|
Bezos noted the enduring nature of corporate cultures in his
annual letter to shareholders.
"The reason cultures are so stable in time is because people
self-select," he wrote. "Someone energized by competitive zeal
may select and be happy in one culture, while someone who loves
to pioneer and invent may choose another," he said, adding that
Amazon has never declared that its approach is the "right one."
Amazon was the subject of a months-long investigation by the
Times, which depicted the company as having a bruising corporate
culture that edged out workers who had been evaluated harshly by
their peers and managers.
The online retailer forcefully rebutted the paper's report after
it was published last year, with the company's top spokesman,
Jay Carney, taking the unprecedented step of writing a public
letter to defend Amazon and revealing personnel information
about a former employees quoted in the story.
In his letter to shareholders, Bezos also trumpeted the success
of big bets like the company's cloud computing arm, Amazon Web
Services, and its wildly popular membership program, Prime.
Amazon does not disclose membership data of its flagship Prime
service, but analysts say it may have more than 40 million
members in the United States.
In highlighting the speed at which Amazon launched services like
Prime Now, its one- and two-hour delivery service, Bezos
signaled to shareholders that the company was not done making
bold investments in new business areas.
"Used well, our scale enables us to build services for customers
that we could otherwise never even contemplate."
(Reporting by Mari Saito; Editing by Leslie Adler)
[© 2016 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2016 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
 |
|
