1 The University of Manchester Alliance Mancheste.docx

1
The University of Manchester
Alliance Manchester Business School
Human Resource Management:
Context and Organisation
SEMINAR 2:
AMAZON CASE STUDY:
Ethics, Fair Treatment and the ‘Meaningful’ Organisation
Professor Tony Dundon
(Alliance Manchester Business School)
&
Dr Brian Harney
(Dublin City University Business School)

2
AMAZON CASE STUDY:
Ethics, Fair Treatment and the ‘Meaningful’ Organisation
Amazon is one of the world’s most recognised organisations. It
was the first to leverage on-
line platforms for selling and distribution, making its first book
sale on-line in 1995 before
diversifying into CD, DVDs and electronics and ultimately
becoming the ‘everything store’.1
It utilises high-end technologies and robotics to shape and
control work and employment
relationships. Amazon is an internet mammoth, heralded as a
true ‘meaningful organisation’
by its corporate leaders. It claims to lead the way for its culture
of managerial change and
creativity and its identity to millions as one of the few
companies of its type to survive the
technological boom-bust cycle.2 As Google is to internet

search, Amazon is to e-commerce,
practically inventing this category of shopping. Amazon’s
overriding goal is
“to be Earth's most customer-centric company, where customers
can find
and discover anything online”3.
Financial results suggest the company and its founder and CEO
Jeff Bezos are doing well in
this task. At the close of 2015 Amazon shares reached a record
$694, whilst company market
capitalisation stood at $325 billion US dollars.4 Jeff Bezos has
been lauded for his
achievements, including numerous best CEO awards. Industry
adjusted shareholder return
under his stewardship comes in at a massive 12,266%.5
According to Bezos success to date is attributable to a unique
culture and capacity for re-
inventing.6 This is seen in inventions such as customer reviews,
the Kindle, and Amazon
Web Services. Recent developments include moving to compete
with Netflix in streaming,
whilst experimenting with drones to achieve 30 minute delivery
times.

In employment terms Amazon has 155,000 people world-wide,
surpassing the likes of
Microsoft. Employees, known as “Amazonians”, are managed
culturally to be ultra-
competitive and achieve high performance. Amazon is renowned
for pioneering creative
work practices. CEO Jeff Bezos is an outspoken supporter of
technological innovations to
1 Sone, B. (2014) The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age
of Amazon, Back Bay Books.
2 Smith, A. (2015) ‘Amazon is America's best company. Says
who? You!’, CNN Money 15th of June.
http://money.cnn.com/2015/06/15/news/companies/amazon-
reputation/index.html
3 http://www.amazon.jobs/
4 Nicolaou, A, and Bullock, N. (2015) ‘Bumper holiday season
sends Amazon soaring’, Financial Times, 30th of December.
5 Hansen, M. T., Herminia, I., and Peyer, U. (2013) ‘The Best-
Performing CEOs in the World’, Harvard Business Review, Jan-
Feb, 81-95.
6 Economist (2012) ‘Taking the long view’, Economist, 3rd of
March
http://money.cnn.com/2015/06/15/news/companies/amazon-
reputation/index.html
http://www.amazon.jobs/
3

reconfigure the world of management by engendering ‘self-
management’ spaces where
Amazonians are encouraged to take ownership of their own
career destiny and earnings
potential. Bezos is famed, for among other things, coining the
mantra that Amazon wants to
be ‘misunderstood’7 and that being normal just deserves to be
messed with’8. If the modern
so-called ‘meaningful organisation’ is defined by its cultural
identity, employees who are
empowered to maximise their potential, combined with a
corporate reputation for innovation,
re-invention as well as wealth creation, then Amazon is possibly
the top of the pile.
Yet at the height of its most successful financial year, Amazon
encountered its most severe
criticism for being a bullying and bruising place to work. A
damming New York Times (NYT)
exposé in August 2015 put Amazon, and it’s CEO Jeff Bezos,
estimated to be the 5th
wealthiest person on the planet, under intense scrutiny.9
Allegations included severe work
pressure with workers crying at their desks, aggressive and
confrontational managerial styles

including inhumane treatment of those suffering personal
traumas such as miscarriages and
cancer, and a culture of constant ‘anytime feedback’
encouraging employees to undermine
one another. The report prompted Jeff Bezos to make a very rare
and public rebuttal. The
debate resonated widely and cross the media broadly (see Figure
1 and 2 below), raising
public questions that resonate with themes such as what
constitutes a meaningful
organisation, what are the wider societal and human resource
management implications of
wealth and success and, in this context, what equates to
appropriate ways of managing
people?
Figure 1 Sample public reaction
7 Hansen et al., (2013) see note 5
8 Amazon ‘something new’ commercial
http://worldwidegadget.blogspot.ie/2012/09/amazon-something-
new-commercial.html

9 Kantor, J. and Streitfeld, D. (2015), ‘Inside Amazon:
Wrestling Big ideas in a Bruising Workplace’, New York
Times, 15th of August
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-
wrestling-big-ideas-in-a-bruising-workplace.html?_r=0
http://worldwidegadget.blogspot.ie/2012/09/amazon-something-
new-commercial.html
4
Figure 2 Sample public reaction
‘Meaningful’ Leadership?
Amazon’s managerial approach is, and always has been,
unashamedly one of ‘hard work’. In

managerial discourse Amazon is evidently unitarist: that is to
say the likes of Bezos and other
senior figures demand employees strive to achieve and deliver
the Amazon way with no time
or space for externalities or undue influence (such as union
representation or independent
worker voice). In fact, the first two words of the company’s
motto to new recruits are just
that, ‘hard work’. Bezos himself defines the company culture as
‘friendly and intense’,
adding that if he had to choose, ‘we’ll settle for intense’10. The
work regime and culture is
certainly intense and fast-paced. Both originate in the constant
quest to deliver for the
consumer, meaning the organisation menacingly pushes moral,
business and ethical limits.
This applies to products and services, ways of doing things,
employee effort and
expectations. In a symbolic act, it is claimed Bezos periodically
leaves a seat free at
conference meetings informing all attendees that ‘they should
consider that seat occupied by
their customer, the most important person in the room’.11

10 Streifield, D. and Kantoraug, J. (2015) ‘Jeff Bezos and
Amazon Employees Join Debate Over Its Culture’ New York
Times, 18th of
August
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/18/technology/amazon-bezos-
workplace-management-practices.html
11 Anders, G. (2012) ‘Inside Amazon's Idea Machine: How
Bezos Decodes Customers’, Forbes, 23rd of April
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/18/technology/amazon-bezos-
workplace-management-practices.html
5
In order to reinforce such ideals Amazon espouses a set of so-
called ‘Leadership Principles’
which guide what every Amazonian (employee) is supposed to
do in their daily work (see
Box 1). According to Amazon:
“Our Leadership Principles aren’t just a pretty inspirational
wall hanging.
These Principles work hard, just like we do. Amazonians use
them, every day,

whether they’re discussing ideas for new projects, deciding on
the best
solution for a customer’s problem, or interviewing candidates.
It’s just one of
the things that makes Amazon peculiar”.12
The content of these 14 ‘principles’ are unashamedly about
driving a hard working culture
that is obsessed with the customer above all else (#1). As can be
seen in Box, 1, the language
of macho-leadership is used excessively to try and influence
people and push boundaries.
Ownership, and by consequence responsibility, is cascaded
down the organisation (#2), with
activities conducted by only the elite best (#3). The principles
boast of ‘unreasonably high
standards’ (#6), ‘a bias for action’ (#8) and delivering results
(#14).
Box 1: Amazon’s Leadership Principles
1. Customer Obsession
Leadership obsesses about customers. Work vigorously to earn
and keep customer trust.
2. Ownership
Leaders are owners and act on behalf of the entire company.

Leaders never say ‘that’s not my job’.
3. Invent and Simplify
A leader will always find ways to simplify and innovate;
externally aware; look for new ideas everywhere.
Amazon accept that we may be misunderstood for long periods
of time.
4. Are Right, A Lot
Leaders are right and have strong judgement and good instincts.
They seek diverse perspectives and work to
disconfirm their beliefs.
5. Hire and Develop ‘The Best’
Leaders raise the bar with ever hire and promotion; recognise
people with exceptional talent. Leaders develop
leaders and coach others.
12 http://www.amazon.jobs/principles
6
6. Insist on the Highest Standards
Many people may think our leaders have unreasonably high
standards, continually raising the bar and delivering
high quality products, services and processes.
7. Think Big
Leaders ‘look around corners’ and create and communicate a
bold direction that inspires results to serve
customers.

8. Bias for Action
Speed matters in business. Many decisions and actions are
reversible and do not need extensive study. We value
calculated risk taking.
9. Frugality
Accomplish more with less. Leaders don’t get extra points for
growing headcount, budget size or fixed expense.
10. Learn and Be Curious
Leaders are never done, always seek to improve themselves and
curious about new possibilities and act to
explore them.
11. Earn Trust
Leaders listen. They don’t believe their or their team’s body
odour smells of perfume. They speak candidly,
treat others respectfully, are vocally self-critical (even when
it’s embarrassing). They benchmark themselves and
their teams against the best.
12. Dive Deep
Leaders operate at all levels. No task is beneath them.
13. Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit
Leaders respectfully challenge decisions. They have conviction
and are tenacious and do not compromise for the
sake of social cohesion. Once a decision is determined, they
commit wholly.
14. Deliver Results
Leaders focus on the key inputs. They rise to the occasion and
never compromise.
(adapted from: http://www.amazon.jobs/principles)

The 14 leadership principles make the ideology of Amazon’s
corporate ethos explicit. The
undercurrent is drive for performance, rewarding those that
excel and, equally, highlighting
those that are not. Work pressure and intensity is manifest
through the focus on analytics and
technology, from the use of 15,000 Kiva robots in warehouses
to enhance efficiency and
workforce effort.
Beyond the explicit performance dimensions are suggestions
that such principles are
manipulatively dangerous. The NYT report quotes Amazonian
Dina Vaccari who worked on
corporate gift cards
7
“I was so addicted to wanting to be successful there. For those
of us who
went to work there, it was like a drug that we could get self-
worth from.”
It is suggested that Amazon even encourages staff to instil

similar principles when rearing
their children. Critics find the inference that all Amazonians
(workers) are somehow leaders
to be misguided. Warehouse attendants, pressured to perform
with increasing precision and
under the watchful eye of monitoring surveillance technology
signifies a lack of job
autonomy or discretion to make meaningful, engaged employee
decisions. Further, the NYT
times report suggests that the lack of any female representation
on Amazon’s leadership team
(relative to the likes of Facebook or Walmart) is likely a
function of the principle based
system with its rigid prescription of ‘competition and
elimination’, meaning that work
pressures can be increasingly more difficult for women with
childcare responsibilities.
Ethical HRM or Cultural Control?
Jeff Bezos’ well-known bias for immediate action, his tendency
to micro-manage, attention to
detail, and willingness to push boundaries as a ‘change
junkie’13 are reflected in Amazon’s
approach to people management., From the beginning Bezos

was attentive to ensuring a good
cultural fit when bring in new hires;
“I’d rather interview 50 people and not hire anyone than hire
the wrong
person. Why?... cultures aren’t so much planned as they evolve
from that
early set of people”14
Bezos’ approach to management is founded on a desire to resist
forces that might sap
innovation including red-tape, bureaucracy, slow decision
making and unbridled expenditure.
In spite of Amazon’s growth, these lean start-up principles
remain. One example of frugality
concerns expenditure on office equipment, while Bezos holds
true to his long standing two
pizza test; if you can't feed a team with two pizzas, the team is
to large.15 Amazon differs
from the likes of high-tech contemporaries Google and
Facebook which are renowned for
supporting and developing employees through a fun work
culture, surrounded by foosball,
on-site massages and independent thinking time. Rather than
engaging in a battle for

employee talent based around perks and benefits, the ‘no-frills
Bezos is proving the potency
13 Deutschman, A. (2004) ‘Inside the mind of Jeff Bezos’, Fast
Company, Aug (85): 52–58.
14 Deutschman, A. (2004) as above.
15 Deutschman, A. (2004) as above.
8
of another model: coddling his 164 million customers, not his
employees’.16 In a letter to
shareholders in 1997 Bezos wrote ‘You can work long, hard or
smart, but at Amazon.com you
can’t choose two out of three’.17 These expectations about the
nature and intensity of work
are made explicit to new hires who are screened for bias to
action and ability to deliver.
Glassdoor.com, a platform where current and former employees
evaluate their workplace
experiences does not hold Amazon with any great expectations,
ranking it 3.1: similar to
Burger King (3.0)18
The darker side criticism of Amazon’s actual day-to-day

workplace regimes have publically
surfaced previously with reference to the poor working
conditions faced by employees and
agency workers in Amazon warehouses. At the warehouse in
Allentown in the US it was
reported that workers had to walk distances of 5-17 miles per
day in conditions that were so
intense that emergency ambulances had to wait outside for those
that had fainted or fallen
ill.19 The New York Times piece extends the criticism to the
human resource practices,
performance analytics and array of (culturally-driven)
controlling work practices as applied
to the increasing cadre of professional, lower and middle
managerial staff. In no uncertain
terms it said Amazon is ‘conducting a little-known experiment
in how far it can push white-
collar workers, redrawing the boundaries of what is acceptable’.
The NYT story reports of brutal work practices that resemble
something akin to the Hunger
Games peppered with a sprinkling of George Orwell’s 1984 big
brother tactics. Veteran
workers use the term ‘Amabot’ denoting a good worker who has
become self-directed,

internalizing the Amazon mode of working to ‘become at one
with the system’. Work life
integration is said to be complete as white collar and lower
managerial employees are
expected to be ‘ever-present’, including checking in and
working during vacation time.
Another work practice that has evolved to be culturally normal
is sending emails late at night.
When a response is not immediate, the unanswered email is
often followed-up with a phone
text message to the person (usually lower or junior level
manager), asking for their response.
This sense of normality is evidenced in attempts to add humour
to this dilemma:
16 Anders, G. (2012) ‘Inside Amazon's Idea Machine: How
Bezos Decodes Customers’, Forbes, 23rd of April
http://www.amazon.jobs/principles
17 Kantor, J. and Streitfeld, D. (2015) see note 9.
18 Anders (2012) see note 17
19 Soper, S (2011) Inside Amazon's Warehouse, Of The
Morning Call, 18th September
http://www.mcall.com/news/local/amazon/mc-
allentown-amazon-complaints-20110917-story.html#page=1
http://www.mcall.com/news/local/amazon/mc-allentown-
amazon-complaints-20110917-story.html#page=1

http://www.mcall.com/news/local/amazon/mc-allentown-
amazon-complaints-20110917-story.html#page=1
9
“The joke in the office was that when it came to work/life
balance, work came
first, life came second, and trying to find the balance came
last.”
(Jason Merkoski, former Amazon Employee reported in NYT)
The culture of voice and employee speak-up programmes,
common among many leading
firms to help generate ideas, has a somewhat sinister twist at
Amazon. Employees are
encouraged to criticise (even purposely undermine) co-workers
using a HR policy called
‘anytime feedback’. Amazon’s leadership principles refer to
being ‘vocally self-critical, even
when it’s embarrassing’ (see box 1 principle 11). The Amazon
rationale is that this will
engender in-house staff competition. Reports suggest Amazon
encourages conflict and
debates, particularly over performance metrics so that ‘there’s
an incredible amount of

challenging the other person,”20 with ‘feedback that can be
blunt to the point of painful’21
The undercurrent of bias for action and results also forms a
significant and harrowing part of
the critique. The NYT article talks of a woman being told to
focus on her work after a
miscarriage. Another employee is given a low performance
rating because of time out for
cancer treatment. The woman, a professional level manager who
had breast cancer, was
referred to a ‘performance improvement plan’ which, internally,
is known to mean that the
person may be at risk of being fired. The cancer treated
employee was informed that
‘difficulties’ in her ‘personal life had interfered with fulfilling
her work goals’. The
performance ethic and fear of retribution is also clearly
manifest at the top. A former Amazon
employee referred to his former CEO as the ‘Dread Pirate
Bezos’, noting his mandates made
workers ‘scramble like ants being pounded with a rubber
mallet’.22
Just as Amazon obsess over customer analytics, so too it
constantly measures employee effort

via technological control and surveillance systems. In Amazon
warehouses workers carry
handheld devices which report their performance (timing and
quantity) against specific
targets. These devices can also receive incoming text messages
from management telling
workers to speed-up or to conduct additional tasks.23 A
disciplinary point-based system
frames the work tasks as employees can accumulate points for
poor work progress, not
adhering to safety standards or uncertified absences. The same
workers are subject to airport
security like scrutiny on exiting the warehouses to prevent theft.
Amazon is a metric driven
20 Manfred Bluemel, a former senior market researcher at
Amazon reported in Anders (2012), note 12.
21 Kantor, J. and Streitfeld, D. (2015) see note 9.
22 Anders (2012) see note 12.
23 O’Connor, s. (2012) Amazon unpacked, Financial Times,
February 8, 2013.
10
organisation with professional workers subject to ‘anxiety-

provoking sessions called business
reviews’. These reviews can be based on 50 plus pages of
results, with the NYT reporting that
employees can be cold-called and questioned on any one aspect
of their performance.
Commentators reflect that these are ‘burn-out’ practices which
have become embedded into
Amazon’s work culture. The NYT expose further reports on a
‘lock-in mechanism’, which
financially penalises any recent hire who exits the company
within two years of being hired.
With such negative media around its work culture, some suggest
Amazon may alter the way
it does things. 24 Yet with strong financial results, it is
questionable whether there is sufficient
motive in the upper echelons of managerial control for any
improved staff improvement
change programmes.
‘Meaningful’ Performance: Does the end justify the means?
The sinister, manipulative and hard-hitting images reported in
the NYT piece are less a new
revelation than an observation of the contours of global neo-
liberalism and market capitalism.

Bezos was quick to deny the harsher commentary of working
conditions noting ‘they don’t
describe the Amazon I know’’25 However, he was equally
explicit in reinforcing that
Amazon’s performance is underpinned an intensity for pushing
a hard working culture and a
focus and enhanced performance using competitive work models
and high-tech practices.26
According to the Amazon way, the logic is those who complain
are simply disgruntled
underperformers who just can’t do the job and don’t fit:
thousands of ‘Amazonians’, claims
Mr Bezos, are happy and eager to stay and earn big bucks.
Defenders of Amazon’s culture
suggest that the evidence of the NYT expose is based on
‘rounding-up a 100 or so disgruntled
employees (past and present) out of a workforce of 150,000’. A
current Amazon employee,
Nick Ciubotariu, mounted a public defence of Amazon’s
practices (see Box 2).27
24 Liacas, T. (2015) ‘What will it take to make Amazon a great

place to work?’, The Guardian, 18h of August
25 Price, R. (2015) ‘Jeff Bezos has responded to a report
slamming Amazon’s working conditions’, Business Insider,
August
27th
26 Scheiber, N. (2015) Work Policies May Be Kinder, but
Brutal Competition Isn’t, New York Times, 17th of August
2015.
27 https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/amazonians-response-inside-
amazon-wrestling-big-ideas-nick-ciubotariu
Box- 2: An Amazonian’s Defence
‘During my 18 months at Amazon, I’ve never worked a single
weekend when I didn’t want to. No one tells me to
work nights’
“Our sheer size and complexity dwarfs everyone else, and not
everyone is qualified to work here, or will rise to
the challenge. But that doesn’t mean we’re Draconian or evil.
Not everyone gets into Harvard, either, or
graduates from there. Same principles apply”.
“I also think teaching Amazon’s Leadership Principles to one’s
children is kind of funny (my opinion only, if
there are indeed Amazonians that do this)”.
Source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/amazonians-response-
inside-amazon-wrestling-big-ideas-nick-ciubotariu
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/amazonians-response-inside-
amazon-wrestling-big-ideas-nick-ciubotariu

11
Amazon has an intense business model and has exerted its
competitive muscle in a range of
controversial domains including with respect to corporate
taxation, legislation, pressure on
suppliers, and in power plays with publishers. Amazon’s own
services such as ‘mechanical
turk’28, heralded as a ‘marketplace for work’ which is known
for perpetuating insecure,
precarious and low paid work.29 A further counter to the
controlling culture of the
Amazonian work experience is that such criticisms have not
dented it’s phenomenal growth
and rising value. In that context, it should not come as any
surprise that negative scrutiny
about the treatment of employees is of little concern to such a
corporate giant.
Defenders of Amazon argue that in contrast to those former
employees who bemoan the
culture there are plenty of others who thrive on the Amazon
way. Indeed, management at
Amazon claim that expectations about the nature of work are

explicit, so that employees
should have appropriately self-selected. One Senior Technical
Program Manager, Nimisha,
explained “you either fit here or you don’t, you either love it or
you don’t, there is no middle
ground really”. 30 The argument goes that if Amazon’s culture
was founded on such extreme
brutality they simply would not have any employees working
for them. 31 In a statement to
the Financial Times defending working conditions in its
warehouses, Amazon noted both the
reality and expectations of positions:
“Some of the positions in our fulfilment centres are indeed
physically
demanding, and some associates may log between 7 and 15
miles walking per
shift. We are clear about this in our job postings and during the
screening
process and, in fact, many associates seek these positions as
they enjoy the
active nature of the work. Like most companies, we have
performance
expectations for every Amazon employee – managers, software
developers, site

merchandisers and fulfillment centre associates – and we
measure actual
performance against those expectations.”32
28 https://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome
29 https://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome Crowdsourcing: Prof
Debra Howcroft
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbcPeVIMzq8
30 ‘What is it like to work at Amazon: Go Beyond the Badge
with Nimisha’, Inside Amazon,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWFxFBD8Qus
31 Price, R. (2015) ‘Jeff Bezos has responded to a report
slamming Amazon’s working conditions’, August 27th
32 O’Connor, s. (2012) ‘Amazon unpacked’, Financial Times,
February 8, 2013, http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/ed6a985c-
70bd-11e2-85d0-00144feab49a.html#slide0
https://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbcPeVIMzq8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWFxFBD8Qus
12
The unitarist undertones re-emerge again and again in the
discourse espoused by Amazon: ‘if
we put customers first, other stakeholders will also benefit’.33
The ideology belies that if the

company is doing good, employees will be better off along with
shareholders, too. Bezos is
frequently praised for his efforts to dodge the short-termism
that characterises the stock
market. With outward facing customer analytics having proved
so successful for the Amazon
business model, it may be argued that a logical corollary is to
manage and control workers in
the same way, using real-time performance tools and
technologically-pervasive system of
monitoring. Former HR Executive, Robin Andrulevich, suggests
that ‘purposeful Darwinism’
filters out underperformers: ‘they never could have done what
they’ve accomplished without
that’.34
Amazon is an avidly anti-union company which has hired the
services of anti-union
consultants to fend off any attempts at collective worker
representations.35 With respect to
opportunities for those who are disgruntled or aggrieved,
Amazon points to its regular team
briefings and all hands meetings as domains where pressing
issues could be brought to
management attention. Bezos finished his public memo advising

staff that they could also
contact him directly: “You can also email me directly at
[email protected] Even if it's rare
or isolated, our tolerance for any such lack of empathy needs to
be zero”.36
Going forward: meaningful or meaningless?
Amazon is one of the few early internet companies that survived
and eventually thrived. The
company is renowned for its innovative zeal, track record of
change, and for Bezo’s grand
ambitions. What emerges is a corporate culture that is
determined, focussed and centred on its
own ambitions and wealth. What is more questionable, however,
is whether this neatly
equates to a ‘meaningful’ corporate model, commensurate with
a ‘meaningful’ existence for
Amazon’s 150,000 plus employees. With record growth it is
unlikely that Bezos will
introduce any dramatic changes in the way things are done or let
up on the intensity of work
pressure and exceptionally high performance demands. Indeed,
investor and shareholder
expectations for even greater massive returns may only serve to

accentuate rather than
alleviate current approaches and systems corporate governance
at Amazon. With stock
33 Hansen et al., 2013
34 Kantor, J. and Streitfeld, D. (2015)
35 http://time.com/956/how-amazon-crushed-the-union-
movement/
36 Geekwire company memo Nicolaou, A, and Bullock, N.
(2015) ‘Bumper holiday season sends Amazon soaring’,
Financial Times, 30th December,
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/9ec3e288-ae5b-11e5-993b-
c425a3d2b65a.html#axzz3vqmXPyzG
http://amazon.com/
http://time.com/956/how-amazon-crushed-the-union-movement/
13
market prices at an all-time high, an unashamedly strong anti-
union sentiment, and limited
scope for labour resistance except, perhaps, through employee
exit, it is questionable where
the pressure for meaningful change will emanate from.

Nonetheless, winds of potential change and/or resistance are not
inevitable. Workers are not
cultural dopes and know when they being duped by Mr Bezos or
other Amazonian leaders.
They may be a distinct power disadvantage, but they are not
blind to the potential for
collective mobilisation or protest. Underlying challenges in
people management issues may
also surface as Amazon moves its business from ‘clicks to
bricks’. Its first physical store
opened in Seattle’s university shopping mall in November,
2015. One suggestion is a
physical store brings different managerial and cultural
challenges when workers engage and
build relationship directly with customers: the bricks format
will enable ‘customers to
experience the tension between front-of-house and back-of
house as a kind of pleasure’. 37
Evidently, with a more traditional mode of business Amazon’s
staff will have direct
interaction with customers so that any perceived staff
grievances will be more directly and
obviously manifest. There is little doubt that Amazon have
brought about some leading

inventions of the internet age, in part fuelled by workers who
thrive on meeting huge
challenges and demands whilst expending creative effort. As
former Amazon executive and
author of the ‘The Amazon Way’ John Rossman put it:
‘a lot of people who work there feel this tension: It’s the
greatest place I hate to work’.
37 De Monchaux, T. (2015) ‘How Amazon’s bookstore soothes
our anxieties about technology’, New Yorker, 22nd of
December, 2015
14
Tasks and Questions
You will be allocated into four teams:
• Team 3 will present (approx. 10-15 mins) on questions 1 and
2.
• Team 4 will present (approx. 10-15 mins) on questions 3 and 4
• Team 1 will critique and debate Team 3 answers.

• Team 2 will do the same to Team 4 answers.
Then idea is not to rigidly present and defend, but to stimulate a
more rounded debate and
discussion about what’s happening in the context of Amazon,
and how these issues connect
and inform the learning on the course (culture, ethics,
leadership – among other aspects).
Team 3
• Is Amazon a ‘meaningful’ and ‘ethical’ organisation’? (if so,
based on what
rationale; if not, why not).
• In what ways do any of the Amazon leadership principles
contradict one another?
Team B4
• Do the issues and conditions at Amazon lend weight or
support to any models of
ethical responsibility? (if so which, and why)
• Describe how corporate cultural and organisational symbols
can control
employees?

References and some additional readings
Collinson, D. (2005), ‘Dialectics of leadership’, Human
Relations, 58(11): 1419-1442. [shows the problems and
meaningless of some leadership discourse].
Cullinane, N., & Dundon, T. (2013). Unitarism and employer
resistance to trade unionism. International
Journal of Human Resource Management, 25(8), 2573-2591
[unpacks concepts of unitarism]
Cushen, J. (2013). Financialization in the workplace:
Hegemonic narratives, performative interventions and the
angry knowledge worker. Accounting, Organizations and
Society, 38(4), 314-331 [explores the
consequences of short-termism and the tensions that arise for
knowledge workers]
15
Cushen, J., & Thompson, P. (2012). Doing the right thing?
HRM and the angry knowledge worker. New
Technology, Work and Employment, 27, 79-92 [how leading
company HR practices can have complex
and often unintended consequences]
Dobbins, T and Dundon, T (2016), ‘The chimera of sustainable
labour-management partnership’, British
Journal of Management (doi: 10.1111/bjom.12128) (on-line
early). [charts an understanding of Society,
System and Dominance (SSD) theory relative to corporate

change, participation and managerial
control]
Dundon, T., Harney, B., & Cullinane, N. (2010). De-
collectivism and managerial ideology: towards an
understanding of trade union opposition. International Journal
of Management Concepts and
Philosophy, 4, 267-281. [velvet glove and iron fist approaches
deployed by management to remain
union free].
Dundon, T. and Dobbins, T. (2015), ‘Militant Partnership: a
radical pluralist analysis of workforce dialectics’,
Work, Employment and Society, 29(6): 912-931 [talks about
undercurrent of worker agency as potential
source of conflict, even in unusual work regimes predicated on
cooperation and mutuality]
Fleming, P. & Spicer, A. (2003), ‘Working at a cynical
distance: implications for power, subjectivity and
resistance’, Organization, 2003, 10, 157-79. [post-structural
meanings on subjectivity of agency and worker
resistance].
Grugulis, I., Dundon, T., & Wilkinson, A. (2000). Cultural
Control and the `Culture Manager': Employment
Practices in a consultancy. Work, Employment and Society, 14,
97-116 [explores cultural control for
professional workers, including how control is extended beyond
areas and boundaries of traditional
employment contracts]
Martin, R. (2010). The age of customer capitalism. Harvard
Business Review, Jan-Feb, 58-65
[value of focusing on customer as opposed to shareholders,

ignores any implications of such for
employees].
Bergvall-Kåreborn B, Howcroft D. (2014), ‘Amazon Mechanical
Turk and the Commodification of Labour’, New
Technology, Work & Employment 29(3):213-223. [critiques
Amazon’s mechanical turk system of creating a
low paid work regime externally]
Pollert, A & Charlwood, A. (2009), ‘The Vulnerable Worker in
Britain and problems at work’, Work Employment
and Society, 23 (2): 343-362. [unpacks vulnerable and
meaningless work experiences].
Smith, C. and Meiksins, P. (1995). ‘System, Society and
Dominance Effects in Cross-National Organizational
Analysis’, Work Employment and Society, 9, pp. 241-67.
[offers theoretical insights into the application
of SSD theoretical framework, labour process analysis and
corporate governance].
Thompson, P. (2013). ‘Financialization and the workforce:
extending and applying the disconnected capitalism
thesis’, Work, Employment and Society, 27, 472-488. [advances
theory of disconnected capitalism,
showing managerial inertia and incapacity in face of changing
social structures of accumulation].
Willmott, H. (1993), ‘Strength is ignorance; slavery is freedom:
Managing culture in modern organizations, Journal
of Management Studies, 30, 515-52. [the managerial
colonisation of culture].
Zoller, H. M. & Fairhurst, G. T. (2007), ‘Resistance leadership:
The overlooked potential in critical organization
and leadership studies’, Human Relations, 60(9): 1331-1360

[leadership adaptions to resistance and dilemmas
of agency].
Seminar 2:AMAZON CASE STUDY:Ethics, Fair Treatment and
the ‘Meaningful’ OrganisationAMAZON CASE STUDY:Ethics,
Fair Treatment and the ‘Meaningful’ Organisation1. Customer
Obsession2. Ownership3. Invent and Simplify4. Are Right, A
Lot5. Hire and Develop ‘The Best’6. Insist on the Highest
Standards7. Think Big8. Bias for Action9. Frugality10. Learn
and Be Curious11. Earn Trust12. Dive Deep13. Have Backbone;
Disagree and Commit14. Deliver Results

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