In his 2016 annual letter to shareholders, Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos noted correctly that corporate cultures are "enduring, stable, hard to change." A recent New York Times investigation had publicly revealed Amazon's culture to be ruthlessly competitive and intensely stressful, often bringing white-collar employees at its Seattle headquarters to tears at their desks. Distribution-center workers had grievances too, as evidenced by a 2014 Supreme Court ruling that they did not have to be paid for the time it took to screen them for stolen goods every day.As a result of the Times story, Bezos launched his own investigation into the company culture, and firmly and publicly refuted the newspaper's report.

In a further response, his shareholder letter went on to say, "We never claim that our approach is the right onejust that it's ours." It's hard to argue with a related observation in Bezos's letter about culture and performance: that people work best in a culture that suits them. Clearly, some people thrive on internal competition, others prefer camaraderie and teamwork, and still others do best when they pursue their goals alone. Bezos believes people "self-select," choosing to leave employers whose climates don't suit or inspire them.

The New York Times story reported a culture that ranked employees by productivity so the lowest performing could be culled, and survivors were "incentivized" to promote themselves at the expense of their colleagues. Perhaps in response, Amazon recently announced changes. It eased some policies that rewarded such competitive behavior, and will launch a retraining program to assign coaching and support to poor performers. Those employees can either appeal the assignment, accept and try to improve, or resign with severance.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

Jeff Bezos's shareholder letter called Amazon a good place to fail, since "failure and invention are inseparable twins." What do you think is the relationship between failure and invention? What do you think, does Amazon's culture tolerate failures?

Is it possible for a company to be as innovative and successful as Amazon without having a particular type of culture? What would the most appropriate type of culture be?