Question:
Discuss about the Amazon, Leadership Vs Management.
The report aims to analyze the difference between the management skills and the leadership methods of global leading company Amazon’s owner Jeff Bezos, the management strategies of its employees and their performance as well as the challenges that the company faces in competitive world.
As the founder chairperson of Amazon.com, Jeff Bezos has been its chief executive officer. With his dynamic vision and passion for reputation, he has built Amazon the world’s largest Internet Sales Company. Beginning as a merchant of books on internet, has expanded to a large variety of products as well as services like audio and video streaming. Amazon is currently the largest provider of cloud infrastructure services (Mattone and Vaidya 2016).
The report discusses the impact of leadership and management skill of Bezos, his characteristics effecting current position of Amazon. This report also discusses the impact of Bezos on Amazon’s future and his success as a boss of Amazon employees.
Bezos leader or manager:
The people working in any organization may possess leadership skills and encourage others to complete assigned task. Management is something different form leadership but a manger must be a good leader to manipulate the employees for the sake of an organizational up gradation (Bolman and Deal 2017). It is a vague assumption that most of the people believe that managers are different from leaders. Therefore, the managers cannot lead his coworkers and leaders unable to manage. The leader posses the vision of his goal but has no knowledge the possible way to reach the desired destination (Dinh 2014). Similarly, a manager without leadership skills is unable to win trust and engagement with others therefore cannot lead the organization to the target. Above all his actions must include innovation, manipulation and creativity on the one hand and engagement, management on the other (Higgs and Dulewicz 2016).
Methods of Bezos:
As a leader of the company, Bezos follows some of the unique methods, which has helped the company to reach its current position. Amazon has empty chair tradition, which continuously reminded of the customers’ existence in the policy making of the company. The leadership trait of Bezos includes component of emotional quotient for all sectors. To the critics this can be proved the company’s weakness but having freedom to disagree and state opinion are part of the company’s principles. Unlike the other successful leaders, Bezos’ active imagination and experiment has transformed Amazon to be the world’s largest retail company. He innovates, renovates and sometimes eliminates the whole thing to shape up any policy according to the time’s needs.
Under the management of Jeff Bezos, the company has maintained a strict work culture where the employees’ performances are assessed constantly. The worker must comment on one another’s performance. The company deploys the method of ‘purposeful Darwinism’ that is to create struggle among the staffs to uplift performance. The company’s foundation and growth has proved that he is a leader more than a manager is.
According to the theory of innovative entrepreneurship, it is the high impact of the research skill of the employees that helps the company discover new ideas and products that the market never imagined. Manifold experiences allow people for thinking diversely and learn new flair (Kantor and Streitfeld 2015). New skills lead to improvement of innovative capacity. Working with diverse people and process of solving complex issues can bring a boom in creativity as well as knowledge.
Positive characteristics:
To Jeff Bezos, experiments lead to innovation, which is the most essential part of the company policy. Experiments continue to surprise and teach more. The more the company experiments with its products, the more it innovates. Amazon always try to find the solutions of the ‘what if’ questions and therefore casts a clear difference between the inventors and non-inventors (Bao and Chang 2014).
Bezos always tried to deconstruct the conventional process of business and find the new perspective to introduce in his business. He found the new and emerging business opportunity provided by the internet and incorporated in his policy thus ‘the biggest bookstore of Earth’ was founded. It is the process of triggering innovative ideas extracted from enquiry and self-questioning. Jeff Bezos encourages his employees with the motto of focusing on process and not on failure. Experiment with the existing products and the ideas, is the optimum way of implementation of a scheme into reality (Cronin 2014). After Amazon stated to make profits from bookselling, the founder took a risky decision to construct large warehouses throughout the USA. This bet sank the stock prices initially but lifted the company to become the largest discount store online (Nichols and Cottrell 2014). According to Bezos, the failure can teach the right method of experiment and show the needed modification.
Bezos points out that most of the tech companies wait for their competitors to introduce new ideas and then try to match up with them. The policy of the owner is to listen to the customers and solve the problems. Therefore, Amazon Web Services has been designed. The main idea working behind it is to follow the customer’s needs in order to lead the market. It is not about setting targets but selecting the most important things and repeats them so that people purchase.
It the business strategy of Amazon that it uses stock options on recruitment. In order to engage and retain the skilled and versatile workers, the company gives them stakes in the company’s success (Miniotait? and Bu?i?nien? 2015). The CEO claims that the company has built a right culture for the employees. The employees feel attracted and like the approaches, as they are meaningful as well as energizing. Jeff Bezos believes that when the organization gets larger, there is a tendency of involvement of top executives in decision-making procedures. Amazon follows the idea of making quick decisions by high judgment groups or individuals. Thus, these characteristics have proved to have positive effects o the company’s growth and adverse stagnation as well as risks.
Negative characteristics:
To the critics, the CEO of Amazon does no pay heed to what others think about him. Bezos firmly believes that if the company gives priority to the customers the stock will rise to desired position. Amazon maniacally focuses on the customers that no other company does (Burke 2017 ). However, this approach of Bezos has its ill effects also. In 2011, a popular newspaper Morning Call published a series documenting the process of treatment of the employees by the company. This reveals that the company pushes the worker to work harder and faster until they quit or were terminated. The documentary also describes how the workers are bound to work in the worst possible conditions. Some of the warehouses lack proper air-conditioning that resulted the workers fall sick. The employees are enraged with the issue of exploitation within the largest online retail company. The New York Times investigated and found though the white-collar employees are happy with the condition of the warehouses and wages with stock options but somewhere feel a tremendous work pressure (Ritala, Golnam and Wegmann 2014).
It is the Darwinian work tradition created by the founder, where no sympathy is shown to the employees facing difficult time or serious illness. The company pays no time off in such cases but punishes for losing focus from the work. This cutthroat work culture was built by Jeff Bezos to prevent the company from being a sluggish bureaucracy. He wants Amazon to have the feelings of start-up therefore has a frantic work pace and pressure intense.
Positive effects: Amazon has been reveling its toughness. The founder and CEO of the company assumes the work culture of Amazon intense and friendly but The company’s motto reveals ‘work hard’ and Jeff Bezos often repeats these two words to keep his employees motivated. This uncompromising attitude has played a great role in keeping a retail company with a market capitalization of $250 billion.
The most relevant criticism for the company’s performance management is on its structure. The system followed by Bezos is based on meritocracy. It is the ideas, which are put into competition and to domination of the best. This competition makes the ground for this unhealthy workplace ambience where each has to outperform the other. Amazon’s feedback system is created to push the limits of the employees (Holten and Brenner 2015). It is as if a machine to propel to achieve the founder’s amplifying ambitions. To evaluate the employees’ performance, the company holds reviews on monthly or weekly basis. Each employee is accountable for his knowledge. It is a lengthy process and exhaustive with discussion which consumes a substantial volume of work hours (Nor house 2015). Therefore, the employees must initiate their own feedbacks and discuss with his team for betterment of his performance without worrying about the negative feedbacks. This will maintain the company’s transparency.
Negative effects: Now the company has been taking issues depicting that the prevailing work culture needs to tamp down all-toughness-all-the-time attitude because it has left many bruised workers. In a response to an article published in The New York Times, which revealed Bezos’ hard hitting style of management, the CEO says that in present competitive tech hiring market no company can survive in a soulless workplace where the employees work without passion or love. He also says it is not a culture of Amazon and it is not the reality.
The article that describes the condition of the workers in the warehouses says that the company evaluates the personal crises of the employees unfairly. The workers suffering from cancer or miscarriage or even psychological trauma and other personal problems are severely penanced and given lesser time to recover from the crises. To the company, the best persons are chosen for work and such unprofessionalism should not be tolerated. However, Bezos has disagreed with this argument completely and guarantees that the company does not tolerate this kind of callous management styles (Johnston and Marshall 2016). ). The company maintains complete secrecy about the issues regarding the workplace culture they retain. It signs agreement for not speaking to the press about the ambience of the warehouses within.
Nick Ciubotariu, an Amazon engineer in his book Linked In, has described that the company always focuses on innovation and customers and no one is compelled to work long and late. The company also does not cull its employees on annual basis. These points contradict completely with many of his colleagues who confirm that the company manages out to reduce a percentage of its workforce annually. The management practices of Amazon have created a haul when the former and current employees have given statements on social media, various websites to compare the strength and weaknesses of the work culture celebrated by Amazon.
Some of them the culture is highly demanding but compassionate while others have described feeling hammered by uncompromising demands, ceaseless competition and the company’s unreasonably high standards (Van Wart 2014). The ex-employee of Amazon working currently working with Hewlett-Packard Software Americas has termed the company the most toxic place to work at. It is impossible to speak about the intolerable problems to the manager as Bezos urges in his letters to the employees because the executives are themselves facing the same problems. The company’s principles of leadership, behavioral guidelines and most importantly the CEO’s style has proved to be harmful for the employees (Rivet 2017).
The company’s has a feedback culture where the employee is encouraged to criticize colleagues’ ideas and instructed to send secret feedback to their managers (Rossman 2016). This feedback culture is claimed to be too open to abuse the coworkers and it is also used foe weakening the work of others. The nature of the feedback culture prevailed at Amazon is harsher than the cultures adopted at Facebook, Adobe, Google and other innovative companies.
Discussing the issues that pose as harm in the reputation of Amazon in the market it is clear that the main problems are centered round the management and employee satisfaction section. The company holds the customers to be the most important but the employees of a company are the driving force (Tourism 2014). Amazon believes in the idea of recruiting people and makes them workaholic and finally cast them aside after they outlive their utility. The future of the company lies on the principles that the company is following at present. It needs to take care more of its employees and empathies with them so that no negative issue can spoil the reputation of Amazon.
As previously discussed various personal and characteristic traits of Jeff Bezos has built the empire of Amazon. His ability of decision-making and vision helped the company to be the world’s largest online retail. Over the 20 years, the company has spread throughout the world and has transformed the concepts of retail (Renz 2016). From a balding bookseller to become one of the richest men in the world was not easy. It is his vision to expand into various retail categories, like food, clothes and electrical (Kantor and Streitfeld 2015). It has recently developed a cloud computing service, own TV shows and an electronic personal assistant for domestic use. Bezos has accepted various challenges chiefly concerning its workforce.
In 2014, Jeff Bezos has named as the worst boss in the world congress of the International Trade Union Confederation. It proves that Bezos represents the inhuman treatment face by the employers working in the North American corporate offices. The New York Times has revealed the employees’ experiences for Bezos and the condition of the warehouses of Amazon. The company regularly terminates the employees or they themselves quit the job, which they found very much compelling and intolerable. Amazon’s corporate practices under Bezos’ dictatorship are termed as stingy. However, this is true that Bezos’ vision and passion has raised the company at the top and it could not reach the place without the assistance of its employees. It is therefore clear that the CEO must take care of his workers so that it built a healthy relationship as well as atmosphere in the workplace.
Conclusion:
From the above discussion, it may be deducted that Jeff Bezos, the founder and chief executive officer of Amazon stands solely responsible for the company’s growth. His vision and hard work have helped Amazon to be recognized all over the globe. It is his strategies that manipulate the employees to work hard keep on innovating. The leadership skills of Bezos have led the company for 20 years. From selling only books over internet, the company now has verity of offerings for its customers. His management style has paved the way for others. His company enjoys the top position globally. To run the company Bezos has faced various problems among which the employee dissatisfaction is the most severe. The philosophy of performance management is reported to be pressurizing the link between the individual performance and the overall success of the company. Many have misinterpreted the ownership culture and therefore overwhelmed with the responsibilities associated with it. These have proved to be harmful for the company’s reputation and employee morale is not doing well in Amazon.
References:
Bao, T. and Chang, T.L.S., 2014. Why Amazon uses both the New York Times Best Seller List and customer reviews: An empirical study of multiplier effects on product sales from multiple earned media. Decision Support Systems, 67, pp.1-8.
Bolman, L.G. and Deal, T.E., 2017. Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice, and leadership. John Wiley & Sons.
Burke, W.W., 2017. Organization change: Theory and practice. Sage Publications.
Cronin, M.J., 2014. Amazon Fast Tracks Transformation. In Top Down Innovation (pp. 49-60). Springer International Publishing.
Dinh, J.E., Lord, R.G., Gardner, W.L., Meuser, J.D., Liden, R.C. and Hu, J., 2014. Leadership theory and research in the new millennium: Current theoretical trends and changing perspectives. The Leadership Quarterly, 25(1), pp.36-62.
Higgs, M. and Dulewicz, V., 2016. Developments in leadership thinking. In Leading with Emotional Intelligence (pp. 75-103). Springer International Publishing.
Holten, A.L. and Brenner, S.O., 2015. Leadership style and the process of organizational change. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 36(1), pp.2-16.
Johnston, M.W. and Marshall, G.W., 2016. Sales force management: Leadership, innovation, technology. Routledge.
Kantor, J. and Streitfeld, D., 2015. Amazon’s bruising, thrilling workplace. The New York Times, 1, pp.20-22.
Kantor, J. and Streitfeld, D., 2015. Inside Amazon: Wrestling big ideas in a bruising workplace. New York Times, 15, pp.74-80.
Mattone, J. and Vaidya, N., 2016. The Six Critical Steps to Transforming Your Culture. Cultural Transformations: Lessons of Leadership and Corporate Reinvention, pp.17-36.
Miniotait?, A. and Bu?i?nien?, I., 2015. Explaining authentic leadership work outcomes from the perspective of self-determination theory. Management of Organizations: Systematic Research, (65), pp.63-75.
Nichols, A.L. and Cottrell, C.A., 2014. What do people desire in their leaders? The role of leadership level on trait desirability. The Leadership Quarterly, 25(4), pp.711-729.
Northouse, P.G., 2015. Leadership: Theory and practice. Sage publications.
Renz, D.O., 2016. The Jossey-Bass handbook of nonprofit leadership and management. John Wiley & Sons.
Ritala, P., Golnam, A. and Wegmann, A., 2014. Coopetition-based business models: The case of Amazon. com. Industrial Marketing Management, 43(2), pp.236-249.
Rivet, D.J., 2017. Amazon’s Superior Innovation: A Study of Amazon’s corporate structure, CEO, and reasons behind why it has become the most innovative company in today’s market.
Rossman, J., 2016. The Amazon Way: 14 Leadership Principles Behind the World’s Most Disruptive Company (Vol. 1). Clyde Hill Publishing.
Tourish, D., 2014. Leadership, more or less? A processual, communication perspective on the role of agency in leadership theory. Leadership, 10(1), pp.79-98.
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