6MG001 Organisation Behaviour Assignment Sample
Module code and Title: 6MG001 Organisation Behaviour Assignment Sample
Introduction
The examination of human behaviour in an organisational setting is associated with organisational behaviour. There are numerous models and theories regarding organisational behaviour and the factors that affect organisational behaviour. This assignment is going to shed light on the organisational behaviour of Amazon. This assignment would minutely analyse the leadership behaviour of this organisation through relevant theories.
It would critically evaluate the theories related to power, gender dynamic, motivation and structure of the organisation to get a thorough knowledge regarding organisational behaviour of Amazon. “The thesis statement is aiming to prove that gender discrimination and unnecessary work pressure has alternated behaviour of employee of Amazon”.
Overview of the Case Study
Overview of Case
Amazon is a customer centric US based e-retail company renowned for its product quality and services. Developing and maintaining the principle of commitment, passion and long-term thinking, this company has developed a sustainable progress in market (ABOUTAMAZON, 2022). Furthermore, it has also been witnessed that with assistance of its HR manager and their strategies, this company has been able to enhance success and progress in market.
Operating with almost 25,000 employees in market, this company has obtained a sustainable position leading towards successful value development (ABOUTAMAZON, 2022). Providing employees with assistance in career development, this company apart from assisting customers has also provided employees with integrated satisfaction.
Figure 1: Amazon Quarterly Net Revenue (Source: STATISTA, 2022)
Owing to this compliance and HR assistance, this company has developed a significant amount of goodwill and value in market. Amazon, with assistance from its HR managers has retained employees and their performance leading towards enhanced revenue generation. In the fourth quarter of 2020, Amazon has generated revenue of $125.56 billion (STATISTA, 2022).
Impacting positively on sales enhancement and customer compliance, this company has developed a positive position in market. However, in the first quarter of 2021 without obtaining progress, this company has faced a downfall in revenue generation. Generating revenue of $108.52 billion, a significant amount of loss has been faced by this company.
Undergoing a case study on Amazon, reasons for its failure has got highlighted, impacting organisational success and sustainability management. The human resource manager of this company has been maintaining compliance with its employees, but owing to the volatility rate in market and its impact has created challenges. It has been witnessed that the HR manager in this company is unable to manage the team, employees and organisational market.
According to Tambe et al. (2019), identification of good employees is a difficult aspect for HR managers and retaining them sometimes becomes more problematic. Keeping up with their expectations often creates barriers towards sustainable growth and development of an organisation. It can be stated that owing to ineffective employee management and lack of guidance to them has created these significant challenges.
Leading towards ineffective business management in first quarter a drastic downfall has been witnessed in Amazon. Owing to this ineffective management, international market share of this company has gone down significantly. This company has obtained a market share of 4.57% in the international market owing to lack of effective customer support from the end of employees (STATCOUNTER, 2022). It can be stated that if this company is able to eliminate challenges in an effective manner, a definite progress and success can witness increased organisational market value.
Being a customer centric company who has a compliance with its effective strategy development can enhance success and progress. If the workplace environment gets managed by an HR manager with quality strategy and effective training, these challenges can be eliminated. As Amazon has obtained success and progress in attracting and retaining customers internationally, making use of quality strategies can assist this company in enhancing success and progress in an effective manner.
Challenges
Identified Issues
Undergoing the detailed case study of Amazon, a definite failure of HR management has been witnessed impacting sustainability and success of this company. Due to these challenges, certain issues have been identified that have a potential of impacting growth and development of this company in a drastic way.
Unreasonable Expectation from Employees
Job expectation is a significant challenge that creates a challenge towards employees in giving their best while operating in companies. Reducing both rate of innovation and motivation, often companies are unable to obtain growth and sustainability in market. Schiff and Leip (2019) opined that unreasonable job expectation provides an employee with immense stress by hampering quality of a work.
Creating significant challenges companies reduced market value and goodwill impacting success and sustainability in a significant way. In case of Amazon, in order to keep up with customers’ expectations, employees often face an immense level of workload. It can be stated that if the HR manager of this company has been able to develop successful strategies for assisting employees, these challenges might not have to be faced by this company.
Increased Unhealthy Competition
Unhealthy competition in companies lays a significant impact on organisational success and progress. Increasing the workload and expectation from employees, companies often reduce morale of employees impacting on their mental as well as physical health. Kgoedi and Pillay (2018) opined that companies unable to develop and comply with operations using proper planning face these kinds of challenges.
It can be stated that in the case of Amazon, owing to this challenge, this company has been unable to maintain progress and success in market. Thus, it can be stated that if an HR manager develops strategies challenges can get eliminated, increasing success and sustainability in market.
Incentive Management
Incentive is an appreciation that encourages employees in retaining their interest towards a company. However, often it gets witnessed that because of the lack of HR compliance, most of the companies are unable to manage this aspect. As a result, promotion of employees gets affected, reducing their rate of interest towards companies.
Based on the analysis of Madanat and Khasawneh (2018), lack of incentive management reduces employee morale affecting their success and innovativeness. It can be stated that in case of Amazon, as the HR manager has been unable to obtain this aspect, ineffective operation management has been witnessed.
Unfair Ranking System
HR managers in companies assist employees in improving their ranking system creating a significant impact on their career development. It has been witnessed that providing equal opportunity and access to resources, HR managers emphasise on to this aspect creating a significant value. Phuong (2018) opined that ranking system influences employees’ workforce and motivation leading towards success and sustainability of an organisation.
However, in case of Amazon, as the HR manager is unable to provide assistance to employees, a negative impact on the ranking system was witnessed. Thus, unable to obtain equal opportunity, employees of this company have been unable to enhance success and progress accordingly.
Impact of issues
Resolving issues within an organisation is extremely important as presence of complications within an organisation degrades performance quality of a firm. In this scenario, Amazon has been facing some issues within its form and due to this Amazon’s performance quality has been depleted. Lack of Customer satisfaction and employee retention also increases within a firm if a company is unable to address the issues that it is facing.
Impact of unreasonable expectations and setting high standards
Amazon has recently made some changes within its organisation target and requirements, thus setting the standard expectations considerably high. Setting high goals and expectations creates unnecessary pressure within employees. Unnecessary pressure on employees caused as an impact of unreasonable expectations and targets increases chances of employee dissatisfaction (Zheng et al. 2018).
Employees are core of an organisation and an increased amount of employee dissatisfaction leads to lagging of work activities within an organisation. In this scenario, Amazon’s employees are facing the same issue and they are subjected to extreme pressure. This pressure is causing harm in their personal life as work life balance is getting disoriented. Therefore, impact of this issue is leading to increased employee dissatisfaction and thus increasing chances of employee retention.
Effect of unhealthy competition
Competition within employees is necessary as it pushes these employees to produce their best results for an organisation. Amazon breeds an organisational culture where employees are allowed and encouraged to rip apart their co-workers’ thoughts and ideas. There is a tool in Amazon that allows users to launch unhealthy complaints against their co-workers.
Both of these issues raise unhealthy competition and as a result of this lack of cooperation, communication takes place within a firm (Je et al. 2022). In Amazon lack of cultural integrity, lack of ethics and lack of cooperation between employees takes place as an impact of unhealthy competition. Therefore, lack of all such aspects is going to directly harm the entire operational flow of this company.
Impact of improper management
In Amazon it is heard that employees suffering from health issues like cancer, miscarriages are judged and they are provided without sufficient time to recover. This unfair treatment creates unnecessary vexation among employees. As stated by Melián-Alzola et al. (2020), employees prefer to work in a company that has a decent management system and understands the employee’s situation.
Therefore, as an impact in Amazon this is leading to resentment and discontentment among employees. Employees as a result of such unfair judgement are pushed to resign from Amazon. Hence, manpower slowly decreases and it directly impacts the entire performance level of Amazon.
Effect of an improper ranking system
Amazon holds an organisational annual review and in these reviews managers of Amazon plans to rank subordinates based on reviews of each employee. Amazon, through this unfair ranking system has removed a lot of hard working employees based on the review system. As stated by Parent and Hoye (2018), such unfair ranking systems restrict new freshers from joining a company.
In this scenario, unfair treatment that is received by previous employees restricts newcomers from approaching Amazon. Hence, as an impact, fresher’s unwilling to work in Amazon due to its bad organisational ranking system creates hindrance in workflow and lack of workflow leads to dissatisfaction among customers.
Theoretical analysis of organisational behaviour on Amazon
Leadership
The CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, has a broad line personality and it reflects on his leadership style. According to Salter (2022), this personality has an eagerness of direct employees, the way they have to behave and overconfidence to accomplish a task by any means. This is the reason where employees struggle to cope up with high expectations and pressure to achieve goals. This behaviour is impacting on the mental health of the employees who work in this organisation.
High turnover labour model and low wage at the same time is enhancing the signs of distress among workers of this organisation. In the opinion of Mellor (2022), Amazon is encouraging unhealthy breeding of competition among workers. This competition also makes employees frustrated and they tend to work long hours to achieve the target of this organisation. It has mentioned earlier that Amazon sets high standards to achieve near to impossible goals. Employees find it difficult to cope up with the expectation of Jeff Bezos and get distressed by excessive pressure.
The intensive competitive environment in Amazon makes employees jealous and they find problems working as a team. Thus, the harmony among employees was disrupted by the intensive competitive atmosphere of Amazon. It is a sign of the Pacesetting Leadership style that set high expectations and employees get burned out to maintain and fulfil the high ambition of the leaders.
This organisation keeps a record of high achiever employees and the least achiever employees. The least achiever employees get terminated without providing any relevant training and discussion. Moreover, intensive management of this organisation always pushes employees to join quickly after health issues such miscarriage, cancer and several other personal catastrophes. As mentioned by Poindexter (2021), a woman who faces a miscarriage informed by the management that they would monitor her performance to ensure that she is focusing on her job.
That woman resigned from her designation as a sense of disrespect made her even more depressed and frustrated. This incident again proves the high ambition of Jeff Bezos has no place for empathy. This style of leadership is harmful for a sustainable long term employee performance somehow unethical too. According to Kadiyono et al. (2020), Affiliative leadership style would be beneficial for this organisation to follow so that harmony among employees is maintained and management looks into the wellbeing of its employees.
Power
Organisational power has a relationship with the stakeholders of the company. This power is in charge of confirming workers’ dedication and compliance in the company. Productivity increases by the right amount of power and helps to co-exist peacefully as employees. However, it has been discussed in the leadership style of Jeff Bezos that employees need to fulfil and cope up with high expectations of this ambitious leader. Due to this the power of stakeholders, mainly its employees, gets reduced.
As opined by Mellor (2021) a shift in power dynamic in Amazon has been observed as the employees forced to work long hours and injury rate is high in warehouse workers. For instance, on Easter Sunday employees had to work a long hour due to a massive offer. However they get only $16 as incentive which is lower than Walmart and Fedex. Hence, low labour wages is a main reason behind shifting power from stakeholders to the management. According to Boogard (2022), power dynamics set the tone of the organisational culture. Moreover, healthy power dynamics ensure that everyone raises their voice on relevant issues.
In this case, employees get terminated for not accomplishing desired tasks. That means they cannot raise their voice regarding the issues they face while working and warehouse labourers also cannot raise their voice for low labour wage. In terms of harmony maintenance between workers, Amazon even makes the situation worse due to high competition. This organisation emphasises on achieving targets by any means and rewarding higher achievers intensifies the competition within the organisation.
It disrupts the harmony among workers and significantly shifts its power dynamics to stakeholders to the leaders. Power dynamic theory entails to distribute the power in a way that would provide opportunity for listening to everyone’s voice and perspective (Bates et al. 2018). In order to achieve the target, ambition and expectation can be high.
However, not that extreme to keep the power in one control and make the employees ignorable in terms of power. Hence, Amazon requires following power dynamics theory in organisational behaviour to obtain the stakeholder’s satisfaction.
Gender dynamics
In terms of organisational behaviour gender dynamic entails the gender based interaction between and among the people in an organisation. Socio-cultural intention of an organisation sets the gender dynamics of that company. As mentioned by Keck (2022), Amazon prime’s segment of workers has observed gender biasness within the organisation.
Five women reported that they face gender baldness in the prime segment as women are frequently overlooked in terms of promotion. This clearly indicates the gender dynamics of Amazon creating a sense of inequality among women’s. In the 21st century, this is an unexpected allegation from a globally renowned e-commerce retailer Amazon. Moreover, they are looked down upon when a challenging job comes up. Women reported that they do not get a chance to learn and show their full potential to solve any critical issues.
Decreminatition based on gender creates an absolute negative impact on the reputation. It also reduces the productivity of employees as a sense of frustration and depression arises from this ethical behaviour. It is absolutely unacceptable in this modern educated society. It shows the low socio-cultural esteem of that organisation. As mentioned by Keck (2022), there are five women who faced harassment and racial discrimination. These instances indicate that there are huge problems in the gender dynamics of Amazon.
This allegation is in the human resource department of this organisation. They do not address these issues and are responsible for this unethical misconduct in this organisation. Hence, the human resource department has to take measures to establish gender equality within this organisation. There are four theories related to gender equality and these are social learning, cognitive development theory, gender schema theory and neurophysiologic theory.
This organisation requires vigorous research on these theories and established a gender equal environment where deserving candidates would get a chance for promotion no matter what gender they belong. Strict policies and regulations would help this company to develop gender equity within the organisation.
Motivation
Learning and growth opportunities are provided by Amazon that has supported Amazon in offering motivation to their employees. Development of personal skill and knowledge has supported employees to improve this knowledge. Sharing of advanced knowledge to employees has supported this organisation in making changes of business in an easier way. Apart from this, effective decisions are generated by this organisation through involvement of potential employees in this company.
However, this company is facing complications in terms of appearances of gender discriminations, which has declined the job satisfaction level of workers. Other than this, organisation behaviour of employees has declined due to appearances of internal conflict between workers for high rates of gender discriminations.
Organisational structure
A proper organisational structure is important to establish a successful business and target can be achieved smoothly. There are numerous organisational structures that different organisations follow to run business smoothly. However, Amazon follows Hierarchical organisational structure (Dudovskiy, 2022). This type of structure holds numerous higher authorities and there are certain disadvantages of this organisational structure.
The process of decision making slows down as employees cannot take a decision due to several higher authorities. They also find it troublesome to present any opinion regarding the decision. Thus, the whole working process gets delayed due to slow decision making. Slower decisions reduce the chance of making internal innovation and leads to several challenges for the organisation.
It has already been mentioned that Amazon holds high expectations and outcomes from the employees by any means. In this situation not being able to take any decision or slower decision-making process would hamper the productivity of this organisation. There are few advantages of this organisational structure. Flexibility to adapt to the external market is one of the advantages of this structure.
Adaptation according to the external market helps the organisation to survive and establish a valuable position in business but it negatively impacts on the employees as they are overlooked. Employees find it difficult to cope up with internal changes in the organisation. Moreover, changes require training and discussion with employees.
Training takes time but a company that shares high ambition and expectation would not be able to provide extra time to adapt with the situation. Hierarchical organisational structure develops a barrier between employees with management and a sense of confusion arises in time of critical problems. Thus, Amazon requires management to conduct meetings with employees to understand the problems of employees.
Recommendation
Amazon has to pay attention to the elements of organisational behaviour as it is facing several challenges to retain employee satisfaction. Employee satisfaction decides whether the organisational structure is appropriate or requires changes. First of all the leadership style is hampering productivity as employees get frustrated due to high expectations and ambitions in the leadership style. They do not get a chance to present their daily nuances in corporate life.
Hence it is recommended in the context of leadership not to follow Pacesetting Leadership style but to follow Affiliative leadership style to retain employee satisfaction. Moreover, it is recommended to provide justified incentives according to the duration and performance of the employees. In order to maintain the harmony within the organisation, Amazon requires to reduce the competition. It requires motivating and conducting meetings instead of instant termination due to low permanence.
Developing an understanding regarding low performance would enhance the chance to control the factors that are the reason for low performance. Team meeting has supported an organisation in execution of open discussion between employees and management. Additionally, issues that are faced by employees related to tasks are also identified by management through this team meeting. A well-established theory such as power dynamics theory would help to divide power equality among employees to keep enhancing the productivity of the organisation.
Conclusion
Organisational behaviour is developed among employees through involvement of leaders in terms of sharing relevant guidance to them for achieving goals. In this particular context, HR needs to be involved in relevant hiring of employees so that productivity of an organisation increases. In the case of Amazon, gender discrimination at workplaces has reduced positivity within the working environment.
Job satisfaction levels of workers are decreased due to internal conflict among workers for discrimination based on gender. Leaders of this organisation are delivering excess pressure to employees for achieving goals and it has raised the mental stress of workers. Staff retention rates of this organisation have decreased due to excess pressure.
In addition, alternating market demand this company has focused on adopting changes, which has alternated working patterns. Amazon does not focus on flexibility to their e employees, which has decreased their engagement in business that creates a negative impact over productivity.
References
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