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Amazon announced two new Leadership Principles on July 1, 2021, expanding its framework from 14 principles to 16. The additions—“Strive to be Earth’s Best Employer” and “Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility”—came four days before Jeff Bezos left the CEO role and Andy Jassy was scheduled to succeed him. They made employee well-being and Amazon’s wider impact explicit leadership responsibilities, but the announcement alone did not show that workplace conditions or business practices had changed.
What Amazon added
Amazon’s July 1, 2021 announcement added two entries to its formal Leadership Principles rather than simply revising the wording of existing ones. The company said the principles guide how employees make decisions and approach their work. Amazon’s announcement set out the new principles and their intended themes.
Strive to be Earth’s Best Employer
This principle describes an ambition to make work safer and more productive while supporting diversity, justice, empathy, employee development, and empowerment. Its scope also reaches beyond work: Amazon said leaders should help employees succeed in their professional lives and beyond. “Earth’s Best Employer” is the name of an aspiration, not evidence of an independently verified ranking.
Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility
This principle asks leaders to consider the effects of Amazon’s decisions beyond the company itself, including consequences for communities, the planet, future generations, customers, employees, and partners. Its language calls for leaders to create more than they consume and leave things better than they found them. It expresses a broad expectation, not a specific environmental pledge or legal obligation.
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Why the timing mattered
The announcement came on July 1, 2021. Bezos was due to step down as CEO on July 5 and become executive chair; Andy Jassy, then head of Amazon Web Services, was set to become CEO. The chronology placed the new principles at the close of Bezos’s tenure and in the context Jassy would inherit. It does not establish that Bezos personally introduced them as a farewell project or that they were designed specifically for Jassy. GeekWire’s contemporary report covered the timing and succession.
The employee-focused principle also echoed themes in Bezos’s final shareholder letter, which called for a better vision of employee success and described ambitions around becoming a better employer and a safer workplace. That made the announcement consistent with his final public message as CEO; it did not demonstrate that the stated ambitions had already produced results.
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The criticism surrounding the announcement
Amazon introduced the principles amid scrutiny over worker treatment and warehouse and delivery conditions, workplace safety, racial inequity and discrimination allegations, employee dissatisfaction, and unionization efforts, including at the Bessemer, Alabama, fulfillment center. The company also faced antitrust and regulatory scrutiny over its market power. These issues formed the public context for the announcement, and contemporary coverage interpreted the additions against that backdrop. Amazon did not say that every criticism directly caused the change.
That distinction matters: the principles can be read both as an effort to adapt a large company’s culture to its broader effects and as a response to pressure over its conduct. The timing and language support those interpretations, but do not prove a single motive.
Why Leadership Principles matter inside Amazon
Amazon presents its Leadership Principles as more than public-facing values. In a later explanation, the company said they inform decision-making, problem-solving, conflict resolution, hiring and interviews, performance evaluation, and leadership development. Amazon also said the principles apply across roles, though particular ones may matter more in some jobs than others. Amazon’s explanation of the principles describes how the company says it uses them.
Because the principles appear in processes that shape who is hired and how work is assessed, adding two could affect expectations and incentives—not just corporate messaging. The extent of that effect depends on how managers apply the principles and what behavior the company rewards.
How the additions expanded Amazon’s idea of leadership
The 2021 additions broadened the framework without replacing its existing performance orientation. Earlier principles emphasized customer focus, ownership, speed, frugality, high standards, analytical rigor, decisiveness, constructive disagreement, and results. Amazon retained principles including “Customer Obsession,” “Frugality,” “Bias for Action,” and “Deliver Results.” The new entries made employee welfare, empathy, safety, diversity and justice, community impact, and responsibility to the planet and future generations explicit alongside those priorities.
That creates a real management tension. Speed, high standards, and results can sit uneasily beside safety, empathy, and employee well-being. The additions did not spell out how leaders should measure those competing aims or settle trade-offs between them. They enlarged the stated responsibilities of leaders; they did not remove the pressure to deliver.
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Was this a genuine cultural change?
The evidence supports a careful answer. Formally, Amazon recognized employees and consequences beyond its operations as leadership concerns. Given the principles’ stated role in hiring, evaluation, and decision-making, their addition could influence organizational behavior. But a statement of values is only one part of change.
- Policy language: Two principles explicitly broadened what Amazon said leadership should consider.
- Implementation: The announcement did not specify success metrics, enforcement responsibility, consequences for violations, or how leaders should resolve conflicts between growth and wider effects.
- Outcomes: The addition alone did not establish that workplace conditions, labor relations, or regulatory concerns had improved or been resolved.
Contemporary reporting described the 2021 additions as Amazon’s first expansion since “Learn and Be Curious” was added in 2015, making the change notable within the history of the framework. The significance lies in what Amazon chose to formalize at a leadership transition—not in proof, from the wording alone, that the company had already changed.
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