Analysis of Ethical Considerations for Amazon in Business Operations

This report provides an in-depth analysis of the ethical considerations surrounding Amazon's business practices. It examines the viewpoints of key stakeholders, including CEO Jeff Bezos, employees, customers, and politicians, to understand the ethical challenges faced by the company. The analysis covers various aspects such as employee working conditions, tax avoidance strategies, and customer perceptions regarding ethical issues like military supply chain management and animal rights. The report concludes with recommendations for Amazon to improve its ethical standing, including tailored wages, environmental responsibility, and addressing controversies. The report highlights the potential long-term impact of ethical failures on Amazon's brand image and goodwill, emphasizing the importance of ethical conduct for long-term success.

Academic and
Professional
Skills
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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Analysis............................................................................................................................................3
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................7
Recommendations:...........................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................9
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Introduction
Business ethics is regarded professional ethics strategy used for the purpose of examination of
the moral and ethical problems that can arise in the external business environment of
organisation. It is applying to all aspects of business conduct and it is very important for the
purpose of deciding the overall code of conduct of organisations and individuals (Amazon
.com Inc, 2020). Present report is based on the case study of Amazon and ethics, Amazon is one
of the leading retail brands having presence across different parts of the world (Shank, 2016).
Amazon is one of many large corporations that are willing to avoid taxation policies and dealing
with serious issues of ethics. Present report is based on the discussion of understanding the
importance of ethics for a business organisation where is analysis of its importance to deal with
the changing business scenario in macro environment in comparison with other competitors.
Analysis
There are certain important aspects of the present case study of Amazon and it has to be
discussed in relation with several important points that will help in developing a detailed
overview of the viewpoints of CEO of Amazon and other ethical view points.
1) View points of CEO of Amazon:
Jeff Bezos is the CEO of world's largest online retail brand Amazon. Jeff Resort has spent his
life in Revolution rising The E-Commerce and the inventing of life. He is the fifth wealthiest
man who is present in this planet aunty has a philosophy that has helped in building the online
retail store (Jacksonand Orebaugh, 2018). Ethics has been major consideration of this business
since its evolution and this has been strongly considered by Amazon information of their several
business policies. There are many interviews and return viewpoints that have been made by Jeff
Bezoz help us in developing an understanding of his views regarding the ethical responsibilities
of this E-Commerce brand. He always believed that there is requirement to build a culture that is
right according to the scenario of organisation. He says that he has never claimed that his
approach is the right one but it is just there approach. Claim that since last two decades they have
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been able to collect the large group of like minded people who are helping them in developing a
energizing and the meaningful approach. He is a person empowering people to avoid situations
of bureaucracy working culture environment.
They also say that they are having obsession over their customers and not competitors. They
always willing to listen to their customers and for this they have able to build the Amazon Web
series business that have been designed for the purpose of solving all the problems that is
resulting of very expensive in house application of opening source products and hosting (Stahl,
and Wright, 2018). They also make efforts to understand the overall ethical responsibility
towards their employees and for this they are willing to make their employees feel that they are
the owners of the brand. They always make efforts in hiring of the versatile employees and retain
them for a longer duration of time (5 key business lessons from Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, 2017).
Workers thinking on ethical responsibility:
There are several different types of employee’s class and differentiation of employees according
to the assigned functions. There is an ethical code of conduct that has been designed for the
employees they have to follow in their working practices (Applin, 2017). There are always
sessions help for employees to make them realise that the importance of ethical responsibility to
ensure the competitive advantage for their brand. All these have created a thinking of the
Employees towards ethical approach towards all the roles and responsibilities that have been
assigned to them in the course of their business functioning. They are always willing to respond
to any of the issues that have been arise for their customers as early as possible apart from this
they are also making efforts to contribute maximum towards the environment by not generating
enough waste like plastics that can be harmful for the environment (Amazon.com Inc, 2020).
Customers views on ethical issues:
Customers are always willing to have preferences for brands who are following a strong ethical
code of conduct. There were several issues that have been faced by the employees in Amazon
such as the working conditions in their houses. According to an Issue held in the year 2011
where there was a hundred degree heat situation prevails and their ambulances for all the
workers. This issue has affected the overall corporate social responsibility of Amazon towards
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their Employees. So in the year 2018, there was a report discussing about the comparison of
Amazon warehouse with the similar size of warehouse in Tesco (Gomes, and Brasileiro, 2018).
Where there are only eight calls for day of the ambulance and there are approximately 115 call
outs by Amazon site in Rugeley near Birmingham.
There have been recent researches which clearly indicate that warehouses in Amazon or
staff by numerous high temperatures and external organisations like Amazon are hiring workers
in the peak season that is leading to huge number of workforce working in a particular area. This
creates a situation of need of a separate warehouse not been fulfilled by Amazon in the recent
scenario (Amazon.com Inc, 2020).
There are also cases of exploitation of Chinese workers where they are hired as temporary
workers from external Agencies and they are then laid off in situations of crisis. Investigations
have also suggested that trainings of the spinning workers are only for five days and dispatch
workers need daily 8 hours of training. These are some of the discrimination instances that have
led to toxic environment for their employees in Amazon. There is also increasing problem for
white collar workers and blue collar workers (Adda and Cohen, 2017). Where workers are
reviewed annually and they are evaluated and ranked according to the performance. Workers
have recently pay situations where they have evaluated unfairly because of the personal crisis
and they are not able to justify the way they have been evaluated by the management. Also
workers returning after serious injuries and surgeries like cancer treatments are given low
performance rating and have not been honestly reviewed according to the personal crisis scenario
they are facing (Shank, 2016). These situations in Amazon clearly indicate that they have not
been able to realise the ethical responsibility towards their employees and this leads to high
dissatisfaction among their overall workforce. These cases have affected the brand reputation of
Amazon as many computed individuals are not willing to work with this friend because of the
prevailing bad environmental working conditions and the ignorance of the management towards
health of their employees have resulted into limitation of the skill set within their overall
workforce (Ethical issues with Amazon, 2019).
Politician views on Ethical responsibilities:
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There are many situations like according to the present case study Amazon is one of the large
organisations who are practicing tax avoidance in many of their present countries where having
their operations (Shetty and Moorthy, 2020). Tax avoidance is not an illegal crime but it is a
consideration that is unethical according to the Government of any country. In the year 2016 in
UK Amazon has earned 24 million pounds and in the year 2017 it was approximately 72 million
pounds. In the year 2016 they paid only 7.4 million pounds tax and in the year 2017 despite of
the numerous enhancements of profits they just paid 4.6 million pounds as their tax. This created
a big question on the tax avoidance strategies of Amazon and this lead to give criticism from
politicians like Donald Trump and Jeremy corbyn (Jacksonand Orebaugh, 2018). These
situations are of serious concern as this led to higher amount of negative impact on the present
goodwill and eyes of their customers and that had a very strong impact on the prevailing brand
image of Amazon in UK (Amazon.com Inc, 2020).
Customer views on Ethical responsibilities:
There are some instances that had lead to a great negative impact on the brand image of
Amazon and they have faced high criticism from their ethical customers the researches have
indicated a high ethical issues that Amazon is dealing with in the present scenario and it consists
of many issues like military supply chain management animal rights animal testing, controversial
Technology, antisocial Finance, factory farming, irresponsible marketing, pollution and toxic,
environmental reporting type of related issues (Sheehan, 2018). Amazon is Prone to a very high
Rapid phenomenon in the present scenario and this has created a use of their ethical customer as
they are not willing to purchase from this brand. They have also received was treating for the
environmental report according to the July 2019 (Amazon.com Inc, 2020). In August 2018
Amazon policies on materials like merino wool and fur they did not prohibited their use and this
led to harming the innocent animals for the purpose of their product. All the ethical customers
across globe are willing to get associated with brands that are successfully able to fulfil their
social responsibilities and ethical code of conduct. Because of the prevailing issues related to not
following ethical concerns Amazon’s ethical rating have been declined in the recent years and
this has led to situations of global boycott by their entire ethical customer base.
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Conclusion
The above discussed analysis it can clearly be seen that there are different viewpoints of all the
related aspects of society like government customer and employees who are the major
stakeholders for any organisation. There are many such instances that have led to the creation of
an image for Amazon in which they have proved to be the major tax avoidance and a subject of
global boycott because of not adopting ethical practices and involving into high amount of
solutions marketing & technological controversies. These have serious concerns on the living
wages and the associated people who are working with Amazon Be it their internal stakeholders
like employees or external stakeholders like customer and the government. Though Amazon has
been able to become one of the largest e commerce websites but the avoidance of ethical
responsibilities can lead to long-term impact on their present Global image and the Goodwill that
have been established because of the High Quality Services they have been providing to their
customers till today.
Recommendations:
The above made analysis of Amazon according to the given case study it can be said that there
are several recommendations that have been drawn and must be adopted by Amazon in the long
run survival. It will help in prevention of the negative impact on their brand image:
1) Tailored wages:
Amazon has been facing a huge negativity because of the UK reports that have led to developing
a scenario that Amazon has tailor their wages from being a leading clothing brand but have not
able to pay their government workers even a living wage. There must be situations make to
create a minimum wage scenario for workers at their minimum level so that they are able to
fulfil at least their basic requirements. Famous also focus on their Chinese workforce so that they
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are able to create a situation of equality in their organisation even if there is high amount of
diverse workforce.
2) There is also a requirement to improve their environment rating as in the in the year 2019 in
July the sustainability report has given worst rating for the environmental initiatives. So there is
requirement to make policies on toxic chemical use especially for their clothing brand. In the
segment of cleaning personal care and beauty products there is also requirement to develop a
restricted substances of all the Chemicals that can be harmful because of creating high amount of
pollution and toxic gases for the environment.
3) In the year 2012, Amazon has been facing a boycott because of the tax avoidance issues.
Despite these issues Amazon repeated such mistakes in the year 2017. Make sure that they are
able to pay the required amount of legal taxes according to the revenue that they are earning.
This will lead to creation of a situation where political parties and government of a country like
UK will be supporting Amazon. Further it is also going to create a situation of positive scenario
for enhancing their market share.
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REFERENCES
Books & Journal
Shank, D.B., 2016. Using crowdsourcing websites for sociological research: The case of Amazon
Mechanical Turk. The American Sociologist, 47(1), pp.47-55.
Jackson, C. and Orebaugh, A., 2018. A study of security and privacy issues associated with the
Amazon Echo. International Journal of Internet of Things and Cyber-Assurance, 1(1), pp.91-
100.
Stahl, B.C. and Wright, D., 2018. Ethics and privacy in AI and big data: Implementing
responsible research and innovation. IEEE Security & Privacy, 16(3), pp.26-33.
Applin, S., 2017. Amazon's Echo Look: Harnessing the Power of Machine Learning or Subtle
Exploitation of Human Vulnerability?. IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine, 6(4),
pp.125-127.
Gomes, L.A. and Brasileiro, T.S.A., 2018. Sustainability and Higher Education in the Amazon: A
Study Based on the Institutional Development Plan (IDP) of the Federal University of
Western Pará. In Towards Green Campus Operations (pp. 851-865). Springer, Cham.
Adda, G. and Cohen, K.B., 2017. Amazon mechanical Turk: Gold mine or coal
mine. Computational Lingustics, 37(2), pp.2-10.
Jackson, C. and Orebaugh, A., 2018. A study of security and privacy issues associated with the
Amazon Echo. International Journal of Internet of Things and Cyber-Assurance, 1(1),
pp.91-100.
Sheehan, K.B., 2018. Crowdsourcing research: data collection with Amazon’s Mechanical
Turk. Communication Monographs, 85(1), pp.140-156.
Shetty, D. and Moorthy, S., 2020. A study of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) by E-
commerce companies with reference to Amazon & Flipkart. Studies in Indian Place
Names, 40(75), pp.9-14.
Shank, D.B., 2016. Using crowdsourcing websites for sociological research: The case of Amazon
Mechanical Turk. The American Sociologist, 47(1), pp.47-55.
Online
5 key business lessons from Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, 2017 [online] Available through:<
https://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/13/5-key-business-lessons-from-amazons-jeff-bezos.html>
Ethical issues with Amazon, 2019[online] Available
through:<https://ethicalunicorn.com/2019/01/12/how-ethical-is-amazon/>
Amazon.com Inc, 2020 [online] Available through:<https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/company-
profile/amazoncom-inc>
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