Integrating Culture and Diversity in Decision Making Essay

1. Provide a draft (1 paragraph) description of the organization you chose to research. Zappos was founded in 1999 during the dotcom boom by Nick Swinmurn (Twitchell, 2009) on a quest to vitiate a pair of sneakers at a local m entirely. It has grown in to a 1.2 billion dollar adjunct of Amazon.com and a leading on-line provider of everything from shoes to c exposeure handbags. They have make this with a simple motto Powered by Service. Providing all of their customers with allay (sometimes next day) shipping and returns, Zappos has invested in the power of word of sing to fuel their worry. 2. Examine the nicety of the selected organization.Retail doesnt be to be the only thing that Zappos has gotten right, however. Beyond growing from a small, upstart union to a 1 billion dollar behemoth, Zappos prides itself on the stopping point it has created and invests in for its employees. Unlike some companies that guard their employee credos and knowledgeable grow (Apple desce nds to mind), Zappos get aheads theirs for all would-be customer to see. Multiple links on their website lead to testimonials, blogs and YouTube videos providing a behind the scenes look at exactly what its like to accomplishment for this Once Upon a Time shoe bon ton. Current CEO Tony Hsieh verbalize in 2009 while celebrating the companys 10th anniversary that Our nary(prenominal) 1 priority is the company kitchen-gardening. Our firm belief is that if we get the agri husbandry right, then everything else, including the customer emolument, will fall into place, (Twitchell, 2009) and indeed that thought processes seems embed in the companys Core Values which are affix on its website under a link labeled Our Unique shade. 3. Explain how you determined that the selected organization showed the signs of the refining that you have identified. Zappos company culture seems to pride itself on creating a world-class experience not and for its customers, but for its employees as well.Both the external adaptation (day to day tasks) and internal integration (employees ability to live and work together) have been addressed in exactly the same way. Zappos seems to suggest that the way they treat their external customers as a company and the way their internal customers treat each early(a)(a) are not varied. In each of the videos posted on their company blog, employees regard their Core Values as both the way they happen their interactions with customers and with each other. Though subcultures do seem to exist (based simply on the variety of employee groups with blogs on their website), Zappos has taken great strides through rituals like their Wishez architectural plan to keep those unique subcultures from becoming countercultures that work against the common goals of the company. Indeed, relationships within these subcultures seem particularly strong. In one video describing the Wishez program and the way it bonds other departments together, employees s eem to indicate that without it they mightiness have never interacted in the frontmost place.This seems to lend itself to Barker and Tompkins theory that employees maintain a tendency to identify much strongly with their individual work teams than with the company as a whole. (Schrodt, 2002) In one video, an employee identifies that she has hired a marching band to come and play Happy Birthday for another employees 40th birthday because he had teased when she turned 40. They work in the same department. By beat such strong relationships between employees, members of Zappos are encouraged to pursue same relationships with their customers. One web page boasts that the longest recorded customer inspection and repair call to Zappos (lines which are open 24/7) was eight hours long. Additionally, during Holiday months, customers might even encounter CEO Tony Hsieh on the customer service lines. 4. go steady the factors that caused the organization to embody this particular cultur e.This dedication towards customer service that the Zappos culture seems to be based around is what has allowed Zappos to survive where other dotcoms had failed. In his book The Greatest Business Decisions of All Time, Verne Harnish lists Zappos decisions to offer free shipping and returns as particularly profound. He says (among the other decisions that he lists) that they stood out from others because they were counterintuitive they went against the grain of popular practice. (Gringarten, 2012) Without this richly customer concentrate culture, Zappos as a brand might never have existed. Indeed, it continues to promote its customer focus and nothing else. While we might think of Zappos as a shoe company, Zappos seems to think of Zappos as a customer service company that happens to sell shoes. 5. Determine what typeface of leader would be surpass worthy for this organization. Support your position.This kind of energy takes a particular type of leader to induce. Each video on their company website that mentions CEO Tony Hsieh mentions his find with some sort of revere suggesting that this type of culture is best suited for a charismatic leader. According to Schermerhorn, charismatic leaders by world power of their personal abilities, are capable of having a profound and extraordinary put in on followers. (Schermerhorn, 2000) Hsieh gives seminars in which he instructs other companies on how they butt joint adopt the Zappos culture to their own businesses.He believes very strongly in the culture that Zappos has created. 6. Imagine that there is a decline in the invite of product(s) or services supplied by the selected organization. Determine what the change in culture would need to be in response to this situation. The intense success that Zappos has enjoyed in such a short amount of time and the growth of their business from simply shoes to only about anything else seems to suggest that even if tomorrow people needed one less pair of shoes, the co rporate culture of Zappos as a company would not need to be adjusted. By focusing on internal culture (employees) and external culture (customer) first, Zappos has answered the interrogate of how to sell rather than what to sell. Their purpose implies that people dont just need shoes what they want is a different way to buy them.BibliographyGringarten, H. (2012). The Greatest Business Decisions of all Time. Journal of Multidisciplinary Research , 95.Schermerhorn, J. R. (2000). Organizational fashion . New York Wiley.Schrodt, P. (2002). The relationship between organizational identification and organizational culture employee perceptions of culture and identification in a retail sales organization. communication Studies , 189.Twitchell, J. (2009, June 16). From Upstart To $1 Billion Behemoth, Zappos Marks 10 Years. Retrieved from LasVegas Sun