Leadership and Management

This document provides a critical analysis of workplace culture and environmental analysis using various tools. It includes a case study of Amazon and analyzes its organizational structure and culture. The document also provides recommendations for improving organizational culture.

Running Head: LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT
2019
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3/26/2019
BA LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT SKILLS FOR THE WORKPLACE

LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT 1
Executive summary
The critical analysis of workplace culture will be included in report for which environmental
analysis would be conducted using various tools and for this Amazon case would be considered
in the report. Amazon is one of the leading e-commerce companies that is serving customers all
the consumer and electronics good at a click to their doorstep. The amazon culture’s three major
aspects include customer centricity, boldness, and peculiarity. The company’s culture can be
analyzed using various cultural tools like cultural web, deal and Kennedy, and Handy’s
organizational cultural model.
Amazon has conducted various programs as per its corporate social responsibility and
sustainability report. Amazon along with another company that is Procter and Gamble has taken
an initiative regarding the packaging. Moreover, another initiative by the company included “the
big picture.” Major recommendations to the company to improve the organizational culture
included transparency, better environment for employees, and flexibility in work culture

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Contents
Executive summary.........................................................................................................................1
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Environmental analysis....................................................................................................................3
Pestle analysis..............................................................................................................................3
SWOT analysis............................................................................................................................5
Strengths..................................................................................................................................5
Weakness.................................................................................................................................6
Opportunities...........................................................................................................................6
Threats.....................................................................................................................................7
Organizational structure...................................................................................................................7
Organizational culture analysis........................................................................................................8
Cultural web.................................................................................................................................8
Deal and Kennedy......................................................................................................................10
Handy’s organizational cultural model......................................................................................11
Organization’s ethical stance.........................................................................................................11
CSR................................................................................................................................................11
Business Ethics..............................................................................................................................12
Ways to fit in cultural norms.........................................................................................................13
Comparative culture with other organization................................................................................14
Recommendations..........................................................................................................................15
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................17
References......................................................................................................................................18

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Introduction
Leadership is the crucial aspect of an organization for which various skills are required to
manage an organization. For this purpose, the thorough understanding of the workplace culture is
essential (Stahl & Tung, 2015). The report will include an understanding of workplace culture
for which environmental analysis would be conduct using various tools. For a critical analysis of
the study, Amazon case would be considered in the report further.
Amazon is one of the leading e-commerce companies that is serving customers all the consumer
and electronics good at a click to their doorstep. The company has not only focused on the
products that the company is offering but the service quality has also been considered. Moreover,
it acts as the largest platform for retailers to trade their products online (aboutamazon., 2018).
Environmental analysis
Pestle analysis
For understanding and analyzing the external environment of Amazon, PESTLE analysis
includes the following factors:
1. Political factors
Amazon is a global company and has high political threat to the company as every nation
has different political aspect and norms. For instance, in the UK the impact of Brexit is
one of the threats to the company as the effect of leaving the EU could be responsible for
Brexit inflation (Stahl & Tung, 2015).
2. Economic factors

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These factors are positively related to business success or failure, in case of positive
economy reflects business success for Amazon and vice versa. As per today’s scenario in
most of the developed and developing nation, the disposable income seems to enhance
which reflect an increase in purchasing power in households and people prefer to spend
money in luxury and entertainment products and service that is beneficial for Amazon
business.
3. Social factors
Culture plays a vital role in the business, as the product serving in a particular country
must be as per the nation’s culture. Amazon is offering almost all the goods asked by the
customer. The threat considering this factor would be some researchers believe that
online shopping is responsible for the increase in obesity rates in the nation (Petersen,
2015).
4. Technological factors
In online business, technology plays a vital role in technology adaption by individuals in
the nation. For instance, developed nations like the United Kingdom would be looking
forwards for advanced technology and the level of adaption would be high.
5. Legal factors
This is another threat to the company that could be responsible for the profit earning of
the company. The reason being these factors include corporate taxes that are different for
all the nations in which the company is trading goods. The higher corporate tax of the
nation would decrease the profit margin for the company. Moreover, the laws and
regulation are to be abided by the company for all the nations. For instance the company

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is not currently facing any legal issues in the UK like Starbucks or Google (Cabral &
Mathiason, 2015).
6. Environmental factors
This factor includes various consequences on the sustainability of the environment due to
human activities. In some regions, water scarcity is the major issue whereas income issue
the carbon emission is the issue for which the company has to take respective action to
preserve the environment (Holt, 1998).
SWOT analysis
Strengths Weakness
 Strong worldwide network
 Customer service
 Brand image
 Quality focused
 The range of goods and services
 Decrease in margins
 Increase in competition
 Failure of some products
Opportunities Threats
 Physical outlets
 Diversification
 Acquisitions
 Technological up gradation
 Price competition
 Online security
Strengths
• Strong worldwide network – The network with the sellers around the globe is strong for
Amazon that makes its business more effective worldwide.

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• Customer service – The company’s one of the USP is the level of services provided by
the company while focusing the customer needs and wants.
• Brand image – The brand image and brand trust among the people are one of the
company’s strengths responsible for earning revenue to the company.
• Quality focused – The Company has focused over the quality to a greater extent, which
has increased the customer loyalty and trust by the customers and eventually increases in
customer retention.
• The range of goods and services – The Company is offering the largest range of goods
and service to the customers. The ease of finding goods by the customers enhance the company’s
effectiveness (Bao & Xia, 2015).
Weakness
• Decrease in profit margins – As the company is offering various discounts due to the
increase in competition has decreased the margin of profits for the company.
• Increase in competition – The completion has been increasing to a larger extent due to an
increase in online companies like flip cart, aliexpress, and eBay due to which the customers are
decreasing for Amazon.
• Failure of some products – for example Kindle has lost the effectiveness in the market
(Hunt & Bicen, 2017).
Opportunities
• Physical outlets
• Diversification – Service diversification like food delivery service

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• Acquisitions – The Company can acquire its competitors to enhance the market share of
the company.
Threats
• Technological up gradation – Technology is changing rapidly that means the company
need to upgrade it regularly
• Price competition – The threat of price competition is increased
• Online security – Security is one of the major threats in online business (Amabile &
Rigolizzo, 2015).
Organizational structure
Figure 1: (Source: (aboutamazon., 2018)

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The organizational structure of the company can be reflected as “hierarchical.” There are several
segments in the structure like human resource, information technology and legal operations,
where all the heads of the segment are liable to report to the CEO of the company that is Jeff
Bezos. The hierarchical structure has been developed for the company due to the large business
size of Amazon (Collins & Benard, 2018).
Organizational culture analysis
The amazon culture three major aspects include customer centricity, boldness, and peculiarity.
The company’s culture can be analyzed using various cultural tools like
Cultural web
Figure 2: (Source: (Collins & Benard, 2018)
This model consists of six elements of culture to assess the culture of a company by strategy.
 Stories – This includes the past people opinion about the events within and outside the
organization. Considering Amazon of being the first mover for the online shopping
experience has resulted in the reason for its success and customer trust and loyalty.

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 Symbols – The Company’s visual presentation acts as a symbol for the company like
logos or staff dress code. For Amazon the brand name of the company is one of its
biggest symbols that are responsible for binding several systems’ components together.
 Rituals and routine – This element reflects the daily activities and behaviors of people
that determine the expected happing among the organization in a particular situation. The
Work culture for daily routine would be aggressive. The employees have been motivated
and pushing forward to gain the best productivity out of an employee within (Ghaderi,
2016).
 Organizational structure – As already discuss the hierarchical structure of the company is
due to the large business operations of the company across the globe that result into
manageable work around the globe through various segments and all the segment head
approaching CEO of the company for the final reporting.
 Control systems – This segment reflects the way the business is controlled. For Amazon
this includes product verification, quality assurance, and delivery partner’s coordination.
The controlling could be the emergent strategy of the company, as the company believes
that the environment is dynamic and the company could have to change the strategy at
any time.
 Power structures – This reflects the real power of the organization this could be the top
executive of the company. In the case of Amazon the CEO of the company was
responsible for innovation culture among the organization who has attempted the
transformational change (Morris, 2018).

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Deal and Kennedy
Figure 3: (Source: (Kaur & Ma, 2015)
Among the four cultural types as per this model, the grid at which Amazon cultural strategy fits
into would be the Tough Guy, Macho. As per the company culture the company is taking a
higher risk every day and are also encouraging the employees to be innovative with the process
and take the risk in the organization to enhance the productivity and better service to the
customer as the coampnyu7 is more customer-centric. Moreover, the feedback speed is very high
for the company, the customer can provide immediate feedback to the applied strategy or as soon
as they receive the service or the products to their doorstep (Kolk, 2016). The options for the
customer for the feedbacks are many like the customer can rate the delivery person service
separately and the products feedback separately on the product page. Moreover, the company can
interact with the company and provide feedback through any social media platform. This has
been effective for the company to enhance customer satisfaction and take immediate action in

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case of dissatisfaction among the customer from the delivery system or process or product from
any retailer on amazon platform (Hill, 2015).
Handy’s organizational cultural model
As per this model, four types of culture are identified that are the power culture, role culture, task
culture, and person culture (Kaur & Ma, 2015). Considering the Amazon culture as per this
model, the cultural type for the company would be the power culture. This type of culture is
reflected in the way as a spider sits in the center of the web and all the element in the
organization is connected to the center around which all the people and department work. The
organizational structure of the company reflect the cultural type as the power culture of Amazon,
as all the departments, segments ,and employees of the organization work around and are
reporting to a centralized individual that is CEO of the company (Petersen & Kumar, 2015).
Organization’s ethical stance
CSR
Amazon has been initiated in various programs as per its corporate social responsibility and
sustainability report. The company has considers various stakeholders while conducting business
(Huckin & Berkenkotter, 2016). The major stakeholders for which the company works would be
customers, employees, business partners, investors, shareholder, and environment. Amazon
along with another company that is Procter and Gamble has taken an initiative regarding the
packaging. This includes the use of a cardboard box for tide and other products instead of plastic
packaging. This included converting an iconic bottle to a completely new transformation that the
customers have not experienced before. This was part of the innovation purpose for the company

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that will also help the environment to minimize the plastic use with the retailers associated with
Amazon. This was known as tide eco box, which was affecting the use of plastic, and 30 percent
less water use (aboutamazon, 2019).
Another initiative by the company includes “the big picture.” This included the inventing for
customers reflecting the best possible experience and service to be provided to the customers
through reaching out to the customer where no company has reached yet in rural and smaller
regions of the nations as well. Moreover, this included supporting the employees of the
company. The company has set the minimum wage for the employees as $15 per hour and that
had provided employment to 610,000 individuals worldwide. This initiative also includes
“Giving back to communities” this was to make sure that the children that the school going
children have healthy breakfast and make them learn to code for making them understand easier
recycling process (blog.aboutamazon, 2019).
Business Ethics
The company has a code of conduct that is been abide by the whole organization in order to work
is done ethically, lawfully and in the interest of all the stakeholders of the company. The
company has to include conflicts of interest to ensure the harmony among various stakeholders,
insider trading policy, discrimination and harassment, health and safety, price fixing, bribery,
reporting, recordkeeping and financial integrity, periodic certification, and board of directors are
part of this code of conduct (ir.aboutamazon, 2019).
Considering the values and believes of the company that reflects the company to be ethical in
norms would include hire and developing the best staff, customer obsession, bias for action,
think big, invent and simplify ear other’s trust. From these values, it can be said that the

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company values are to concentrate on the customer need and satisfaction and an action taken in
favor of customers. The values also reflect the employee's concern by the company that is to
develop and train the employees and enhance the productivity of the company for ensured
results. Moreover, the company believes include insisting the organization performance at the
highest standards in order to ensure the quality of the products and services offered by the
company to the customers. Moreover, respect is the major aspect of the organizational culture to
earn trust among every individual in the organization.
Ways to fit in cultural norms
In order to fit into the cultural norms of Amazon and for being successful in the organization the
ways to be adopted would be:
 Service-oriented – Service is the key to the company and this reflects that to fit into the
customer the major focus need to be on service provided to the company and customers
instead of only focusing over the products (forbes, 2019).
 Continuous improvement – The innovation is the key and the industry in which the
company is performing is very dynamic that reflects that the improvement has to be made
continuously (Dustershoff & MacGregor, 2014).
 Quality focused – The Company is majorly focused on the quality of products and service
and the productivity of the organization. Therefore, to fit into the cultural norms the
quality is to be considered while performing in the company (Wass & Harrison, 2017)
 Risk taking and innovative – The culture of the company encourages the employees to
look forward to the innovation in the work and take the risk for better performance.
Therefore, to fit in it would be important to communicate new ideas from everywhere

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inside and outside the organization and taking the risk to improve the performance of the
organization as a whole (aboutamazon, 2018).
 Time management – Time is an important element for the organization and it encourages
the employees to complete work in time and reach out to the customer on time or before
time to maintain the satisfaction level among the clients. Therefore to fit in it is important
to manage time for timely completion of the individual task in the organization (Kesen &
Kaya, 2014).
Comparative culture with other organization
One of the major competitors of Amazon is Flipkart, which has completely contrasting
organizational culture from that of amazon. Where the amazon culture is customer driven and
strict corporate culture, the Flipkart culture reflects the open work culture, compatibility of and
traits. The major effect of the work culture of Flipkart includes:
 The employees accept the open culture at work best as it provides freedom to the
employees to work as per their conditions and terms. This effect the performance of the
employees as they are working in smaller agile teams and it helps to bring out the
versatility among the staff and it will diminish the hierarchical gap.
 Creativity is the result of the work culture of the company, as the individuals are free and
self-motivated to perform and enhance the creativity in the process (Chung et al., 2015).
 More ideas and innovation would another effective result of the company’s work culture.
People at the lower level are also working towards the innovation and providing ideas in
the organization and the company improves the challenges that the staff is facing soon.

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 Open culture is also responsible for providing space to the employees for personal
interaction and socializing which help the team to become stronger and enhancing
internal support system.
 Working within this culture makes an individual with a balanced approach, with more
managerial nature traits, positive diplomatic, and ambiverts for ease of work and better
work performed (businesscasestudies, 2018).
Recommendations
While understanding other company organizational culture and analysis of Amazon
organizational culture, the major recommendation for Amazon includes:
 Transparency - The Company’s culture must include transparency with the retailer’s
price and data transparency. This would increase the trust among different stakeholders
for the company and would be helpful to the company for being more ethical towards the
retailers and the customers. For this, the company could have shown the actual data for
how much amount the same product is selling elsewhere.
 A better environment for employees – There has been various cases and new regarding
the unfair treatment with the employees in the organization. Moreover, the culture is
quite strict and does not allow the employees to work freely in the organization. The
company must provide a more flexible, friendly and healthy environment for the
employees to perform (retaildive, 2019). For this, the company would have encouraged
the open corporate culture instead of an immense amount of strictness.
 Flexibility in work culture – The Company must provide flexibility to the employees to
take a decision and encourage innovation and creativity in the organization. This would

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increase the self-motivation among the employees and would result in better productivity
for the employees. For this the company could have provided various sessions for the
employees like a brainstorming session and listen to the employee's ideas and challenges
they are facing and coming up to the problems immediately (Huckin & Berkenkotter,
2016)

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Conclusion
From the report, it can be concluded that the Amazon is one of the leading e-commerce
companies that is serving customers all the consumer and electronics goods at a click to their
doorstep. The report included an understanding of workplace culture for which environmental
analysis was conducted using various tools. The hierarchical structure has been developed for the
company due to the large business size of Amazon. The tool used for analyzing organizational
culture was a cultural web where the company reflecting the elements of the culture was
analyzed. According to the deal and Kennedy cultural model, the cultural type for Amazon
seems to be “tough guy” and as per Handy’s organizational cultural model, the type of culture
was “power culture.”

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