Zappos
Essays

In the first month of this year, 2012, online shoe retailer Zappos' now a business unit of Amazon, experienced a security breach that was initiated from a distribution center located in Kentucky. The nature of the breach shows how vulnerable the retailer's systems are to employees who choose to break in and attempt successfully to gain access to customer records. It also showed how vulnerable the entire Amazon.com e-commerce system is attacks originating from internal servers. The hacker, an employee, gained access to over 24 million Amazon.com and Zappos' customer records. Despite having sophisticated 128-bit encryption on these systems, the hacker was able to bypass internal systems with knowledge of how the distribution center staff had constructed firewalls and password conventions. The last four digits of the customers' credit cards were taken, their names, addresses, complete customer histories and approval credit limits of they had obtained Amazon.com credit cards (Letzing, 2012). The security systems had not been upgraded since 2010 when Zappos had been purchased for $800 million by Amazon.com and made a core part of the overall company network (Hsieh, 2010). As Zappos' had superior technologies for logistics planning and execution, supply chain planning and execution, and the ability to orchestrate fulfillment with 3rd party logistics providers, Jeff Bezos made the decision to standardize on Zappos' technologies and websites (McDonald, 2011). Zappos' had also created a unique series of technologies that allowed for consumers to inspect entire series of items online and evaluate how they will look in them (Tsuruoka, 2012). Zappos' had also created an entire corporate culture predicated on delivering exceptionally positive, memorable experiences for anyone purchasing online from them, empowering customer service teams to do whatever it could within the boundaries of profitability and legality to exceed customers' expectations (Tsuruoka, 2012). The theft of 24 million records was even more surprising given how strong of a culture the company has, one known for promoting worker autonomy and giving them as much freedom as they need to do their jobs (Shine, 2012). The theft had been motivated by the potential to sell the names on the black market for tens of thousands of dollars, a temptation even the relatively well-paid employees of Amazxon.com could not pass up (Letzing, 2012). The breach was discovered within the Amazon Web Services (AWS) team's audits were completed of transactions across all subsidiaries, including a reconciliation of accesses by role (Letzing, 2012). If Amazon was not able to track the access points and roles of associates looking at data online, chances are this breach would have not been fully found. Given the highly analytical nature of the Amazon.com culture within the AWS business unit, the discovery and reaction to the breach within hours highlights why e-commerce companies need to consider partnering with cloud platform providers for the long-term (Tsuruoka, 2012). If Zappos' had been in the position of hosting their own website and relying on their own infrastructure, the breach may potentially have never found to the extent to which it happened (Letzing, 2012).

¶ … administered a culture survey (e.g., the OCI) to all store employees (a.k.a. "crew members") and management, do you think espoused culture as described by management would match the culture expressed by the employees?

Identification/Description -- Amazon.com, as of 2009, was the world's largest book retailer in the world. However, the company is far more than a bookstore in 2012 -- it is a retail giant, handling almost $50 billion in…

Zappo's founder and CEO Tony Hsieh is a visionary in online retailing and business models, as he sees the creativity, intuitive, intelligence and passion of his employees as being crucial to delivering exceptional…

¶ … Strategic Action: Oracle's Acquisition of PeopleSoft

This paper conducts a chapter review describing the importance of employee benefits as a strategic component in fulfilling HRM objectives. Moreover, the paper gives an in-depth explanation regarding how Genentech and Zappos use benefits to motivate employees. Lastly, supporting information for belief whether benefits offered at Genentech and Zappos can work for other organizations are also highlighted in the paper.

The contemporaneous society is now faced with tremendous challenges, such as the aging of the population, the decaying state of the natural environment, the economic crisis, the decreasing state of human health and so on. At the level of human health, problems are raised by the modern day sedentary life style and inadequate nutrition, which favor diseases. In such a context, the population seeks to return to its original and simpler life style of simple and healthy foods, and exercise.

Social networking is a relatively new business tool, but it is simply a more sophisticated means of communication than we have had hitherto. New uses for SN are being made all the time; however, the basics of communication remain the same. JS has grown and we have been lucky in being able to keep our feet in these harsh economic times, if not thrive somewhat. Nonetheless, experience and research has shown me that social media is the way to go and is the path of the future. Social media (i.e. social networking) enables our business to grow in so many directions: not only does it afford us venue for communicating, but it enables us to publicize and market our business, network amongst an infinite pool of people, retain our supporters, and accomplish so much more that this brief will describe.

The case study, Human Resources at Hewlett-Packard, presents a portrait of an evolving organization that moved from its earliest base as a small privately owned company, with a single manufacturing focus, to a multinational conglomerate with multiple lines of business. Like many start-ups, in the early years, the company ethos exemplified that of its entrepreneurial founders. Entrepreneurs are often characterized by their capacity to have a hand in all facets of the organization, including human resources, and this was the situation at Hewlett-Packard for several decades. The case study presents a scenario in which the new CEO must address task force findings and questions about the viability of "the HP Way" and its role in employee engagement, strategic planning for the multinational context in which Hewlett-Packard now competes, and the evolution of a mature company in a mature industry. That Hewett-Packard has changed over the years, morphing into an organizational structure that bears little resemblance to its original form, is not surprising. Nor is the distress that long-time employees feel with regard to these changes. The case study spins in the direction of communicating the inevitability of the company's evolution, given the degree of change in the competitive landscape. After all, the case study seems to implore, how could Hewlett-Packard be the same when it has gone through so many iterations that is not even in the same business? Moreover, the case study presents a thorough enough summary of the corporate history of Hewlett-Packard that the iterations stand out against a background of technological changes that acted as catalysts for the company's redefinitions.

This paper is a case study of Zappos, the wildly successful online shoe company recently acquired by Amazon. It specifically focuses upon the team-building efforts at Zappos, and the methods of its HR department used to create a cohesive corporate culture. Its unusual hiring and training policies, combined with a high toleration for weirdness foster loyalty and creativity.