Zappos.com is an online retail company dealing in clothing and shoes. Zappos is based in Las Vegas, Nevada, the United States of America. Zappos has proven that a company focused on happiness can be successful, just equally as much as those companies actively motivated by profits. The revenue of Zappos grew from $ 1.6 million in the year 2000 to $ 1.64 billion ten years after (Zappos, 2019). The chief executive officer of Zappos, Tony Hsieh, reiterates that Zappos is a brand about happiness to the employees, customers, and vendors. Happiness on the employees' side means that the company is focused on the fulltime increase in job satisfaction among the workers, which translates to their willingness to maintain ethicality. The corporate culture of Zappos and the focus on satisfaction has reflected on the other companies' ability to focus on building a corporate culture that highlights ethical behavior. Additionally, Zappos has fostered a culture of ethicalness by having defined core values and a business model. With the leaders increasingly advocating for the core values of the company, Zappos has been able to influence the relationships among the employees, customers, and other stakeholders not to mention the environment and the community around the company.
In spite of the sector in which they operate, the other companies can mimic the culture of Zappos by integrating various actions. Firstly, the companies can evaluate their core values and make necessary changes to introduce advanced ethicalness. The core values of an organization provide the moral direction that the workers can follow to achieve sustainability both in the financial and social sectors. The core values of a firm are also an essential aspect of the corporate culture of a given firm. By introducing elements such as honesty and integrity, the companies will be on a positive trajectory, which will improve ethical behavior. Secondly, the companies need to come up with business models that are targeted at increasing positivity in the relationship among the customers, employees, and other stakeholders. Employees play an essential role in connecting the company to both the customers and stakeholders. Therefore, the workers benefit from the new business model in terms of having an opportunity to develop a new corporate culture. The two actions mentioned above are some of the practices that Zappos makes use of to regulate the relationship between the employees and the customers, and the other stakeholders, which grows and develops a desirable corporate culture characterized by ethicalness.
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Zappos leadership and ethical practices philosophy is one of the most influential among American based companies. Both have had notable implications on the company's stakeholders. Firstly, the leadership and ethical practices of Zappos have led to the satisfaction of the customers (Ferrell & Fraedrich, 2015). It is a common American belief that the customer is always right and therefore, satisfaction on the clients' side is considered a win for a particular firm. The satisfaction of customers potentially streamlines the relationship between the employees and the consumers, which leads to an increase in revenues for Zappos as the customer base rapidly expands (Ferrell & Fraedrich, 2015). The leadership and ethical practices of Zappos have seen its revenue grow exponentially over the decade. Starting as clothing and shoes intermediary in San Francisco, the company has had a tremendous ability to grow financially owing to the able leadership and the practice of ethical behaviors among the workers. The leadership and ethicalness at Zappos have enabled the company to be sustainable in its supply chain with the complete control of its order fulfillment up to delivery and thus offering the employees more opportunities to interact with the target customers and radiate their excellent customer service to the clients owing to the ethical practices in the organization.
Practicing ethical practices at Zappos has not been a walk in the park for the leaders as well as the employees. The first drawback that Zappos faces in its quest to promote ethicalness is the layoffs that took place in 2008. During the year, Zappos had to lay off 8% of its workers and explained the reasons surrounding the decision across its social media sites (Zappos, 2019). Most of the companies faced economic hardships during the economic recession and had to reduce their employee bases to avoid closing down their operations. The major ethical pitfall associated with the layoffs revolved around handling the sensitive issue that was seen as an ethical breach on the side of Zappos by its stakeholders. The other ethical challenge that Zappos has faced in its history is the merger with Amazon. As Zappos merged with Amazon, most of the stakeholders and employees of Zappos did not think highly of the move as the corporate culture of Amazon had a significant difference from that of Zappos (Zappos, 2019). The other ethical setback that Zappos faced is the loss of sensitive information. Zappos had its database hacked and lost a substantial customer and financial details, which led to the outrage of the clientele (Zappos, 2019). The company added insult to injury when it had the call center disconnected as the customers reached out to know more about the hack.
For the ethical challenge of the layoffs, the leadership at Zappos would have communicated adequately to its customers, employees, and other stakeholders on the laying off many employees stating valid reasons to justify the action. Moreover, Zappos should have given the criteria applied to determine the employees to be laid off and thus averting the sensitivity of the actions it took. For the pitfall regarding the merger between Amazon and Zappos, the leadership at Zappos ought to have scheduled for the cultural integration seminars between the workers of the two companies, which would have eased the adoption of both cultures after the merger. The leaders of both companies would have worked together to facilitate the process of cultural integration to ensure that the merger is sustainable. For the issue of the hack that exposed both financial and customer information at Zappos, the leadership would have handled the delicate situation better by having a reliable communication procedure with the customers. The effective communication would have handled the questions that the customers were continually asking regarding the hack and would have helped Zappos maintain its customer trust and prevail through the adverse situation.
Zappos may be described as a values-based organization (VBO) since its culture is based on the various shared core values among its employees. The core values of Zappos have sought to influence the relationship among the employees, customers, and other stakeholders. One of the core values of the online retailer is to deliver WOW through service. The delivery of WOW through service mainly targets the ability of the workers to promote customer satisfaction as they interact with the clients during the order fulfillment and the deliveries. The other core value is to embrace and drive change. Change in the organization has introduced Zappos to new growth opportunities both in the financial and cultural aspects. The core value regarding the creation of fun and a little weirdness sharpens the ethical perspectives of the workers, which leads to the customer and employee satisfaction simultaneously. The building of honest and open relationships with communication as part of Zappos core values has directly targeted the workers and imparted a sense of ethicalness in their work. The honesty and openness in relationships and communication among the staff members of Zappos highlight the importance of the core values in managing and developing ethicalness in the case of the organization.
The stakeholders' perspective in the case of Zappos mostly manifests in need for change, open communication, sustainable culture, and customer satisfaction. The core values of the company thus support the perspective of the stakeholders on various levels. Regarding the need for change in Zappos among the stakeholders, the embrace and drive for change as part of the company's core values support the perspectives and views of the various stakeholders. On the desire to have open communication as part of the views that stakeholders have for the company, Zappos has integrated the need to have honest and open communication to model relationships among the employees and other stakeholders by introducing it as a core value that ensures the workers stick to it. The sustainability of the culture at Zappos has been fueled by the core values such as those about being adventurous, and creative as well as the pursuit of growth and learning among the staff. The stakeholders' views of customer satisfaction at Zappos are supported by the company's core values urging the employees to create fun and some level of weirdness as well as delivering WOW through their service.
For the ethical challenges that Zappos faced in its past, it was necessary for the company to involve technological solutions such as in the case of the data breach. The company should be prepared to handle the cyber-attacks by having a team come up with and implement antiviruses, which are meant to counteract the actions of the cyber attackers and thus preventing the loss of both financial and customer information (Olesen, 2016). Furthermore, Zappos requires a more elaborate social media presence to connect its employees to their customers and other stakeholders to pass round information regarding ethical breaches or layoffs. For the online presence, Zappos should be active on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram as some of the most popular sites that the other companies in and out of the US interact with their clients.
References
Ferrell, O. C., & Fraedrich, J. (2015). Business Ethics: Ethical Decision Making & Cases .
Nelson Education.
Olesen, N. (2016). European public-private partnerships on cybersecurity-an instrument to
support the fight against cybercrime and cyberterrorism. In Combatting Cybercrime and Cyberterrorism (pp. 259-278). Springer, Cham.
Zappos. (2019). Shoes, Sneakers, Boots, & Clothing + FREE SHIPPING. Retrieved from https://www.zappos.com/
