Integrating Culture and Diversity in Decision Making free essay sample

The number one philosophy of building a great business is to fill a void. Nick Swinmurn founder did just that in 1999 when he started Zappos. com Inc (Zappos. com). Mr. Swinmurn wanted to start an online store that catered to selling a great selection of shoe after going to a mall and he could not find the shoes he was looking for (Eng 2012; Zappos. com). The website was dedicated to the selling of wide variety of brands, colors, sizes, and widths; if you are looking for a shoe chances are Zappos. com has them. There was finally a website customers could go and shop for the best shoes and have no trouble returning the shoes if it did not fit. The website started by Nick Swinmurn going into stores and actually taking pictures of shoes then selling them on the website (Eng, D. 2012). This was done by the company actually buying the inventory then selling it on the website. To make Zappos the online shoe giant, Swinmurn teamed up with investor Tony Hsieh who was later named CEO and helped grow the company (Eng, 2012; Kopelman at. el, 2012; Zappos. com). The company started making profits slowly after making a commitment to customer services; gaining loyal customers. In Early 2009 the company was sold to Amazon, closing a $1. 2 billion deal (Kopelman at. El, 2012). Not only did Swinmurn and Hsieh build a company but they also build a whole new culture. This paper will examine the culture of Zappos. com, the factors that demonstrated the culture, the type of leader that would be best suited for the company’s culture, and the culture change needed to if there was a decline in sells. Examine the Culture: The Zappos company brand is known as a culture that is fun, unique, and customer centered. The company has ten core values, which drives the culture of the company. The core values speak to the company’s culture. The values includes â€Å"embrace and drive change†, â€Å"create fun and a little weirdness†, ‘do more with less†, and â€Å"be humble† (Zappos. com). Number one for the company is to â€Å"deliver WOW through services† (Zappos. com). According to the company’s website delivering the WOW through services means delivering something innovated, unconventional, and something that is beyond what is expected (Zappos.com). Due to this core value many costumers would agree that Zappos. com is top when it comes to customer services. The company shows their dedication for service by the way they have set up the companies operations. The company has a â€Å"customer loyalty department† who job it is to ensure the customer receives the best service possible and are mixed with other departments like the resources desk, quality assurance and anti-fraud teams (Boone and Kurtz, 2012). Having this type of team makes a different in the service the customer of Zappos. com receives. According to Boone and Kurtz (2012), â€Å"Customers loyalty team members have the authority to send individual customers personal notes or request flowers for a wedding or anniversary celebration. They don’t need to ask permission to issue refunds or coupons or ask to give out their contact information† (Page 344). Many customers notice the difference when a customer service rep can issue a refund without having to get approval and will continue to go back to the site to make another purchase. This is a small policy but makes a big difference. Another way the company show their loyalty to customer service is they post the customer service number at the top of every page on the website and the line is 24/7 (Kopelman at. el, 2012). Customer can call when they have a problem and not wait until the next business day. Explain how the selected organization showed the signs of the culture: Customer service is not the only factor that drives the company’s culture the company is also employee driven. Employee satisfaction is also a key component to great customer service; it is hard to have one with out the other. The core values that has also shaped the company’s culture is â€Å"Create fun and a little weirdness† and â€Å"Be adventurous, creative, and open-mined† (Zappos. com). According to the website these values embodies the idea of embracing the uniqueness and diversity of the company’s employees while encouraging creativity, adventure, and innovation with a hint of weirdness (Zappos. com). Due to the fact employees do not have to check with management to in order to help the customers, employee’s are tasked with coming up with out the box ways to provide better customer service (Kopelman at., el 2012; and Zappos. com). According to the Kopelman article, â€Å"Zappos also encourages employees to respond spontaneously and warmly to customers†¦One Zappos employee, for example, sent flowers to the funeral of a customer’s husband, an action that was taken without first checking with a supervisor. This gesture purportedly earned the company 30 loyal customers† (Page 67). Determine the factors that caused the organization to embody this particular culture: Innovation has been another key component for Zappos. com Inc. The company itself was started by an innovated idea of having a large inventory shoe store online and it has continued to be innovated from offering free shipping to having an intelligent tracking system. Such innovation has been geared towards a productivity-driven practice. Normally inventory is stocked in a warehouse by stacking the shoes with the same brand by each other; however Zappos tracks each pair of shoe allowing for random stacking and saves lots of time (Kopelman at. , el, 2012). This means the shoes or products gets to the consumer faster. Determine what type of leader would be best suited for this organization: A company with a unique and fun culture like Zappos would need a just as fun and unique leader. The leader of this company would need to be a transformational leader, one who leads by developing relationship with the employees and motivate them to complete goals (Cavazotte, Moreno, and Bernardo 2013). Having this type of leader would be important due to the fact the employees are expected to make decision without approval or impute from management. The culture of Zappos.  com rewards out of the box thinking and support being the company who does things differently. According to Lowe and Galen Kroeck, â€Å"Transformational leaders seek new ways of working, seek opportunities in the face of risk, prefer effective answers to efficient answers, and are less likely to support the status quo. Transformational leaders do not merely react to environmental circumstancesthey attempt to shape and create them† (1996). The leader of Zappos, under the current culture has to be willing to be creative, think outside the box, and be willing to motive the employees. If there is a decline in demand determine what the change in culture would need to be in response to this situation: One foreseeable decline would be lack the of sells and new customers. There are a lot of new sites that off offer shoes. There are now sites like Just Fab that offer to send one pair of shoes a month for one low price. Theses customer are getting the convenience of having an online stylist where they don’t have to do the shopping or searching for items they like. These sites gather information about the member and each month a stylist pick out items that would likely appeal to the certain member. The culture of a company shapes everything. A company’s culture is the foundation of how the company is run and when there is a decline the culture has to change. However if there is a decline in Zappos’ decline the culture can remain the same. The current culture allows for the company to constantly to change and to come up with new ideas. Zappos. com culture is surrounds customer services and employee-driven innovation (Zappos. com). If there was a decline this would be the same culture the company would need to help turn the company around.