Current Events Paper KELLY 1
Amazon Problem Statement
Amazon is one of the largest companies in the world and has become a titan of the
retail sales industry. Amazon is the largest retail sales website in the world (Angelovska,2019).
Since its inception in 1994 Amazon has grown from selling books and music online to a massive
organization that could employ more than a million people by the end of the 4th quarter in 2020.
According to Fox Business as of the fourth quarter of 2019, Amazon reported that it had 798,000
full-time and part-time employees across the globe. In the same article Fox business showed 4th
quarter profits of over 87 billion dollars (De Lea, 2020).
Amazon’s financial success is well documented, however a detrimental issue the industry
giant faces currently is its unethical treatment of factory employees that has flooded the news
over the last few years. Horror stories from The Atlantic go into vivid detail about ruthless
holiday quotas that ignore the well being of employees (Evans, 2020). More recently Amazon’s
ethics problem has taken center stage in the 2020 presidential race as democratic candidates such
as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have spoken out against Amazon’s accused practice of
“profit over people” (Evelyn, 2020). The key decision maker and person with the most power to
put out Amazons ethical fire of employee treatment is perhaps one of the most notable and
richest CEO’s in the world, Jeff Bezos.
Concepts from the Textbook
The three concepts from the Principles of Management textbook that I have connected
with Amazons ethical problem are Selective Perception, SWOT Analysis, and Outcome Oriented
