Amazon HR Business Report

Amazon HR Business Report
You may have heard about The New York Times article, “Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace published on August 17, 2015. The critical expose brought to light some unflattering aspects of Amazon’s workplace dynamics for its white-collar workers. Although there has been some rebuttal to the article, including a response by CEO Jeff Bezos, the article has caused a firestorm of criticism over working conditions at Amazon. In fact after The New York Times article was published, The Morning Call rereleased an article from 2011 on poor conditions for Amazon’s blue-collar warehouse workers. Whether the articles are representative of the majority, or a small minority, of employees at Amazon, they show that there are definitely some employees who are unsatisfied. Therefore, your task is to read The New York Times article (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-wrestling-big-ideas-in-a-bruising-workplace.html?_r=0) and The Morning Call article http://www.mcall.com/news/local/amazon/mc-allentown-amazon-complaints-20110917-story.html and write a business report identifying HR problems at Amazon and formulating recommendations to solve these problems. You should read and refer to only the two assigned articles as you complete your analysis. You should not find or use any additional articles.
As you write your HR business report, you must include appropriate references to concepts, theories, and ideas from the textbook including parenthetical citations with page numbers; for example, (Noe, 263). References to the articles should also be parenthetical citations but as there are no page numbers on the articles, you should just include the authors last names & date; (Kantor and Streitfeld, 2015) for The NY Times article and (Soper, 2011) for The Morning Call article. At the end of your report you should include a list of works cited.
Your report should be a minimum of 1500 words and include an overall introduction, body, and conclusion as well as effective transitions. The body of your report must include the following four sections:
1. Summary of the facts presented.
2. Analysis of the problems.
3. Recommendations for solutions to the problems.
4. Implications your recommendations will have on the operation of the organization.

Details on each of these four sections can be found below.

Summary
After your overall introduction, your write-up should include a concise synthesis of the facts in the case, under the heading “Summary.” Stick to one or two sentences and do not put any discussion of problems or recommendations for solutions in this section.

Analysis
The most important section of your case analysis comes next, under the heading “Analysis.” This section should be the longest, most thorough section of your write-up. Managers cannot solve problems unless they can first identify them. Recognizing problems and then understanding the nature of the problems is the proper beginning of all managerial action. Solutions generally fall in place relatively easily once problems are recognized and understood. There are often several viable solutions to problems in a case, but you cannot implement any of them if you cannot identify the problems. It is important that there are references to ideas, concepts, and theories from textbook in the “Analysis” section. Your grade will depend, to a large degree, on including appropriate, logical references you include in your write-up.

Recommendations
Next, write your recommendations on to how to solve the problems in a section titled “Recommendations.” Put the solutions in order of priority. It is vitally important that you include references to the textbook in the “Recommendations” section, too.
Implications
Finally, in your “Implications” section you should elaborate what implications your recommendations will have on the operation of the organization in the short and long term and what broader policy implications your recommendations might have not only on the organization but also on the business community, if there are any. In other words, if your recommendations are implemented, what changes will the organization and the business community in general have to make in the way they do things now and in the future? Include appropriate references in this section, too.

Please note, these are older articles which include workplace scenarios which can be found in many companies today. This project asks you to analyze, interpret and make recommendations from the view of HR.