Effective Human Resource Management (HRM) is pivotal in driving organizational success in today’s rapidly evolving business landscape. This means that a company’s HRM aims to increase its adaptation to disruptions such as natural disasters and disruptions. Yu et al. (2022) pointed out that effective human resource management dramatically impacts an organization’s resilience, competitiveness, and performance in a specific market. Furthermore, strategic human resource management ensures that all human resource choices align with the organization’s fundamental objectives and aspirations. Through this, an organization can compete fairly in a specific market, thus attaining long and short-term benefits with the assistance of qualified human resources (AIHR, Academy to Innovate HR, 2023). Several theories have been argued through this approach to help organizations tailor the needed HRM practices to meet their desired goals. With this aspect, the contingency theory provides that internal and external factors influence the type of HRM practices within an organization. This implies that contingency management theory stresses the interplay between a leader’s characteristics and effectiveness to suggest HRM activities in different situations. This means contingency decisions within human resource management depend on vertical and horizontal alignment. Further, vertical alignment means that the HRM practices in a business organization are matched with the organization’s strategy or environmental factors that affect a business. On the other hand, horizontal alignment tends to focus on the set goals and employees’ abilities amid the engaged HRM practices. This report undertakes a case study analysis of Amazon.com, Inc., one of the world’s largest technology companies, to explore the factors shaping HRM practices and evaluate its strategic orientation in managing human resources. This paper assesses the embedded Amazon’s HRM practices through understanding its organizational strategies and cultural values.
Organizational Strategy
The HRM beliefs and practices embody a need to align the goals and objectives of a defined organization with the overall set activities. This aspect means that an organization has to break down each goal into possible and viable implementable actions through various departmental levels (Setyawan, 2021). As such, the organization’s strategies entail aligning its HRM practices with the vertical way. It ensures that it has aligned and matched each of its activities and approaches with the overall actions of the team. Similarly, it encompasses that an organization can match and align its practices and strategies with the eventual practices shaping the working capabilities of the HR. This means that the human resource person can identify and implement the small events and activities per stage into the possible and efficient activities per level (Schein, 2019). As such, it calls for the attention and abilities of an organization to involve and drive each of the short and long term activities with the overall objectives and goals of an organization. K and Thakur (2019) indicated that several approaches and activities enable an organization to spot and engage the relevant activities and approaches to spotting the necessary and possible strategies for achieving the desired goals.
With this, Varma (2017) asserted that an organization needs to attract, engage, retain, and foster the necessary skills to improve a defined employee’s overall outlook and image. This means that the overall objective places the organization in a suitable place to instill the appropriate abilities and skills to its employees. With this, it is possible to identify and retain the best talents to achieve the set objectives and overall goals. For example, suppose the overall goal is for an organization to achieve cost leadership, then in that case, the HRM approaches should focus on developing efficient staffing to enhance effective training methods and strategies (Structural Contingency Theory in Human Resources, 2016). As such, the organization can set and build high performance within its various departmental-based divisions. As such, the ability to create and establish accountable leaders is effective in creating and fostering desired organizational goals through strategic approaches. Additionally, the affected HRM practices enable an organization to enhance the continuous engagement of employees with the daily practices of an organization that limits leadership and management costs towards the overall set goals and targets.
According to Harney (2023) on the contingency level, the HRM practices must be aligned with the desired levels of organization strategies and approaches. Considering these elements and techniques at an organizational level, the Amazon Company is a leading team that specializes in aligning HRM practices with the overall business goals. With this, amazon’s strategies lie around ensuring that it has achieved the best customer-based practices. Next, Amazon.com ensures that amid its rich and diverse services, transparent methodologies are geared to engaging and incorporating innovation, long-term thinking, operational excellence, and obsession within the HR team. This practice ensures that HR is viable for making long-term and serving leadership skills across the various departments (Vieira, 2020). As a result, the contingency theory comes into application when pursuing multiple goals via applying the forecasted HRM practices.
Similarly, through vertical alignment of its beliefs and practices, the company capitalizes on familiarizing the HR team with the stepwise objectives to meet amid reaching the desired goals and expectations. Next, its organizational strategy influences and determines the inclusivity of the incorporated HRM practices within its hiring and recruitment processes. Additionally, as advanced and affirmed by Aycan et al. (2019), the best HRM practices involve aligning and matching the HR activities and practices with the embedded strategic plans; Amazon.com emphasizes recruitment and retention of the best talents and abilities that foster its desired customer centered services and innovative practices. The HRM practices found at Amazon.com, such as cost leadership through creating and emphasizing best leadership and management practices, help ensure that the employees receive and acquire the best guide (Vieira, 2020). The HR team can develop and retain the appropriate level of employees and invest more towards their professional development to create decisions at personal levels that enhance proper and overall organizational management approaches and practices that align with the total organizational goals and expectations.
Organizational Culture
K and Thakur (2019) stated that amid the increasing organization competition and changes in working relations among institutions, organizational culture has become essential in shaping a defined enterprise’s overall image and outlook. This concept means that culture represents the behaviors and interactions of the employees (Rose, & Kumar. 2020). This factor shapes and determines the overall activities and aspects in modeling the expected and desired goals and objectives. Organizational behaviors and practices are shaped and determined by the level of hybridization of individual-based values and that of the overall organization (Childs, M. et al. 2022). The organizational culture entails that an organization has a given way of interacting with all of the embedded stakeholders such that there is a conducive interplay between the various elements of interactions. At the HRM practices level, the organizational culture shapes and determines the behaviors and attitudes of the overall employees amid the initial image created during the engagement process. As such, Aycan et al. (2019) indicated that organizational ecology studies define organizational culture and overall HRM practices as essential factors that tend to determine the interplay between employees, customers, and overall stakeholders. This aspect interprets that the organizational culture is a vital tool for shaping the needed practices both at the external and internal level. This aspect indicates that the organizational culture informs the face of employees in the presence of other company stakeholders such as direct financiers and customers (“How Organizational Culture and HRM Practices Affect Organizational Performance in Greece and Scandinavia,” 2023). This approach informs that the horizontal alignment of institutions relies on the embedded cultural values and attitudes within an organization. As such, coupling this information with the contingency theory, sociocultural values tend to shape and affect the external and internal work behaviors that, in turn, influence the HRM practices at the organizational levels.
Basing the organizational culture exhibited at Amazon.com, it has been known for its customer-centricity, innovation, and value-added intensity. Vieira (2020) highlighted that Amazon ensures that it has incorporated the older values, practices, and attitudes towards innovation, creativity, and best customer relations into the new generation of workers. This aspect ensures that the company can maintain a fresh pull of the desired staff, thus reinforcing its strategic plans through a forecasted HRM team (Khoobchandani, 2019). This indicates that the HRM practices help ensure they align with its horizontal and vertical measures while embodying responsible individuals (Swanepoel et al., 2018). As such, Amazon capitalizes on aligning its best HRM practices with the desired values and making sure that the company’s staff are aware of its practices and culture through continuous reinforcement and rigorous onboarding processes of the necessary management practices. In essence, Paauwe (2019) asserted that the new generation tends to bring in new insights best for the HRM practices in meeting the instilled level of motivation, innovation, and employee engagement, thus helping build change and instantaneous growth and development activities. As such, the Amazon’s HRM practices defines what is done at the various levels of coordination through effective employees’ management. Mba (2023) added that since employee satisfaction and motivation connect and relate directly with organizational performance, Amazon’s leadership team capitalizes on aligning both vertical and horizontal-based alignments with organizational-based values and practices through practical and realistic HRM practices. As a result, Amazon’s culture, known as an entrepreneurial culture, enhances it to create and achieve various levels of coordination through HRM practices (Amazon Organizational Culture: Harsh, but Effectively contributing to the Bottom Line, 2022). The HR team ensures that each employee has a clear and conducive understanding of the embedded values necessary to realize creative thinking amid the various entrepreneurial practices and beliefs.
Concerning the changing market needs and values, the company’s HRM practices align with the embedded cultural values crea, creating room for enhancing the undying redefinition of the various ambitious positions within and across the customer-rich faces (Vieira, 2020). As such, the HRM practices enable Amazon.com to assemble and connect with the necessary personnel to sustain the intended defense and compete favorably with other organizations as a function of entrepreneurial cultural practices and beliefs. With this, the company creates and enhances effective and efficient HRM practices through vertical alignment of its strategic goals with the perceived competition levels (The Amazon Firm’s Human Resource Management Essay Example [Free], 2023). As such, HR perceives the need to embed the necessary innovation and differentiation practices and approaches. On the same note, the company values innovation and creativity across its various sectorial bodies thus creating the need to meet the horizontal goals embedded through collaboration and innovation (Ritala et al., 2019). As such, HRM entails recruiting and engaging employees with the best behaviors that enable them to meet and reach their potential goals and ambitions. Additionally, the contingency theory supports that the effectiveness of HRM practices determines the level and area of application within its divisions. This aspect entails that both the internal and external elements of change are affected in creating and implementing the desired level of innovation, collaboration, and development while providing the intended HRM practices. This approach is potentiated to meeting and availing the expected image at the internal and external levels.
Conclusion
In conclusion, through the lenses of HRM practices, an organization’s internal and external factors tend to shape and define its initiative toward achieving the desired goals and objectives. With this, the HRM practices of an organization ought to align with both strategically and culturally based values and practices. The practical application of this HRM practice relates and connects with the Amazon.com Company that emphasizes aligning both vertical and horizontal-based activities with its strategic approaches and activities. As such, through the contingency theory, Amazon can capitalize on aligning its HRM practices with the internal and external factors embedded at the cultural and strategic levels. All the same, an organization must attempt to create a balance on the types of talents and abilities it intends the employees to engage amid the changing demographic and market needs. This aspect is essential in fostering creativity and innovation in the face of new technological developments.
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