Organizational Development: Characteristics and Business Profiles of Oxfam, Amazon, and Coventry City Council

This presentation discusses the key characteristics and business profiles of Oxfam, Amazon, and Coventry City Council in the context of organizational development. It explores their vision, mission, health and safety policies, and organizational philosophies. It also examines the different theories and models they use in their operations. The presentation concludes by recommending Amazon as the best choice for a graduate student employee.

ORGANIZATIONAL
DEVELOPMENT

TABLE OF CONTENTS
 INTRODUCTION
 KEY CHARACTERISTICS
 CONCLUSION
 REFERENCES

INTRODUCTION
 Organizational development is a special technique which helps the organization to
bring changes in the entire aspect of an organization rather than focusing on
individuals. It is simply a technique to bring a planed change in an organization.
 OD is a comprehensive strategy for making improvements in an organization. Present
report discusses about the characteristics and difference business profile of three types
of an organization like Oxfam, Amazon and Coventry City Council

Key characteristics
Amazon
 Amazon is a multinational company of technology which is focusing on e-commerce,
artificial intelligence and cloud computing.
 Amazon is a private company and is the world's largest e-commerce market place and
cloud computing platform. It was founded by Jeff Bezos in July, 1994.
 Its headquarters is at Seattle, Washington, United States. It is a global company and
has more than 100 million subscribers

Cont..
 Vision: Amazon's vision is to become world's most customer centric company and to
become a online company where the customers can find and buy anything they want.
 Mission: To provide the products to customer at low prices with a best selection for
customers and at utmost convenience.
 Amazon's health and safety and Environmental policies: Amazon's heath and safety
team executes their company policies and are ensuring that local and regional
regulation are applicable to their stores across the world (Kazmi, 2017). Amazon keep
on making continuous improvements take initiatives to reduce the risks in their
processes and ensure that there exists safe and healthy working environment for
Amazon associates

Theory- MBO cycle
 Amazon's Organizational Philosophy: Amazons business philosophy is “focusing on the
customer makes a company more resilient”
 Amazon: Amazon works through MBO cycle as Amazon's aim is top improve the performance
of the organization and are clearly defining its objectives which are agreed by both employees
and the management. It involves six steps:
 1. At first Amazon defines its goals
 2. In second step Amazon define employees objectives
 3. Amazons monitors its perform and progress towards the set objective.
 4. Amazon makes performance evaluation
 5. checks the feedback
 6. and at the end makes performance appraisal (Hoover, Giambatista and Tribble, 2016)

Cont..
Oxfam
 Oxfam is a charitable organization which is focusing on eliminating the poverty in the
world. Oxfam is a non-profit organization which was founded in 1942.
 It is one of the major non profit group which is involved in extensive collection of
operations. Winnie Byanyima is the executive director of Oxfam since 2013. A main
focus of the organisation is to help the needy people across the world.

Cont..
 Vision: Oxfam wants to see the world without poverty and imagines a kind of a world
in which the people can influence the decisions which affects their lives and people
can enjoy their rights and take care of their responsibilities to help others.
 Mission: Oxfam wants to be a global organization and to work for the humanity in
such a way to end the poverty and to tackle the root causes of poverty and provide
solutions to reduce poverty (Safety and welfare, 2019).

Cont..
Oxfam health and safety and Environmental policies:
 Activities of Oxfam which have an impact on environment and communities
are Oxfam follows the principles of Reduce, Reuse, Repair and Recycle.
 Also Oxfam uses the tools of ethical purchasing policy in order to influence supply
chain employment conditions
 Oxfam organizational philosophy: Organizational philosophy of Oxfam is “ To help
people build better futures for themselves and save lives in disasters”

Theory- 5 p's strategy
 Oxfam: Oxfam uses 5 p's strategy for its business operations
 1. Plans: First Oxfam plans the actions which are to be carried out for the
business.
 2. Patterns: Patterns are about the strategies which have been implemented by
Oxfam in past which help Oxfam to achieve results.
 3. Position: Oxfam looks its position in the markets does its match to the
requirements of stakeholders (Siddiq, Ahmad and Jan, 2015).
 4. Perspective: Oxfam frames the strategy to target large audience.
 5. Ploy: Oxfam gains the competitive advantage over its competitors.

Cont..
Coventry City Council
 Coventry City Council is a local government organisation of UK which is responsible
for the governance of city of Coventry in UK.
 Coventry is a public company of UK and is controlled mainly by labour Party form last
few decades. It was founded April 1974, produced by Coventry city council of county
Borough of Coventry

Cont..
 Vision: Coventry city Council's Vision is to drive the services to the public to ensure
children are at heart of everything Coventry city Council does, to work with families, to
provide high quality, child centred and effective services. To serve the people with high
performance with a committed work force.
 Mission: To provide the services to family and children and to develop a mature
partnership and to provide early help to the people (Shah, Hussain and Rahman, 2016).
 Coventry City Council organizational philosophy: City Councils works on the
philosophy of “Don't make excuses, make improvements”

Cont..
Coventry city Council health and safety and Environmental policies:
 Coventry city Council's health and safety team are dealing with the complaints which
are related to Local authority enforced business are can investigate the complaints like
unreported accidents, unsafe premises, unsafe practices, and concerns about the
welfare.
 Coventry city Council is involved in climate changing strategy, mineral safeguarding,
reducing waste energy and make use of renewable sources of energies etc.

Key Environmental influences
 Amazon: Amazon believes in environmental sustainability which is a important concern
for business world. Being a e-retailer company Amazon have focused on several areas
like waste reduction, packaging and energy consumption. Also Amazon have invested a
lot on sustainability and CSR. Renewable energy is the key focus of Amazon.
 Oxfam: Oxfam is working on reducing the impact of global warming in present and for
future. Oxfam is working on climate change because of climate has devastating impact
on people's lives. Oxfam works on cause and effects of climate change because the
people Oxfam works with are being hit first and at worst.
 Coventry City Council: Coventry City Council is tackling the climate change and is
contributing in reducing the greenhouse gas emission in the city. Coventry City council
is ensuring that tackling climate change is the common goal and are working together in
the

Theory- The effective management of people
Coventry City Council: As Coventry City council is the local authority and are managing
different departments and people in it so the organisation has manage its people effectively
to offer the services effectively.
 The employees of Coventry City Council have to maintain consistency in their working
standards.
 Maintain proper communication in different departments and also the clarity of
communication which results in the organizational success (Kazmi, 2017).
 Set the departmental goals.
 Coventry City Council should maintain transparency which will build trust within the
employees of an organisation.

Cont..
Organizational structure
 Amazon: Amazon has Hierarchical organizational structure which has different levels
of authorities.
 Oxfam: Oxfam has Network structure as Oxfam coordinates and controls relationships
both internally and externally (Harwood, 2017).
 Coventry City Council: Coventry City Council has Divisional structure in which entire
organisation is split up into autonomous units.

Cont..
Organisational Communications
 Amazon: Different departments of Amazon communicate with each other through
down ward communication.
 Oxfam: In Oxfam different departments communicate through lateral communication.
 Coventry City Council: Different departments of Coventry City Council communicate
through formal communication process (Awan, Salam and INAM, 2015).

Cont..
Kind of organisation cultures
 Amazon: Amazon has power culture in which power moves from top-down.
 Oxfam: Oxfam has task culture with in the organisation as it has small teams across the
world and is solution oriented with high flexibility and adaptability.
 Coventry City Council: Coventry City Council has role culture within the
organisation which is run by procedures.

Cont..
Management styles
 Amazon: Management style followed by Amazon is Autocratic management style
 Oxfam: Oxfam follows Democratic management style.
 Coventry City Council: Coventry City Council follows Laissez-faire management
style

Cont..
Leadership Characteristics
Amazon:
 Leaders take little or no inputs for the group members
 leaders take all the decisions
 Work trends is highly structure and are rigid.
Oxfam:
 Leaders take inputs from others
 Employees participate in decision makings
 working environment is flexible.
Coventry City Council
 Ability to make difficult decisions
 Willing to take risks
 works with a clear vision.

Cont..
Performance and effectiveness of the organisation and how is it measured
 Performance may be defined completion of the task with application of knowledge,
abilities and skills within organisation like Oxfam, Amazon and Coventry City Council.
Performance of a job assesses whether a person performs a job well or not (Gartzia and
Baniandrés, 2016).
 Effectiveness of the these organisations is how well they are able to meet their
objectives and it can be measure by net profitability.

RECOMMENDATION
 Amazon will be the best company for graduate student employee because of following
reasons:
 Amazon is the organisation which focuses on its profitability and clear set goals as
compared to other two organisations. This will provide a graduate student with perform
different tasks within an organisation focusing on single goal.
 Amazon also hierarchical organisational structure with different levels of authorities
which help a student in gaining the experience how different departments works within
an organisation and communications flows from top to bottom level.
 Also leaders of Amazon follows autocratic leadership style within the organisation
which will help the student in improving its performance and knowledge.

CONCLUSION
 It can be concluded that all these types of companies are different in their business profiles and operations.
 They differ in their goals, objectives, vision and strategies, but they have goal in terms of contributing
towards the global environment and health and safety standards.
 It can be concluded that there is difference in their organizational philosophies and they also have different
key environmental influences which influence these organizations in contributing to the environment.
 It can also be concluded that they use different models and theories within their organizations in order to
perform their business operations.
 These model and theories within the organisation have an impact on their performance levels. It can also be
concluded that Amazon is the suitable organisation for graduate student employee which will improve the
skills and knowledge of the employees related to different tasks.

REFERENCES
 Awan, W. A., Salam, A. and INAM, S. G., 2015. The impact of marketing mix (5 Ps) elements on sales of UPS: A case of Karachi
Market–Buyer’s perspective. VFAST Transactions on Education and Social Sciences. 6(2).
 Gartzia, L. and Baniandrés, J., 2016. Are people-oriented leaders perceived as less effective in task performance? Surprising results
from two experimental studies. Journal of Business Research. 69(2). pp.508-516.
 Harwood, S., 2017. ERP: The implementation cycle. Routledge.
 Hoover, J. D., Giambatista, R. C. and Tribble, L., 2016. An Organizational Development Approach to Experiential Learning with
Millennials. In Developments in Business Simulation and Experiential Learning: Proceedings of the Annual ABSEL conferenc.
(Vol. 43, No. 1).
 Kazmi, A., 2017, October. Blending transformational leadership with strategic thinking to strengthen organizational NPD
innovation process. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Operations Management,
Bogota, Colombia.
 Safety and welfare. 2019. [Online]. Available Through: <https://oxfamapps.org/festivals/health-and-safety.php>.
 Shah, F. A., Hussain, J. and Rahman, W., 2016. The Effect of Training and Development Practices on Employees’ Organizational
Commitment among the Employees in Private Health Care Sector in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. Sarhad Journal of
Management Sciences. 2(01). pp.17-26.
 Siddiq, A., Ahmad, S. and Jan, M.F., 2015. Emotional Intelligence: A Driving Force towards Organizational Development. Journal
of Management Research (JMR). 1(2). pp.86-104.