Addressing Organizational Issues At Zappos: Application Of Relevant Theories In Essay.

You need to choose an organisational issue in Zappos. You then need to determine how this topic occurs within Zappos and explain how the relevant theories could be applied to solve the organisational problem you have identified.

Zappos' Core Values and Management Approaches

According to Yu-chen (2012), Zappos is one of the best online clothing and shoe retailer. The study review Zappos as one of the retailer shop which have a strong ethical climate as well as striving on their code of conduct and ethics. The retail also embraces its strong core value which keep it thriving to meet its customer expectations. Its management has been focusing to ensuring it remains competitive through offering high quality services. Over the years, it has been embracing and driving Change to operate based on the changing customer needs. Some of the primary aims of Zappos is to create Fun, Adventure, and creativity, open minded, and also pursue growth and learning.

The company focuses on building openness and honesty through their channel of communication, and building team work (Tanu, 2017). They also aim at achieving more with less as well as spirit of being passionate and humble to the stakeholders and its customers. This core values have helped the retail in providing the customers with customer service to enhance their level of satisfaction. It also aims at decreasing unethical workstation behavior which may affects day to day operations.

According to Lili (2016), Zappo was initiated in the early 1999 by Nick Swinmurn. The idea to come up with the company by Nick was reached after his attempts to find a pair of his favorite footwear at his local mall. Later, he approached his two friends Tony Hsieh and Alfred Lin who supported his idea of coming up with the online retail shop which would primary deal with high quality shoes. The company was launched in 1999 by Hsier and Lien by the name Shoe Sites which later changed to Zappos (Oss & Hek, 2011). The primary aim of changing the name was to make the company to diversify in other products other than shoes.

Late on Venture Frog invested additional capital to Zappo which made it to be shifted into their office space thus Tony Hsieh becoming board as co-CEO with Nick Swinmurn. The Company was in a position to realize $1.6 million in revenue in 2000 which marked an increase as compared to the previous year (Danny, 2016). With proper management and continuous market research, the company continued to report positive performance, and in 2004 it was in a position to receive its first round of venture capital. Later, and due to best performance and growth it moved its headquarters from San Francisco to Henderson, Nevada.

Organizational Issues at Zappos

Regardless of the challenges which the company has been facing over the last years, such as 2012 hacking incident, the management has been focusing on better performance through using unique operational strategies. The retail also expanded its line of production to dealing with various products such as handbags, eyewear, clothing, watches, and kids’ merchandise. This decision made it to expand its market share and to become an internationally competitive company.

Over the years, the retail has been contributing largely in promoting social interaction and also their interaction between the stakeholders and employees through engaging in various charity events. It also encourages team building as one of the ways of promoting relationships among its staff members. Additionally, its management trust that its customers are of essence because they are the reason why the company has been in operation and therefore focuses on ensuring they are fully satisfied with its products. This has to attain reputation and customer loyalty which in turn has made it to realize substantial revenues. It focus on doing what is right has also made it to be termed as one of the most ethical companies.

According to Vijay (2014), Zappo is listed as one of the most independent workplace internationally by the WorldBlu because of its ethical behavior and commitments to excel in its work. Focusing on satisfaction to its shareholders, employees and also to its customers has led to multitude of transparency between top management and all employees as well being in a position to address the needs of its customers without major challenges.

Although this company has been realizing success over the years, it also faces various challenges that make it hard to attain some of its goals. One of the challenges faced by this organization is cyber threat. According to Pettinger (2010), companies that conduct online businesses face the threat of cyber-attacks. Being one of the online companies, Zappos experience the challenge of dealing with hackers and other intruders who can interfere with its operations.

Zappos has faced economic discomfort which led to the lay off its employees. According to Meera (2016), economic distress has a significant impact on businesses because it can not only make them incur reduced revenues but also threat of collapsing. Despite the fact that its management was able to handle the challenge with agility, strength, and also precision, seeing the staff members quite was not pleasing because the management valued every employee (Mitushi, 2014). Furthermore, they were entirely precise concerning the financial situation which led to some of employees to lose their jobs.

Possible Solutions to the Identified Organizational Issues

Another ethical challenge encountered by Zappo was a merger with Amazon in 2009. This brought about confusion especially to its Customers because they could not understand the reason that made the company to bond with Amazon. Though the management confidently expressed the situation to the customers in order to maintain their loyalty, it was challenging especially those who had negative experience with amazon. This made the company to experience a significant decrease in its market share.

The reluctance of the board of directors also came as a challenge since they did not want the company to concentrate more on their clients but rather aim at shifting the entire focus exclusively to product sales which was also a challenge to the company. Although the research review that Tony Hsieh did not support the decision of doing away with the customer-centric model that Zappos because it was the one which the company had used for some years, his attempts to object the decisions did not succeed because it was challenging to convince some of the people who formed the top management

Another challenge that Zappos faces is globalization and core sustainability. This has brought up the question on how Zippos can continue using aggressive pricing strategy in the international markets that have similar harvest and with cheaper price tags. The study reviews the online retail sector environment being highly competitive and also very volatile. In this case, the entrance of the new innovative business venture is more likely to cause disruption in the entire industry based on the competition thus become a problem in operation of this company.

The best alternative for Zappos to be able to achieve its target as one of the best online shop is to abandon their policy of free shipping. Instead, it should charge relatively low cost for shipping and also brand their product to meet the customer standards since the human resource practices will be will be essential in addressing these challenges.

Zappos also needs to make attempts of recruiting the right staff members, by considering those who can promote some of the essential things in the company such as its core values. It should also encourage keeping innovative employees and ones who strive to find solutions for the business to a sustainable growth. Additionally, it should come up with best ways of promoting customer trust even when the company decide to merge with other firms.

Conclusion

One of the solutions that Zappos can use to address its challenges is coming up with proper measures of promoting the security of its online platforms. Some of the measures which it can take is undertaking extensive research to identify the reasons that makes its websites to be prone to hackers. It can also solve this issue through investing in innovation to ensure unique measures are put in place to challenge the hackers.

Another possible solution available for Zappos is employing the right people. According to Donovan (2012), employing qualified people enables a company to realize solutions to some of the things that seem to prevent them from attaining their goals. For example, employing skilled people can make the company to remain productive even during the times of economic distress. Employing the right people can also help Zappos to avoid the significances of changing to a self-regulating business.

To solve the challenge of lack of knowledge in dealing with some of its systems, the company can design a new application process, which will help to omitting individuals who may not understand how to use Holarctic system. Taking this decision can be crucial because it can improve productivity and also to retain employees.

While trying to boost transparency and enhance operation processes, Zappos should trying using a super-flat structure known as ‘Holacracy’. Taking this decision is crucial because it can assist the management in replacing the top-down predict-and-control paradigm, and hence achieve control through allocating power (Prerna, 2014). This strategy can also enable the management to work based on the expectations of the customers and the society at large.

The company should also strive to penetrate to as many markets as possible in order to minimize the risk of realizing significant impact when there is a realization of economic distress. According to Clayton (2011), operating in different countries is crucial because it makes businesses to remain productive when some of the nations are affected by economic depression. This means that Zappos should target as many countries as possible and use proper operational strategies to make the company competitive.

References

Clayton, A. P. (2011). The Practice of Organizational Diagnosis: Theory and Methods.  New York: Oxford University Press

Danny, M. (2016). . Response to "Research on the Dark Side of Personality Traits in Entrepreneurship: Observations from an Organizational Behavior Perspective” Entrepreneurship: Theory and Practice, 40(1), 34-45.

Donovan, M. A. (2012).  Personal Knowledge Management: Individual, Organizational and Social Perspectives.  Journal of Applied Management and Entrepreneurship, 17(2), 132-142.

Lili, F. (2016).  The Relationship among Public Service Motivation, Civic-Organizational Behavior (Obc), and Service Quality.  Iranian Journal of Management Studies, 9(1), 54-65.

Meera, S. (2016).  Organizational Citizenship Behavior and Organizational Commitment in Indian Workforce.  Journal of Psychosocial Research, 11(2), 78-94.

Mitushi, J. (2014). Organizational Success through Strategic Human Resource Management.  Journal of Social Welfare and Management, 6(1), 34-56.

Oss, L. V & Hek, J. V. (2011).  Why Organizational Change Fails: Robustness, Tenacity and Change in Organizations. Ney York: Routledge

Pettinger, R.  (2010). Organizational Behavior: Performance Management in Practice. New York: Routledge

Prerna, C. (2014). The Role of Cognitive and Affective Trust in the Relationship between Organizational Justice and Organizational Citizenship Behavior: A Conceptual Framework.  Business: Theory and Practice, 15(2), 43-65.

Tanu, S. (2017). Organizational Behavior.  South Asian Journal of Management, 24(1), 43-56.

Vijay, K. S. (2014).  Attaining Organizational Happiness through Value-Based Management - a Conceptual Framework.  Advances in Management, 7(6), 78-98.

Yu-chen, W. (2012).  Person-Organization Fit and Organizational Citizenship Behavior: Time Perspective1.  Journal of Management and Organization, 18(6), 23-43