Corporate Social Responsibility Business Case: Amazon Analysis

This case study examines Amazon's corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives, focusing on customer obsession, ownership strategies, innovation, and leadership. It analyzes the impact of CSR on organizational performance, considering financial and non-financial factors, and explores the mediating role of innovation in CSR-performance relationships. The study discusses different leadership styles, including internally focused, externally focused, and strategically focused leaders, and how CSR contributes to employee loyalty, motivation, and creativity. It highlights Amazon's successful implementation of CSR in areas such as recyclable packaging and renewable energy usage, demonstrating how these initiatives align with positive operational effectiveness and contribute to the company's growth and sustainability. The case study emphasizes the importance of CSR in today's business environment, where organizations must consider their social and environmental responsibilities alongside their economic goals.

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CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY OF AMAZON
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Introduction
The organization like Amazon follows the Corporate social responsibility that is based on
the Customer obsession, the ownership strategies, inventing the various ways and simplifying the
various method, learning new methods and becoming curious (Story and Neves, 2015). This also
includes the strategies that the business need to hire and develop the best skills for the team
members, the leaders also insist on the highest standards and by earning trust (Zhu, Sun and
Leung, 2014). This study focuses on the corporate social responsibility of the organization that
can be implemented in Amazon, includes the knowledge regarding the effective leadership
styles. This study also involves the cognitive and the intellectual skills of the leadership
strategies for reaching the organizational goals and the practical implications of the effective
leadership in the business performance. This study draws light on the transferrable skills for the
life and the professional practices.
Engagement with Literature Skills
According toJones Christensen, Mackey and Whetten (2014), this study analyses the
impacts of the Corporate Social Responsibility on the measurement of the organizational
performances for encompassing both the non-financial and the financial factors indicators that
studies the potential mediating role of the innovations in the corporate social responsibility for
the performance relationships. This study uses the structural equation modelling approach for the
sample of the 133 Eco-responsible Spanish companies, the results of this approach provides the
leadership strategies and include the evidences of the positive and the important direct impacts of
the Corporate Social Responsibility on both the innovations and the organizational performances
that is across all the groups of the companies. The group of companies includes the

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manufacturing company verses the non-manufacturing company, proactive verses the non-
proactive company, the smaller verses the larger and the younger verses the older firms. The
results also finds the mediation role of the innovations for the case of manufacturing the
companies. This study include the leadership strategies like the internally focused one, externally
focused one and the strategically focused one. The internally focused one reflects those who are
internally focused and they run the business depending upon the needs of the team that is they
prioritize the staff members, colleagues and investors more than they prioritize the customers.
The outside forces, which influences and affects the company, mostly drive the externally
focused leaders and they are also deeply concerned with the strategies of the changes introduced
in the economy, the strategy of the new competitors and the customer satisfaction. The
strategically focused leaders develops and executes the practical strategy for their own
organization. These leaders are rarely influenced by the other factors and instead these leaders
are driven by the desires to create the clear brand identity and developing the profitable products
and services. These leadership strategies differentiates between the outstanding entrepreneurs.
According to Rao and Tilt (2016), this research study continues to determine and
examine how the Corporate Social Responsibility leads to the positive attitudes of the employees
and the work behaviours of the employees. This was found out by the research study that the
Corporate Social Responsibility improved the employee loylty, motivates employees, satisfies
the employeesand also improves the employee commitment. The Corporate Social
Responsibility affects the employee creativity and also in addition to this, the considerable
skepticism remains related to the importance of the Corporate Social Responsibility that is in
relation to the employee’s behaviours, employee’s attitudes and the potential contingencies,
which intervenes in these relationships.The another focus of this study is to develop the

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leadership strategies that is developing the opportunities for the experience based learning and
the leader need to hire for the transformations. The perfect strategically leader need to bring the
whole self to the work and finding time for reflecting and recognizing the leadership
development as the ongoing practices. This study argues the impact of the Corporate Social
Responsibility on the creativity of the employees that is contingent upon the local firm’s
corporate ability. These expertises in producing and delivering the products and services and this
study mainly argues with the corporate ability that influences the employee’s organizational
identification, it affects how the employees reacted to the Corporate Social Responsibility and
this study also tested the arguments with the sample of the professional workers in the
telecommunication sector and also found out the strong support for the proposed model.
According to O'Mara‐Shimek, Guillén and BañónGomis (2015), the idea of the Corporate
Social Responsibility is considered as the responsibility that the business beared to the society
and the broader set of the stakeholders beyond its stakeholders and gained the currency in the
1960s. From then the attention on the Corporate Social Responsibility has been growing in both
the academic and the practitioner communities around the world. The goal of this study is not to
develop a theory based on the Corporate Social Responsibility instead the motive of this study is
to highlight the continuous growing breadth and depth of the literature and point out to the
promising avenues of extending the understanding of the complex issues. This study focuses on
the growth of the strategic leadership. This also involves the principles of the leadership
strategies that is distributing responsibility, the leader need to be honest and open about the
information in the organization, creates multiple paths for raising up and testing ideas. The
principles also includes that the strategic leader should make the safe decisions before it fails and
the leader should provide access to the other strategist. This thematic problem help to progress

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the editorial’s effort in highlighting the management scholarship based on the societal roles of
the corporations and the organizations. This study also helped in understanding the base concept
by outlining the potential research questions, which helped to find out the six values: dignity,
solidarity, plurality, reciprocity, subsidiarity and the sustainability. This helps the organizations
to achieve the purposes based on the six values. For making the organizational purpose, a
defining characteristic, the practices and the perfect behaviours strengthens the character of the
individual, the organization and the society.
Knowledge understanding skills
The effective model will help Amazon to build their organizational performances and this
effective model will bring improvements for the organizational performances. The effective
process of developing the corporate social responsibility need to include the four basic styles that
is the leader need to be Pragmatist, these leader should set high standards in the unapologetically
expectations of standards, which need to be met by the employees (Frynas and Yamahaki, 2016).
The pragmatist leader inherit the characteristics that are driven and competitive and they
prioritize in hitting the goals. The leader need to be idealist as the ideal leader should be the
highest energy achiever that believes in the positive potential of everyone around them. The
idealst leaders want to learn and grow and they also want everybody else in the group to perform
in the same manner (Wheelenet al. 2017). Amazon need to follow the models involving the
steward leadership models that is the steward leader need to be dependable, helpful and loyal and
should become the rock behind the organizational needs. Amazon also need to follow the
leadership strategies like following the diplomatic leadership styles that is by involving the
awards for the interpersonal harmony and this leader acts as the social glue and the affiliative
forces that keeps the team together and these also typically build up the personal bonds with the

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employees. Among the leadership styles, the pragmatists pushes themselves and the employees
hardest , the Amazon’s growth can testifies these leadership styles would get amazing results.
The goal of this leadership demands moving out of their comfort zone and growing bond with
the employees (Vlachos, Panagopoulos and Rapp, 2014).
Cognitive and intellectual skills
According to Lozano (2015), it is important to understand the significance of the CSR
techniques that are implemented by Amazon in view of the diverse workforce that is has across
the world. Amazon takes part in CSR activities to help the integration of its large diversified
workforce. Moreover, the CSR activities of the company are also focused towards sustainability.
The large scale operations of the company make it necessary to implement policies that are
socially and environmentally effective. It becomes much important that the company implements
strategies through which it can essentially realize the business opportunities that are present at a
global level The company focuses towards effectively contributing towards the development of
an environment where diverse group of people can interact positively and productively.
Additionally, the focus is also towards developing environment friendly operations so that both
the internal and external environmental responsibilities can be essentially handled (Jain and
Jamali, 2016). It is important to understand that organizational effectiveness relies on how the
organization treats its people and the environment within which it operates. This makes CSR
even more important in view of the large responsibilities that are associated with the productive
functioning of businesses. Considering this the development and running of Amazon Care is
much important (Kantor. and Streitfeld 2015). Through the organization amazon maintains an
essential image in regards to the responsibilities that it undertakes.

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Practical skills
According to Baskentli (2018), the key concepts that are related to the CSR functions of
various organizations need to be studied effectively in order to understand their implication
towards being applied as practically viable ideas. Organizational development in the current
world cannot disregard social responsibilities. The environments within which the corporate
organizations of today essentially operate make it very important for them to work in accordance
of the benefit of the society and the world. Environmental factors crucially affect the operations
of businesses across the globe. The different types of CSR are environmental responsibilities,
philanthropy, ethical practices and economic responsibilities (Schwartz 2017). These are the
various different activities that contribute to the development of optimally effective corporate
socially responsible functions. Amazon has made significant impact in two major aspects of
CSR. They are improvements in packing and commitment towards renewable energy. This has
greatly lead to the significant success of the company with regard to its corporate
responsibilities. According to Sosik and Jung (2018), the major initiative that had worked in the
favor of Amazon was the usage of recyclable packaging material). This is important as
recyclable materials have also led to the lesser usage of any additional shipping boxes. The
supply chain management had to be optimized in order to incorporate these changes. This
required the working together of the company with the engineers and manufacturers. The
company stopped the usage of some unnecessary elements that are merely used to increase the
display value of the product (Smith, Rupp and Offodile 2017). In doing so the company not only
reduced wastage but at the same time it saved a lot of money that was actually required in order
to facilitate these practically unnecessary things (Schwartz, 2017). It is important to remember

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that apart from helping the environment CSR initiatives can many times help to optimize the
operational value of an organization.
The company has also significantly contributed towards the effective usage of renewable
energy. The web services of the company have greatly reduced the usage of non-renewable
energy. This has facilitated the growth of better more energy efficient offices (Javidan,Bullough
and Dibble, 2016). At the same time the sustainable usage of energy has contributed greatly
towards the lesser use of energy across the organizational levels (Shamir 2017). It is important
that both the usage of recyclable materials and the usage of sustainable renewable energy
resources have largely contributed towards the effective growth of the organization (Kantor. and
Streitfeld 2015). As a company Amazon have been largely successful in aligning the CSR
funtions with positive operational effectiveness of the company. The company have been able to
implement effective CSR techniques.
Transferable skills for life and professional practice
Tai and Chuang (2014), state that it is important for the maintenance of the long term
commitment towards responsibilities of any organization that the skills are sustained. The skills
refer to the various effective techniques that are implemented in order to significantly impact the
effectiveness of CSR. The sustenance of these skills essentially require that the employees that
are newly acquired as trained on the practices of CSR from the very beginning. It is important
that the organization takes the necessary steps towards retaining the teams that have significantly
contributed towards the positive management of CSR across the organization. However simple
sustaining the essential talents are not enough as the company needs to grow with regards to the
CSR activities. This means that with time the CSR activities need to get better. Amazon faces
some significant challenges in this regards. This is mainly due to the fact that the company keeps

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very low record and very low assessment techniques for the CSR activities that it participates in.
Meaning that the company although have taken effective measures towards CSR, does not
greatly keep the records of these CSR activities. The company can fail to capitalize on the
emerging trends in CSR if it does not keep records of its essential CSR activities. This can
hamper the further development of CSR for the company despite its present effectiveness. Thus,
it becomes important that dedicated CSR teams are formed by the company in order to help the
effective future management of CSR function.
The company needs to enlighten each employee about CSR from the very beginning of
their services of the company. Separate CSR trainings can be held in between work. Amazon
have to cultivate social responsibilities among their employees if they want to continue their
activities in the future. Amazon has to implement productive design for CSR that are better than
the presently applied techniques by the organization. It is important to understand the basic
significance of CSR towards the personal development of each employee along with the wider
value that attaches with organizational development. Companies are getting smarter and more
energy efficient. Amazon being one of the leading companies of the world currently, it becomes
much important that the organization treats its responsibilities in better ways (Grayson and
Hodges 2017). The focus should be toward the long term sustainability, feasibility and the
operational effectiveness that can be gained through the implementation of better CSR
management.
Conclusion
Therefore, from the above discussion, it can be concluded that the effective leadership
style can be implemented in the organization like Amazon for the better improvement of the
organizational operational process. For developing the social corporate responsibility the

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organization are need to be improved by following the various recommended leadership style
and theories. The research study stated the various theories regarding the leadership strategies
and the leadership styles. The recommended cognitive and the intellectual skills of the leadership
strategies for reaching the organization goals and the practical implications of the effective
leadership in the business performances. The mentioned transferrable skills for the life and the
professional practices could bring improvement in the organization.

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