Amazon is one of the largest American companies selling a wide variety of products over the Internet. Its founder, Jeff Bezos, managed to create a massive organization bringing multibillion-dollar income from a tiny online bookstore. It seems to me that a company’s organizational culture largely determines whether a company succeeds. The corporate culture of Amazon is ambiguous, but without any doubt, it allows the firm to gain popularity among buyers.
Although it has become popular to foster a culture in which the workforce turns into a kind of family and the opinions of each employee are given a lot of attention, Amazon is pretty different. In 2015, The New Your Times article by Kantor and Streitfeld criticized the attitude of Amazon leaders towards workers. The authors claimed that the company’s corporate culture was based on fairness (Kantor & Streitfeld, 2015). It would be wrong to consider that they are wrong and that, in fact, Amazon is a perfect place for any worker. On the other side, if the leader of Amazon were so despotic, its employees would just run away. However, this article by Kantor and Streitfeld impacted Amazon since Bezos accepted criticism and asked his workers to read the paper and inform HR about cases similar to described ones (Bariso, 2016). Therefore, Amazon and its leader are always ready to become better.
Although Amazon’s culture is pretty harsh, it is effective and customer-oriented. Even though Kantor and Streitfeld (2015) were strict about Amazon’s culture, the company always tends to optimize its organizational culture and improve it (Bariso, 2016, para. 1). Therefore, in the original reporting, there were several unfair biases. Bezos also said that he did not recognize this Amazon described in the article (Bariso, 2016). To date, the company even has GLAmazon, a group of HR managers responsible for recruiting members of the LGBTQ, as well as Black Employees Network and Women in Technology groups (Dudovskiy, 2020). Moreover, Bezos claimed that they launched “a new annual review process that focuses on our employees’ strengths, not the absence of weaknesses” (as cited in Bariso, 2016, para. 3). Therefore, Amazon has a well-developed culture, which, however, cannot suit everyone. The emotional pressure on employees and unrelenting pace are integral parts of this culture, which affects the company’s results. Strict rules and constant control ensure Amazon’s operation without failures and help avoid unexpected cases, guaranteeing that the company will be the market leader for a long time.
References
Bariso, J. (2016). How Jeff Bezos used the New York Times expose to make Amazon better. Inc. Web.
Dudovskiy, J. (2020). Amazon organizational culture: Harsh, but effectively contributing to the bottom line. Business Research Methodology. Web.
Kantor, J., & Streitfeld, D. (2015). Inside Amazon: Wrestling big ideas in a bruising workplace. The New York Times. Web.