1.

Introduction
Wal-Mart is one of the leading American Multinational retail companies that operate a wide
chain of hypermarkets in different parts of the world. In this particular study, management
activities of the company have been discussed. Four important management areas, i.e. planning,
organizing, leading as well as controlling activities of the company have given special emphasis.
In order to carry on the entire study, several aspects have been described (Chuang et al., 2011).
The background of the company has helped to understand the present situation and thus has been
described here in details. After that, four important theories have been described from the
company perspectives and these are management and evolution of management theory,
globalization and the global environment, planning and decision-making and structure and
strategy. The first strategy has helped the company to determine the objectives and perceive the
desired results based on the objectives. The second theory has influenced the company largely,
and Wal-Mart is one of those companies that is largely affected by globalization. The planning
process of the company is very updated as well as modified, as the target of the company is to
satisfy both the customers and the suppliers. The company aims to provide the best quality
products to the customers at the least as well as most affordable prices.

The company is facing some problems in recent days, which should be addressed. One of the
major problems is in the company outlets; their products are not kept in an organized way, which
is making their customers dissatisfied. The second problem is, in their company outlets, most of
their products are out of stock, but in their inventory, it has been revealed that huge stock of
products is present, which are not being utilized. It has been found that the employees of the
company have been facing several management issues related to the organizational environment,
and these are not reaching the higher level of management. Based on the identified issues, some
of the effective recommendations have been drawn for further improvement of the situation in
Wal-Mart. These might help the company to overcome the present turbulent situation in the
global scenario.
2. Company overview
Amazon is a USA based e-commerce firm with headquarters in Seattle, Washington. Beyond e-
commerce, this multinational technology company, which commence operations with the sale of
books, also has a distinct focus on cloud computing, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence.

An examination of Amazon, which effectively commenced operations in July 1995 (less than 25
years ago) points to a clear vision from the outset to use technology to transform the
purchasing of books into the fastest, easiest, and most enjoyable shopping experience possible.

Regardless of its type, an institution that does not have a clear vision of why it exists and where
it intends to go could be in danger of retardation and the incurring of expenditure developing
processes and functional frameworks which lack focus and a clear definition of what it should be
doing. This in turn can give rise to poor and costly decision making. Thus, any forward-thinking
organization ought to give full time and more, to defining its strategic growth path and related
costs and risk towards the achievement of such.

Research suggest that Amazon’s founder and CEO Jeff Bezos was somewhat uncertain about the
outcome of his bold initiative at the out-start of his company, indicating to his family who
provided the seed capital that there was a 70% chance that it wouldn’t work. He was however
clear that he wanted to establish an operation that was unlike the traditional brick and mortar
store and exhibited a convincing level of confidence in technology as an innovative way to sell
books and offer a truly universal selection. Hence his virtual shopping mall Amazon.com
became a reality.

At present, the company has organized the operation into three segments, North America,
International and Amazon Web Services (AWS). Among them, North America and International
are two main segments, which contributed more than 90% of total net sales ($178 billion) in
2017, increased 31% compared to the previous year. In these two segments, the company has a
huge network of fulfilment centers, warehouses, shop-floors and delivery systems to provide
digital delivery and physical stores for customers to purchase products. Operating a complicated
system of warehouses and fulfilment centers is not an easy task to generate a huge profit,
especially Amazon’s management practice is one of the biggest concerns when “the giant” needs
to manage the total number of employees of 566,000 (including full-time and part-time) as of
December 31, 2017. 

3. Management Concepts

This section of the study of consists of the concept concepts related management and specifically
as follows-

• Management and Management Theory evolution

• Globalization and the global environments

• Planning and Decision-making

• Structure and Strategy

3.1 Management and Management Theory evolution

Taylor’s scientific management
Taylorism was introduced in the context of the Industrial Revolution, which started in the
eighteenth century in Great Britain and steadily spread to a larger scale. This revolution
generated the idea of improving productivity in factories with the transformation of the machine
to gradually replace the human workforce (Kiechel, 2012).

Taylor, in his point of view, realized that to enhance productivity, it needs to eliminate the waste
of national resources and materials (Taylor, 1911). He also viewed that human labor can be
analogous to the machine if they are “engineered” to work more efficiently (Koumparoulis &
Vlachopoulioti, 2012). By such way, Taylor generalized the rule of thumb and transformed it
into “time and motion study” through splitting tasks into different and smaller steps,
scientifically observing the behavior of workers, and measuring the precise time for them to
complete each step. Each motion of work is designed to utilize the maximum capacity of workers
through training to generate high profit for organizations (Udin & Hossain, 2015).

Scientific management pioneered by Taylor has four philosophy:

1. The management develops the science of work for workers to replace the old rule of
thumb method.
2. Managers scientifically select, teach and train the labor workforce to develop their own
capacity of performing tasks.
3. The management cooperates to workmen to make sure the jobs done aligned with
principles of science that were developed.
4. There is an equal responsibility between management and execution, then conflicts will
be eliminated when managers and workers are specialized in their tasks.

From the evidence collected in the secondary source of data, mainly from the journals, it seems
to appear that there probably exists the presence of Taylorism in Amazon warehouses and shop-
floor practices with the use of advanced technology. In the warehouses, employees are monitored
by a sophisticated electronic system to control and manage the number of target boxes that they
need to pack every hour (Kantor & Streitfeld, 2015). Meanwhile, in the office for management,
the company uses a complicated set of management, data and psychological tools to set the target
for white-collar workers to perform jobs in warehouses. It means that there is a specialisation of
labour in Amazon when managers focus on the task of planning, setting targets for workers and
the workmen to concentrate on the jobs of packing boxes in accordance with their goals
proposed by the management.

One of the similarities between Taylorism and Amazon management and shop-floor practices in
warehouses may be the way “time and motion study” is applied to assess employee’s
performance. Every motion of workers is under the control when in huge warehouses, workers
have hand-held computers to record their movements (Spicer, 2018). He also mentioned that
Amazon has a wristband, which received a patent but did not put into use, to control the hand
movements of workers via “haptic feedback”. Currently, stock pickers in warehouses are
reported to be under the observation rigidly of cameras that strictly controlled their behaviours
(Spicer, 2018). Based on a study of motion and observations at the workplace, the performance
of employees is continuously measured by the algorithm, which is running as a tool to measure
and enhance the performance of white-collar employees over time (Kantor & Streitfeld, 2015).
Workers at the warehouses, therefore, receive the salary in accordance with their performance
assessment. For example, at Florence warehouse, the wage system or “piece rate” is calculated
by 50 cents per hour that can be raised every 6 months together with a monthly bonus after
taking into consideration of personal attendance, outperformance to exceed production goals of
pushing out 600,000 items per day (Rittenhouse, 2017).

Critics of Taylorism and its irrelevance in Amazon

Despite the fact that most of the key points can be clarified by Taylorism but actual management
practices in Amazon is more complicated and Taylorism fails to explain to them as it under-
looked some important aspects.

Firstly, there is no equal right between managers and employees in practices when employees at
warehouses are treated as a machine or robot, not human. It is also one of the limitations of
Taylorism when he implied that human labor might work effectively as the machine provided
that they are “engineered” to do so (Koumparoulis & Vlachopoulioti, 2012). The ideal workers
or effective workers in Amazon are assumed to be Amabot – human-robot of Amazon (Kantor &
Streitfeld, 2015) without the time of breaks. They even do not have time to go to the bathroom as
a fear of missing productivity targets. They spend most of their lunch breaks waiting in line for
onerous security screenings and feel pressured with under-report warehouse injuries (Sainato,
2018). Although Amazon uses robots in fulfilment centers (Florence warehouses), the work done
is not relieved but turns workers into robots without any time for relaxing.   

Secondly, the resistance in the behaviors of most managers to pay the piece rate or remuneration
to workers makes it difficult to satisfy Taylorism principles. Clegg et.al (2016) views that few
managers accept to pay for productivity in Taylor’s system. They want to adopt piecemeal and
efficiency from time measurement but not rewards in form of bonus using piece rate. In the case
of Amazon, although workers at warehouses have to work under the poor conditions, for
example, ambulances were called 600 times in three years at British warehouse due to work
abuse to employees (Sainato, 2018), or workers at an eastern Pennsylvania warehouse fell down
under 100-degree heat when the workplace was not installed with air-conditioning (Kantor &
Streitfeld, 2015), employees cannot get appropriate compensation and bonus. Some local
warehouses try to reduce wages, for instance, Lexington County, South Carolina (decrease over
30%), Chesterfield, Virginia (17%) and Tracy, California (16%) (Sainato, 2018). Additionally,
Amazon also claimed that employees can receive a promotion with the title of an ambassador
but, this position does not offer any additional payment (Rittenhouse, 2017). This can be
partially understood by a decline of the traditional retail industry of America and a fierce
competition among other competitors internationally (Alibaba, eBay, JD) which force Amazon
to exploit employees (Sainato, 2018).

Other theories

The first thing that Taylorism fails to explain in the case study of Amazon is the worker’s
motivation, which is a part of management practices. Taylor in his book implied that money is
the only motivation for workers “what the workmen want from employers beyond anything else
is higher wages, what employers want from workmen most of all is low labour costs in
manufacture” (Taylor, 1911). However, it is not really true when there are more important and
specific factors to determine the motivation of employees, which linked to individuals or jobs
themselves. If the assumption of Taylorism holds to be true, then, in Amazon warehouses, where
is described as standardized jobs (packing, stock picking), poor working conditions, employees
may still feel motivated when they are paid money for the jobs. In fact, employees do not feel so,
even for new employees. Over through tough recruitment to become the best candidates for the
job, the newcomers often feel “dazzled, flattered and intimidated” by responsibility on their
shoulders (Kantor & Streitfeld, 2015).

McGregor – Theory X and Y

From previous literature, motivation can be viewed in the employer’s perspectives – McGregor
theory’s assumption of employers (McGregor, 1960). He introduced two theories X and Y. At
the beginning of a few decades in the twentieth century, Theory X is conquered in business after
the mechanical system of Taylorism (Mohamed & Nor, 2013). Hindle (2003) views that Theory
X is the autocratic style, emphasizing on “productivity, on a concept of a fair day’s work, on the
evils of featherbedding and restriction of output, on rewards for performance”. Theory X is a
negative way that employers see their staff, who are reluctant to do the jobs and try to find ways
to reduce work output or do the jobs with little effort (McGregor, 1960). In another word,
managers have the responsibility to identify second-class workers, who are naturally lazy, and
“soldier” them into first-class by urging them to work and monitoring their behaviors rigidly to
prevent the situation of doing less. However, the conflict potentially arises when managers use
penalties or punishment towards employees to eliminate the cases of avoiding the work, which
may not help to improve the relationship at workplace between them.

On the other hand, Theory Y states that employees will become productive if employers see
employees positively and delegate more trust and responsibilities to them. McGregor (1960) also
believes that Theory X is simply the satisfaction of low-level physical needs, which cannot
expect to be productive. Thus, in the case of Amazon warehouse, strict rules and punishment to
force employees to attain productivity goals, for example, employees are not allowed to sit on
the company time, workers will be reduced 10 hours from vacation if not taking enough
mandatory overtime shift (Rittenhouse, 2017), invisibly cause the fear for workers of missing
targets. They just try to complete the job in time bounce without any thoughts that they really
want to do so “It’s a job, it’s not a career” (Rittenhouse, 2017). Productivity and trust are truly
created when employers change their negative views about the employees.

Mayo’s Hawthorne Works Experiment

Besides the employer’s perspectives and motivator factors, employees also need human relation
and organizational culture that can be built through management practices. These points were
emphasized in the study of Mayo with Hawthorne Works Experiment. Although the initial
purpose of Mayo study is to develop Taylor’s scientific management, the finding is strikingly
contradictory to Taylor’s beliefs. Mayo also implicitly agreed that monetary reward is not the
determining factor of work satisfaction, which should be created by working conditions,
attitudes, communications, and positive management response (Mayo, 1946). For such
standardized and simple jobs such as “standing, walking, lifting and bending” (Rittenhouse,
2017), Clegg et.al (2016) argue that specialization of jobs with a high degree of centralization
apply best for simple and repetitive tasks, however, this may be no longer true especially the
business environment changes significantly. Workers of standardized and repetitive tasks in the
modern world still have the rights to require motivation factors like other jobs. Mayo also
emphasized the importance of the informal group in the workplace that subsequently causes the
sub-cultures in the organization. He believed that group dynamics and social makeup can create
greater participation of workers, and openness in the workplace as well as groups (Onday, 2016).
Particularly, in Amazon, informal groups play a substantial role in asking for benefits from the
company. They are grouped together to go for strikes, recently in Europe, to fight against unfair
treatment of Amazon in its warehouses on Black Friday. Each geographical group conducted the
strikes in their countries to ask about the rights of workers in terms of wages, appropriate
management, and break time (World Socialist Web Site, 2018). Importantly, they are linked
together to form a larger group in the world, which forces Amazon to modify their rules and
conditions. Although Clegg et.al (2016) viewed that Taylorism does not explicitly refer to
culture, Parker (2000) still argues that the organizational culture in Taylorism is “single
utilitarian to minimize employee resistance and maximize productivity”.

Amazon’s culture

The culture in Amazon, more precisely, warehouses, might be not integrated when the norms and
beliefs of the company and employees are not analogous, which results in the conflict between
them. Mayo (1946) also refers that there would be cultures in the informal organizations and the
way of management causes the cultural effect by the collection of worker recognition. To be
more specific to Amazon case, its culture focuses on “Leadership Principles”, which is clearly
stated on its website and probably applied in every function in its company. Briefly, these
principles are privileged for leaders, accordingly, leaders are owners and they are always right a
lot because they have strong business judgement and good instincts (Amazon n.d).

It appears that the culture in Amazon in general and Amazon’s warehouses in specific is kind of
bureaucratic. In this culture, action can be taken by formal rules from managers or supervisors
with a high hierarchy in the organization (Weber, 1976). For example, management work is to
set up goals and employees need to follow the goals rigidly. Otherwise, they cannot receive an
additional bonus. Or they need to conduct mandatory overtime shift unless they want to cut 10
hours from vacation time to work instead. Owing to the strict rules, which may be not flexible in
some occasions, for example, World Socialist Web Site (2018) cited the case of a pregnant
woman, who still needed to work hard to ensure the productivity while she felt depressed with a
lot of work, it is partially caused the different cultural effects on employees. This may be one of
the reasons for the differentiation in culture of Amazon, causing the conflict of interests between
managers and workers.   

Globalization is a commonly
used social construct in
today’s society. There are three
different views towards this
phenomena, including
globalist perspective,
internationalist perspective as
well as transformationlist
perspective
3.2 Globalization and the global environments

Globalization is a commonly
used social construct in
today’s society. There are three
different views towards this
phenomena, including
globalist perspective,
internationalist perspective as
well as transformationlist
perspective. While globalists
argue that globalization is a
positive process,
accompanied with international
capital expansion,
internationalists hold a skeptical
view towards this
phenomena.
Globalization is a commonly
used social construct in
today’s society. There are three
different views towards this
phenomena, including
globalist perspective,
internationalist perspective as
well as transformationlist
perspective. While globalists
argue that globalization is a
positive process,
accompanied with international
capital expansion,
internationalists hold a skeptical
view towards this
phenomena.
Globalization is a commonly
used social construct in
today’s society. There are three
different views towards this
phenomena, including
globalist perspective,
internationalist perspective as
well as transformationlist
perspective. While globalists
argue that globalization is a
positive process,
accompanied with international
capital expansion,
internationalists hold a skeptical
view towards this
phenomena.
Globalization is a commonly
used social construct in
today’s society. There are three
different views towards this
phenomena, including
globalist perspective,
internationalist perspective as
well as transformationlist
perspective. While globalists
argue that globalization is a
positive process,
accompanied with international
capital expansion,
internationalists hold a skeptical
view towards this
phenomena.
Globalization is a commonly
used social construct in
today’s society. There are three
different views towards this
phenomena, including
globalist perspective,
internationalist perspective as
well as transformationlist
perspective. While globalists
argue that globalization is a
positive process,
accompanied with international
capital expansion,
internationalists hold a skeptical
view towards this
phenomena.
The development of Amazon is heavily influenced by globalization. Bezos got inspired by the
"Amazon river" as it is exotic and the biggest river in the world, and he decided to name his
company Amazon, even though it was originally called "Cadabra." In 1994, Jeff
Bezos integrated Amazon. Bezos got inspired by the “Amazon river" as it is exotic and
the biggest river in the world.

The globalization has intensified the competition to Amazon, in terms of rivalry, consumers,
suppliers and substitutions. Rivalry between competing enterprises is intense. Amazon's
Marketplace (Amazon Auctions) competes directly with auction websites such as eBay,
Ubid.com, and Yahoo! Auctions, as well as indirectly with brick-and-mortar retailers such as
Wal-Mart and BestBuy. When Google, Apple, and other pure Internet companies declared plans
to improve their offering of Internet content services, a new type of rivalry evolved. Each of
these companies has a distinct marketing strategy that makes them difficult to defeat. For
instance, Wal-'EverydayMart's Low Price' approach has resulted in the establishment of a
Business Empire spanning all 50 states in America. By depending only on the virtual website
platform, Amazon is compelled to incur enormous resources in order to maintain their market
dominance. Faced with enormous domestic market pressure, it is not prudent to
engage in tit-for-tat pricing wars and massive promotional activity. Amazon needed to enter
overseas markets ahead of domestic competition and expand their online retail presence globally
to offset the loss of physical locations.

Buyers have considerable negotiating power. Customers of Amazon have the option of
purchasing the items and services they wish on the internet's hundreds of thousands of other
retail websites. If Amazon does not provide enough cheap pricing to please the client, the
customer will browse the internet until they do. Finally, by extending the company to a
worldwide market where consumers have less price control, Amazon can easily foster
client preferences and loyalty with lower price sensitivity.

Suppliers' leverage is limited. Providers have little clout in the sense that most of Amazon’s own
inventory may be sourced from a variety of suppliers around the nation, if not the world.
Amazon is a significant purchaser of things, since its stated mission is to “provide everything
to everyone." Additionally, they have complete control over what appears on their
website and may exert influence on smaller providers. Amazon may be able to get lower-
price proposals from suppliers in this manner. This competitive edge propels Amazon's global
expansion, since regardless of where a consumer hails from or how much money they earn,
pricing is always the first thing that will draw them. Additionally, because Amazon’s
suppliers, which include wholesalers, manufacturers, and publishers, are located throughout the
world in order to "sell anything," the suppliers in other regions truly expect Amazon to expand
into their regions or integrate backward with them in order to achieve their desired steady value
chain. As a result of these suppliers' objectives and possibly beneficial contract policies, Amazon
is attracted to and pushed into overseas markets.
The key characteristics of the global environment which the management of amazon should
measure are-

1. Economic Environment: The management of Amazon.com should measure the economic

environment of the countries in which it operates. This includes factors such as GDP growth,
inflation, unemployment, and interest rates.

2. Political Environment: The management of Amazon.com should measure the political

environment of the countries in which it operates. This includes factors such as government
stability, trade policies, and regulations.

3. Social Environment: The management of Amazon.com should measure the social environment
of the countries in which it operates. This includes factors such as population growth,
demographics, and cultural trends.

4. Technological Environment: The management of Amazon.com should measure the

technological environment of the countries in which it operates. This includes factors such as the
availability of internet access, the speed of internet connections, and the development of new
technologies.

5. Legal Environment: The management of Amazon.com should measure the legal environment
of the countries in which it operates. This includes factors such as copyright laws, patent laws,
and antitrust laws.

6. Environmental Environment: The management of Amazon.com should measure the

environmental environment of the countries in which it operates. This includes factors such as air
and water pollution, climate change, and resource depletion.

3.3 Planning and decision making

The Amazon planning process is divided into a bi-annual process dubbed OP-1 (Operating Plan) and OP-
2.
 OP-1, which happens around June, is a mandatory six-page document produced by every team’s Product
Manager, addressing the following questions:

 What outcomes did you achieve last year, in comparison to what you planned?

 What outcomes can you achieve if your level of investment remains the same?

 What resources do you need to grow your business by 10x?

Responses to OP1 can result in either a full investment of your team, or its disbanding. As the world’s
most valuable company, Amazon is primarily interested in leading any category it chooses to compete in
—if your team doesn’t have a viable path to market dominance, the company may surrender the market
for now.

After nearly a month of preparation and socializing between other teams, each team submits their plan.
Leaders then collate those plans at every organizational layer so that when Jeff Bezos sits down to review
the full company’s goals and resources, he’s staring at only six pages. Bezos makes key decisions, and
then the process cascades back down in determining which teams receive what resources.

OP-2, which happens around the end of December, is another six-page document from every team which
asks:

 What did you accomplish since OP-1 compared to what you planned?

 Reasonably, how will you finish out this year and first quarter of next year?

If OP-1, with its questions about how to 10x your business, is about blue-sky thinking, OP-2 is about
closing the year realistically and managing expectations. OP-2 also reflects what’s already happened
during the team’s most active period, Black Friday and holiday shopping.

3.4 Structure and Strategy

Strategy has been defined as the direction and scope of an organization over the long term, which
achieves advantages for an organization through its configuration of resources within a changing
environment to meet the needs of the market and fulfil stakeholders’ expectations.
In fact, the strategic planning process is fundamentally a way of coping with the uncertainty and
risk of the future in a way that will allow an organization to achieve its goals through objective
setting, analysis and forecasting of market conditions and assessment of its internal environment
and capabilities to determine its capacity to meet set objectives.

They Saw a Future Customers Wanted

The decision by Amazon to differentiate was vitally critical to its success, given the likes of the
already established and profitable Barnes and Noble with whom Amazon would have had to
compete.

Of note, the objective of differentiation is to achieve a competitive advantage by creating a

product (good or service) that is perceived by customers to be unique in some important
way. Remarkably, Bezos’ Amazon differentiation strategy gave effect to the establishment of a
distinguishing service that was perceived to be unique within the industry, supported by a level
of convenience and allowed customers to choose from an introductory 1.1 million book titles. By
1997 this had reached 2.6 million.

Facilitated by easy methods of searching and browsing, together with shipment of most popular
titles within two to three days, Bezos was on his way to shaking and reshaping an industry that
has never been the same. His vision in effect made obsolete the thinking and strategies of the mid
90s and mandated a new wave of strategizing and planning.

Randall Stross in his 1997 Fortune article highlighted that no company had done more to show
how the Web overturns conventional assumptions about distribution like Amazon.com and
referred to the Amazon model as ‘beguilingly attractive’, noting as well that ‘expensive
inventory and bricks-and-mortar warehouses were not needed by the new age retailer and that all
customers needed, it would seem, was a website to present the face that greets customers and
take their orders.’
They Saw a Future that Embodied Highly Profitable
Win-Win Partnerships

The initial strong growth in Amazon’s customer base also prompted another strategic decision
that further strengthened their position in the market. This was the expansion of its online reach
in the signing of agreements to become the premier bookseller with online companies such as
American Online, Yahoo, Excite.com, AltaVista, Search network, Prodigy and Netscape’s
Netcenter. In effect Amazon was pursuing a performance improvement strategy by way of
linkages that allowed for complimentary leveraging of their customer base, through coordinated
supplier activities and channels, in a bid to improve their competitive advantage.

This proved to be successful and resulted in sales moving from $500,000 in 1995 to $81.7
million through three quarters of 1997. By June 1999 Amazons Senior Vice President of Product
Development was boasting of a customer base that grew from 1 million to 10 million in less than
two year and by May 1997 Amazon went public. It is apparent that this strategic decision was
premised on the robust growth they were experiencing as well as the need for financing to
support and maintain an aggressive expansion and marketing program. There was obvious
investor confidence in Amazon whose shares initially traded at in excess of $100 over a 52
weeks period.

They Shaped a Resilient Future by Building a Resilient

Team

In addition, and also key to Amazon’s initial success was their recruitment policy. The likes of
David Risher, a veteran of Microsoft Corporation who was responsible for launching Microsoft
Access, Warren Jensen Amazon’s Chief Financial Officer and Jimmy Wright former Vice
President of Distribution at Wal-Mart, were part of Amazons team by its third year of operation.
It is folly to think that any organization will achieve any significant mark of success if its leaders
surround themselves with the ‘wrong people’. The quality of persons employed by an
organization is a critical resource for fueling future growth. To this end the careful recruitment of
employees is important in the process of obtaining and indeed maintaining competitive
advantage.

4. Identified Problems

Insensitive Management

The approach selected by Amazon’s management seems to be rather insensitive and harsh in
relation to employees. It is especially observable regarding those who have to encounter serious
health or life hardships, such as cancer, accidents, or divorce (Rosin). In response to multiple
reports, the company’s spokesman – Craig Berman – claims that this attitude is not their policy
or practice, thus rejecting the mentioned issue. Moreover, Amazon is insensitive to its employees
while they need support and understanding to perform their work effectively.

As a rule, a large and stable business is insensitive to the loss of not only employees but also
managers as the structure and organization of business processes of large companies are built in
such a way as to minimize risks. In particular, in Amazon, each manager is required to have
several successors – the potential candidates who can replace him or her, if required (Kim). Such
candidates can become both employees of the company and people from the outside.

The manager oversees their career growth, helps them develop, and tries to develop a
commendable successor. This, however, does not mean that the role of each individual employee
is so small that it is impossible or unworthy to fight for it. People are the key source in a
company of any size, and the success of a business depends on their professionalism, motivation,
and well-coordinated work.

In offices, Amazon uses a self-reinforcing management system and psychological tools to

encourage tens of thousands of office workers to new achievements. The company applies a
continuous algorithm to boost up the efficiency of its employees. However, the measures are
rather controversial. For instance, psychological pressure is used while asking employees to
report about problems occurring with their work. The most difficult questions are asked about
the failure in work, when, for example, customers did not receive their orders on time (McCray
et al. 48). Such conversations severely hamper the rest of the work as employees should take all
these metrics as part of the overall workflow and make their minds work with plenty of details
under stressful conditions. As a result, workers feel that their work is never finished or not done
well enough to meet the company’s requirements.

Lack of Benefits

The mission of Amazon is to be the most client-oriented company in the world and continuously
enhance service standards. Putting a customer at the forefront, the company can be merciless to
its competitors and, most importantly, to employees (Kim). This means that offering low prices
and fast shipping, Amazon offers almost no benefits to staff members. On the contrary to Google
and Microsoft that focuses on employees’ wellness, nutrition, and special benefits, Amazon does
not promote personal value in employees (Rosin). While successful managers receive
competitive wages, the rest of the employees are expected to be fragile, as stated in rule number
nine declared by the company. This implies that workers should independently pay for their
leisure, phones, and travel expenses.

Moreover, according to the first rule of Amazon’s corporate culture, employees should prioritize
customer service over their own obsession (Kim). It should also be emphasized that the company
requires workers to partially pay for their relocation expenses in case they quit within two years.
The mentioned aspects illustrate that Amazon’s employees experience the lack of benefits that
inevitably leads to stress and burnout. The company’s leadership considers employees to be a
large system of elements, which can easily be replaced by similar ones.

Disregarding Employees’ Need for Work-Life Balance

Both former and current Amazon employees dissatisfied with working conditions have created
the Former and Current Employees (FACE) website, presenting anonymous feedback on the
company’s corporate culture. The key problem, as stated by the website authors, is that Amazon
uses excessive power of managers while such abuse leads to the emotional burnout of employees
and worsens the atmosphere inside the company (Kim).
The creators of FACE believe that the feedbacks and reviews provided on the website would
prompt the company to solve issues in management and HR. In case there would be no changes,
the members of the organization assure to seek to adopt the legislative measures. FACE already
published more than 100 negative reviews about the company’s internal culture along with the
open letter addressed to Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos, claiming to improve the current situation.
Taking into account that Amazon employs more than 230,000 employees, the audience of this
website is extremely small, yet it may rapidly grow in case of the lack of adequate measures
(Kim). The representatives of Amazon declined to comment on this case.

Lack of Praise

The new employees should receive an introductory lecture, according to which they are ordered
to forget bad habits acquired at previous jobs. To become the best Amazons, they need to follow
the 14 principles of leadership that are put on comfortable laminated cards and specify the
corporate culture of the organization.

In Amazon, employees are encouraged to criticize other people’s ideas at meetings, lateness, and
other related issues. The core idea is that employees should motivate themselves based on their
own efforts, thus integrating into the system and becoming a single whole. The culture of the
company encourages the entrepreneurial abilities of employees as well as the ability to take
responsibility and bring results (O’Reilly et al. 602).

However, disputes and conflicts are not uncommon here as the company considers that everyone
should be able to defend and argue his or her point of view. In this regard, the internal
environment seems to be overly aggressive. The lack of praise demotivates employees to develop
and achieve the stated goals, instead of focusing on self-motivation and the ability to cope with
daily routine.

Unfair Systems of Ranking

Criticism in the company goes through the special Anytime Feedback Tool, through which
employees can complain or praise either colleagues or management. While the managers can
identify the authors of the messages, they are usually not known to the one about whom these
messages were written. Thus, every employee has a rating, and employees with the worse rating
are to be fired at the end of the year. Utilizing the above tool, Amazon pursues competitiveness
and productivity within the company, yet it causes the fact that everyone tries to surpass the
others (Flamholtz and Randle 83). Even though according to managers, most of the reports are
positive, employees call them “a river of intrigues and machinations” (Kim).

This system of ranking seems to be quite unfair as the authenticity of the information regarding
one or the other employee cannot be guaranteed by the author of the complaint. In effect, the
system creates plenty of false messages and deteriorates the working atmosphere by disrupting
trust and respect between staff members as well as between the latter and management. In
addition, the so-called Organization Level Reviews conducted on an annual basis serve as a basis
to discuss the lower-level employees in the presence of the higher-level works (Rosin). Such
meetings can be regarded as unethical as they may diminish one’s role in the organization and
insult his or her feelings.

The preparation for this event is reminiscent of the preparation for judicial protection: in order to
avoid the loss of valuable team members, they should prepare strong evidence to protect the
unjustly accused and blame members of other teams.

5. Recommendations

A major problem which is faced by Amazon is a decline in the overall customer satisfaction
related to its products. The major cause for these problems is related to the unappealing nature of
the displayed products at its outlets and the unavailability of some of the popular products. There
is an urgent need to address these problems, and the company needs to develop strategies that
aim to increase the customer satisfaction. The company can employ a number of strategies that
ensure customer satisfaction. Firstly, the company can develop ways that ensure quicker delivery
of products from the backrooms of the company warehouse to the selves of the company outlets.
This can be done by increasing the payroll hours dedicated to the management of the warehouse
storage back rooms. The company should also increase the workforce involved in the entire
process of the management of the inventories.
The company can ensure that the quality of the products is never compromised by increasing the
discount rates on the fresh food products that are nearing the dates of expiration. This will ensure
that the company does not face loses related to the unsold expired products. The company should
also try to assess the most appropriate product that will help in increasing the sales of the
company. The company should take advantage of market data and invest in the product that can
ensure an increase in the sales and high profit.

6. Conclusion

The assignment is focused on the application of management functions in the business activities
of the company, Amazon. Firstly, the four important management areas, i.e. planning,
organizing, leading as well as controlling activities of the company are discussed. In this report
firstly, a brief overview of the company, Amazon is made.  Amazon is a USA based e-commerce
firm with headquarters in Seattle, Washington. Beyond e-commerce, this multinational
technology company, which commence operations with the sale of books, also has a distinct
focus on cloud computing, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. The business activities of
the company is understood by evaluating the four management theories which are management
and evolution of management theory, globalization and the global environment, planning and
decision-making and structure and strategy. The first area includes the concept of the
management function which are planning, organizing, leading and controlling function.  The
second area includes the concept of globalization, which has helped Amazon develop its
logistics, technology, communication and information systems and economic and trade
liberalization. On the other hand, the organization structure of amazon is based on its mission

statement which is to to be Earth's most customer-centric company”. In the third area, the
planning function is used by the management of amazon that is needed to develop certain goals.
The decision making process is adopted by the management of Amazon to measure the possible
alternatives and actions to achieve its objectives. In the fourth area, structure and strategy of
amazon are evaluated.
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 References
 Baylis, J., Smith, B., &
Owens, P. (2021). The
Globalization of World
Politics: An
 Introduction to international
relations. Oxford University
Press.
 Cochrane, A., & Pain, K.
(2000). A Globalizing
Society? In D. Held (2003),
A
 Globalizing World? Culture,
Economic, Politics. London
and New York:
 Routledge.
 El-Ojeili, C., & Hayden, P.
(2006). Critical theories of
globalization. Palgrave
 Macmillan.
 References
 Baylis, J., Smith, B., &
Owens, P. (2021). The
Globalization of World
Politics: An
 Introduction to international
relations. Oxford University
Press.
 Cochrane, A., & Pain, K.
(2000). A Globalizing
Society? In D. Held (2003),
A
 Globalizing World? Culture,
Economic, Politics. London
and New York:
 Routledge.
 El-Ojeili, C., & Hayden, P.
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 Macmillan.
References

Baylis, J., Smith, B., & Owens, P. (2021). The Globalization of World Politics: An Introduction
to international relations. Oxford University Press. Cochrane, A., & Pain, K. (2000). A
Globalizing Society? In D. Held (2003), A Globalizing World? Culture, Economic, Politics.
London and New York: Routledge.El-Ojeili, C., & Hayden, P. (2006). Critical theories of
globalization. Palgrave Macmillan.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/strategic-decision-making-outsiders-view-how-amazon-broke-
blenman/

Jerry DaC Blenman

Globalization is a commonly
used social construct in
today’s society. There are three
different views towards this
phenomena, including
globalist perspective,
internationalist perspective as
well as transformationlist
perspective