Amazon’s ethical issues
Amazon is a big name in e-commerce industry that involve in online retail business all over the world. The latest ethical issue is taken from the article “Amazon is paying employees to tweet nice things about its warehouses” related to Amazon’s false practices of self-promotion where the company is blamed for creating ‘Astroturf Twitter accounts’ to show how good its work environment and how healthy it is to work there. In this essay, it has been discussed that how Amazon created a small twitter army from their employees for tweeting nice things about the good working conditions in Amazon’s warehouse. Further, it has been discussed that how it is affecting the image of the company. The company take this step because people talk more about the poor working conditions in Amazon and raising their voice to improve the bad working conditions in the company. Amazon was in the highlights, from last few years about the bad working conditions in the company and harassment of its workers. The fake posts of Twitter may be treated as a step in order to re-improve its image among the people on social media (BEH, 2018). This Essay includes consider some ethical philosophies and concept regarding these issues of Amazon and analyses how it affects the company image among the people they are operating the business.
Amazon was continuously in news from last few years about its bad working conditions. Amazon was also in news because of poor integrity, incentivized reviews, favourable blogs, and posts about doing jobs for the company on social media. The problem is that the company thinks that it is a part of the promotion of the company and establishes a public-relation with the people. However, some other market experts understand that it is more deceptive because the company paid the employees for posting blogs on Twitter about the good working conditions and even the incentives were undisclosed and had to be revealed by a third party. Amazon is doing this thing because they want to regain their bad images among the people that they do not have a good working culture in the company and they harass their employees with workload (Prescott, 2013). Amazon’s top executives feel nothing wrong in it because it enhances the image of the company and provides awareness among people about its good working environment. Some people negatively consider the paid blogs and twitter post of the company because it hides the real faults of the company. Moreover, it has been considered by many people that because of paid incentives employees will never reveal the bad working conditions of the company (Binder, 2018). Generally, people think this is unethical and instead of fake promotion, an honest and biased free opinion of people should be promoted on social networking site. However, the company thinks that it spread awareness among people who want to work with Amazon in future and open the gate of future recruitments. The other benefit of doing such practices is removing the past image of the company of poor working conditions.
What is Astroturfing?
Such practices of the company are a breach of social responsibility where the company requires providing honest and relevant information about the working conditions. According to some ethical philosophies, it may be ethical for the company because it helps to come out from the past allegations on their working culture and environment (Barish, 2018). Even the role of its CEO Jeff Bezos was under a question mark and people blame him for their wrong decision regarding the welfare of employees.
Astroturfing is the practice of false or fake advertising, promotion, or delivering the message or masking the sponsors of a message to the stakeholders of an organisation for orchestrated marketing (Elgan, 2013). In simple words, it creates a false impression of a company of widespread grassroots support for an organisation, product, policy, or individual, where slight a bit such supports exist. It misleads the consumers, and it is against the law in Australian (breaches both Australian Consumer Law, and the Code of ethics of the AANA) and some part of the world.
In order to correct the poor perception of people about Amazon’s bad working conditions, Amazon find this solution to post favourable blogs on twitter by their own warehouse employees and in return, the company will pay some extra money to them. However, the question is that it is ethical or unethical. The company provide assistance to its employees in terms of monetary benefits to respond to those criticisms of Amazon, which are targeting poor working conditions as well as the leadership potential of the top leaders of the company.
Historically, it was assumed that the tendency of doing such type of false advertisement, which is derived from monetary gluttony, is a false and unethical practice. According to the Jean-Pierre Teyssier, the first self-regulatory efforts of the business profession were encouraged by the desire to build a strong relationship of trust with the public. The company here is trying to regain the trust of people, which was already destroyed a few years back because of their some unethical practices at the workplace (Silberman, Irani, and Ross, 2010). However, here company needs to build a confidence among the people by providing some real information about the working condition by removing such problems rather than a false advertisement that might isolate them. A nastiest lie is for advertisement is not to present itself as such because it persuades the community to drop its guard and losing the trust of its customer.
Ethical philosophies
The ‘Utilitarian theory’ of ethics considers that the ethical decisions are made on the basis of the consequences of the action that is why it is sometimes called ‘Consequentialism theory’. The theory believes that the correctness and wrongness of a decision or any action must be viewed in terms of the result we get in return for the action or decision we make. If the decision is good and beneficial for mass then it is ethical and vice-versa (Mill, 2016). According to this theory, a company should act or make decisions in such a way to produce the greatest good for the greatest number. If we consider the Utilitarian theory of ethics, then we found that Amazon performs its e-business operations all over the world and creating Astroturf promotion of its good work culture. Although if we considering this theory it is good because it helps the company to regain its brand image position in the mind of people and correct the bad perception of people about the working conditions of Amazon. The company believes that this action of the company helps to rebuild its image in the mind of potential job seekers who look Amazon as a career opportunity that might also help the community in providing a job for the people (Mandal, Ponnambath, and Parija, 2016).
The other ethical theory called ‘Deontological Ethics’, which is given by the father of modern deontology, Immanuel Kant. The theory of Immanuel Kant based on the transcendent principle that applies to all human beings. The theory supports the concept that there should not be any unethical practices in the organisations whatever the matter. Individual or company has a duty and responsibility to respect other’s rights and treat them accordingly. It supports that no action should be performed in an organisation, which is unethical or breaching any law. Everything should be fair and ethical that is ethical people who are connected with the organisation. False information should not be spread among the person, which misleads them about the company. The Deontological theory of ethics provides the strongest model for applied public relation ethics, which is based on the moral autonomy of the individual and liberty from infringement that public relations pursue to be outstanding (Paquette, Sommerfeldt, and Kent, 2015). This theory strongly opposes the action of Amazon as they spread biased and dishonest information among the people but the problem is this is not clear in this theory how people know that the information is wrong or right for them if they not experienced it personally. The action of the Amazon is only appropriate for the company itself, and it is not beneficial for those persons who want to seek real information about the company, as it was paid version of the stipulated information.
The egoism theory believes that a company or individual should make those decisions or doing actions that maximize their self-interest, and which is defined by each individual differently (Garfield, et.al, 2015). According to egoism theory of ethics depending on self-interest or egoist, may be taken as physical well-being, money, a good family life, acquiring power and pleasure, fame, or something else. According to this Amazon is looking for their self-interest and it proves that it is ethical to regain its poor images by doing such activities. The astroturf practices of Amazon help the company to achieve some ultimate goals by spreading a positive message about the company (Overall, 2016).
The ‘Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’ (ACCC) said that false or misleading information is a fraud in the country and its breaches of the consumer rights. This law proh9bits the false and unauthentic information that leads to the false information about the company, its products, and about its working conditions (Hall, 2011). According to this law, the information provided by the Amazon employees might not be real because the company paid for posting favourable comments and blogs on social media. Apart from Australia, it is also illegal and unethical in USA, Canada, Ontario, and the UK etc. The law of different countries advocates about the truth, clarity, and accuracy in information whatever the type or source of information (such as advertising, public relation information, or product information). If we consider these laws, we found that the authenticity of information given by the warehouse employees is not reliable and can be biased because of the monetary incentives provided by the company (Wear, 2014).
First, we are able to understand and see what the portent exists and its examples when Wal-Mart and PlayStation both have done such type of practices in past. Apart from this, there is no way of evaluating or detecting these incidents without a detailed investigation. An individual People or customer cannot identify such flogs or Astroturf every time they occur nor they have any idea to accurately check the authenticity of the people’s opinion about the company (Leiser, 2016). It might be true or might not be true. However, such a phenomenon is very usual and often happens in social media people have no more time to go into the details of the information provided by the employees. Most of the people have at least some idea about astroturfing or flogging. We also consider that there is currently no way of detecting or recognizing such practices with certainty thus it might not be illegal which we cannot prove. The various countries have some law about misleading information or false advertising of the company, but it is not applied on individual view of a person on social media. It might be the self-perception of the people or might not be (Thomas, 2010). Thus, it is essential that there should be specific rules and regulations that govern these fake practices and ensure that no industry can spread such types of biased information, which misleads people. However, it is essential for the company to eliminate such obligations with real and true practices and ensure good working conditions in the company rather than fake promotion of company.
Conclusion
Social media defined a new and way of advertising that is spreading day by day everywhere and but it is helpless against the dangers of astroturfing. Amazon used Twitter as a tool to recover its poor images about working conditions, which is not wrong. Amazon is trying to aware people about its working condition that is fair and ethical, but the way it is convincing people about the company is not ethical. Although some ethical theories supports the way Amazon is trying to do PR activities or advertising of the company because it will maximize the benefits of company. We also found that there are some regulations that apply directly to the astroturf way of advertising or distortion of information among people. The government should make some other strict law regarding these astroturf activities of the company thus company can only spread authentic and reliable information among people about it business operations.
References
Barish, M. (2018) Reaching for the Stars: A Proposal to the FTC to Help Deter Astroturfing and Fake Reviews. Cardozo Arts & Ent. 36(5), p. 827.
BEH (2018) Is Amazon Astroturfing the Twitter Discussion About its working conditions [online]. Available from: https://businessethicshighlights.com/2018/09/12/is-amazon-astroturfing-the-twitter-discussion-about-its-working-conditions/ [Accessed: 15/09/2018].
Binder, M. (2018) Amazon workers are being paid to defend the company on Twitter [online]. Available from: https://mashable.com/article/amazon-warehouse-twitter-defense/#Hs5OukieEmqV [Accessed: 15/09/2018].
Elgan, M. (2013) Are online comments full of paid lies? [online]. Available from: https://www.computerworld.com/article/2485252/social-media/are-online-comments-full-of-paid-lies-.html [Accessed: 16/09/2018].
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Mandal, J., Ponnambath, D.K. and Parija, S.C. (2016) Utilitarian and deontological ethics in medicine. Tropical parasitology, 6(1), p. 5.
Mill, J.S. (2016) Utilitarianism: In Seven Masterpieces of Philosophy. 2nd ed. UK: Routledge.
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Paquette, M., Sommerfeldt, E.J. and Kent, M.L. (2015) Do the ends justify the means? Dialogue, development communication, and deontological ethics. Public Relations Review, 41(1), pp. 30-39.
Prescott, V. (2013) Astroturfing on Amazon: Why Telecom Lobbyists are planting bad reviews [online]. Available from: https://mashable.com/article/amazon-warehouse-twitter-defense/#Hs5OukieEmqV [Accessed: 15/09/2018].
Silberman, M., Irani, L. and Ross, J. (2010) Ethics and tactics of professional crowd work. The ACM Magazine for Students, 17(2), pp. 39-43.
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Wear, R. (2014) Astroturf and populism in Australia: The convoy of no confidence. Australian Journal of Political Science, 49(1), pp. 54-6
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