31

Amazon: HRM and change in the house

of neo-liberalism*
Brian Harney and Tony Dundon

BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT

Amazon is one of the world’s most recognised organisations. It was the first to leverage on-line
platforms for selling and distribution, making its first book sale on-line in 1995 before diversifying
into CD, DVDs and electronics and ultimately becoming the ‘everything store’.1 As Google is to
internet search, Amazon is to e-commerce, practically inventing this category of shopping. Ama-
zon’s overriding goal is ‘to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find
and discover anything online’.2
Financial results suggest the company and its founder and CEO Jeff Bezos are doing exception-
ally well. Amazon’s share price has grown exponentially, while the company has been expanding
at an impressive rate. Jeff Bezos has been lauded for his achievements, including numerous best
CEO awards. Industry adjusted shareholder returns under his stewardship have reached a massive
12 266 per cent.3 Cementing his leadership status, in 2018 Jeff Bezos overtook Bill Gates as the
wealthiest person on the planet.4
According to Bezos, Amazon’s success to date is attributable to a unique culture and capacity
for re-inventing.5 This is seen in inventions such as customer reviews, the Kindle, and Amazon
Web Services. Recent developments include moving to compete with Netflix in streaming, whilst
Copyright © 2020. Edward Elgar Publishing Limited. All rights reserved.

experimenting with drones to achieve 30-minute delivery times.

THE ‘COMPETITIVENESS’ OF HRM

In human resource and employment relations terms, Amazon has a workforce of over 600 000
employees, surpassing the likes of Microsoft. Employees are known as ‘Amazonians’, and are man-
aged culturally to be ‘ultra-competitive’ and achieve ‘high performance’. Amazon is renowned for
pioneering creative work practices. CEO Jeff Bezos is an outspoken supporter of technological
innovations to reconfigure the world of HRM by engendering ‘self-management’ spaces where
Amazonians are encouraged to take ownership of their own career destiny and earnings potential.
Bezos is famed, among other things, for coining the mantra that Amazon wants to be ‘misunder-
stood’6 and that being ‘normal just deserves to be messed with’.7 It is claimed that all employees
(Amazonians) are empowered to maximise their potential. These features, combined with a cor-
porate reputation for innovation, re-invention as well as wealth creation, mean that on many read-
ings Amazon is seen as the leading-edge company in the creativity and innovation space.

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 192 CASE STUDIES IN WORK, EMPLOYMENT AND HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

Figure 31.1 (above) Sample public reaction

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/
inside-amazon-wrestling-big-ideas-in-a-bruising-
workplace.html?_r=0

Figure 31.2 (above right and right)

Sample public reaction

Yet at the height of its most successful financial year, Amazon encountered its most severe
criticism for being a bullying and bruising place to work. A damning New York Times (NYT) exposé
Copyright © 2020. Edward Elgar Publishing Limited. All rights reserved.

in August 2015 put Amazon and its CEO Jeff Bezos under intense scrutiny.8 Allegations included
severe work pressure with workers crying at their desks, aggressive and confrontational manageri-
al styles, including inhumane treatment of those suffering personal traumas such as miscarriages
and cancer, and a culture of constant ‘anytime feedback’ encouraging employees to undermine
one another. The report prompted Jeff Bezos to make a very rare and public rebuttal. The debate
resonated widely across the media (see Figures 31.1 and 31.2), raising public questions that reso-
nate with themes such as what constitutes fair and ethical treatment at work, what are the wider
societal and human resource management implications of wealth and success and, in this context,
what equates to appropriate ways of managing people?

THE IDEOLOGY OF ‘HARD’ LEADERSHIP

Amazon’s managerial approach is, and always has been, unashamedly one of ‘hard work’. In man-
agerial discourse Amazon is evidently unitarist: that is to say the likes of Bezos and other senior
figures demand that employees strive to achieve and deliver the Amazon way with no time or space

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 AMAZON: HRM AND CHANGE IN THE HOUSE OF NEO-LIBERALISM 193

for externalities or undue influence (such as union representation or independent worker voice).
In fact, the first two words of the company’s motto to new recruits are just that, ‘hard work’. Bezos
himself defines the company culture as ‘friendly and intense’, adding that if he had to choose, ‘we’ll
settle for intense’.9 The work regime and culture are certainly intense and fast-paced, privileging
customer needs above all else. In a symbolic act, it is claimed Bezos periodically leaves a seat free
at conference meetings informing all attendees that ‘they should consider that seat occupied by
their customer, the most important person in the room’.10
In order to reinforce these ideals Amazon espouses a set of so-called ‘Leadership Principles’
which guide what every Amazonian (employee) is supposed to do in their daily work (see Box
31.1). According to Amazon:

Our Leadership Principles aren’t just a pretty inspirational wall hanging. These Principles
work hard, just like we do. Amazonians use them, every day, whether they’re discussing ide-
as for new projects, deciding on the best solution for a customer’s problem, or interviewing
candidates. It’s just one of the things that makes Amazon peculiar.11

The contents of these 14 ‘principles’ are unashamedly about driving a hard working culture that
is obsessed with the customer above all else (#1). As can be seen in Box 31.1, the language of
macho-leadership is used excessively to try and push workers’ effort. Ownership, and by conse-
quence responsibility, is cascaded down the organisation (#2), with activities conducted by only
the elite best (#3). The principles boast of ‘unreasonably high standards’ (#6), ‘a bias for action’
(#8) and delivering results (#14).

BOX 31.1
AMAZON’S LEADERSHIP PRINCIPLES
1 Customer Obsession
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Leadership obsesses about customers. Work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust.
2 Ownership
Leaders are owners and act on behalf of the entire company. Leaders never say ‘that’s not my job’.
3 Invent and Simplify
A leader will always find ways to simplify and innovate; externally aware; look for new ideas
everywhere. Amazon accept that we may be misunderstood for long periods of time.
4 Are Right, A Lot
Leaders are right and have strong judgement and good instincts. They seek diverse perspectives
and work to disconfirm their beliefs.
5 Hire and Develop ‘The Best’
Leaders raise the bar with every hire and promotion; recognise people with exceptional talent.
Leaders develop leaders and coach others.
6 Insist on the Highest Standards
Many people may think our leaders have unreasonably high standards, continually raising the
bar and delivering high quality products, services and processes.

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 194 CASE STUDIES IN WORK, EMPLOYMENT AND HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

7 Think Big
Leaders ‘look around corners’ and create and communicate a bold direction that inspires results
to serve customers.
8 Bias for Action
Speed matters in business. Many decisions and actions are reversible and do not need extensive
study. We value calculated risk taking.
9 Frugality
Accomplish more with less. Leaders don’t get extra points for growing headcount, budget size
or fixed expense.
10 Learn and Be Curious
Leaders are never done, always seek to improve themselves and are curious about new
possibilities and act to explore them.
11 Earn Trust
Leaders listen. They don’t believe their or their team’s body odour smells of perfume. They
speak candidly, treat others respectfully, are vocally self-critical (even when it’s embarrassing).
They benchmark themselves and their teams against the best.
12 Dive Deep
Leaders operate at all levels. No task is beneath them.
13 Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit
Leaders respectfully challenge decisions. They have conviction and are tenacious and do not
compromise for the sake of social cohesion. Once a decision is determined, they commit wholly.
14 Deliver Results
Leaders focus on the key inputs. They rise to the occasion and never compromise.
Source: Adapted from: http://www.amazon.jobs/principles.

The 14 leadership principles make HRM an ideologically-driven goal at Amazon. The undercur-
Copyright © 2020. Edward Elgar Publishing Limited. All rights reserved.

rent is to enhance performance, reward those that excel and, equally, highlight those that are not
meeting these imposed standards. Work pressure and intensity is manifest through a focus on
analytics, metrics and technology, from the use of 15 000 Kiva robots in warehouses to enhance
efficiency and workforce effort to real time performance analytics.
Beyond the explicit performance dimensions are hints that such principles could be manipula-
tively dangerous. For example, one Amazonian, Dina Vaccari, who previously worked on corporate
gift cards explained to the NYT: ‘I was so addicted to wanting to be successful there. For those of us
who went to work there, it was like a drug that we could get self-worth from.’
It is suggested that Amazon even encourages staff to instil similar principles when rearing
their children. Critics find the inference that all Amazonians (workers) are somehow leaders to
be misguided. Warehouse attendants, pressured to perform with increasing precision and under
the watchful eye of monitoring surveillance technology signifies a lack of job autonomy or discre-
tion to make meaningful, engaged employee decisions. Further, the NYT report suggested that the
lack of female representation on Amazon’s leadership team (relative to the likes of Facebook or
Walmart) is probably the result of these hard and ideologically-driven principles, which privilege
‘competition’ and a ‘long hours’ culture.

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 AMAZON: HRM AND CHANGE IN THE HOUSE OF NEO-LIBERALISM 195

ETHICAL HRM AS A FORM OF CULTURAL

CONTROL?
Jeff Bezos is alleged to support immediate action and encourage quick decision making, with a
tendency to micro-manage and push boundaries.12 From the beginning Bezos was attentive to
ensuring a good cultural fit when employing new hires: ‘I’d rather interview 50 people and not hire
anyone than hire the wrong person. Why? ... cultures aren’t so much planned as they evolve from
that early set of people.’13
In spite of Amazon’s growth, these lean start-up principles remain. One example of frugality
concerns expenditure on office equipment. Bezos holds true to his long-standing two pizza test;
if you can’t feed a team with two pizzas, the team is too large.14 Amazon differs from the likes of
high-tech contemporaries Google and Facebook, which are renowned for supporting and devel-
oping employees through a fun work culture, surrounded by foosball, on-site massages and inde-
pendent thinking time. Rather than engaging in a battle for employee talent based around perks
and benefits, the ‘no-frills Bezos is proving the potency of another model: coddling his 164 million
customers, not his employees’.15 In a letter to shareholders Bezos wrote ‘You can work long, hard or
smart, but at Amazon.com you can’t choose two out of three’.16 These expectations about the nature
and intensity of work are made explicit to new hires who are screened for biases and ability to
deliver. Glassdoor.com, a platform where current and former employees evaluate their workplace
experiences, does not hold Amazon with any great expectations, ranking it 3.1 on a 5-point scale,
similar to Burger King (3.0).17
Criticism of Amazon’s actual day-to-day workplace regimes has publicly surfaced previously
with reference to the poor working conditions faced by employees and agency workers in Amazon
warehouses. At the warehouse in Allentown in the US it was reported that workers had to walk
distances of 5–17 miles a day in conditions that were so intense that emergency ambulances had to
wait outside for those that had fainted or fallen ill.18 In James Bloodworth’s book Hired,19 Amazon
Copyright © 2020. Edward Elgar Publishing Limited. All rights reserved.

was one of the companies where he secretly worked as an undercover journalist. Among other
things, he found that warehouse employees would have to urinate in plastic bottles and forgo toilet
breaks because of work pressure and performance demands. In the New York Times piece, criticism
extends to numerous HR policies to control professional, lower and middle managerial staff. In no
uncertain terms it said Amazon is ‘conducting a little-known experiment in how far it can push
white-collar workers, redrawing the boundaries of what is acceptable’.
The NYT story reports of brutal work practices that resemble something akin to the Hunger
Games peppered with a sprinkling of George Orwell’s 1984 Big Brother tactics. Veteran workers
use the term ‘Amabot’, denoting a good worker who has become self-directed, internalising the
Amazon mode of working to ‘become at one with the system’. Work–life integration is said to
be complete as white collar and lower managerial employees are expected to be ‘ever-present’,
including checking in and working during vacation time. Another work practice that has evolved
to be culturally normal is sending emails late at night. When a response is not immediate, the un-
answered email is often followed up with a phone text message to the person (who is usually lower
or junior to the one waiting on a reply). This sense of normality is evidenced in attempts to add
humour to this dilemma: ‘The joke in the office was that when it came to work/life balance, work

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 196 CASE STUDIES IN WORK, EMPLOYMENT AND HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

came first, life came second, and trying to find the balance came last’ (Jason Merkoski, former
Amazon employee reported in NYT).
The culture of employee voice, common among many leading firms to help generate ideas, has a
somewhat sinister twist at Amazon. Employees are encouraged to criticise (even purposely under-
mine) co-workers using a HR policy called ‘anytime feedback’. Amazon’s leadership principles refer
to being ‘vocally self-critical, even when it’s embarrassing’ (see Box 31.1, principle 11). The Amazon
rationale is that this will engender in-house staff competition. Reports suggest Amazon encourages
conflict and debates, particularly over performance metrics so that ‘there’s an incredible amount of
challenging the other person,’20 with ‘feedback that can be blunt to the point of painful’.21
The undercurrent of bias for action and results also forms a significant and harrowing part of
the critique. The NYT article talks of a woman being told to focus on her work after a miscarriage.
Another employee is given a low performance rating because of time out for cancer treatment. The
woman, a professional level manager who had breast cancer, was referred to a ‘performance im-
provement plan’ which, internally, is known to mean that the person may be at risk of being fired.
The cancer treated employee was informed that ‘difficulties’ in her ‘personal life had interfered
with fulfilling her work goals’. The performance ethic and fear of retribution is also clearly mani-
fest at the top. A former Amazon employee referred to his former CEO as the ‘Dread Pirate Bezos’,
noting his mandates made workers ‘scramble like ants being pounded with a rubber mallet’.22
Just as Amazon obsesses over customer analytics, so too it constantly measures employee effort
via technological control and surveillance systems. In Amazon warehouses workers carry handheld
devices which report their performance (timing and quantity) against specific targets; technologies
mean humans interact with robotics at an increasing rate. Many devices can also receive incoming
text messages from management telling workers to speed up or to conduct additional tasks.23
The same workers are subject to airport security-type scrutiny on exiting the warehouses
to prevent theft. Amazon is a metric-driven organisation with professional workers subject to
‘anxiety-provoking sessions called business reviews’. These reviews can be based on 50-plus pages
Copyright © 2020. Edward Elgar Publishing Limited. All rights reserved.

of results. The NYT reports that employees can be cold-called and questioned on any one aspect of
their performance. Commentators reflect that these are ‘burn-out’ practices which have become
embedded into Amazon’s work culture, which can financially penalise recent hires who may exit
the company within two years. With such negative media around its work culture, some suggest
Amazon may alter the way it does things.24 Yet with strong financial results, it is questionable
whether there is sufficient motive in the upper echelons of managerial control for any improved
staff improvement change programmes.

(UN)ETHICAL HR: WHEN THE END JUSTIFIES THE

MEANS?
The sinister, manipulative and hard-hitting images reported in the NYT piece along with James
Bloodworth’s (2017) first-hand accounts are less a new revelation than an observation of the
changing contextual changes to global neo-liberal capitalism. Bezos was quick and may be right
to counter the commentary of HR practices and work experiences reported in the media and

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 AMAZON: HRM AND CHANGE IN THE HOUSE OF NEO-LIBERALISM 197

other research, noting that ‘they don’t describe the Amazon I know.’25 However, he was equally
explicit in reinforcing that Amazon’s performance is underpinned by an intensity for pushing a
hard-working culture and a focus on enhanced performance using competitive work models and
high-tech practices.26 According to the Amazon way, the logic is that those who complain are sim-
ply disgruntled underperformers who just can’t do the job and don’t fit: thousands of ‘Amazonians’,
claims Mr Bezos, are happy and eager to stay and earn big bucks. Or maybe many just realise there
is little choice: leaving Amazon may result in no work or being employed at another high-work
intensification job. Defenders of Amazon’s culture suggest that the evidence of the NYT exposé is
based on ‘rounding-up a 100 or so disgruntled employees (past and present) out of a workforce of
150,000’. A current Amazon employee, Nick Ciubotariu, mounted a public defence of Amazon’s
practices (see Box 31.2).27

BOX 31.2
AN AMAZONIAN’S DEFENCE
‘During my 18 months at Amazon, I’ve never worked a single weekend when I didn’t want to. No
one tells me to work nights.’

‘Our sheer size and complexity dwarfs everyone else, and not everyone is qualified to work here,
or will rise to the challenge. But that doesn’t mean we’re Draconian or evil. Not everyone gets into
Harvard, either, or graduates from there. Same principles apply.’

‘I also think teaching Amazon’s Leadership Principles to one’s children is kind of funny (my opinion
only, if there are indeed Amazonians that do this).’

Source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/amazonians-response-inside-amazon-wrestling-big-ideas-nick-ciubotariu.
Copyright © 2020. Edward Elgar Publishing Limited. All rights reserved.

Defenders of Amazon argue that in contrast to those former employees who bemoan the culture,
there are plenty of others who thrive on the Amazon way. One Senior Technical Program Manag-
er, Nimisha, explained ‘you either fit here or you don’t, you either love it or you don’t, there is no
middle ground really’.28 The argument goes that if Amazon’s culture was founded on such extreme
brutality they simply would not have any employees working for them.29
However, the unitarist undertones re-emerge again and again in the discourse espoused by
Amazon: ‘if we put customers first, other stakeholders will also benefit’.30 The ideology belies that if
the company is doing well, employees will be better off, along with its shareholders. With customer
data analytics having proved so successful for the Amazon business model, it may be inferred that the
company assumes that a logical corollary is to manipulate employees in the same way, using real-time
performance tools and a technologically-pervasive system of monitoring to adapt behaviours. Former
HR Executive Robin Andrulevich suggests that ‘purposeful Darwinism’ filters out underperformers:
‘they never could have done what they’ve accomplished without that’.31
Furthermore, Amazon is an avidly anti-union company which has hired the services of anti-
union consultants to fend off any attempts at collective employee representations.32 With respect
to opportunities for those who are disgruntled or aggrieved, Amazon points to its regular team

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 198 CASE STUDIES IN WORK, EMPLOYMENT AND HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

briefings and ‘all-hands’ meetings where pressing issues could be brought to management atten-
tion. Bezos finished his public memo advising staff that they could also contact him directly: ‘You
can also email me directly. Even if it’s rare or isolated, our tolerance for any such lack of empathy
needs to be zero’.33

GOING FORWARD: THE POTENTIAL FOR

COUNTER-MOBILISATION?
Amazon is one of the few early internet companies that survived and eventually thrived. The com-
pany is renowned for its zeal, track record of change, and for Bezos’ grand ambitions. What emerg-
es is a corporate culture that is determined, focused and centred on its own ambitions and wealth.
What is more questionable, however, is whether this neatly equates to a ‘sustainable’ corporate
model that values people, human need and justice. It is likely that under the rubric of finance
capitalism, even if Bezos wanted to be more people-centric, shareholder expectations for even
higher market returns means squeeze will be put on workers to work harder and be subject to
even more forms of technological control and surveillance. However, winds of change and oppor-
tunities for workforce challenge may yet emerge. Workers are not cultural dopes and know when
they being duped. Even though there is an evident power disadvantage, employees are not blind to
the potential for collective mobilisation or protest. Underlying challenges in people management
issues may also surface as Amazon moves its business from ‘clicks to bricks’. Its first physical store
opened in Seattle’s university shopping mall in November 2015. One suggestion is that a physical
store brings different managerial and cultural challenges as workers engage and build relationships
directly with customers: direct shopping outlets will enable ‘customers to experience the tension
between front-of-house and back-of house as a kind of pleasure’.34 In other environments worker
resistance has emerged in the likes of TGI Fridays, Uber Eats, JD Wetherspoon pubs and resultants,
Copyright © 2020. Edward Elgar Publishing Limited. All rights reserved.

McDonald’s,35 and even Google.36 Such employee protests signal a mood to question unfair treat-
ment and the seemingly taken-for-granted nature of management by stress and discrimination.
Employees remain an agent capable of challenge and change, especially if organised and mobilised
collectively.

QUESTIONS
1 Why does Amazon treat its customers better than its employees? Why do we, as customers,
accept that?

2 Can Amazon claim to be a legitimate ‘ethical’ HR organisation?

3 In what ways do any of the Amazon leadership principles contradict one another?

4 Do the HR issues at Amazon lend weight or support to any particular arguments to managing
work and employment in more ethical or socially sustainable ways?

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 AMAZON: HRM AND CHANGE IN THE HOUSE OF NEO-LIBERALISM 199

END NOTES
* Brian Harney acknowledges funding received from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation pro-
gramme under Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 734824 while working on this case.
1 Sone, B. (2014), The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, Back Bay Books.
2 http://www.amazon.jobs/.
3 Hansen, M.T., Herminia, I. and Peyer, U. (2013), ‘The best-performing CEOs in the world’, Harvard Business Review,
Jan–Feb, 81–95.
4 https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/#7455673251c7.
5 Economist (2012), ‘Taking the long view’, Economist, 3 March.
6 Hansen, M.T. et al. (2013) see note 3.
7 Amazon ‘something new’ commercial http://worldwidegadget.blogspot.ie/2012/09/amazon-something-new-
commercial.html.
8 Kantor, J. and Streitfeld, D. (2015), ‘Inside Amazon: wrestling big ideas in a bruising workplace’, New York Times, 15
August, accessed at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-wrestling-big-ideas-in-a-bruising-
workplace.html?_r=0.
9 Streitfeld, D. and Kantor, J. (2015), ‘Jeff Bezos and Amazon employees join debate over its culture’, New York Times, 18
August, accessed at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/18/technology/amazon-bezos-workplace-management-practices.
html.
10 Anders, G. (2012), ‘Inside Amazon’s idea machine: how Bezos decodes customers’, Forbes, 23 April, accessed at http://
www.amazon.jobs/principles.
11 http://www.amazon.jobs/principles.
12 Deutschman, A. (2004), ‘Inside the mind of Jeff Bezos’, Fast Company, August, 85: 52–8.
13 Deutschman, A. (2004), ibid.
14 Deutschman, A. (2004), ibid.
15 Anders, G. (2012), see note 10.
16 Kantor, J. and Streitfeld, D. (2015), see note 8.
Copyright © 2020. Edward Elgar Publishing Limited. All rights reserved.

17 Anders, G. (2012), see note 10.

18 Soper, S. (2011), ‘Inside Amazon’s warehouse, of the morning call’, 18 September, accessed at http://www.mcall.com/
news/local/amazon/mc-allentown-amazon-complaints-20110917-story.html#page=1.
19 Bloodworth, J. (2017), Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low-Wage Britain, London: Atlantic Books.
20 Manfred Bluemel, a former senior market researcher at Amazon reported in Anders, G. (2012), note 10.
21 Kantor, J. and Streitfeld, D. (2015), see note 8.
22 Anders, G. (2012), see note 10.
23 O’Connor, S. (2013), ‘Amazon unpacked’, Financial Times, 8 February.
24 Liacas, T. (2015), ‘What will it take to make Amazon a great place to work?’, The Guardian, 18 August.
25 Price, R. (2015), ‘Jeff Bezos has responded to a report slamming Amazon’s working conditions’, Business Insider, 27
August.
26 Scheiber, N. (2015), ‘Work policies may be kinder, but brutal competition isn’t’, New York Times, 17 August.
27 https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/amazonians-response-inside-amazon-wrestling-big-ideas-nick-ciubotariu.
28 ‘What is it like to work at Amazon: go beyond the badge with Nimisha’, Inside Amazon, accessed at https://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=lWFxFBD8Qus.
29 Price, R. (2015), ‘Jeff Bezos has responded to a report slamming Amazon’s working conditions’, 27 August.

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 200 CASE STUDIES IN WORK, EMPLOYMENT AND HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

30 Hansen, M.T. et al. (2013), see note 3.

31 Kantor, J. and Streitfeld, D. (2015), see note 8.
32 http://time.com/956/how-amazon-crushed-the-union-movement/.
33 Geekwire company memo, Nicolaou, A, and Bullock, N. (2015), ‘Bumper holiday season sends Amazon soaring’,
Financial Times, 30 December, accessed at http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/9ec3e288-ae5b-11e5-993b-c425a3d2b65a.
html#axzz3vqmXPyzG.
34 De Monchaux, T. (2015), ‘How Amazon’s bookstore soothes our anxieties about technology’, New Yorker, 22 December.
35 https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/uk-jd-wetherspoon-mcdonalds-tgi-fridays-uber-eats-workers-strike-over-
pay.
36 https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/nov/01/google-walkout-global-protests-employees-sexual-
harassment-scandals.
Copyright © 2020. Edward Elgar Publishing Limited. All rights reserved.

Case Studies in Work, Employment and Human Resource Management, edited by Tony Dundon, and Adrian Wilkinson, Edward Elgar
Publishing Limited, 2020. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uwa/detail.action?docID=6124244.
Created from uwa on 2020-08-23 22:15:51.