Business Study with Foundation year

Organization theory and practice

Individual case study Amazon Company

Student name: Nadyesma Santos

Student ID: S214902

10-01-2022

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Executive summary
In the assignment organization is selected from the given list and the analysis of the managerial style of
the CEO of Amazon and their impact on the organization. With the help of the extensive research the
issues of the company and learning outcome are undertaken for the Amazon Company. The leadership
and motivation strategies of the company are being undertaken for the analysis of the organization
structure and culture of the Company. The power, influences and conflicts which have arise in the
company and its related corporate examples are explained for the better representation of the research.
Based on the research the conclusion and recommendation has been provided for the increase of the
performance of the Amazon Company.

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Table of Contents

Executive summary ................................................................................................................................... 2

Introduction .............................................................................................................................................. 4

Managerial style of the Amazon ............................................................................................................... 5

Change in the organization culture and structure .................................................................................... 6

Leadership style of the Amazon ................................................................................................................ 7

Effect of the power, influence and conflict of the Amazon ...................................................................... 8

Motivation strategies of the Amazon ....................................................................................................... 9

Corporate examples ................................................................................................................................ 10

Recommendations and suggestions ....................................................................................................... 11

Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................... 12

References............................................................................................................................................... 13

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Introduction

Amazon Company is the international company which deals in the cloud computing, e-commerce,
artificial intelligence, and digital streaming etc. it is the world largest internet company which has the
online marketplace and live streaming service which measure the revenue and market share. The
company has earned the reputation as a disruptor of the well-established industries with the help of the
technological innovation and mass scale. The CEO of the Amazon Company is Jeff Bezos in the year
2020 and in the year new CEO is appointed whose name is Andy Jassy. The culture of the Amazon
company is comprising of the four ingredients like long term thinking, customer obsession and
eagerness to invent with the operational excellence.

The main strategy of the company is mainly on the technology investment. This strategy helps in the
enhancement of the logistics application, R and D activities in the logistics, M and A strategy and
improved web services and company is also securing the inventions with the help of the patents (US
About Amazon, 2021). The company is expanding the training for the employees, creating the good
jobs among the US. The company has made the investment of $34 Billion on the infrastructure and
became the no.1 investor in America.

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Managerial style of the Amazon

Management is organization setting which take place with the prescribed roles and responsibilities. It is
directed towards the other influence for the achievement of the aim and objective of the organization.
The main focus of the management theory is emphasis on the structure and reduces the span of the
attention and effort for developing the familiarity and practice of the management. Henry Fayol makes
the formal and informal agreement between the firm and employees and there is one-man superior
command in the management theory (Caputo, Ayoko and Amoo, 2018). The management has
combination of the justice and kindliness towards the employees. Six sigma style processes enable the
Amazon to offer the best possible customer experience at the best possible price. Under the data driven
approach the employee and consumer behavior are measured as the data is incredibly liberating.

The Amazon has the pragmatist management style in the organization. This style set the standards and
unapologetically they are met by the employees at the time of conducting operations. The business
leader of the company is exceptional. In the year 2020 the Amazon Company plan to create the 2000
jobs for the Austin tech hub (Sulich, Sołoducho-Pelc and Ferasso, 2021.). The company make
accountable for demonstrating the management principles with the daily routine actions. This
management style describes how the customer at the centre is kept in the decision-making situation.
The management is taking the decision towards the social justice.

The focus of the company is to develop the systematic and solid industry for the forces of the
competition in the porter five forces of model. The strategy of the Amazon elaborates the roadmap for
the firm and also generates the pros and cons of the strategic choices and rational remark in terms of
the scenario. The company amazon tries to centralize the customer with the wide range of the products
(Franco‐Santos and Otley, 2018). It also offers free return slip and delivery which will formulate the
guarantee for the sales evaluation and for the growth of the profitability.

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Change in the organization culture and structure

Amazon is committed to develop the sustainable business for the customer and planet. In the year 2019
the company pledges the climate and make the commitment for the net zero carbon across the world by
2040. The company put the scale and inventive culture for working and building the sustainable future.
The company is taking the bold steps and making the huge difference for the development of the new
technologies in the industries to support the low carbon economy (Pedro Filho, et.al., 2017). The
company to join the climate pledge is the biggest opportunity for the company for leading the business
and making the commitment for making the transformational action to protect the global economy from
the climate change and disruptive risk are associated with the organization culture.

The company Amazon has been describing the organizational culture as the breakneck paced and cost
conscious and notoriously. The company is listed, and it follows the generally accepted accounting
principles for earning the profit and loss in the company. the company has been never waived to
commitment the four core principles and its culture is made up of the four principles like customer
obsession and eagerness to invent, long-term thinking and pride in the operational excellence. There are
four types of the organizational culture like clan culture, market, hierarchy, and adhocracy culture. The
company illustrates the effective and mixing of the various cultures (De Theije and Salman, 2018). The
Amazon company focus is mainly on the clan culture which describe as the commitment, relationship,
team building, engagement, mentoring and empowering the human development.

The company organizational culture enables to respond the business capacity for the demand in the
commerce market. This culture set out the value and tradition for influencing the behavior of the
employees. The company organization culture includes the characteristics include the boldness,
peculiarity, and customer centricity. Amazon corporate culture pushes the employees to go beyond the
limit of the conventions and traditional for developing the bright solutions and ideas and the company
seek to fresh talent.

The organizational culture reinforces and develops the human resources for making the long-term
competitive advantage. This is the vital and critical factor for the success of the online retailer. The
condition of the company capacity is to seek the new opportunities for utilizing the data intensive
process. The company pioneering efforts espoused the vision of the CEO and it has the supporting
innovation advantage in context to the organizational culture.

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Leadership style of the Amazon

Bezos fascinating personality and good leadership style, amazons’ culture is influenced. The company
has cascaded down by the Bezos authority and transactional style. Also, it affected the culture and
atmosphere of the organization adversely at the point where employees don’t experience a supportive
work environment and felt sabotaged and threatened.

In the 14 leadership principles of Amazon, Bezos portrays his leadership style and workplace ideas.
Employees by these guidelines, gets encourage and motivate to prove their worth, outpace their
colleagues and even sabotage their careers. This contrasts with Google oxygen 8 behaviors for great
managers which are basically focused on career development, on coaching, autonomy, and
communication (Al Khajeh, 2018). Employees at Amazon through its leadership tools and principles
gets encourage to stay critical of each other’s ideas in meetings and to send feedback to their managers
which employees perceive as sabotage.

Through punishment and reward, leaders keep their employees at Amazon motivated and encouraged,
as they have a transactional leadership style. It is in contrast with transformational leaders who have an
identity of shaping individuals and its employees.

At Amazon, there is an atmosphere of backstabbing and pointing out fingers, incites SCARF threats.
Relatedness is one of the most notable threats of Amazon. No good relationship, empathy, or trust
exists there. Autonomy is the one of other threat factors, which is mitigated by enhancing autonomy
and decreasing micromanaging (Burns, 2017). Additionally, another threat factor is sense of unfairness
which increases the turnover. Amazon has the second highest turnover in 500 companies of
AMERICA and only fifteen percent of the colleges and employees had been from more than 5 years at
the company. A transformational leadership, Amazon got benefitted as it encourages leaders to broaden
and elevate the employees’ interest, looks beyond their own self-interest for the group’s betterment. By
incorporating goggles manager principles, this can be achieved.

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Effect of the power, influence, and conflict of the Amazon

Conflict increases anxiety and stress among the employees resulting in decreases the level of
satisfaction and productivity. If the individuals got the feeling of demeaned and defeated, their turnover
may got increase but their morale goes down.

Conflict is unavoidable and can be reduced and managed by exercising political strategies and power.
Conflict is not a bad adverse. As it forces the employees to recognize and know their intense feelings
and make efforts to solve them. It is very basic that employees often have different interests and aims
that they want to achieve (Culpepper, and Thelen, 2020). So, in some way, it is harmful to have so
much of conflict. But it has positive sides also as it requires questioning the intrinsic and original
thoughts and thinking models, encouraging new approaches and ideas thus bringing out changes.

Effects of conflict in organizational life- conflict does not always means that it will bring negative
results, rather it provides positives effects in the company also. Mangers that can cope and manage with
the conflict in a better way may bring positive effects to their process of achievement of goal. In
companies, the positive effects conflict is reflected on renewal in relationship, increasing chances of
newer possibility and enhancement of productivity.

In contrast conflict brings negative effects also, negative effects are acknowledged by increasing the
level of stress in the employees, cooperation and relationships are getting worse, production gets
reduced, and violent conflicts possibilities are increasing (Rodriguez and Sarmiento Barletti, 2021). It
has been seen in Amazon that when conflict arises among subordinates and managers, subordinates’
level of stress gets increase and motivation gets decreased, and thus results in lower their efficiency of
work and worsening cooperation also. Managers use their power to frustrate and restrict the lower level
of management to let them obey their orders which will slowly converting into violence in conflict.

Power referred to the ability of employees within an organization which can help other employees to
bring out the results they want thereby affecting others. It simply means by using power, power holders
impede other procedures of achieving theirs aims with the purpose of achieving their desired goals.

One of the biggest challenges for the higher level of management is to use their power in a manner that
efficiently resolves and manage conflicts. Leaders of Amazon exercise their power in a way which
promotes the potential information processing benefits of conflict while decreasing the relationship
risks related with expressions of power to settle conflict.

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Motivation strategies of the Amazon

Everybody knows that it is sensible to have a group of motivated, engaged people at the company.
Through that only business will be profitable, and productive. But how to keep the employees of the
company motivated all the time, an important question to ask. As there are different people in the
world, so what becomes motivation for the one person may not be for the other. Some people get
motivation from money, whereas some gets motivation from recognition or rewards (Bawa, 2017). And
some find motivation from their inner self, and just perform from that inner zeal.

Therefore, there is not only a single method to motivate the employees, maintaining a thriving happy
work environment, or to boost the performance of the employees. Company requires utilizing many
different methods for it.

So, the different motivation strategies which are being used by Amazon are as follows-

1. Start with individuals- it is next to possible to encourage or motivate the employees until and
unless, company knows what drives them. It requires asking to the employees about their aspirations
and needs. And then according to each person personal and professional goals company can align each
person’s tasks and roles. This conversion should get start at the point of induction.
2. Get the basics right- as some company’s get distracted by adoring Silicon Valley like
environment, but if the basics are not correct, these fancy mechanisms won’t go to work. Company
should ensure that its culture should be based on respect to all employees, and behaviors should align
with its values. Company should have a policy to pay employees correctly and on time. And if the
basics are correct, company need not to invest in a pinball machine to keep the employees motivated
but if company do so, then it will become like icing on the cake.
3. Trust your people- trust is the most crucial building blocks of any organization’s culture. By
both ways it is applicable, employees need to trust their manager and manager needs to trust employees
to do their job effectively without any monitoring.
4. Show them the bigger picture- it is another strategy to let their people know that how their
work helps the company to achieve its goals. Explain to the employees fully about the purpose of the
company and how their tasks contribute to it.
5. Recognize and reward- as all know, that for the hard work done employees get paid, but for
going beyond, individuals like to be recognized. They are much better motivators in comparison to
punishment as it encourages the people to keep going (Quaratino and Mazzei, 2018). Rewards don’t
need to be formalized, though it can be built into performance management system, employees can be
rewarded for doing amazing work. Recognition proves best when it is personalized, as humans like to
be acknowledged.

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Corporate examples

Excellent customer satisfaction has been achieved by the Amazon by offering the
ever expanding and large selection of the personalized experience and products.

The focus of the company Amazon is on the customer service and many opportunities are available for
the company to sell the personalized products. The company has big ideas which has the stuck of
successful in the last 18 years. The company put the customer on the main focus point and sees of the
purchasing capacity of the customer. The main individual focus of the company is on the each and
every customer (Wu and Gereffi, 2018). The main target of the company is on the middle and upper
class of the customer as they are comfortable with the basic technology and less capability to purchase
the expensive product, so they purchase the product online with the discount which is available to them
for the product. The Company Amazon implements the timely review and feedback from the customer
to showcase the purchase behavior of the product online.

The company achieves the target as it has the focus on the speedy service to be available for the
delivery of the product and goods by the customer from the online portal. The Amazon Company
prevents the customer from the delay in the available of the product and makes the fast delivery of the
product (Järvi and Kortelainen, 2017). The company has the high efficiency in the operation and
affordability of the consumer. The company is being growing with the tremendous rate by rising of the
revenue in the pandemic period. In last it can be state that 55% of the online customer has been started
searching the product from the online portal of the Amazon and the company has earned the 100 billion
marks in the short span of time.

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Recommendations and suggestions

Amazon has the main focus on the data driven marketing strategy and roll them to get the great results.
The personalize system make the personalize enable for building the application with the machine
learning technology. This provides the effective form of the targeting marketing strategy for the
personalized shopping experience for the customer. The large retailer like the Amazon has the scalable
over the large and big customer base and the product catalogue which require the processing time to
generate the online recommendations for the immediate reaction for the changes in the user data. This
makes the compelling of the users in case of regardless for the purchase and ratings. Hence, items to
items collaborative are filtering helps in meeting the requirement of the company.

The powerful strategy behind the Amazon engine is to build the digital experience for humanizing the
consumers. This has transformed the e-commerce and leveraging the winning efforts in the
personalized efforts. The company designed the robust product recommendation for realizing the
potential payoff for the product discovery. Continuous and developing enhancement of the Amazon
makes the access to the unprecedented consumer data (Moore and Tambini, 2018). The company
provides the pleasant experience in the era of the consumer shopping and product component.

The economic growth of the company is in the last decade of the company the Amazon created the
more jobs in the last two years. The company is providing the comprehensive and industry leading
benefits by combining the investment in the infrastructure and compensation to the employees. The
benefits of the company include the health care coverage to save for the future and make the access to
the up-skilling programs.

The company created the training opportunities for the employees of the Amazon and the company is
supporting the tech hub, retail store, fulfillment centre and transportation network which provide the
access to the highly skilled and paying employees. The company main mission is to earth customer
centric company which makes the commitment to build the sustainable business for the employees and
communities. The company is driving the net zero carbon future which support the entire value chain
with the respect and dignity. In the year 2020 the company became the world largest corporate
purchaser of the renewable energy.

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Conclusion

The Amazon Company is the world leading company in the e-commerce sector. The Swot analysis of
the company reveals the online retailer for the competitive advantage for making the company
dominant player in the retail industry. The main mission of the company is to rise continue bar of the
customer for the use of the website and internet for the purchase of the goods and product from the
online portal only. The company target is to develop the non-zero carbon company and the main
motive of the company to make the company earth’s most customer centric company. The main
strategy of the company is enhancement of the logistics applications and investment in technologies.
The company built the best experience with the customers and three crore customers expect to purchase
from the online. The company in the year 2021 launches the new region in Indonesia and also plan to
create the 550 jobs at the sector of the phoenix technology hub.

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References

Al Khajeh, E.H., 2018. Impact of leadership styles on organizational performance. Journal of Human
Resources Management Research, 2018, pp.1-10.

Bawa, M.A., 2017. Employee motivation and productivity: a review of literature and implications for
management practice. International Journal of Economics, Commerce and Management, 12, pp.662-
673.

Burns Jr, W.A., 2017. A Descriptive Literature Review of Harmful Leadership Styles: Definitions,
Commonalities, Measurements, Negative Impacts, and Ways to Improve These Harmful Leadership
Styles. Creighton Journal of Interdisciplinary Leadership, 3(1), pp.33-52.

Caputo, A., Ayoko, O.B. and Amoo, N., 2018. The moderating role of cultural intelligence in the
relationship between cultural orientations and conflict management styles. Journal of Business
Research, 89, pp.10-20.

Culpepper, P.D. and Thelen, K., 2020. Are we all Amazon primed? Consumers and the politics of
platform power. Comparative Political Studies, 53(2), pp.288-318.

De Theije, M. and Salman, T., 2018. Conflicts in marginal locations: Small-scale gold-mining in the
Amazon. THE PICK, p.261.

Franco‐Santos, M. and Otley, D., 2018. Reviewing and theorizing the unintended consequences of
performance management systems. International Journal of Management Reviews, 20(3), pp.696-730.

Järvi, K. and Kortelainen, S., 2017. Taking stock of empirical research on business ecosystems: a
literature review. International journal of business and systems research, 11(3), pp.215-228.

Moore, M. and Tambini, D. eds., 2018. Digital dominance: the power of Google, Amazon, Facebook,
and Apple. Oxford University Press.

Pedro Filho, F.D.S., Lima, V.A., Neto, J.M.D.S., Muller, C.A.D.S. and Costa, G.B.D., 2017. Building
the capacity for sustainable innovation in the Amazon region. International Journal of Innovation and
Learning, 22(1), pp.23-43.

Quaratino, L. and Mazzei, A., 2018. Managerial strategies to promote employee brand consistent
behavior: The new frontier for brand building strategies. EuroMed Journal of Business.

Rodriguez, D. and Sarmiento Barletti, J.P., 2021. Can multi-stakeholder forums mediate indigenous
rights and development priorities? Insights from the Peruvian Amazon. International Forestry Review.

Sulich, A., Sołoducho-Pelc, L. and Ferasso, M., 2021. Management Styles and Decision-Making: Pro-
Ecological Strategy Approach. Sustainability, 13(4), p.1604.

US About Amazon. 2021. About Amazon. [online] Available at: <https://www.aboutamazon.com/>

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Wu, X. and Gereffi, G., 2018. Amazon and Alibaba: Internet governance, business models, and
internationalization strategies. In International business in the information and digital age. Emerald
Publishing Limited.

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