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Leadership is a very crucial management function that benefits in directing the organisational resources effectively for enhancing efficiency and attaining the determined organisational goal. Globalisation has opened the door of opportunity for business and businesses have focused on expanding their branches all over the globe. In this growing diversity, inclusive leadership is of great importance, which encourages diversity and leads an organisation to be successful (Kuknor and Bhattacharya, 2020). This particular report will highlight the various aspect of inclusive leadership. Firstly, the report will demonstrate its concept and discuss the pros and cons of inclusive leadership. The following section will emphasise amazon, analyse their inclusive practices from various sites, and identify gaps inside the inclusive practices of the organisation and based on that a recommendation will be offered.
Fig 1: Official Logo of Amazon
(Source: Garrett et al., 2019)
Task a: analysis of the Definition of Inclusive Leadership
a.1 Analysis of the Definition of Inclusive Leadership
Table 1: Definition of Inclusive Leadership
References
Definition
Key aspects of an inclusive leader
Ferdman, B.M., Prime, J. and Riggio, R.E. eds., 2020. Inclusive leadership: Transforming diverse lives, workplaces, and societies. Routledge.
The capacity of managing and leading a heterogeneous group of people effectively along with respecting the individuality of everyone's uniqueness in an empathetic manner and bias-free manner is called inclusive leadership.
Inclusive leaders are the loyal ambassadors of inclusion and diversity and always spread the significance of diversity inside the workplace. These leaders accept that they are vulnerable and display this. These leaders are well aware of their biases and habitual pattern challenges. Inclusive leaders have excellent communication skills and they are also great listeners. Furthermore, these leaders comprehend and adopt different cultural norms and they are good team players who are enthusiastic to do what is best for the team's performance.
Hollander, E., 2012. Inclusive leadership: The essential leader-follower relationship. Routledge.
According to Ferdman, Prime and Riggio (2020), inclusive leadership is the type of leadership that recognise the value of team members, welcomes different perspectives, and builds a working culture where everyone feels open about their opinions and dedicates their effort to contribute toward the improvement of organisational well-being.
Aspects of inclusive leaders help in creating an egalitarian workplace. Inclusive leaders are cognizant of bias as they rely on and involve in the other’s opinions who are coming from different backgrounds. These leaders have strong cultural intelligence, which helps them to move from one cultural setting to another setting, which helps in communicating effectively with the market. Inside an inclusive environment leaders encourage the employee to participate and take initiatives which enhance team collaboration and inclusive leaders become role models. Moreover, inclusive leaders possess the capacity to change with the new wave of new ideas and it also facilitates increasing employee integrity.
Moss, G., 2019. Inclusive leadership. Routledge.
Inclusive leadership avoid any type of bias, discrimination and favour depending on colour, race or other characteristics, which allows employees and customers to feel valued, encourages effectiveness of decision-making, team collaboration motivation, and encourages diverse ideas.
Inclusive leader is well aware of their own preferences and biases. They encourage equality and emphasise listening actively. They are curious and remain empathetic and compassionate.
The three definitions have given a broad overview of the concept of inclusive leadership. In each definition, it is common that the leaders to value each individual's uniqueness in an empathetic manner and encourage individuals to participate in the decision-making process which makes a welcoming organisational culture. In terms of leadership characteristics, it has been found common among the opinion of these scholars that these leaders are aware of their biases and preferences and they have good communication and listening skill. They are adaptive and good team players. Moss (2019) stated that inclusive leaders are curious. Ferdman, Prime and Riggio, 2020; Hollander (2012) both have admitted that inclusive leaders are adaptive. Therefore, all these definitions state all the same qualities of an inclusive leader.
a.2 Understanding Pros and Cons of Inclusive Leadership
Table 2: Pros and Cons of Inclusive Leadership
Pros of Inclusive Leadership
Cons of Inclusive Leadership
Inclusive leaders can encourage the employees to bring out innovative solutions by using their knowledge and team members’ expertise (Qi et al.,2019).
This leadership style also creates an ambiguity of roles, as there is less clarity in the responsibility of the employees and the management (Bourke, Titus and Espedido, 2020).
Inclusive leadership encourage diversity and ensures each employee takes participation and shares their views (Marques, 2020).
Often, inclusive leadership create conflict where the team cannot come to a decision (Minehart et al., 2020).
This leadership style makes the employees feel valued, enhances the internal relationship and encourages communication (Javed et al., 2019).
Among the leaders and employees, inclusive leadership can cause potential power struggles (Javed, Khan and Quratulain, 2018).
In this modern area of the workplace, inclusive leadership encourage diversity. As mentioned above this leadership style has pros and consequences. This leadership style can be utilised inside the organisation to motivate employees to perform better (Wyman, Oliver, 2021). Leaders will be able to encourage communication and employee participation will be encouraged. If properly utilised these drawbacks can be easily overcome and can create a beautiful workplace environment where employees will strive to make the firm successful (Javed et al., 2019). In all organisational settings, this headship style can be utilised to encourage collaboration and will create great value inside the workplace and employees will feel valued. Therefore, this leadership style will encourage cultural diversity and sensitivity among the employees.
Task b: Case Study Analysis
Amazon is an internet-based organisation which is among the most valuable brand in the world. The organisation has been founded by Jeff Bezos in the year 1994 and is headquartered in Seattle Washington and Arlington, Virginia, the U.S. currently 1,298,000 employees run the organisational operation (Garrett et al., 2019). This section will analyse their website and social media platform to analyse their inclusive practices.
b.1 Examination of the Organisational Website
Table 3: Website analysis of the Inclusive leadership and culture inside Amazon
Quality 1 Evidence
Quality 2 Evidence
Quality 3 Evidence
Amazon ensures a culture of inclusion and emphasises the aspect of valuing employees. Amazecon is the largest conference at Amazon, which highlight the advantage of gender diversity (Amazon, 2021.).
Amazon focuses on attracting and retaining diverse leaders who will be able to attract diverse teams. In the year, 2020, Amazon launched an inclusion training to abolish any kind of language, which are racial, and insensitive.
In order to encourage inclusiveness, Amazon guide and monitor the leader and employees to build an effective inclusive team. Employees get training, mentorship, and educational programming.
Being a diverse workforce, Amazon is committed to valuing and respecting individuals coming from different backgrounds, ethnicity, race and gender.
The firm has focused on the strategic partnership which will emphasise the recruitment and retention of Native American employees, Latinx and black people.
In order to respect employees' choices, Amazon gives the employees opportunity to select their preferred mentor and every month over 500 mentors are connected all over Amazon (Amazon, 2021).
Amazon employees are educated by external scholars and activists writers from different backgrounds regarding how to build a supportive and inclusive team.
As the diversity goal, in the year 2021, Amazon has determined companywide goals where the vice president will analyse statistically significant differences on the first-quarter basis, a monthly basis. If any low performance is found an action plan will be implemented (Amazon, 2021).
For the purpose of developing leaders, the firm has invested $700 million to upskill and curb their curiosity to learn such are, such as specialised training to build black leaders at the director level, executive leadership development program etc.
Source: How Amazon builds diversity, equity, and inclusion into its culture (aboutamazon.com), Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (aboutamazon.com),
Analyzing the entire Amazon website demonstrates that the organisation is solely promoting a diverse workforce and encouraging inclusivity through various actions. Through the help of educational programs, their goal to recruit and train the communities that are relatively behind others will encourage a balanced diversity ratio in the management. Furthermore, this firm has acquired the title of the best place to work on the "Human Right Campaign's Corporate Equality Index”. In 2021. Amazon has received the "American Foundation for the Blind Helen Keller Achievement Award” for equality inclusion and empowerment.
Overall, considering the definition of task a, an inclusive leader must encourage each individual to participate, offer the same level of benefits and bring a place where employees feel respected. Amazon through their initiative is already making an effort to make their firm truly inclusive through the decision of recruitment, empowering black, and Native Americans to get the same place as others. Educating people to make a supportive environment shows Amazon offers a good inclusive environment.
Fig 2: Website Picture of Amazon Encouraging Inclusivity
(Source: Amazon, 2021)
b.2 Examination of Social Media Platform
Table 4: Employee reviews of Amazon
Positive Comments
Negative Comments
According to the comment found in Indeed, one employee has stated that the organisational culture is very nice where employees are made feel important inside the firm. The senior management is very cool and friendly in nature. Employees enjoy the perk (Indeed, 2022).
Another employee has also commented that the work culture and the management of the organisation are good. The work culture is excellent and the work environment is basically free from any politics due to its micro-management system. Most of the employees have supported that the organisational culture is good.
According to the Indeed featured reviews, a customer service associate of Amazon has stated that the workload is high on Amazon. A former employee has also commented that the organisation is customer-centric and not employee-centric and the managers push employees' bias toward action (Indeed, 2022). Amazon also has an isolated culture, as the management does not interact with the employee directly.
Amazon culture gives people time to grow and spend time with their families. Employees get learning opportunities and the management is helpful and good.
According to a senior associate, the work-life balance is massively hampered due to the unachievable target of Amazon and employees are given huge pressure. The employees also felt a lack of growth opportunities inside the firm.
Amazon offers exciting perks to their employees.
A comment suggests that the management of Amazon expects high ratings from the employee, which is impossible to attain (Indeed, 2022).
Source: Working at Amazon.com: Culture | Indeed.com
From the comments, it has been evident that the organisation's culture is overall good as most of the comments suggest that the management is helpful and encourages employees to develop and participate. The management I also friendly and cool, which makes the employees, feel easy to seek help. Again, the negative comments state that Amazon gives lots of work pressure on the employees and the management expect unexpected outcome and rating from the employee which shows a different side of the book.
Overall, most of the employees have termed the organisational culture as sound and the employees have also supported that the pay is good inside the firm and the management is supportive and friendly towards the employees. This culture shows that Amazon practices inclusivity where employees are welcomed by the management for any query and given enough support regardless of their background. Therefore, pushing employees to attain excellency is not a culture of inclusivity where the management should encourage people and the work culture needs to be open and should recognise employee contribution individually.
b.3 Suggestions for mitigating the gap in Inclusivity
Table 5: Best Practices from Google
Gaps
Best Organisational Practice
Lack of motivation
· Google offer Zen centric meditation
· Offers workplace-venting sessions to do fun activities together (Beltrán and Gulc, 2021).
· Offers one to one attention(Murtikusuma et al., 2019).
· Offers free food to the employees.
Amazon can apply these techniques to motivate its employees. As an employee in Amazon has to work for long hours offering a workplace venting session can help the employee to recharge and will increase engagement. Offering one to one attention will benefit in increasing employee recognition and free food is an effective way to motivate employees to work.
b.4 Recommendations for Mitigating the Gap in Inclusivity
Table 6: Best Practices from Microsoft
Gaps
Best Organisational Practice
Work pressure
· In order to reduce work pressure, Microsoft promotes good stress or right stress (Rodeghero et al., 2021).
· For recognising employee contributions, Microsoft publishes their contribution on online platforms (Blomberg, 2021).
· Offers employees a variety of responsibilities to maintain their engagement.
These outlined techniques followed by Microsoft will be one of the most effective ways for Amazon to reduce employee stress. Promoting good stress and right stress inside Amazon can reduce bad stress among the employees. Along with this, offering employees different responsibilities will benefit in engaging minds in different tasks. Lastly, offering feedback on an online platform will let employees feel, that amazon takes good care of them and their interests.
2. Conclusion
After analysing the entire report, it can be stated that inclusive leadership culture is very vital in this world of diver work cultures. Amazon indeed has a good working culture and pro motivate inclusivity but there are contain gaps, which are creating weakness in the strong working environment. Taking the above-stated measures will benefit Amazon to enhance its work culture and improve its inclusive leadership environment.
References
Amazon, 2021. Diversity and Inclusion. [online] About Amazon. Available at: https://www.aboutamazon.com/workplace/diversity-inclusion. [Accessed 22 May 2022].
Beltrán, H.C. and Gulc, A., 2021. Business culture of corporate giant–a case study of Google company.
Blomberg, M., 2021. Biggest Skills Needs & Gaps: Case Study of Sandvik Coromant & Microsoft.
Bourke, J., Titus, A. and Espedido, A., 2020. The key to inclusive leadership. Harvard Business Review, pp.2-5.
Ferdman, B.M., Prime, J. and Riggio, R.E. eds., 2020. Inclusive leadership: Transforming diverse lives, workplaces, and societies. Routledge.
Garrett, R.D., Cammelli, F., Ferreira, J., Levy, S.A., Valentim, J. and Vieira, I., 2021. Forests and Sustainable Development in the Brazilian Amazon: History, Trends, and Future Prospects. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 46, pp.625-652.
Hollander, E., 2012. Inclusive leadership: The essential leader-follower relationship. Routledge.
Indeed, 2022. 17,601 Amazon Jobs and Vacancies - 22 May 2022 | Indeed.com. [online] Available at: https://in.indeed.com/Amazon-jobs?vjk=ac0804780cdddc61 [Accessed 22 May 2022].
Javed, B., Abdullah, I., Zaffar, M.A., ul Haque, A. and Rubab, U., 2019. Inclusive leadership and innovative work behavior: The role of psychological empowerment. Journal of Management & Organization, 25(4), pp.554-571.
Javed, B., Khan, A.K. and Quratulain, S., 2018. Inclusive leadership and innovative work behavior: examination of LMX perspective in small capitalized textile firms. The Journal of psychology, 152(8), pp.594-612.
Kuknor, S.C. and Bhattacharya, S., 2020. Inclusive leadership: new age leadership to foster organizational inclusion. European Journal of Training and Development.
Marques, J. ed., 2020. The Routledge Companion to Inclusive Leadership. Routledge.
Minehart, R.D., Foldy, E.G., Long, J.A. and Weller, J.M., 2020. Challenging gender stereotypes and advancing inclusive leadership in the operating theatre. British Journal of Anaesthesia, 124(3), pp.e148-e154.
Moss, G., 2019. Inclusive leadership. Routledge.
Murtikusuma, R.P., Fatahillah, A., Hussen, S., Prasetyo, R.R. and Alfarisi, M.A., 2019, February. Development of blended learning based on Google Classroom with osing culture theme in mathematics learning. In Journal of Physics: Conference Series (Vol. 1165, No. 1, p. 012017). IOP Publishing.
Qi, L., Liu, B., Wei, X. and Hu, Y., 2019. Impact of inclusive leadership on employee innovative behavior: Perceived organizational support as a mediator. PloS one, 14(2), p.e0212091.
Rodeghero, P., Zimmermann, T., Houck, B. and Ford, D., 2021, May. Please turn your cameras on: Remote onboarding of software developers during a pandemic. In 2021 IEEE/ACM 43rd International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Practice (ICSE-SEIP) (pp. 41-50). IEEE.
Wyman, Oliver, 2021. Inclusivity & Active Listening go hand-in hand – how leaders can get better at both https://www.oliverwyman.com/our-expertise/insights/2021/mar/inclusivity-and-active-listening-go-hand-in-hand.html [Accessed 22 May 2022].
