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OBHR Individual Assignment

Name: Anushka Kamble

2200026

ONS-SPRING-47

Chris Forster
Table of content

 Introduction

 Organizational structure and culture

 Mode of communication

 Leadership style

 Organizational culture and structure leading to success

 HR strategies

 Recommending and suggestion


Introduction

Organizational behavior and human resources play a crucial role in the development of an

organization. It analyses the effect of social and environmental factors that impacts the

organization as a whole. Organizational behavior helps the organization understand their

employees, motivations skills and abilities, and their lacking areas, where the organization

can help them fill in the gaps for better performance. It supports the framework of the

organization’s structure and culture. Organizational structure is the guidance provided to the

employees by laying out certain rules and official reporting relationship that governs the

workflow of a company. Below are two case studies, one reaching the success peak and the

other failing to structure the organization leading to downgrading.

Qualitative research by Black Garner gives an insight into amazon being a globally-based

organization. It argues how the layout of business production, product planning, financial

outlines, and its cultural acceptance helped Amazon build globally. On the contrary, another

qualitative research by Tomi, Juha, and Eero talks about the management learning of Nokia.

The initial stage led to the success, however, the management failed to adhere to the

organizational structure and culture leading to the degrading of Nokia as a company.

Organizational Structure and Culture

Organizational structure helps the organization in accomplishing its goals. Considering the

case of Amazon, it has a hierarchical structure. The hierarchical structure is mainly for the

larger companies which rely on having different levels of authorities with a connecting chain

of command managing levels. Amazon also supports hybrid working, where the employees

can work part-time. This enhances the performance of the employees. Further to the structure,

Jeff has introduced the two-pizza rules where minimum employees are called to the meeting.
This helps makes the employees more focused, innovative, and prevents data duplication. In

contrast to this, we have Nokia with a horizontal organizational structure. In the horizontal

structure, there’s a possibility of having one supervisor handling a medium size team,

resulting is led innovation, burden, and poor regulations of activities. This was one of the

reasons for the failure of Nokia, where they focused on the traditional phone instead of

adding innovative features.

Moving ahead with the organizational culture, Amazon is a globally-based organization,

which socially accepts the cultures and practices. There are four core cultural values followed

by the employees:

Customer obsession: Jeff Benzo believes in a customer-centric approach where the

employees are aware of the taste and preferences of the customers through feedback and

questionnaires. This helps in developing strategies for enhancement.

Long-term Planning: The future forecast is done by taking take 5-6years plan into

consideration, which helps the organization to understand the further issues and work on

them accordingly.

Eagerness to invest: Few organizations invest in a risking taking project. Amazon is one of

the organizations that invest in the project that would profit them in long term despite the risk

involved.

Peculiarity: Amazon involves peculiarity in their culture. This characteristic refers to the idea

of challenging conventions. For example, Amazon motives their employees to see their

performance as different from the conventional ways of doing business.

On the other hand, we have Nokia with a flat network organization with speed and flexibility

in decision making. They believe in providing equal opportunity. However, they failed in

retaining these values at a core level. Further, there were some internal clashes in the
organization from 2006-2009. These clashes were mainly due to favoritism and politics. This

neglected the skilled labor which impacted the growth of the organization. This led to the

failure of its organizational culture.

Mode of Communication and employee interaction:

The communication mode of Amazon with its customers is through emails, calling on toll-

free numbers, web chat, social media, and website queries. This communication takes place

with regard to customer queries or problems. Further, the internal mode of among the

employees are as follows:

Face-to-face: Where the employee meets each other over the conference table or at the desk

to discuss the queries and come up with a solution.

Virtual meeting: While working in a group the employees communicate through different

modes like MS Teams, Google meet, Skype, and Social media.

Further, the mode of communication of Nokia with its employees is mentioned below:

Bloghub: It’s a tool where the employees can create their own community by posting a

picture or video.

Infopide wiki: It allows the employees to collaborate and share knowledge by forming up

teams. These are the ways a team can bond and work on a given project.

Management and leadership style:

The management style of Amazon is Autocratic. The superiors and the CEO are responsible

for all the decisions made during any project. The input of employees is considered, but later

its molded according to the thinking of the CEO, and a particular decision is made. Amazon

believes in a long-term leadership style. It doesn’t only focus on the internal options, but on
the facts borne out from the market places. Further, it has certain drawbacks like work

pressure, customer-centric, and a diverse workforce among employees.

On the contrary, Nokia’s management is based on building, managing, and enforcing the

positive at the workplace to maintain decorum and avoid conflicts. The management at Nokia

is more democratic, where it gives an opportunity to the employees to voice their opinion.

Initially, Nokia had a management style involving innovation. Nokia is divided into four

parts, also called as business groups, where the employee can give the feedback and the

management can work on its accordingly in order ti enhance the performance and the

product’s productivity

Organizational culture, structure, and management style led to success/ failure:

The organization’s culture, structure, and management style of Amazon have helped it to

build its desired goal. Below are the key elements that contribute to the success:

 Culture Acceptance: Amazon growing on the global level accepts the culture and

practices across the world. The employees and customer of Amazon is spread across.

 Innovative and peculiar: This being the core cultural value made the employees come

up with innovative ideas making the organization grow.

 Employee satisfaction: The organization structure motivates the employees in various

ways making them achieve their desired goals. This helps the employee to perform

better and contribute to the organization’s goal.

On the other hand, Nokia started by touching the peak of success with its organization’s

structure and culture, however, it could not retain its values over time. During 2006-2009

the organization faces major internal clashes. Below are some issues that lead to the

failure:
 Political clashes: The organization faced political clashes during 2006-2009. They

encouraged nepotism and favoritism which lead to the loss of skilled labor.

 Lacked Innovation: Since the organization lost skilled labor there wasn’t any

room for innovation and the organization failed to focus on modern features.

 Pay structure: The compensation structure is low which failed to motivate the

employees, instead it demotivated the employee.

HR Strategic planning, recruitment, and selection strategy, and performance/ talent

management strategy

Amazon:

HR Strategics are the practices undertaken by the organization to evaluate the growth and

manage the resources. Below are some of the strategies undertaken by Amazon:

 Short-term and long-term goals:

 Customer-centric:

HR Recruitment and Selection concentrates on the talent management and the right pool of

candidates to increase the growth of the organization:

 Bar-risers:

 Innovative Approach:

 Work diversity:

Performance management strategies help the organization motivate the employees to enhance

their performance.

 Pivot:
 Reward Management:

 Employee Retain:

Nokia:

HR Strategies are quite a different from that of Amazon:

 Focuses on Decision making:

 Long-term goals:

HR Recruitment and selection strategies for Nokia are based on the basic HR Metris:

 Different levels of interview:

 Innovative Approach:

The performance management of Nokia is quite similar to that of Amazon:

 Reward Management:

 Compensation Policies:

Suggestion and Recommendation:

Amazon:

 Amazon ends up burdening the employees which might lead to burnout. They should

introduce stress management.

 Quality of products must be improved.

Nokia:

 Nokia should implement employee equality and neglect favoritism.


 They should focus on an innovative approach and implement the order features to

boost their sales.

 Nokia should update its pay structure. The compensation policies should be enhanced

to employee performance.

 Focusing on short-term goals can help the organization to achieve the desired goals.
References:

Garner, B. A. (2018). Amazon in the Global Market. Journal of Marketing &

Management, 9(2), 63–73.

LAAMANEN, T., LAMBERG, J.-A., & VAARA, E. (2016). Explanations of Success and

Failure in Management Learning: What CanWe Learn From Nokia’s Rise and Fall? Academy

of Management Learning & Education, 15(1), 2–25.

https://doi-org.ezproxy.myucwest.ca/10.5465/amle.2013.0177

Bieńkowska, A., Koszela, A., Sałamacha, A., & Tworek, K. (2022). COVID-19 oriented

HRM strategies influence on job and organizational performance through job-related

attitudes. PLoS ONE, 17(4), 1–29.

https://doi-org.ezproxy.myucwest.ca/10.1371/journal.pone.0266364

Patyal, V. S., & Koilakuntla, M. (2018). Impact of organizational culture on quality

management practices: an empirical investigation. Benchmarking: An International

Journal, 25(5), 1406–1428. https://doi-org.ezproxy.myucwest.ca/10.1108/BIJ-12-2016-0191

Field of dreams: team implementations and greenfields. (2007). Team Performance

Management, 13(3/4), 65–89.

https://doi-org.ezproxy.myucwest.ca/10.1108/13527590710759838

Dudovskiy J,. (2022) Amazon Organizational Culture: harsh, but effectively contributing to

the bottom line. Article,


Brown, A. (2017) “glamazon at Amazon: eighteen years of change” Working at

Amazon, Available at: https://blog.aboutamazon.com/working-at-amazon/glamazon-at-

amazon-18-years-of-change

Verma P., (2022). Why did Nokia Fail?. Article

BusinessEssay. (2022, January 4). Human Resource Management at Amazon. Retrieved from

https://business-essay.com/human-resource-management-at-amazon/

StudyCorgi. (2022, June 8). Amazon Human Resources Strategy. Retrieved from

https://studycorgi.com/amazon-inc-s-human-resource-management-strategies/

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