Maintaining Ethics in Business: A Case Study of Amazon

This presentation discusses the unethical issues faced by Amazon and provides recommendations for the company to become more ethical in its business practices. It highlights the importance of ethics in running a successful business and the negative impacts of unethical behavior on profitability and reputation. The presentation also examines specific unethical practices of Amazon, such as employee abuse and harsh treatment of workers and customers. It suggests applying UN Sustainable Goals as a code of ethics and improving the organizational culture to maintain ethics. The presentation concludes by emphasizing the need for companies to treat employees equally and meet their basic needs to create a positive brand image and achieve sustainable growth.

How to maintain
ethics

Table of content
• Introduction
• Importance of ethics
• Overview of Amazon
• Ethical implications of Amazon
• Actions to become ethical
• Conclusion

Introduction
This presentation is going to present a report on
unethical issues that are happened in Amazon and what
actions it need to take, to become ethical in business
which is necessary to gain sustainability at
marketplace.

Importance of ethics in business
Ethics are important to run business successfully, if any firms
found unethical then it highly impacts on its profitability and
also face a number of legal issues with loss of reputation in
marketplace. If a firm runs its business ethically then it would
help in retaining its employees and gain their loyalty towards
corporate goals effectively. It also aids in meeting basic human
needs like treating equally, fair and ethically at workplace.

Overview of Amazon
Amazon is one of the American international company, that
deals in e-commerce industry and distribute a range of
products digitally at worldwide level. Currently, it has given
employment to more than 740k employees, that helps in
tailoring needs of both domestic and international customers
successfully.

Ethical Implications in Amazon
• Abusing and torturing employees mentally – As per
BBC investigation in 2013, on one of the warehouse of
Amazon in UK, it has been found staff members were
mentally and physically tortured especially on the
occasional period like Christmas. Due to increase in online
purchasing, working hours for night workers had increased
from eight hours to ten hours, that breach the employment
regulations, because if a person at night shift work more
than 8-hours in a day, then it would impact on health
adversely in both physical and mental way.

Continue…
• Usage of abusive and harsh practices on workers and
customers – The culture of Amazon also evident about it harsh
and unethical practices where to immediately reply every
customer mails, employees are forced to work for long period
of time. Therefore, treating workers poorly put negative impact
on its brand image, that affect perception of customers.

Continue….
Other unethical practices – Covering the abusive practices, by
getting involved in Greenwashing, Tax avoidance and evasions
in several countries, etc. are some other unethical acts
conducted by Amazon, due to which it has lost its brand image
at marketplace, especially in UK.

Actions to become ethical
In order to reduce ethical implications, Amazon need to apply
certain UN Sustainable Goals as code of ethics like Good
health & Well-being, Gender Equality, Decent Work and
Economic Growth, Reduce inequalities etc. Amazon requires
to focus on improving its organisational culture to maintain
ethics, where it needs to fulfil some basic needs of workers,
like equality in workplace, shift in working hours for fixed
duration only, safety and security. For this purpose, it needs
to apply Good Health & Well being in its ethical practices.

Continue
• As tax and other legal compliances are mandatory, therefore,
Amazon needs to comply its policies with ethical codes like Decent Work
& Economic Growth by providing fix working hours to employees and
treat workers, customers and all other people equally with dignity and
respect, etc.
• As per UN Sustainable goals like decent work and economic
growth, Amazon needs to stop practices like tax evasion and earning
profits in unethical manner. It is mandatory for this firm to pay valid tax
timely so that positive image can be developed among its customers, to
gain sustainability in business.

Continue…
• For improving working culture, proper code of conduct needs to be
set like avoiding Bezos principle. Because this principle mainly focuses on
being competitor instead of people-centric at marketplace, that lead a firm
to do anything to gain competitive advantage. In this regard, such a firm
adopts unethical practices like treating workers brutally for tailoring needs
of customers in short span of time. So, it affects brand image negatively
and may create legal issues as well. So, Amazon requires to avoid Bezos
principle to maintain ethics and positive working environment in its
organisational culture.

Continue…
• Providing rights to employees to complaint about any practice
or activity that put working pressure on them, will also help in
improving working culture of Amazon. For this purpose,
reducing inequalities as ethical codes can be applied in
organizational policies.
• As Amazon also face legal issues for creating discrimination at
workplace, like exploitation of cheap labour of Chinese
workers, also need to be eliminated, for reducing inequalities
in business.

Continue…
• As per UN Sustainable goals like decent work and
economic growth, Amazon needs to stop practices like tax
evasion and earning profits in unethical manner. It is
mandatory for this firm to pay valid tax timely so that
positive image can be developed among its customers, to
gain sustainability in business.

Conclusion
It has been concluded from this presentation that for running
business in a sustainable manner, it is essential for every
firm whether deals at small or large level, to maintain ethics
in business. For this purpose, companies are required to treat
employees equally and meet their basic needs effectively.
This would help in creating the positive brand image at
marketplace and achieve growth of business in a sustainable
manner, to gain high profitability.

06/08/19
References
Jago, A. S. and Pfeffer, J., 2019. Organizations Appear More
Unethical than Individuals. Journal of Business Ethics,
160(1). pp.71-87.
Tzini, K. and Jain, K., 2018. Unethical behavior under
relative performance evaluation: Evidence and remedy.
Human Resource Management, 57(6), pp.1399-1413.

Thank you