Introduction
Jeff Bezos established Amazon in 1994. It is one of the biggest e-commerce platforms and a pioneer in cloud computing, digital streaming, and AI (Luo, 2020). Amazon’s large client base, enormous logistical network, and technical competence influence worldwide commerce. Managing organizational transformation requires sense-making. It is how people and organizations understand, interpret, and create meaning. Sense-making helps stakeholders understand organizational change, evaluate its effects, and agree on the new course. Amazon now prioritizes sustainability in its business model. Consumer demand for eco-friendly practices, climate change concerns, and the realization that sustainable operations may lead to long-term company success is driving this transition (Amazon, 2021). Amazon has adopted renewable energy, carbon neutrality, and ecological packaging to lessen its environmental impact. The strategic adjustment has also highlighted public problems. Amazon’s carbon emissions, trash, and logistical infrastructure are problems. Amazon is expected to solve these issues and reduce its environmental impact. Understanding and resolving these public problems takes sense-making. Amazon may receive stakeholder input, analyze its sustainability programs, and discover areas for improvement using sense-making. The strategy helps Amazon meet stakeholder expectations, establish trust, and improve its corporate citizenship.
The Shift to Sustainability: Amazon’s Current Business Strategy
Amazon’s new business strategy emphasizes sustainability. Customer demands, environmental concerns, and market developments have prompted the corporation to include environmental considerations in its operations. Customers’ desire for eco-friendly goods and practices drove Amazon’s sustainability transformation (Yu et al., 2022). Today’s environmentally concerned consumers seek sustainable enterprises. Amazon hopes to increase customer loyalty and recruit environmentally concerned customers by integrating its business strategy with customer values.
Amazon’s strategy shift was also influenced by climate change and resource depletion. Amazon understands its environmental duty as a multinational firm with a large carbon impact. Amazon embraces sustainability to lessen its environmental effect and help fight climate change. Amazon prioritizes sustainability due to market trends. Consumers like companies that promote sustainability. Amazon incorporates sustainability into its business strategy to be competitive and satisfy consumer expectations.
Amazon has implemented many operations-wide sustainability initiatives. Renewable energy adoption is crucial. Amazon funds wind and solar farms to power its data centers, warehouses, and other facilities. Renewable energy reduces the company’s fossil fuel use and carbon emissions. Amazon also pledged carbon neutrality. The corporation wants to attain net-zero carbon emissions by 2040, a decade ahead of the Paris Agreement (Blumanthal et al., 2020). Amazon is investing in electric delivery trucks, energy-efficient technology, and novel emission-reduction solutions to reach this aim.
Eco-friendly packaging is another endeavor. Amazon is reducing packaging waste and improving recycling. The corporation invests in sustainable packaging research, such as utilizing recycled materials and optimizing package sizes to reduce waste. Amazon prioritizes supply chain sustainability (Yu et al., 2022). Suppliers are encouraged to use sustainable production methods, decrease waste, and reduce environmental effects. Amazon collaborates with suppliers to improve the value chain and boost industry sustainability.
Public Issue: Environmental Impact and Climate Change
Amazon’s sustainability strategy’s environmental effect and climate change contributions are a public problem. Amazon’s logistics infrastructure’s carbon emissions, packaging waste, and deforestation have concerned stakeholders and the public. Amazon’s carbon emissions raise worries. Amazon’s data centers, fulfillment centers, and transportation networks span the globe. Energy and transportation emissions make these activities carbon-intensive. Amazon must lower carbon emissions and switch to sustainable energy to satisfy stakeholders (Blumanthal et al., 2020). Packaging waste is another issue. Amazon uses more packing materials as internet shopping grows exponentially. Overuse of cardboard boxes, plastic bubble wrap, and Styrofoam has raised concerns. Stakeholders want Amazon to reduce packaging, use recyclable or biodegradable materials, and encourage recycling.
Amazon’s logistical infrastructure deforests. Warehouses, distribution hubs, and transit routes may deforest environmentally sensitive regions. This involves biodiversity loss, habitat devastation, and forest carbon release. Stakeholders want Amazon to utilize land responsibly, conserve forests, and reforest to reduce deforestation. Environmental issues are urgent and worldwide (Blumanthal et al., 2020). Climate change threatens ecosystems, communities, and economies globally. Amazon, a global powerhouse, must take environmental responsibility.
Sustainable growth and the low-carbon economy need environmental solutions. Governments, corporations, and people must collaborate. Amazon, one of the world’s top firms, must lead business reform as a role model (Amazon, 2021). Environmental issues provide chances for innovation, cost reductions, and long-term resilience. Energy efficiency, supply chain optimization, and resource management can lower Amazon’s operating expenses. Environmental leadership may boost the company’s brand, attract eco-conscious consumers, and build stakeholder confidence. Amazon’s climate change and environmental consequences need an immediate response.
Implications of a Sense-making Approach to Organizational Change
Understanding organizational changes is crucial. It helps stakeholders comprehend change dynamics, analyze data, and collaborate. A sense-making method improves stakeholder perceptions, worries, and expectations, easing change management. Amazon’s environmental change and the public problem need sense-making. Amazon may learn about stakeholders’ environmental effects and sustainability expectations via sense-making (Fusch et al., 2020). Amazon may address concerns and match its approach with stakeholder interests, encouraging support and cooperation. Amazon uses sense-making to analyze consumer, employee, and environmental input (Fusch et al., 2020). This data may enhance its sustainability efforts, targeted solutions, and environmental performance. It helps Amazon adapt to changing trends, market needs, and regulations in a fast-changing environment.
Explaining the Elements of Sense-making in the Context of Amazon’s Change
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Sense-making and Identity Construction
Sense-making is understanding the world and finding meaning in confusing situations. Understanding organizational change’s causes, effects, and objectives is essential. Amazon acknowledges the importance of sense-making throughout its sustainable shift. Amazon may use sense-making to build its brand and solve the public issue of its environmental impact (Whittle et al., 2023). Amazon can establish a favorable sustainability brand by implementing sustainable activities. Identity and conduct build trust, reputation, and stakeholder relationships.
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Social Sense-making
Amazon must understand and include stakeholder groups in decision-making to achieve sustainability. Amazon can learn from customers, employees, environmentalists, and policymakers. Amazon now understands stakeholders’ sustainability concerns, expectations, and views. Amazon co-creates sustainable solutions with stakeholders to ensure compliance with their needs and values. The participative approach invites individuals to work together and feel ownership over fixing the public issue.
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Extracted Cues of Sense-making
Amazon must-read environmental indicators to understand its movements. Data research, industry trend tracking, and market intelligence help Amazon enhance its sustainability efforts. This requires understanding customer preferences, technology, legislation, and market demands. Amazon may change its sustainability policies, find areas for improvement, and guarantee that its actions continue to meet stakeholders’ shifting needs and the greater environmental situation by monitoring these indicators.
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Ongoing Sense-making
Organizational change requires repeated sense-making. Amazon needs feedback loops, regular reviews, and sustainable policies that evolve with information and stakeholder input. Amazon may learn from stakeholders and adjust its approach by evaluating sustainability initiatives (Blakçori & Psychogios, 2021). This constant sense-making allows Amazon to adapt to changing situations and ensure the success of its environmental efforts and stakeholder support.
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Retrospection
Reflection helps explain the past and its effects. Amazon may conduct retrospective studies to evaluate its sustainability activities, acknowledge successes, and suggest areas for improvement. Amazon uses its past and experiences to develop its operations, apply its lessons, and make its company more sustainable. Amazon can change its approach, address problems, and demonstrate its commitment to learning and growth via reflective sense-making.
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Plausibility
Given the transition to win over stakeholders, it would be best if you had a clear plot that makes sense. Amazon must emphasize the financial case for sustainability by emphasizing its benefits. This comprises prioritizing energy efficiency, environmental responsibility, and global sustainability goals to save costs, improve reputation, and ensure long-term resilience (Blakçori & Psychogios, 2021). Amazon’s sustainability plan will succeed if it can tell a compelling narrative that connects sustainability to corporate objectives and stakeholder interests.
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Enactment
Amazon’s sustainability strategy relies on sense-making. Implementing sustainability commitments involves initiatives, investments, partnerships, and internal policies. Amazon uses renewable energy, recycles, and manages its supply chain ethically. Amazon can demonstrate its commitment to solving the public issue and gain stakeholder confidence by taking specific steps and aligning its conduct with its environmental goals.
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Projective Sense-making
Storytelling and visioning help sense-making and organizational change. Amazon could provide an appealing picture of a sustainable future, emphasizing its role as an environmental steward. Amazon may motivate stakeholders to work toward sustainability by clearly communicating this ambition (Whittle et al., 2023). Projective sense-making fosters enthusiasm and engages stakeholders in Amazon’s sustainability journey.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Amazon’s sustainability push shows its understanding of sensemaking’s role in organizational transformation. Amazon can link its sustainability efforts with stakeholder expectations and build trust and cooperation by sense-making its environmental effect. Identity construction, social sense-making, continuing sense-making, and projective sense-making help Amazon understand stakeholder concerns, react to trends, and enhance its environmental performance. Amazon can pioneer sustainable business practices, attract eco-conscious customers, and improve corporate citizenship with a complete sense-making strategy.
References
Amazon. (2021). Further and Faster, Together Amazon Sustainability 2020 Report. https://sustainability.aboutamazon.com/amazon-sustainability-2020-report.pdf
Blakçori, F., & Psychogios, A. (2021). Sensing from the middle: middle managers’ sense-making of change process in public organizations. International Studies of Management & Organization, 51(4), 328–353. https://doi.org/10.1080/00208825.2021.1969136
Blumanthal, K., Breeden, M., Madison, A. J.-F., Project, P., & Wilcox, J. (2020). Analysis of Corporate Carbon Dioxide Footprints and Pledges. https://digital.wpi.edu/downloads/c821gn62m
Fusch, G., Ness, L., Booker, J., & Fusch, P. (2020). People and Process: Successful Change Management Initiatives. Journal of Social Change, 12(1), 166–184. https://doi.org/10.5590/JOSC.2020.12.1.13
Luo, N. (2020). Amazon.com, Inc Strategic Audit. Honors Theses, University of Nebraska-Lincoln. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/honorstheses/308/
Whittle, A., Vaara, E., & Maitlis, S. (2023). The Role of Language in Organizational Sense-making: An Integrative Theoretical Framework and an Agenda for Future Research. Journal of Management, 014920632211472. https://doi.org/10.1177/01492063221147295
Yu, W., Hassan, A., & Adhikariparajuli, M. (2022). How Did Amazon Achieve CSR and Some Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—Climate Change, Circular Economy, Water Resources and Employee Rights during COVID-19? Journal of Risk and Financial Management, 15(8), 364. mdpi. https://doi.org/10.3390/jrfm15080364
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