Organizational Culture at Amazon - Case Study Example

 Amazon Case Question A Organization culture is the way the employees of a certain company or organization relate to one another, work and the world around them. Organizational cultures differ with differing organizations since different companies have different objectives at a particular time. Organizational culture can prevent a certain company from realizing its objectives. In such cases, the employees do not homogenously embrace the culture, and hence a negative culture develops. Thus, company leaders should strive at all times to create a positive organization culture to ensure smoother operations that aim towards meeting set objectives. Fundamental to all the existing organization cultures, the employees exhibit a sense of sensitivity to others and the customers. The employees develop an interest in new ideas to fuel innovation and creativity. The employees have a willingness to take risks so they can implement their innovative ideas. In the same sense, the companies place a high value on other people and give freedom to the employees to communicate freely using the available options. The Amazon Company exhibits a market culture since it gives utmost focus to market stability and control but with an external orientation. The company constantly motivates the employees and ensures stability and control of the market. The company considers companies’ ways as poor habits and, therefore, teaches its employees to learn how to solve problems (when you hit the wall, climb the wall). Besides, the secret phone directory ensures that every employee and boss is ever doing something geared towards increasing the company’s productivity. The company’s gross attention is on the customers that the company gives little attention to the employees. Most employees resign after few years of working with the company. Other employees get fired after suffering minor or major personal crises as these are unproductive. The company is result oriented, and the employees who experience or suffer from miscarriages, cancer, and other personal crises have reduced productivity detrimental to the company’s objective of attaining the best competitiveness in the market. Additionally, employees toil till late in the night to ensure complete customer satisfaction. The organizational culture of the Amazon.com has been transferred from generation to generation of the employees. Numerous objects are available to ensure the transfer. Immediately an employee passes an interview, interviewers tell the new employees to leave their old work habits learned from previous workplaces and instead learn new Amazon singular working procedures. The company’s handy cards serve as symbols to enable the transfer of the culture. The company also has a building complex named Day 1 that reminds the employees of the changes the company is making in culture. The building reminds the employees that there is still more to achieve. Furthermore, the building conveys the company’s significance of a large and stable place to work. The company also has a slogan such as you can work long, hard or smart, but at Amazon.com, you cannot choose two out of three that ensures transfer of the culture. The slogan ensures that the employees meet the company’s objectives within specified time limits and gives the employees a sense of the company as a market oriented organization. The slogans not only communicate to the employees but also to the general public, that is, the customers. Additionally the company has stories that move around through the company through either formal or informal means. The stories such as here at Amazon we always want to arrive at the right answer illustrate the fundamental aspects of the organization culture. The stories work to introduce and reaffirm the underlying values to the employees. The company’s vice president once noted that the employees can ensure social cohesion by not compromising and debating on issues. The strategy helps to avoid unnecessary mistakes that may result from wrong decisions made because of debate and compromise. The company also organizes family picnics for the workers where they can hold a family reunion and express family love. The culture also gets transmitted through the various award winning ceremonies held annually. Written statements of principle engrossed on the various buildings convey the message of the culture in a written form. The company accords every employee an opportunity and freedom to practice the statements and therefore effectively reinforces the company’s message about what it means. Question B The market culture has numerous advantages as well as shortcomings. The company with such a culture often enjoys speedy work and timely completion of tasks. However, the company does not provide a supportive environment for innovations and creativity. Moreover, the company focuses on stability and, therefore, is very rigid to embracing changes. Consequently, problems may occur that requires the leaders to make changes in the governance system. Changes originate from such actions as an introduction of new employees, and company mergers. The changes integrally contribute to increased productivity. New employees come with different personalities, values, and beliefs. Managers at the Amazon.com should begin with managing resistance to change to ensure a change in the organizational culture. The change that the managers handle exhibits itself in a variety of forms including increased number of quit or transfer requests, slowdown strikes, sullen hostility, and expression of pseudo-logical reasons why the proposed change will not work. The market culture has seen numerous employees resigning from the company after few years of work because of low attention the company accords to the staff. The Amazon.com employees have mixed reactions regarding the nature of the working environment at the company. Initially, the management must learn to manage the resistance to change since change management has the potential of mitigating the resistance. Change management activates and engages the company employees towards embracing the change and change is often progressive. The management may opt to capture and leverage for passion and positive emotion surrounding change. Consequently, the strategy can prevent resistance from occurring and, therefore, provide a structural management strategy of change management that allow for proper initiation of the change management project. Moreover, the senior leaders can actively participate in the processes of change management. The senior management will ensure effective communication between the employees that describe change and the benefits of the change. In most cases, the strategies directly address the main sources of resistance thus preventing resistance from occurring throughout the company’s lifecycle. The company leaders are usually in the front line and, therefore, understand the "why" question originating from the need for a change. Employees often experience changes in the company that demands adaptation to changes as a result of environmental pressures, shift to a knowledge-based economy, technological innovations and tighter economic resources. Since resistance to changes can often impact on job satisfaction and also job turnover. This calls for a special strategy that aims at dealing with the resistance in a bid to avoid the negative impacts from occurring. The employees then establish a sense of comfort with the status quo. In such a case, the resistance will not come as a surprise to the employees. Resistance is both psychological and physiological in nature. More brain and physical power are necessary to embrace the change in organizational culture. The senior employees can as well analyze the changes to likely sources of resistance. The management can then find effective measures to prevent such a change. The managers can as well engage the right resistance managers with professional qualifications regarding such topics. The resistance managers are the leaders with experience in the field as a result of working for longer durations. The managers have well-informed strategies to communicate the new initiatives of approaching the changes to the employees. The employees get regular updates of meetings where the management informs them of the need for the change. The strategy also ensures a timely communication of the need for the change. Often, employees get the information through rumors and develop a negative opinion towards it thereby making it difficult for the managers to relay the information without imminent resistance. A culture of trust that incorporates transparent communication while engaging employees results in better interpersonal relationships. In such a case, leaders spot resistance to change before it occurs since the employees feel free to share their thoughts with the managers. However, the market culture does not promote such because the culture pays little attention to employees. To address the shortcoming, the managers can as well divide the change to the various sections and develop a step by step procedure to ensure achievement of the change. After successful completion of each phase, the managers publish a public report on the performance of the procedure. Finally, the managers compensate the employees for embracing such a change. Read More