The Impact of Governmental Action on Business-Amazon
The Impact of Governmental Action on Business-Amazon
Business Environment: The Impact of the Governmental Action or Political Challenge on Amazon’s Financial Situation and Operations
Berry (2017) cites that governments comprise multiple policies and rules, which guide businesses. Some regulations, such as the minimum wage abound as obligatory, while other restrictions consist of an indirect influence. Government action, such as implementing policies to catalyze markets, shifts the business environment’s social behavior. For instance, a government can issue taxes on utilizing carbon-based fuels and avail subsidies for firms using renewable energy. Besides, a government can schedule the growth of an innovation portending the necessary shift. Implementing excessive duties or taxes than required affects businesses. Contrary, duty and tax exemptions on specific industries trigger investment and generate development. Political culture and political stability also comprise an impact on a business. Cullen & Cushman (2000) postulate that government policy always relies on the existing political culture. The procedure established in a politically unwavering country abounds as distinct from that determined in an unstable state. A firm political system facilitates business-friendly decisions, which encourage local businesses. Unstable government systems avail challenges, which jeopardize the potential to sustain law and order comprising a negative impact on the business environment.
Government spending and taxation also comprise different effects on a business. Mainly, governments earn revenue from taxation. Augmented spending requires a government to increase its borrowing or taxes. Tax augmentation discourages investment among business people that take risks of commencing and managing businesses. Governmental actions such as setting interest rates encompass the rise that augments businesses’ borrowing costs. Higher rates also contribute to alleviated consumer spending while lower interest rates draw investment as companies increase production. Primarily, governments control interest rates temporarily through printing money that consequently results in inflation. The latter hinders businesses from thriving. The last governmental action entails permits and regulations. Trade regulations permit requirements, and the federal minimum wage comprises impacts on business. For instance, conducting temporary health inspections on firms contributes to the latter spending a lot of time and money to fulfill the rules, proving unnecessary or ineffective. Effective and fair regulations encourage business development.
Sustainability
The above government actions affect the sustainability of the business in multiple ways. Williams (2002) asserts that governmental action such as policy as a market catalyst abounds as impact investing. The latter facilitates the business’s sustainability in various ways, including pushing the company to pay attention to the environmental and social effects. Additionally, it encourages assessment and reporting. Secondly, impact investment focuses extensively on financial return and stability longevity instead of relying on swift and unsustainable revenue. The former facilitates the discipline and augmented sustainable practices in the business. Last, impact investment promotes the company’s sustainability. It targets a more diverse return range such as fro beneath-market to risk-adjusted market rate across all levels, such as cash equivalents guarantees, grant support, and fixed income. Political actions such as government instability increase risk factors and result in significant losses.
Political powers comprise the ability to shift the business results. Governmental actions such as a decrease or increase in tax presage distinct effects on the business. For example, a tax decrease harbingers the business sustainability stemming from good profits and reinvestment. Vaccaro, Santana, & Wood (2009) posit that tax increases hinder business sustainability because it can affect the revenues based on the added costs. Multiple political environment aspects impacting a business include corruption, tariffs, trade control, employment law, deregulation and regulation, consumer protection, and e-commerce. The latter comprises four significant sustainability effects on the business, including risk mitigation, economy shifts, regulation changes impacting the industry as explained above, and political stability resulting in business stability. The economic impact affects the economic setting and the latter influences business performance. When the government shifts its regulations and rules, it impacts the business either positively or negatively based on the law. Risk mitigation encourages business sustainability considering issues such as purchasing political risk insurance alleviates risk exposure. Regulations and permits such as the environmental rules portend reducing Amazon’s productivity and help employment by meager amounts to shift towards cleaner manufacturing procedures. Simon (2008) adduces that environmental regulations merits outweigh the costs. For example, comparing the job losses associated with the approximated health merits concerning the Clean Air Act in the U.S. abounds significantly.
Internal Resources: Business Project Team Present to React to Threats and Opportunities
Perera (2017) avers internal resources as comprising the inherent weaknesses and strengths. The latter impact a business in terms of how it attains its goals. For instance, Amazon utilizes the resource-based view, value chain, and financial analysis for its internal assessment procedure. The value chain used by Amazon comprises the operational potential to add worth and sustain competitive merit. The value chain applied derived from Michael Porter’s generic worth chain that has primary and support activities including operations such as assembling and the manufacturing product, inbound logistics including the reception of supplier goods, storing, and allocating the same, and outbound logistics including distributing its goods to retailers, wholesalers, or selling the same to the end customer. Competitive merits associated with Amazon include demand and print, robust innovation infrastructure, a single platform, a fast and easy payment system, and 24 hours of operations. The resource-based view, as applied by Amazon, facilitates the firm to establish a competitive edge. Two types of competitive merits used by Amazon include differentiation merit and cost advantage. The business triumphantly showed the correct resources and developed its potential in the main target areas, including personalization features for clients on websites, retailing technologies that abound as sophisticated, combined easy and reliable scalable IT systems, and prioritizing customer relationships. Based on financial analysis as an internal resource, Amazon evaluates at the macro-level, including its retained and revenue profits, cost from overtime revenues, debt, dearing, and capital structure, top, client association system, and last, enhanced warehouses.
Communication and Company Image
Amazon Drones comprises three main stakeholders, including employees’ customers and third-party sellers. From the case, Amazon cited its intention to influence stakeholders via the quality of products relinquished to the market, the ethical procedures, price, and general society participation. For instance, customers questioned the company’s product’s security, including its mobile application that permitted hackers to the unbounded degree of guesses for a client’s password. The company dealt with the issue and further addressed the same via its blog. The company cited that it abounds as the least significant issue for the organization’s growth and stakeholders since fixing the problem. However, security preservation trust among clients should always feature as a priority.
The company also utilized Forbes Magazine to communicate its intentions to increase membership costs for Amazon Prime and its benefits program. The magazine cited that three out of ten existing members abound as willing to pay an extra $20, which abounded percentage such as 9 percent stem as ready to consent a rate increase of $40 or more. The organization mainly comprises an approximate 20 million Prime customers that presage dissatisfaction by the augmented membership cost. If a reduction in purchases or members due to the new expense, it foretells profits reduction for third-party sellers. The former plan lacks a direct effect on the workforce due to a lack of salary reduction. An augmented cost in Prime Membership hinders the firm’s growth, meaning Amazon needs to shun the decision. The company lacks a means of publishing its sustainability report to avail data regarding its Carbon Disclosure Project based on its greenhouse gas production. Climate Counts organization rates Amazon poorly regarding endeavors to curb its carbon footprint. Cullen & Cushman (2000) cites that it Amazon improves its sustainability endeavors, it harbingers increased loyalty among clients, employees, and third-party sellers considering the premise that corporate sustainability abounds as a prerequisite in the contemporary society. Camille Pilar Phillips (2014) avers that going green foreshadows Amazon’s cease complains, reputation, and increase the firm’s growth.
Camille Pilar Phillips (2014) states that client satisfaction abounds as the paramount worth to Amazon’s CEO. Client focus stems from a cultural problem distinguishing Amazon from other firms. Foresee Analytics established an E-Retail satisfaction survey that depicted Amazon as comprising the past few years’ highest scores. Customer satisfaction abounds as significant to stakeholders and Amazon customers because it augments customer loyalty, increases third-party sales, and intensifies its growth. If clients avail poor third-party ratings, it foretells the failing of the seller’s accounts. The increase of innovation avails multiple platforms for clients to advance their complaints on various social media platforms and, replying to complaints deals away with online criticism. Amazon factors customers’ complaints significantly and addresses them promptly.
Employee situations comprise a high ranking among significant problems to stakeholders and company development. In some regions, frequent walk-outs and strikes were featured in reaction to Amazon’s refusal to increase workers’ wages.Camille Pilar Phillips (2014) indicates that a BBC reporter applied for a job in one of Amazon’s warehouses to explore the firm’s w working conditions. The reporter delineated that the workers abounded as machines meaning that the company overworks their employees.
A Pennsylvania lawsuit charges the firm for labor abuse. A significant complaint was raised regarding the company’s failure to compensate its workforce on an hourly basis for the airport’s layover time, such as security lines each time they departed from a warehouse. Though the firm utilizes the former technique to curb product theft, it takes close to 20 minutes.
Camille Pilar Phillips (2014) quotes an article by Brad Stone that features an interview of more than three hundred employees. The author emphasizes the stressful work environment in the business as “notoriously confrontational.” Besides, Camille Pilar Phillips (2014) states that the Amazon workforce thrives in perpetual termination fear. Amazon workforce employed the Glassdoor website to advance their comments, whereby they presented positive ratings entirely. Despite the former, the employees grumbled regarding the lack of employee incentives, hectic work life, and unfair pay. Employee conditions issue significantly impact the latter as stakeholders. Many third-party sellers and customers shun a firm with poor workforce treatment. The strikes and lawsuits foreshadow stunted company growth and increased expenditure.
The company also utilizes television as a medium of communication. The CEO took to CBS 60 Minutes to state that its Drone package delivery service christened Prime Air abounds as significant to its growth. Based on the latter, the business aspires to come up with drones to deliver small packages.
Amazon comprises a lousy relationship with its third-party sellers because the latter filed lawsuits against the company. Lawsuits’ progression presages an effect on Amazon’s reputation, association with its clients, and its revenues.
Response
The association with Amazon’s third-party sellers abounds as the most significant problem to stakeholders and the second most significant problem concerning the firm’s growth. Considering the premise that third-party sales comprise more than half of the business earnings for products, a need arises for the company to enhance and sustain its associations with its sellers.
The current macroeconomic and business environment forces Amazon to establish a novel automation objective. Although the firm endeavors to frequently employ thousands of new workforce, augmenting its workforce numbers by about 30 percent over the last year, the firm also fills various jobs with autonomous counterparts. For example, Amazon can seek the assistance of Kiva Systems, which abounds as a robotics company to enable it to establish new independent products to facilitate its automated order attainment operations. With the application of human-robot symbiosis, the company can manage to keep its shelves stocked.
Camille Pilar Phillips (2014) also recommends that the company adopt drone deliveries considering their merits and deal away with the reliance on third-party sellers. Drone deliveries will help the company deal with the increased lawsuits and enhance time management as they allow humans to focus on other significant delivery processes. The latter derives from the premise that drones deliveries abound as faster based on their accurate location program. Delivery drones also comprise few error margins when sitting in the exact intended area. The drone delivery application also enables product delivery. Delivery drones abound as primarily utilized for delivering products or objects. Larger delivery drones currently feature, which the company can invest in to deal away with unnecessary lawsuits. Drones also conserve energy and save time. Mainly, drones save time by adding further workforce to a firm as it ferries objects to other locations via a remote-controlled system. The latter facilitates the workforce to have additional time to attend to other significant workplace delivery issues (Simon, 2008).
Based on employees’ complaints regarding their overworking and safety, drones also abound as the best alternative considering they stem as physically delivering a product to consumers. Human delivery personnel abound as frequently exposed to risk environments. When utilizing drones, provide personnel will work in safer environments. Accuracy also features why Amazon needs to implement drone deliveries (Great Britain National Audit Office, 2006). Drones abound as more efficient and comprise higher accuracy rates when delivering in comparison to humans. The former portends lessening of the wrong deliveries.
Financial Impact
In terms of financial impact, unmanned aerial vehicles’ adoption portends both short-term and long-term benefits for Amazon. The firm also aspires to reduce the delivery time for packages by 30 minutes to weigh less than 5 pounds. However, investing in the same stems is high because the drone market abounds at $127 billion across multiple sectors. Besides, the adoption of drones portends the creation of more jobs in the firm. Mainly, drones will facilitate Amazon to save costs that can be passed down to clients. However, downsides also abound, including logistical roadblocks. Conventional postal services sustain the liability of stolen or damaged goods incurred during the delivery process. Without human monitoring, drones abound as incapable of facilitating seamless deliveries; thus, meaning an additional expense for the company. Amazon drone deliveries in big cities also experience various problems, including admittance into apartment units with storied buildings features as an impossible feat for drones.
Operational
Adopting robotics will enable Amazon to enhance consistency and quality, including the 3D printing robots and the industrial internet of things. Industrial robots comprise the potential to avail of better quality production, reliable, and precise procedures (Vaccaro, Santana, & Wood, 2009). Amazon will also derive maximum throughput and productivity as an industrial robot augments manufacturing speed procedures. Mainly, robots can work on a 24 hr basis though their dependability and speed alleviate the cycle time and increase throughput. More excellent safety is also promised within the organization stemming from repetitive tasks resulting in fewer safety hazards for workers in the production and manufacturing sectors. Besides, the latter facilitates supervisors to monitor the production system from a remote location. Alleviated labor costs also feature under operational costs as robots reduce employees’ freeing up to focus their expertise and skills elsewhere.
Operational downsides include high initial costs as robots feature as expensive to invest in. for instance, Amazon has to assess whether the robots can be altered for other operations prospectively. Ongoing costs also abound as a downside considering that robots abound with their ongoing expenses, including maintenance. Besides, Amazon will have to factor in the robots’ upkeep costs and any associated internet of Things linked devices shielded from cyberthreats (Williams, 2002).
Ethical Implications
Although drones are intended to deliver products to consumers, humans usually expose themselves to physical danger as they must negotiate with totalitarian administrations. Other significant ethical issues include the imperfect nature of artificial intelligence when it makes a mistake, wealth inequality and job loss leading to people reprimanding the organization, lack of significant air safety, need for insurance in some regions, ad crowded skies.
External resources
Lobbyist abound that argue on behalf of the government. The government will consider implementing a robot tax based on the premise that automation results in mass unemployment, which abounds as a severe issue. Mainly, policymakers will also commence arguments regarding the design and safety of robotics or automation. For instance, the EU parliament advanced a motion rejected regarding factoring at levying tax on robot work or a fee for utilizing and maintaining the same. The need for taxation emanates from the government’s anticipation of funding the aid and sustenance of unemployed workers whose jobs have been eliminated or reduced (Camille Pilar Phillips, 2014).
Although taxing robot usage sounds more comfortable in theory, lobbyists also abound that support Amazon in terms of practice. They will endeavor to shift the definition of “robots” concerning what differentiates a robot from a tool.
