Organizational Analysis: Amazon - Essay Example

? Organizational Analysis: Amazon 0. of the organization, what it does, the s it serves and its size 1.1. Description of Amazon Amazon.com, Inc. Company was established in 1994 and has its headquarters at Seattle, Washington (Finance.yahoo.com, 2013). Currently Amazon.com Inc has its operations revolving around online retail in North America and internationally through North America and International business segments. Finance.yahoo.com (2013) reveals that amazon.com Inc. operates under numerous retail websites like amazon.com and amazon.ca that comprises of commodities and material acquired from vendors and intended for resale as well as commodities obtained from agent sellers (Reuters, 2013). The main focus of Amazon.com is on selection, expediency and price to customers who are served through numerous websites. Conversely, sellers are provided with the programs that enable them to sell their commodities online through the company’s websites and the sellers’ own websites as well. Kindle Direct publishing online platform allows independent authors and publishers to present their books in the Kindle store and users have to subscribe to view the books online while Amazon.com manufactures and sells Kindle e-reader devices (Finance.yahoo.com, 2013). For musicians, filmmakers, authors and applications developers among others, Amazon.com offers numerous programs through which they can make known and sell their content. For customers interested in credit cards, Amazon Inc. provides co-branded credit card agreements. The company also offers fulfillment and advertising services to its customers (Finance.yahoo.com, 2013). 1.2. What Amazon.com, Inc. Does? Amazon.com Inc. was established as an online bookstore. However, time have seen Amazon diversify to incorporate services of CDs, video games, electronics, furniture, DVDs, jewelry, apparel, software, MP3 downloads, food and toys selling among others. Reuters (2013) points out that Amazon.com Inc. also manufactures and vends consumer devices which are: the Kindle Fire Tablet PC and Kindle e-book reader. The fire tablet device is one of the well-known suppliers of services in cloud computing. According to Reuters (2013), Amazon.com Inc. focused on improving its operating efficiencies such that it offers continued low cost for its customers. In addition, each encounter with Amazon.com Inc customers is made such that it is fast, timely and reliably fulfilling (Reuters, 2013). 1.3. The customers served by Amazon.com Inc Amazon is well known by its customers for proffering the lowest prices there are for both its products and shipping offers each day (Reuters, 2013). Lowest prices are also available through membership to Amazon prime. Amazon.com Inc. customers of small, medium and large scale developers and enterprises obtain technology infrastructure access through Amazon Web Service or AWS for nearly all forms of businesses while authors and book publishers receive Amazon Kindle direct publishing (Reuters, 2013). Customer services are offered through websites that are separate for each region like Canada, United States, Spain, Brazil, China and Japan among others. For countries where Amazon.com has no website, Amazon products are shipped internationally (Finance.yahoo.com, 2013). 1.4. Size of Amazon.com Inc Amazon.com remains the leading online retailer e-commerce multinational with centers for development of software situated at North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. For effective service delivery, Amazon operates under North America segment and the international segment (Reuters, 2013). The North American segment is accountable for Amazon services in North America and Canada while the International segment is responsible for retails sales made from internationally-oriented websites through consumer products’ sales and subscriptions. Finance.yahoo.com (2013) reveals that Amazon Inc offers its services through 88,400 permanent employees working under numerous departments and locations worldwide. Amazon operates under the leadership of Mr. Jeffrey P. Bezos, the founder, chairman and CEO who is assisted by other executives and a board of directors. 2.0. Amazon.com Inc. mission statement and the role of HR in fostering the mission statement 2.1. Amazon’s mission statement Amazon.com has had its attention shifted to its customers not just in North America but in the entire universe (Askville.amazon.com, 2013). Through its services and products to its customers, Amazon.com aims at establishing an organization where everything that any person needs to purchase from online is available no matter their location in the world (Askville.amazon.com, 2013). This mission statement has remained with Amazon.com since its inception and has played a vital role in determining numerous leadership decisions. In addition, Amazon has remained committed to its mission unwaveringly and ensuring that the mission is executed daily and at all organizational levels. 2.2. Role of Hr in fostering Amazon mission statement At amazon.com, Human resource is credited for the organization’s quality, profitability and enhancement of other organizational goals (Managementparadise, 2011). Human resource policies and practices are attributed to accurately incorporating the goals and objectives of the top management while ensuring that the behavior needed to achieve the organization’s strategies never goes unrewarded. Amazon’s Human resource team also focuses on enhancing the organization’s competitive advantage through development of efficient leadership and differentiation. In order to facilitate organizational growth, HR manager also focuses on recruiting, hiring, orienting, and training new employees who will work efficiently and productively (Hinton, 2012). In the case of Amazon, HRM focuses on recruiting the best of any talent at any given time when required to do so. In addition, HRM team at amazon.com ensures that the company is properly staffed through adopting a system that ensures there is regular flow of competent talent to fill up existing open positions in the organization efficiently and in a timely manner. In order to guarantee a successful future for Amazon.com, the Human resource ensures that employees are assessed and evaluated through appraisals while employees are enabled to perform their work effectively through supported career development and training programs such that employees are always effective (Hinton, 2012). Besides dealing with employees, HRM at Amazon.com focuses on internal management development as a way of improving the organization’s leadership nationally and globally (Briscoe, Schuler and Tarique, 2012). The organization has focused on and maintained the position of being the best online bookstore on web through ease-of-use websites. 3.0. Common HR challenges facing Amazon.com Inc. and a recommended strategy to overcome technological challenges 3.1. Common HR challenges facing Amazon.com Inc As a technology-inclined organization, Amazon.com HR managers are bound to ensuring that the organization culture, practices and policies conform to any changes in the business environment and in technology (Lengnick-Hall and Lengnick-Hall, 2003). In times of such changes, HR managers must realize that quick responses and improvisations are needed to ensure that the company remains in touch with technological advancements while delivering convenient top quality and cost effective commodities. In some cases, change in technology and business environment would result to complete exit from original plans (Sims, 2007) and the HR team must ensure that they establish a balance on how to effect such change through employees and processes or technologies. In most cases, employees are not incorporated in change process yet they make sense and judgment of their working conditions thereby offering a knowledge economy that is more effective than dependence on the use of market trends (Sims, 2007). This implies that, HR managers have to effectively communicate changes resulting from technological advances to employees such that they can continually offer high productivity without any conflicting interests. In the recruitment process, HR managers are expected to effectively manage the recruitment, selection and hiring of new employees to ensure that only the top and best talent possible is tapped into the organization for the sake of the future of the company (Sims, 2007). The HR team at Amazon.com must ensure that they do not lose control of their organization to organizational units like information technology, finance and operations and remain to play the secondary role while they are expected to harness Amazon.com’s human capital (Lengnick-Hall and Lengnick-Hall, 2003). Every new employee must not only meet the qualifications of an organizational unit but must also work towards the interest of the organization as a whole. 3.2. Recommended HR strategy to overcome technological challenges In the face of constant changes within the work environment, Human resource managers at Amazon.com should work towards fostering an ethical business culture (Sims, 2007). For a multinational company like Amazon.com, the human resource must ensure that at any instance, ethical scandals are avoided in order to avoid losing the confidence and respect of their customers and investors worldwide. In addition, HR mangers must cultivate a working environment where ethical scandals are perceived as a sense of betrayal that would cause the investors to lose confidence in organizations and quit. In order to avoid instances of ethical concerns at Amazon.com HR managers must ensure that they are in a position to distinguish, assess and proceed with the ethical perspective of their organization’s business (Sims, 2007). This means that HR team at Amazon.com must also learn to identify website issues like business globalization, government regulations, and environment stewardships among others and ensure that their customers and investors always understand clearly what the company stands for (Sims, 2007). Clear understanding of the organization by investors and customers requires that HR team works towards eradicating the gaps in values through the establishment of an environment characterized by collective sense of purpose and collective of convictions that will eventually build commitment and pride (Sims, 2007). 4.0. HR strategy and Amazon.com competitive advantage Through the cultivation of an ethical work culture at Amazon.com, the HR team is assured of improvement in the bottom line performance, through minimized organization disclosure to inflexible penalties, fines and loss of customers and contracts (Sims, 2007). In addition, the presence of an ethical work culture at amazon.com would win the company the competitive advantage of recruiting and retaining top talent employees. With commitment and pride of the investors and customers at Amazon.com, the HR team will strive towards designing and executing ethics strategies that are balanced on employees, stakeholders, and management. Such strategies will serve well in countering unethical conduct while protecting the interests, reputation and image of the organization (Sims, 2007). The establishment of an ethical culture and maintaining it results to the ability of employees and the organization to balance responsibility and courage with reverence and modesty. The implication here is that every employee and manager will be committed to work with integrity coupled with high opinion for customers and others (Sims, 2007). References Askville.amazon.com, (2013). What is Amazon’s Mission statement? Retrieved from http://askville.amazon.com/amazon%27s-mission-statement-organizational-structure/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=71036503 Briscoe, D., Schuler, R. and Tarique, I. (2012). International Human resource management, 4E: policies and practices for multinational enterprises. New York: Routeledge. Finance.yahoo.com, (2013). Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN). Retrieved from http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=AMZN+Profile Hinton, M. (2012). Introducing information management. Oxford: Elsevier Butterworth-Heinemann. Lengnick-Hall, M. and Lengnick-Hall, C. (2003). Human resource management in the knowledge economy. San Francisco: Berret-Koehler Publishers, Inc. Management paradise, (2011). Human resource management of Amazon.com. Retrieved from http://www.managementparadise.com/forums/human-resources-management-h-r/213815-human-resource-management-amazon-com.html Reuters, (2013). Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O). Retrieved from http://in.reuters.com/finance/stocks/companyProfile?symbol=AMZN.O Read More