Business Ethics: A Case Study of Zappos

Business Ethics: A Case Study of Zappos

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Business Ethics

Ethics is all about the way to behave. In an organization, fostering ethical culture needs individual responsibility from all the employees. Everyone from top management downwards should understand the organization ethics. Organization ethics is the way to do business with utmost honesty, respect and in an acceptable way (Parboteeah & Cullen, 2013). Zappos organization leaders have been very instrumental in ensuring customer satisfaction. The leaders have acted as an example as wells as developing core values that guide the ethical culture of the organization. Values in business need to define the behavior of an individual when offering services to a customer.

Zappos leaders developed ten core values that drive the ethical behavior in the organization. The values act on principality and guide every business undertaking of every employee. The core values include delivering WOW through service, ensure the creation of fun and a little weirdness, and embracing and driving change in the organization. Other values include pursuing growth and learning in the organization, encourage creativity, adventure, and open-mindedness, building honest, open relationships, establish a positive team and family spirit, ensuring they do more with less, inspiring passion and determination and lastly embracing humility. The values have fostered every aspect of undertaking in the organization.

Zappos leaders also make genuine culture review are carried out. The ten core values evaluated on almost daily basis within the organization. The review impact on the employee daily work and encourage improvement in challenging areas (García-Marzá, 2012). At Zappos believe that employee happiness direct relationship to performance is taken seriously by the top management. They think that if you make the employees happy and understand the organization culture and the core values then, they can be better performers.

Zappos recruitment process is also tailored to test the ten core values and the commitment of the potential employee. Humility at Zappos affects the hiring decisions. The hiring team does not only look at the experience and the suitability of the prospective employee, but they also test their ego that most of them fail. In most companies, such candidates usually pass the test and get employment for purposes of the addition of top and the bottom line, however, the company would surely lack high values(Ferrell, Fraedrich & Ferrell, 2004).

 The will to make short term sacrifices if there is believe of worthy long-term goals is the philosophy at Zappos. Culture and ethical protection are the long term benefits protected by the organization. Each new employee at Zappos is expected to declare an understanding of the ten core values and responsibility to uphold them on a daily basis is expected of them.

The other companies can mimic this culture through their hiring process and developing core values that define the organization conduct. Creating of core values by the management would make sure everyone complies with organization’s rules and behavior.  Core values would create clear boundaries and standards that will enable employees to make the right decisions (Das Gupta, 2010). The hiring process should also incorporate evaluation of character and make sure employees understand organization values.Job evaluation and reward scheme should include this test.

The significant impact of Zappos leadership philosophy on it stakeholders include increased customers, loyalty, and trust. Zappos investment on building their brand on the best customer’s service has improved customer experience and led to a rise in revenue. Zappos customer service is an excellent one and sets the company profile above others offering the same product. Free shipping of goods in the United States, for example, give the customer a secure purchase. The customers are also allowed to make more purchases and can return the ones they do not like in delivery. This has built a solid trust among the client base and has massively led to an increase in revenue.

 Customer loyalty has also been massive throughout the organization businesses. The hiring team at Zappos understand the importance of hiring the right employee with emphasis on the values and customer oriented culture. The company is now equipped with necessary skills to deal with clients. The less employee turnover is resulting from good leadership ensures the retention core values. Customer loyalty is enhanced because the elimination of the risk of adjustment of new employees on a frequent basis is. Customer satisfaction and consequently the possibility of repeat purchases therefore upheld.

Zappos faces the ethical challenge of loss of critical business information. Critical business information lost through dishonest employees. Often employees leak the secret business information to competitors leading to losses. Although the task of protecting critical business information is not easy, the top management can try to eliminate the vice through identifying, designating information as confidential, making policies to guard this information and immediately addressing contraventions that can lead to occurrence of such thefts