Zappos identity

Zappos Identity

September 13, 2009

Zappos box

I would suggest an eccentric way of reading the recent New Yorker essay on Zappos.com ("Happy Feet: Inside the Online Shoe Utopia" by Alexandra Jacobs). Think of the essay as a description of a emergent identity category that finds itself in competition with religion and the nation-state. This identity category is the current corporation.

An issue that must be solved by a corporation if it is to compete with the allegiance of the nation-state is to develop a values-system that elevates the corporation as the primary community for its workers. In the past corporations were limited because their workers understood themselves based on class divisions— the driving force for labor unions. A man on the assembly line was not primarily a member of GM, but of the working class. More recent corporations have cut out the entire rationale of unions by encouraging a direct identification with the corporation, from the lowest levels on up. This process is evident in the essay on Zappos, when CEO Tony Hsieh muses:

"I just liked working for Zappos," he said. "It was about: What kind of company can we create where we all want to be there, including me? How can we create such a great environment, where employees get so much out of it that they would do it for free?" And, in fact, some Zapponians, as they are known, draw a wage as low as eleven dollars an hour.

The ideals expressed here I don't have much to say about, but the result is important: employees view themselves as showing up to work to have fun and participate on a team. This sense of identity ("Zapponians") is meant to trickle down to even the lowest paid workers. A labor union in this environment is impossible to imagine as it would mean, by definition, not being a true Zapponian; it would be an admission that work is not fun. By the emphasis on fun and equality a major problem in the old-style corporation is overcome: the primacy of class identification. That issue of class was a major impediment to the development of the corporation as an all-encompassing identity that could compete with the nation-state.

Now think of how religion offers value and meaning for individuals. Religions will set out a code for life. Usually in a religious context this code comes mixed up with metaphysical claims, but those are not a necessary part of a code for life. Zappos has ten "core values" that have a distinctly religious sense to them:

1. Deliver WOW Through Service
2. Embrace and Drive Change
3. Create Fun and A Little Weirdness
4. Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded
5. Pursue Growth and Learning
6. Build Open and Honest Relationships With Communication
7. Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit
8. Do More With Less
9. Be Passionate and Determined
10. Be Humble

To begin with, ten "core values" is an obvious contemporary skewing of the Ten Commandments. The extent to which these add up to a lifestyle and way of being is clear in this Zappos-produced video:

Watching more of their videos (such as "Why Do People Work At Zappos?") the smiles and forced creativity can seem grating. It's reminiscent of the way presentations of church life start to seem saccharine and shallow with the non-stop procession of smiling happy people.

Hsieh has a thing for happiness, writing a book entitled for now "Delivering Happiness", which will be "a combination of talking about Zappos, the culture, core values, and the science of happiness..." I personally don't resonate with the notion that "happiness" is something around which life can be organized. To my way of thinking happiness is a byproduct of a correctly ordered frame of thinking (I'm a Stoic!), and something that therefore finds you when you stop thinking about it. But any discussion of happiness takes us into the orbit of religion, and to the extent that Zappos is a corporation dedicated to a version of happiness, it's also a religious organization.

Ask yourself: could a fundamentalist Christian work well at Zappos? Not that there's any overt discouragement as such, but a fundamentalist would surely find the "open-minded" and "growth" values difficult to fathom.. and the idea that happiness can be embodied in a corporate culture? "Come again?" the fundamentalist would ask. This style of corporation needs a certain type of individual, and where a fundamentalist would fit in well in certain hierarchical work structures, Zappos calls for someone at home in contemporary popular culture and the kind of diversity values that are everywhere today.