Case Study

Your company is one of the nations leading e-retailers with more than 200,000 em- ployees.
Located in Seattle, and recently valued at 250 billion dollars by Forbes, you CEO is one of the
five richest people on the planet. With a global reputation, your or- ganization recently
surpassed Wal-Mart in value, and just completed a new office complex for 50,000 employees.
Your organization is also known forcorporate social responsibility (CSR) practices that
its include
donating a portion of profits to quickly resolving customer and client complaints, and
charity, offering
employees a large cash sum if they want to quit each year. A very competitive organization,
your company values include: “customer obses- sion, ownership, invent and simplify, are right a
lot, learn and be curious, hire and develop the best, insist on the highest standards, think big,
bias for action, frugality, earn trust, dive deep, have backbone, disagree and commit, deliver
results.”
Your organization has recently been brought under the media spotlight for its harsh treatment
of
employees at all levels of the organizational hierarchy from workers in shipping and packaging,
to senior
management According to a recent exposé pub- lished in the New York Times (NYT), the
. everyday
working conditions for floor workers is both physically challenging and mentally stressful for all
but the youngest and most physically fit employees.
In terms of how managers and supervisors are treated the NYT article suggested that
employees are encouraged to work late, e-mails arrive past midnight, followed by text
messages asking for a response if one is not sent. Employees also complained that the
corporate culture encourages people to “tear apart the ideas of others” at meetings, and the
internal phone directory “instructs colleagues on how to send secret feedback to one another’s
bosses.” The company also conducts an annual culling, firing workers who have been identified
as weak. Even sick workers “who suffered from cancer, mis- carriages and other personal
crises” were fired. As one senior marketer who left after only two years said, “Nearly every
person I worked with, I saw cry at their desk.” The NYT exposé also included other issues that
included a culture of ignoring sexual as- sault of employees, and harassment and mistreatment
at all level of the organizational hierarchy.
Scientific management principles (Taylorism, Fordism, etc.) from the turn of the centu- ry are
the reason behind the Darwinian employee treatment. Scientific management calls for the use
of meticulous measurements of employee activities from time spent on computers, to time
spent assembling customer orders. Based on the data gathered, employees are expected to
perform at the level required or are fired for underperfor- mance. In support of the current
system, the CEO him/herself has spoken negatively about the lax, “country club” employee
culture across the river at Microsoft, suggest- ing that if that ever happened at your
organization “we would die.”
The CEOs response to the NYT article was dismissive, e-mailing company employees and telling
them to read the article, and stating that the situations described in the article does not
resemble the company that s/he knows. Former employees are forbid- den from speaking
about the company or talking to the press. Indeed, only a few em- ployees in the company are
authorized to talk to the press. Very few former employees speak well of the company culture,
which can be blamed for an assortment of physical
and emotional harms, but many employees still praise the opportunities to excel that the
company offers.
Your task is to discuss and analyze the situation from a communication and public relations
standpoint. What should the organization do? Assume that you have been gathered by an
enterprising communication manager eager to succeed to deal with the issue. What part does
organizational climate play? Is this a crisis? The CEO essentially ignored the problem with
minimal comment so there are not yet any serious sales con- sequences, but what about brand
value? Word on the street is that many people have stopped shopping with your company over
the treatment of employees. What about from a CSR standpoint? If a company does not violate
the law and tries to serve the interest of customers and clients, gives money to charity, etc. but
also abuses their employees, is such behavior still corporate social responsibility?
Some members of your class will be assigned roles to play in the discussion where they are
provided with ethical and personal decision-making information. If you are one of those
selected to take part in the discussion, review your character carefully, take notes, and make an
effort to respond as s/he would under the circumstances. If you are a member of the class
observing the discussion, you job is to try and under- stand the ethical and decision-making
strategies of each member of the group, and to be able to explain how you could draw upon
that knowledge as part of an effective decision-making process.

Being CEO I have to clear it all by providing correct information

• If there are consequences which are to be discussed properly, I will gather all the
employees, workers, managers in a place and ask the media to cover it or any magazine
which could help my organization to make the situation better and for the words
company were supposed to stand for.
• Surely this have been impacting the reputation of the company and the customers have
also been disappointed by reading the news published.
• May be there is a need to change some working policies, ethics and behaviors towards
employees and workers.
• The incentives would be great if the workers aren’t satisfied with their wages and
salaries if required
• The NYT spotlighted that the company is being harsh to the employees and giving stress
which in result makes all the work force encourage for late responses on given tasks
• The next main point is for being disrespectful, so in that case managers would be asked
to look at the behaviors of the employees towards each other or may be any person
working in the organization
• As the employees know that they are one’s who are responsible somewhere for the
clashes and they are the one’s who have to develop solutions with the cooperation of
the CEO and all workforce
• The firing if the employees wouldn’t be the great option so by yearly or monthly basis
company will try manage the performance of the employees. The employees will be
classified from best to worst by using any scaling method which would be appropriate
for the company
• For personal issues the employees have to be more practical. Being emotional on work
place isn’t an option.