable objectives.
With the help of change management, organizations could easily make their functionalities
efficient enough to cope up with the dynamic business environment as well as to boost
organizational performance. Apart from this, opportunities for the organization who regular
update its processes are much high in comparison to the organizations who does not believes in
adaptation of change. In this scenario, Amazon is one of the largest e-commerce based company

Human Resource Management 13 | P a g e
and they regularly update its processes through which desired goals could easily be
accomplished. Amazon believes in customer satisfaction and to maintain the customer centric
brand image of the organization, it is necessary to adopt appropriate measures for maintaining
the quality of the products and services along with deterring target audiences’ demands and
wants so that the desired goals could be attained (Elmes & Barry, 2017).
In the regular updating of organizational processes, leaders and managers both play vital role
because these are people who regularly interacts with the employees and analyse their
requirements in terms of business process and the impact of external business environmental
factors over organizational policies. Apart from this, there are numerous other factors which are
related to the organizational performance and these factors are required to be analysed by the
leaders and managers. In relation to this, Jeff Bezos is considered as an effective leader with
futuristic approach. He regularly determines the demand of their target audience and the trend
followed in the market. In relevance to his research and the future conditions of the business
market, he introduces products. This is the main attribute through which organization could
easily sustain in the competitive business environment. This leads Amazon towards regular
introduction of new and innovative products and services through which target and potential
customer segments’ interest could be retained within the organization along with coping up with
the future changes (Bradley, 2016).
In relation to the change management, Amazon has recently entered into virtual industry with
their brand product Alexa. It is a virtual assistant capable enough to help their users in doing
various personal stuff like making to-do-list, helping users to maintain their daily schedule, play
songs, videos, making calls, providing traffic and weather updates, etc. Alexa has been
introduced in the 38 countries till February 2018 and by the end of this year, it will be introduced
in some other countries also. Apart from this, some other innovative steps taken by Amazon are
entering into online entertainment industry; cloud computing and web service industry, etc.
(Pugh, 2016).
Summary
It has been analysed that change management is a collective term for all approaches to prepare
and support individuals, organizations, teams in terms of making organizational change. Change

Human Resource Management 14 | P a g e
management is influenced mainly with the technology evolution, crisis, change in consumer taste
and preferences, change in the policies by government, change in the market conditions and there
are various other factors which lead to the adaptation and implementation of change at
workplace. In this report, change management and management of employees have been
discussed in relation to the functionalities of Amazon. The report has concluded that Amazon is a
company which regularly update their policies and the processes along with adaptation of change
whenever it is required for improving organizational performance. In relation with the adaptation
of change, primary challenge arises as resistance towards change by employees because it
directly affects their productivity and sometimes, it also leads to decrease their importance. In
relation to this, number of strategies and processes has been discussed in order to develop clear
understanding amongst the employees and the management towards adaptation of change.
Strategies for change management, impact of change management over future trends and
evaluation of organizational functionalities have been discussed in the report.

Human Resource Management 15 | P a g e
References
Amazon Inc., (2018). About Amazon. Retrieved from: https://www.aboutamazon.com/?
utm_source=gateway&utm_medium=footer
Baker, R. I. (2015). Ideal Leadership Style Preferences by Generational Cohort Membership and
Gender (Doctoral dissertation, Xavier University).
BBS, (2009). Resistance to Change A Construcive Approach for Managing Resistant Behaviors.
Retrieved from http://www.diva-portal.se/smash/get/diva2:222586/FULLTEXT01.pdf.
Blazek, K. (2016). Jeff Bezos: How his unique leadership style set Amazon Apart. Retrieved
from: https://www.truscore.com/360-feedback-resources/jeff-bezos-leadership-style/
Bradley, G. (2016). Benefit Realisation Management: A practical guide to achieving benefits
through change. Routledge.
Cameron, E., & Green, M. (2015). Making sense of change management: A complete guide to
the models, tools and techniques of organizational change. Kogan Page Publishers.
Carnall, C. (2018). Managing change. Routledge.
Doppelt, B. (2017). Leading change toward sustainability: A change-management guide for
business, government and civil society. Routledge.
Elmes, M., & Barry, D. (2017). Strategy retold: Toward a narrative view of strategic discourse.
In The Aesthetic Turn in Management (pp. 39-62). Routledge.
Ghany, M. (2014). Readiness for change, change beliefs and resistance to change of extension
personnel in the New Valley Governorate about mobile extension, Annals off agricultural
science, 59(2), 297-303.
Goetsch, D. L., & Davis, S. B. (2014). Quality management for organizational excellence. Upper
Saddle River, NJ: pearson.
Hayes, J. (2018). The theory and practice of change management.

Human Resource Management 16 | P a g e
Hayes, J. (2018). The theory and practice of change management. Hayes, J. (2018). The theory
and practice of change management.
Jeston, J. (2014). Business process management. Routledge.
Kamatkar, S. J., Tayade, A., Viloria, A., & Hernández-Chacín, A. (2018). Application of
Classification Technique of Data Mining for Employee Management System.
In International Conference on Data Mining and Big Data (pp. 434-444). Springer,
Cham.
Love, P. E., Matthews, J., Simpson, I., Hill, A., & Olatunji, O. A. (2014). A benefits realization
management building information modeling framework for asset owners. Automation in
construction, 37, 1-10.
Lunenburg, F. C. & Ornstein, A. C. (2008). Educational administration: Concepts and practices.
Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Oduh, I. U., Misra, S., Damaševičius, R., & Maskeliūnas, R. (2018). Cloud Based Simple
Employee Management Information System: A Model for African Small and Medium
Enterprises. In International Conference on Information Theoretic Security (pp. 115-
128). Springer, Cham.
Offermann, L. R., & Coats, M. R. (2018). Implicit theories of leadership: Stability and change
over two decades. The Leadership Quarterly, 29(4), 513-522.
Pugh, L. (2016). Change management in information services. Routledge. Pugh, L.
(2016). Change management in information services. Routledge.
Rivet, D. J. (2017). Amazon's Superior Innovation: A Study of Amazon's corporate structure,
CEO, and reasons behind why it has become the most innovative company in today's
market. 5(2), 25-41.
Schermerhorn, J. G., Hunt, J. G., & Osborn, R. N. (2005). Organizational behavior (Ninth
edition). United States of America: John Wiley & Sons Inc.

Human Resource Management 17 | P a g e
Steinburg, C. (1992). Taking charge of change. Training and Development, Volume 46(3), 26-
32.
Turner change, (2010). The Fallacy of Resistance to Change. Retrieved from
https://thinktransition.com/articles/the-fallacy-of-resistance-to-change-2/.
Van der Voet, J. (2014). The effectiveness and specificity of change management in a public
organization: Transformational leadership and a bureaucratic organizational
structure. European Management Journal, 32(3), 373-382.