Amazon's Corporate Social Responsibility

This assignment examines Amazon's corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance. It analyzes the company's contributions to society, the environment, and customers, while also evaluating its treatment of internal stakeholders, particularly employees. The analysis highlights Amazon's strengths in customer-centricity, environmental initiatives, and charitable projects, but suggests areas for improvement regarding employee well-being and work-life balance.

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Executive Summary
This report analyzes the social performance of Amazon.com. The report presents a positive
viewpoint regarding one social aspect of the company. The positive view point discusses the
great impact that the company makes on society and its stakeholder. The positive aspect is about
the involvement of Amazon in several charitable actions and its effort in conservation of energy.
Another negative aspect is also analyzed regarding the average performance of the company
related to its labors.

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Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................1
Discussion........................................................................................................................................1
Positive view-Charitable actions taken by Amazon....................................................................2
Impact on Society.........................................................................................................................2
Impact on external stakeholders (customers)...............................................................................3
Negative View-Amazon’s internal employees suffer..................................................................3
Impact on internal stakeholders (employees)...............................................................................4
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................5
Reference Lists................................................................................................................................6

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Introduction
Amazon.com, the e-commerce giant company was founded by Jeff Bezos in the year
1994.The company has it’s headquarter in Seattle, Washington. The company provides cloud
infrastructure services and sells goods consumer electronics goods, the most popular of which is
Kindle in different countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia,
Germany ,Italy ,Spain and many more with a separate websites for each country. Amazon also
takes part in corporate social responsibilities which is a meaning way by which a business
organization contributes to the society. Analyzing the social performance of a company and the
impact the company makes towards society is of paramount importance. Society is an important
stakeholder of business and the e-commerce giant Amazon makes significant contribution to
society to sustain its business in the highly competitive world (Rossman 2016).
Discussion
Amazon aims to be a customer centric organization. The company hires talented and
self-driven employees to provide best services to customers. The worldwide sustainability team
of Amazon has six teams comprising of 1) Social Responsibility 2) Environment and Energy 3)
Sustainability services 4) Packaging experience for customers 5) Research and Development 6)
Technology. However there are positive aspects about the company related to its achievement
and there are negative arenas and areas that require improvement (Technology in Amazon 2017).

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Positive view-Charitable actions taken by Amazon
Amazon.com has taken several initiatives for the betterment of the society. The positive
aspects of the company are highlighted in terms of its good social responsibility. Amazon has
launched a program called Amazon Smile where the company donates 0.5% of the price of a
user’s purchases to his favorite charitable organization. One million charitable organizations
have enrolled to make them eligible for Amazon Smile (AMAZON 2017).
Impact on Society
Amazon has delivered two thousand gift packages to military men and women in the
United States in the year 2015 who served the country far away from home as a part of its
charitable responsibility. The company has also donated money in several disaster relief
programs –Amazon has donated money for the relief program in Nepal earthquake of the year
2015. Amazon has taken several measures to support the society and local communities. The
company has taken several initiatives like “Girls who Code” to support more women of the
society who are interested in coding. The e-commerce giant has taken initiatives to provide funds
to aspiring writers by Amazon Literary Partnership Program (Amazon 2017). The company has
organized Amazon’s Device Donation Program by which the company donates electronic
devices and gift cards to schools near Amazon’s fulfillment centers. Amazon has taken several
initiatives like partnership to provide digital reading facility in sixty one Kenyan Public libraries.
The company has taken active part in protecting the environment and initiatives taken by
Amazon for Energy Conservation are noteworthy. The accomplishments of Amazon for
conserving the energy are recycling heat from a building nearby to heat the office space in

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Seattle. The office space in the headquarters of the company has three million square feet which
can be heated by this system. Solar energy systems will also be implemented by the e-commerce
giant on the rooftops of the fulfillment centers of the company which will have the capacity to
generate forty one megawatts of power(AMAZON 2017).The company has also undertaken ten
renewable energy projects which will generate every year around 2.6 million megawatt of
energy. Thus from the above facts a positive view can be constructed about the company
regarding its involvement in charitable activities and its concern for the environment (Amazon
Service Industry2017).
Impact on external stakeholders (customers)
Amazon focuses on the three Ps of business like People, Profit and Process and has
created a positive image in hearts of its customers. The charitable activities of Amazon helps the
company to gain customer perceived value These charitable activities and concern for the
environment will indirectly make an impact on the net profit of the company as the positive
brand image in the minds of customers will increase the brand value of the company(Schubert et
al. 2013). The brand value will have direct effect on brand awareness. Customers will be loyal
and will make repeat purchases from the websites of Amazon if they have a positive customer
perceived value (Hayashi 2013).
Negative View-Amazon’s internal employees suffer
Though Amazon takes part in several charitable activities and has taken multiple projects
to conserve energy, it should improve on providing better working conditions for its employees.
The social performance of Amazon will be detrimentally affected if it bridges health and human
rights laws and does not focus on providing better working conditions for its internal

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stakeholders- its employees. Amazon provides employment to more than fifty one thousand
people across the globe. The company has faced issues related to labor that remain unaddressed.
The e-commerce giant is a public company and investors emphasize on the fact that the company
should be profitable every year. To focus on profit, Amazon has neglected the work-life balance
of its employees in the warehouse and customer service department. The employees of the
organization have complained about fifty to seventy hours of work within a week during seasons
of holidays. Poor management of this warehouse centers were also reported by the employees.
The labors complained that their shift timings were changed without prior notice and they were
not allotted enough break time during holiday seasons. Employees have joined labor union in the
company headquarters in Seattle but the company took actions immediately against this union.
The company laid off around many workers (Amazon Layoff 2017).Amazon should be more
responsible towards its employees. The employees of an organization contribute significantly to
improve the customer service of an organization (Bergvall‐Kåreborn, Birgitta and Debra 2014).

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Impact on internal stakeholders (employees)
Amazon aims to be a customer-centric organization and employees are internal customers
of the company. The e-commerce giant should take proper care of its employees in order to
sustain in the competitive business world. The Company should not neglect the health and work
conditions of its labors as poor work conditions of employees can lead to a negative public image
about the company. Amazon will fail to impress its external customers if the news and media
channels publish negative reports about the poor work life of the labors of the company. This
will create a negative public image and will have a detrimental influence on the brand value of
the company. The negative brand value will affect the customer perceived value and the
profitability of the company will be negatively affected in the long run if Amazon does not take
proper care of its employees. The workers of Amazon contribute towards the success of the
company by providing their best services like on-time delivery. Thus workers of the company
contribute substantially toward the strong development of the supply chain and logistics
management of the company. Amazon should make efforts to improve the lives of its employees
by providing them better work-life balance which will improve the profitability of the company
in the long run (Work Culture of Amazon 2017).
Conclusion
The company’s performance in the society in terms of external stakeholders like society,
environment and customers is good. Amazon has been successful in its efforts of being a
customer-centric organization. The e-commerce giant has undertaken several projects on charity
and corporate social responsibility. The contribution of the company on environment

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management and conservation of energy is also noteworthy. However the company has
performed average on its responsibilities towards internal stakeholders that means- the
employees. The company should improve on this particular arena in order to be an excellent
performer in terms of social aspect.

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Reference Lists
"AmazonLayoff".2017. Www.Businessinsider.In. http://www.businessinsider.in/Amazon-is-
reportedly-laying-off-employees-in-its-Lab126-hardware-division/articleshow/48690532.cms.
"AMAZON". 2017. Www.Amazon.Com/. https://www.amazon.com/.
"AmazonServiceIndustry".2017. Www.Businessinsider.Com.http://www.businessinsider.com/
amazon-is-no-longer-a-retail-company-2017-10?IR=T
"Technology In Amazon". 2017. Businessinsider.In. http://www.businessinsider.in/Should-you-
be-scared-of-Amazon/articleshow/59205803.cms.
"Amazon". 2017. Hbr.Org. https://hbr.org/2017/09/what-amazons-hq2-wish-list-signals-about-
the-future-of-cities%20.
Bergvall‐Kåreborn, Birgitta, and Debra Howcroft. "Amazon Mechanical Turk and the
commodification of labour." New Technology, Work and Employment29, no. 3 (2014): 213-223.
Hayashi, Alden M. "The inside and outside view of innovation." MIT Sloan Management
Review 54, no. 3 (2013): 39.
Rossman, John. The Amazon Way: 14 Leadership Principles Behind the World's Most Disruptive
Company. Vol. 1. Clyde Hill Publishing, 2016.
Schubert, Petra, Susan P. Williams, and Ralf Woelfle. "Sustainable competitive advantage in e-
commerce and the role of the enterprise system." In Competition, Strategy, and Modern
Enterprise Information Systems, pp. 303-319. IGI Global, 2013.

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Work Culture Of Amazon". 2017. Www.Businessinsider.In. http://www.businessinsider.in/Ex-
Employees-Dish-On-Amazons-Darwinian-Frugal-And-Deliberately-Adversarial-Culture/
articleshow/36447338.cms.