Diversity Analysis Of Amazon A Company By Jeff Bezos

The company chosen here is Amazon. Amazon, founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994 as an e-commerce platform for trading. Today Amazon is a Fortune 500 e-commerce business in Seattle, Wash. It is one of the largest internet-based enterprises that sell goods over the Internet (Schneider 2017). The diversity statement of Amazon is that ‘We are a company of builders who bring varying backgrounds, ideas, and points of view to decisions and inventing on behalf of our customers. Our diverse perspectives come from many sources including gender, race, age, national origin, sexual orientation, disability, culture, education, as well as professional and life experience. We are working to develop leaders and shape future talent pools to help us meet the needs
According to (Dickie & Soldan 2008), Equity approach is reactive in nature. In other words, it is externally driven by law, social and moral responsibilities, focus on equality, preference, gender, age, physical ability and more. On the other hand, Diversity approach is proactive in nature which means that it is internally determined, focusing on increasing productivity, efficiency and quality. Diversity approach emphasizes on building abilities and tapping into the value of employees, getting an even wider mix, which includes understanding different opinions as well as to develop the right systems and operations. Amazon is a company of creators with varied experiences, thoughts, and opinions of view in designing for their clients. Amazon diverse perceptions derive from its diverse employees in age, gender, nationality, race, philosophy as well as life and professional practices. Amazon is also trying to develop leaders with good management skills and shape their talent pools in order to aid the company in meeting its desires of their clients around the world (Diversity at Amazon n.d.). Amazon has faced several workplace diversity issues over the years which include gender inequality, race discrimination, LGBT issues as well as marital and parental
Gender discrimination occurs when an employer in a company treats his or her employees differently specifically due to an individual is either a woman or a man. Gender discrimination includes rejection of applicants, dismissal or biases to workers due to their gender. (Gender discrimination 2017). According to (Lomas 2014), Amazon’s overall workforce consists of 63 percent male whereas female comprises of 37 percent. This caused female employees felt that they were bumping into a ‘glass ceiling’ situation. Glass ceiling defines as the barriers faced by women who were being kept away from advancing into a higher position in an organization (The glass ceiling: Domestic and International perspectives 2004, p.2). At Amazon, 75 percent of Amazon managers were men and only a quarter was female. This phenomenon can be applied to occupational sex segregation. Occupational segregation means both men and women are employed in different work fields which are caused by gender bias based on the social differences between both genders (Occupational segregation n.d.) In order to resolve this problem, Amazon emphasized ‘making its workplace more inclusive. In the year 2015, Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos has recruited and selected Maria Renz as the first female executive as previously the position has always held by a man. Amazon has also been trying