Changes of Organizations: Amazon

Using the below information: write at least 1925 words not including the 8 peer reviewed articles from (2017-2021) please use APA 7 and include the DOI in reference area, and The paper must also include 1 biblical principal and have a reference for that as well:
Choose two ways that Amazon organization have changed over the years and provide a past to current summary, integrating theory and personal perspectives. Your discussion should include areas such as organizational environment and networks, organizational goal setting, and technology and organizational boundaries.

ANSWER

Introduction

Organizational change entails the actions in which a business or company alters the main components of its organization, such as underlying infrastructure, culture, products, technology, and internal processes (Banutu-Gomez and Banutu-Gomez, 2016). Organizational change has been successful through change management, a method of leveraging change to lead to a successful resolution. Some of the reasons that lead to the necessity of change include the execution of new business models, novel technology, changes in the corporate team, and new leadership (Tamunomiebi and Akpan, 2021). Organizational change has been classified into transformational change and adaptive change. Therefore, this paper will focus on two significant organizational changes that have been experienced within Amazon over the years. Amazon has undergone changes in its shopping models and product line expansion which have played an essential role in the growth and development of the company in the retail market. All organizations must change to improve their operations and operations, evolve with external effects, and address problems.

Background

The CEO of Amazon company, Jeff Bezos, has a background in computer science and electronic engineering, which played a significant role in starting the company. Jeff Began the company in Seattle as a book-selling company that offered a wide selection of books with better prices than the brick and motor stores (Sadq, Sabir and Saeed, 2018). Amazon was selling books online since the SEO had seen the vision of the internet and how big the internet could be. Amazon offered the client a way to order almost every book in print and ship it directly. Most of the books were sold directly from Amazon, while others were brokered by Amazon from the publisher and shipped to the client. The vision was to be the world’s most customer-centric organization where clients can discover and find all they might need to purchase online. The mission of Amazon was to serve the online and physical store consumers and emphasize price, selection, and suitability.

The company’s core values are in line with the vision and mission, which focus on catering to their clients and increasing adaptability. For instance, Amazon leaders expect invention and innovation from their teams, who play a significant role in finding ways to simplify business processes. The company has employed over had a million employees globally and has an increasing consumer target of more than 30 million clients worldwide. Despite the hierarchical organizational design at Amazon, the company has remained flexible and highly innovative. Over the years, Amazon has continued to cause changes in eCommerce and is also driving disruptive innovation in the global logistics industry.

Changes in Online Shopping Models

Amazon’s organizational strategies and processes have changed over the years leading to transformational changes that have reshaped the company leading to a shift in the working culture. Being the first bookstore to sell online, Amazon has transformed its business processes to improve shopping convenience to greater levels. The company has introduced new processes for shopping online such as personalized recommendation, one-click ordering, package pickup at Amazon lockers and hubs, and in-home delivery with Amazon Key ((Sadq, Sabir, and Saeed, 2018).

The personalized recommendation has created real rime personalized user experience. Amazon Personalize has made work easy for developers to create applications that can deliver a wide range of specializations, including product re-ranking, specific product recommendations, and tailored direct market. Amazon personalize is a wholly managed machine learning operation that extends beyond the static and static rule-based approval strains and systems to the deployment of custom machine learning models that focus on delivering highly customized recommendations to clients all over the world.

Amazon introduced one-click ordering, which is the idea that clients can enter their shipping, billing, and payment information just once and only click a button when they want to purchase something. The one-click ordering system led to hassle-free online shopping without re-entering the payment, billing, and shipping information Ives, B., (Cossick and Adams, 2019). Home delivery with Amazon Key is a process of securely delivering packages inside homes with a four-hour delivery window where the drive sends an arriving now notification after arrival with an option of watching delivery live when available. The driver places the package inside the garage and sends a final notification after completing the delivery. Package pickup at Amazon lockers and hubs have been used to increase the convenience of package pickup at a place and time that is convenient to the customer. The lockers have acted as a secure and self-service kiosk that allows the customer to package conveniently, thus avoiding the worries about a package being left at the door while one is away.

The organizational culture and goal setting have influenced the capacity to change the processes and strategies. Amazon has a corporate culture that enables the business to respond to demands and changes in the online retail market. Ideally, a company’s culture guides the values and traditions that influence the behavior of employees (Aryani and Widodo, 2020). For instance, Amazon has a corporate culture that pushes for innovation and the need for the workers to go beyond their conventions and traditional limits to develop bright solutions and ideas. Amazon has been able to build a culture of innovation since it focuses on meeting the clients’ needs and inventing on behalf of the clients. Amazon has reinforced the employees to work towards meeting the demands and needs of the customers. The company has continued to determine changes and trends in consumer preferences in its online retail services.

Amazon has relied on ADKAR Change Management Model to facilitate change in their processes and strategies, especially the online shopping model. The first thing is to create awareness about the reason for the change in the workforce (Tang, 2019). Honest, consistent, and open communication with employees has improved the ability to communicate the need for change. For instance, employees understand the need for change to meet the consumer demands and invent on behalf of the client (Angtyan 2019). Amazon has also engaged and empowered employees to want change. Regular involvement and communication have been key to increasing the desire for change and reducing the change resistance.

Amazon also focuses on building employee knowledge through training and putting new knowledge into practice to create organizational value. Leaders at Amazon have been able to identify and address barriers that hinder change by encouraging employees to believe in their abilities and themselves, thus building their confidence. Amazon has reinforced and sustained change by building a culture of innovation. The culture of innovation has played a major role in empowering and encouraging employees to invent and innovate more, thus embracing change.

Product Line Expansion

Amazon began with a single product line which was selling books online. With time, the company has expanded its product line beyond its boundaries. The company has experienced adaptive changes, which include incremental changes where the organization adopts to address the needs of consumers that evolve with time. Amazon began selling video games, computer software, and small house improvement items, expanded overseas and sold third-party items. With its focus on customer centrism, Amazon has become a place to buy anything online. A customer-centric approach is a culture and strategy of doing business that focuses on establishing the best experience for the consumers and building brand loyalty. Customer centricity has been a major driver at Amazon, which focuses on providing products that lead to a positive customer experience. The company has progressed along the product lines by expanding into other novel product categories.

Amazon Web Services is a developing and all-inclusive cloud computing space offered by Amazon, including a combination of IaaS and PaaS and SaaS offering/. AWS was launched in 2006 from the internal infrastructure that can handle online internal operations. AWS has offered various solutions and tools for software developers and enterprises to be utilized in data centers in more than 190 nations. Since 2010, Amazon has grown its global presence as an international retailer by expanding its localized storefronts that include domains for Australia, Singapore, Turkey, Netherlands, UAE, India, and Brazil. Amazon has also introduced a line of Echo devices powered by Axela and has become one of the most relied in the line of smart speakers.

Amazon has gained more than 61% of the U.S market share in this line of products. Amazon has continued to grow its core retail business, which has surpassed big retailers in the United States, such as Amazon. Amazon has also expanded into entertainment operations in the past decade, focusing on Amazon Prime Video. Amazon Prime Video is focused on competing with live streaming services such as Hulu and Netflix. This has been made possible by acquiring Twitch, which has also enabled Amazon to gain dominance in the gaming and entertainment industry.

In 2017, Amazon entered the grocery business by acquiring Whole Foods (Cossick and Adams, 2019). Amazon bought the longstanding supermarket chain, acknowledged for its organic products and high rates. However, the single biggest impact of Amazon has been the Amazon prime on Whole Foods. In the past, Whole Foods was not known for discounting due to its business model. However, Amazon has introduced the yellow prime and telltale blue prime discount stickers that offer discounts to clients. The Prime Whole Foods app has also been convenient to the consumers while accessing the products.

In 2018, Amazon bought Smart-Doorbell marker Ring, which led to Amazon stepping into the Home security market and gaining a huge leg up on smart home technology (Cossick and Adams, 2019). The Smart doorbell ring has also completed other retail services by making the ordering process easier on the website. After the company announced the Amazon home key delivery, they partnered with other existing smart lock makers to establish kits for interested consumers.

The Ring’s doorbell is equipped with audio equipment and audio and can easily operate with voice-enhanced smart home devices. Amazon has been focusing on improving their e-commerce business and has been doing this even with Echo and Axela and have continued that trend with Ring and Whole Foods. Currently, Amazon has been signaling about venturing into another sector: healthcare. In 2018, the company acquired PillPack, a health startup, while in 2019, it acquired Health Navigator. The company has incorporated Amazon Care, a fresh trial healthcare platform that is presently available to its staff but will be extended soon.

Organizational Goal Setting

Ideally, the goals and objectives of an organization determine the course of action and lead a company to prepare for future changes. The organizational goal setting entails the future state that a company is striving to achieve (Gagné, 2018). For every goal that an organization sets, there are objectives that are short-term targets. The organizational goals have acted as direction and guidance, motivating and inspiring workers, facilitating planning, and helping organizations control and examine their performance.

According to the goal-setting theory, organizations can rely on their goals to improve employee engagement (Locke and Latham, 2019). The goal-setting theory is based on establishing certain measurable and specific goals is more effective than having unclear goals. Ideally, Amazon’s business strategy has played a major role in bringing change since it has created its goals around satisfying customer needs. The goal of Amazon is to be the world’s best customer-centric company where customers can discover and find anything they want to buy online. This has greatly contributed to the changes and achievements since they have continued to introduce more services to the clients, thus raising the bar of client experience through the internet.

Organizational Boundaries

Amazon has also focused on open innovation and organizational boundaries, which have enabled the company to reach out to different market fields. Currently, the company is operating in gaming and entertainment, retail and grocery, cloud services, home security and are planning to enter the healthcare field. Their open organizational boundaries have played a major role in change and innovation. The diverse organizational boundaries that exist internally and externally, including external partners, have given birth to a new capability in the generation of innovation. Ideally, the advancement in information technology over the last few years has demanded open organizational boundaries that allow the merging of different technology to span different industries and build business models.

Biblical Reference

In 1 Samuel 16:5-3, the Bible tells the story of David, who transitions from a Shepherd to a King. David prepared for change and transition without knowing that he was prepared to kill Goliath. The story relates to organizational change at Amazon, which has grown from a book-selling company to the largest eCommerce company to be the most customer-centric company globally. The past seasons of Amazon have been used to prepare the company for the next season, which is how God operates.

Conclusion

In summation, organizational change is important for developing and accomplishing an organization’s goals and objectives. Change management leads to successful usage of change and adaptation within the business. This allows the workers to commit and understand the shift and effectively work to achieve the goals of an organization. Amazon has been committed to building a culture of innovation and a customer-centric company which has allowed changes in the online shopping models and product line expansion. Therefore, organizational goal setting, boundaries, and culture are important in boosting organizational change. Organizational change at Amazon has focused on exploring new opportunities and innovation, leading to many positive aspects that have led to the retention of their competitive advantage in e-commerce. Therefore, companies need to focus on change that affects their strategies, products, and processes to maintain pace with the constantly changing world.

References

Angtyan, H. (2019). ADKAR Model in Change Management. In International Review of Management and Business Research (Vol. 8, Issue 2, pp. 179–182). Academy of IRMBR. https://doi.org/10.30543/8-2(2019)-4

Aryani, R., & Widodo, W. (2020). The Determinant of Organizational Culture and Its Impact on Organization: A Conceptual Framework. In International Journal of Higher Education (Vol. 9, Issue 3, p. 64). Sciedu Press. https://doi.org/10.5430/ijhe.v9n3p64

Banutu-Gomez, M. B., & Banutu-Gomez, S. M. (2016). Organizational change and development. European Scientific Journal, 12(22). http://dx.doi.org/10.19044/esj.2016.v12n22p56

Gagné, M. (2018). From strategy to action: transforming organizational goals into organizational behavior. International Journal of Management Reviews, 20, S83-S104. https://doi.org/10.1111/ijmr.12159

Ives, B., Cossick, K., & Adams, D. (2019). Amazon Go: disrupting retail?. Journal of Information Technology Teaching Cases, 9(1), 2-12. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F2043886918819092

Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (2019). The development of goal-setting theory: A half-century retrospective. Motivation Science, 5(2), 93. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/mot0000127

Sadq, Z. M., Sabir, H. N., & Saeed, V. S. H. (2018). Analyzing the Amazon success strategies. Journal of process management and new technologies, 6(4). http://dx.doi.org/10.5937/jouproman6-19264

Tamunomiebi, M., & Akpan, E. (2021). Organizational Change and the Imperatives of Managing Employee Resistance: A Conceptual Review. Journal of Strategic Management, 6(1), 18-32. https://doi.org/10.47672/jsm.683

Tang, K. N. (2019). Change management. In Leadership and change management (pp. 47-55). Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-8902-3