Critical Analysis of Amazon's Organizational Structure and Culture

This essay critically analyzes Amazon's organizational practices, drawing upon concepts of organizational structure and culture. The analysis explores Amazon's hierarchical structure, including its impact on employee roles, responsibilities, and information flow. The essay delves into the company's culture, highlighting its emphasis on customer centricity, innovation, and risk-taking, while also examining criticisms related to its demanding work environment and employee treatment. The essay references key literature on organizational development, change, and culture to provide a comprehensive understanding of Amazon's approach to management and its implications for employees and overall organizational success. The essay highlights the challenges and opportunities in maintaining a competitive edge in the e-commerce market while addressing employee well-being.

RUNNING HEAD: Understanding organization and people
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Amazon
Understanding organization and people

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The marvels and monsters of Amazon
The Amazon is identified as the world’s largest online retailer and a conspicuous cloud
service provider. Amazon strives to do big, innovative and ground-breaking things which are
not easy. It offers the brand of an exciting company to work for but recently it is labeled as a
‘bruising workplace’. The organizational practices are the practices and actions of the
employees conducted within the culture of the organization. The organizational practices
comprise the organizational structure and organizational culture (Strati, 2017). The
organizational structure defines how definite activities can be directed in order to achieve the
goals of an organization. Such activities comprise the rules, roles, and responsibilities. It also
includes how information flows from level to level within the organization. Amazon follows
hierarchical organizational structure. It incorporates many small teams which are specialized
in dealing with various aspects of the business. The senior management of the company
comprises two CEOs, three senior vice presidents, and a worldwide controller (Rizzolatti,
Cattaneo, Fabbri-Destro and Rozzi, 2014).
The strategic responsibilities of the CEOs in the Amazon are to identify the right market for
the business. Their responsibility is also to ensure effective utilization of the resources within
the organization. it is also the responsibility of the CEOs to optimize various processes. They
head the executive committee and arranges meeting at constant intervals to discuss and
resolve various business issues. The CEOs take all the necessary actions in order to meet the
requirements of the employees, shareholders, customers and the communities. They are liable
to keep track of the financial market. They even develop and implement strategies based on
the reports of the financial analysis. Whereas the directors manage the roles linked to the
development of financial statements and government issues. The workers at Amazon are
stimulated to represent ideas in the meetings and held to the standards which are swanked
unreasonably high. The organizational structure at Amazon has limited flexibility and
responsiveness. The dominance of the global functions reduces the capacity of the company
to respond to issues and problems faced in the e-commerce business. There is a lack of
flexibility in increasing empowerment. The colleagues are guided by the internal phone
directory and are taught to send secret feedback to another’s bosses. As per the employees, it
is used to disrupt others. It creates inflexibility and complaining about the minor tasks. The
newcomers in the Amazon will not be there in a few years (Witt, et. al. 2017). The winners of
company dream up innovation and roll out quarter-billion customers and ensue small fortunes
in elevated stock. As per the director of the human resources of the company, losers leave or

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fired in annual cullings of the staff. The workers who agonized from cancer, miscarriages,
and other personal crises confronted that they had been assessed unethically rather than time
to recover. The criticism is favored in the Amazon over harmony. A painful feedback is
delivered to the colleagues before agreeing on a decision. The employees also suffer from
poor working conditions. The unhappy employees are bad for the efficiency and this dispute
has reached outside workplace (Nickson, Warhurst and Witz, 2017). The poor organizational
structure creates problem to the company in being competitive at work place.
Amazon tests delivery by drone and methods to replenish toilet paper at the impulse of a
bathroom switch. It is a little experiment to push white-collar works and redraw the
boundaries which are acceptable. The company is run by many of the popular management
bromides. It is really challenging for the company when it does something really big,
innovative and the groundbreaking things. Amazon is stronger in extracting most from
employees. Its swelling campus is capable of transforming ten thousand new workers to sell
everything to everyone everywhere (Mishra, Boynton and Mishra, 2014).
There is also an unfair system of ranking in the Amazon. The managers are required to
deliberate and determine the ranking of the subordinates. The low-level employees are
reviewed in the front of high-level managers. The company even adopted the practice of
stack ranking. It causes managers to fire valuable talents to meet a quota. The company keeps
offering a combination of incredible opportunities and compensation. This effort is like
paining for gold to the employees (Zyskowski, Morris, Bigham, Gray and Kane, 2015).
The organizational cultures are the values and behaviors which contribute to the unique social
and psychological environment. It influences the way people interact. The business culture at
Amazon guides to the employees, work and the customer. The organization culture at
Amazon enables business capacity to respond to the demand of the e-commerce market. The
organizational culture is a critical factor in the success of the online retail business. The
company is known for its corporate culture which pushes its employees to discover ideas and
take risks. The culture is responsible for seeking opportunities to offer efficient online retail
business. The company even highlights the centricity of customers. The company strengthens
employees’ focus on the customer’s needs and demands. Amazon even strives to determine
trends and changes in the preference of the consumers. The traditions and values set by the
company influence the employee’s behavior (Maslach and Leiter, 2016).

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The staff of the Amazon such as leadership members, human resources executives,
marketers, engineers, retail specialists who work on the projects is under pressure and
sometimes punished for the power to create. As some employees of the Amazon confronted
that they were prospered specifically because it pushed them in the past what they thought
were their limits. The employees were encouraged by thinking big and knowing that they
have not spoiled the surface on what’s out there to invest. Some other employees also defied
that they learned in brief and it helped in their careers later. Some other also realized later that
they had become habituated to the company’s way of working (Burke, 2017).
The company is even keeping up with the competition and helps old-line business in order to
become responsive to change. Amazon believes in infusing with transparency and precision
about the employees who are really achieving and who are not. The employees of the
company are often designated as athletes for the endurance, performance, and speed which
can be measured. The employees can work hard, long or smart. But they cannot choose two
out of three at Amazon.com. It is not the priority of the company to offer any pretense which
caters to employees. It is just compensation which is considered competitive as the successful
managers can collect an extra salary (Dwivedi, et. al. 2015). But the employees are
anticipated to hold prudence and cell phones and travel expenses are often not paid by the
company. The focus is being made persistently to please customers. Along with this, the
members at Amazon are educated to ‘disagree and commit’ to split into the colleague ideas
with feedback. The staff is also discouraged due to lack of praise. The company have never
done good enough. The employees cannot even tolerate the hostile language used in the
meetings.
The system at company strengthens others to motivate and discipline the marketers, engineers
and finance specialists. The constant feedback on the performance and the competition
among staff misses a potential problem and race to answer an email before anyone else. Some
employees even opposed that they were protected from the pressure caused by the bosses and
worked in the relatively slow divisions. However some other said that the culture encouraged
their willingness to corrode work-life boundaries and criticize themselves for the
shortcomings. The people became practically combust (Anderson, 2016). The organizational
culture even imposes a strain on the human resources in pushing employees to take a bold
and non-conventional approach in doing their jobs. Amazon has a culture of working
incredibly hard. It is used to describe the standards and expectations of the company. The
junior employees have a lot of responsibility which even reveals the punishing culture. The

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employees are even often found upset as they have to compete with each other. The team
members are ranked each other and it leads to the competitive atmosphere. It creates an
uncomfortable working environment as the negative feedbacks can be send to the peer’s
bosses. The company do not give time employees to recover who are suffering from cancer or
like major disease and the miss happenings (Hatch, 2018). They found a company so
persistent that they could not pause. The intense work environment creates concern for the
place to work. The employees have to give up feel-good aspects in order to be innovative,
competitive and winning. The corporate culture here is enduring, stable and hard to change.
Pushing employees with the impossible standards may seem easy but replacing people is not
easy at all. It is also observed that most employees cannot handle negative and suspicious
culture (Grof and Grof, 2017).
Amazon can establish higher flexibility and responsiveness in increasing empowerment. The
company is even moving through a lot of people to identify and retain talent. Amazon can
enhance its organizational culture and structure by offering a combination of incredible
opportunities and compensation.

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