Goal setting of Amazon

Goal setting

A goal is a desirable outcome as a result of a person’s effort, whilst goal setting refers to the overall process that involves establishing goals, such as deciding a reasonable goal to work towards and planning the steps to take in order to achieve it. A company’s mission refers to the set of aims that they wish to achieve, which determines the desired direction of the company and thus influences their goals.

Currently, Amazon’s mission is to become the largest online retailer, offering every product that a customer may desire and ensuring quick and reliable delivery of goods ("Amazon's global career site", 2019). This has caused Amazon to emphasise speed and efficiency in the preparation and delivery of products to the customer, as well as effective customer care services. This, however, has led to Amazon receiving backlash as a result of their fast-paced and strict warehouse system, which has led to staff incurring injuries on the job and an overall bad reputation of employee treatment (Cain & Hamilton, 2019).

According to Locke’s Goal Setting Theory of Motivation (Locke, 1968), high employee performance is achieved through assigning specific and challenging goals and receiving regular feedback. To an extent this theory has been followed by Amazon as they emphasise hard work in order to achieve customer satisfaction, which has produced both positive and negative results, as employees appreciate Amazon’s high work pace and state that it is a symbol of motivation. However, the majority of employees, which has gained public attention, have claimed that the company is too demanding and expect them to reach unattainable targets, which may cause some employees to cut-corners in order to meet such standards, which sometimes leads to damaged good or harm to employees (Burin, 2019). Furthermore, employees are only given feedback when they do not meet company productivity rates, which deviates from Locke’s Theory, as feedback should be given regardless of performance in order to enhance motivation and productivity. Thus it is clear that their current emphasis on high employee performance deviates from Locke’s theory as it does not motivate employees sufficiently to complete a task. In order for such theories to be effective, the goal or targets have to be attainable by employees without forcing them to neglect company procedures.

Ineffective goal setting is not the overarching reason of employees becoming demotivated and less productive, however, it is one of the reasons. This can lead to damaged goods, injured employees or both. In either respect, money will be lost from the company as a result of the lack of attention to detail. This is evident within Amazon, as a number of employees from different warehouses worldwide, have indeed stated that as a result of their overwhelming targets in order to reach Amazon’s goals, they being overworked and have suffered injuries in the process.