Individual Case Study Bezos

Individual Case Study Bezos

Introduction - Individual Case Study Bezos

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Leadership is a key function in the supervision of an organisation’s resources to boost its productivity and accomplishment of goals. Effective leaders aim to accomplish their objectives, empower and manage their people. Leadership is essential for the growth of a business (Ciulla, 2020). It is the art or ability to convince people to freely, efficiently and competently do given tasks. Leadership usually serves as a key by demonstrating the proper path and creating employee confidence. It assists to establishing team members’ connections. It helps the company make the most use of its personnel since dedicated employees are willing to go above and beyond.

To become a great leader a leader must exhibit vision, ambition, initiative, personality and moral integrity (Turner, 2019). The following research looks at Jeff Bezos’ leadership style, which is well-known for being a transformational and task-oriented leader at Amazon. Thus the study focuses also on the traits and abilities that allowed Jeff Bezos to further drive his business and the study shows how the chosen leader may impacted an inclusive corporate culture. The future implications of Jeff Bezos’s leadership style on the company’s performance is also highlighted in the following study that in turn helps identify the effectiveness of his leadership style.

Critical analysis of the Jeff Bezos’s leadership approach and leadership theories linked to the chosen leader

Jeff Bezos, as owner of Amazon, developed an empire and managed one of the most biggest companies in the world. Jeff Bezos is a pioneer and creator of the development of online electronic trade (Faherty, Huang, and Land, 2017). He is indeed the owner of Amazon, CEO of the Washington Post and the creator of Blue Origin, astronomical research institution, and the internationally renowned e-commerce business. As a consequence of his excellent and well-known business efforts, he became one of the richest and most powerful leaders in the world. As Burfeind (2019) said, Bezos was the richest individual in the world with a total figure of $110 billion. Bezos’s transformational management style and task-driven approach are extremely good. Kastner (2021) says that Bezos was seeking for and is still looking for new ways of modernizing his business. He is a renowned leader for his dynamic planning and preparation. The long-term goals and requirements of the public are connected together so that customers may be served better (Mooers, 2020). His ability to create and dream had enabled his company grow and expand over time.

Whether he will be rejecting Wall Street’s requests for consistent income growth or forcing its top talent in the world to write crafty missives or to launch apparently unrelated companies at a grassy level, Jeff Bezos has always done stuff his own way(Faherty, Huang, and Land, 2017). But Bezos’s approach has nothing random. Nevertheless, his actions, like the memos he insists his managers write, are inspired by clear reasoning and a shared vision, even though it takes a long time for competitors to find out Amazon’s motives, by which time it may be too late.

When one look at Bezos’s style of leadership, one can see that it is distinctive and different. Since he personally controls and supervises everything, his leadership is characterized by the Autocratic Leadership Style. He seems to have a Strategic Leadership Style, as per Holzmann and Mazzini (2020), in which he uses extraordinary methods and innovative measures to guarantee the productivity and growth of his company. Sometimes Jeff Bezos takes the leadership style of a team. Through such a leadership style, he may be able to determine the company’s future and set goals and criteria (Marathe and Gawade, 2020). He has adopted a Cross-Cultural Leadership Style, inspiring individuals via his charm, charisma, and the company’s goals and aspirations, since he has a big workforce to supervise. As a consequence, his leadership approaches adapt in response to changing conditions.

Bezos is famous for his dual personality, which transforms him from a caring person to a stern and demanding employer prone of instilling fear and worry in his employees (Mooers, 2020). He claims that everyone should behave and work closely with his set standards. In Amazon, the severity of its fundamental problems is reduced by an approved system.

In 2017, Amazon was rated the world’s most innovative firm. Only Bezos’ coherent vision and willingness to experiment with various business methods made this happen (Taylor, 2018). Contrary to Apple and Dell, Bezos never focused on uniqueness. He was very innovative and never hesitated from reinventing established corporate structures. Amazon Prime, a departure from conventional bookstores, emphasized the impact of online books in relation to other fundamental human necessities like food (Taylor, 2018). This has prompted a lot of debate over Bezos’ business competence.

Jeff Bezos has also always established high performance standards in line with Path Goal Theory, which stimulates and inspires leaders to think about both their employees and clients. As per the path-goal theory, a leader’s perception is governed by the happiness, commitment, and performance of their employees (Faherty, Huang, and Land, 2017). Amazon prides itself on the motivating factors it employs to maintain and boost employee morale. The organization’s capability to inspire its stakeholders has enabled disruptive innovation in robots, artificial intelligence, and space technology. The idea of the contingency can also be used to assess Jeff Bezos’ leadership style. As per contingency leadership theory, a leader’s performance is measured by how suitable his leadership style is. Jeff Bezos described his managerial style as “fierce, ambitious, and harsh.” As per Matthews, Harbin, and Daigle (2018), such a leadership style was appropriate for the firm’s early years, when it sought to establish its position in a fast expanding sector. Amazon’s leadership styles include assuring profitability at the company’s current low profit margins (Marathe and Gawade, 2020). Currently, the business has been capable of handling that challenge by continuously upgrading processes, acknowledging the role of human resources, and developing into new sectors.

Characteristics and qualities of Jeff Bezos that helped him drive the company forward

 Amazon began in a garage and has since grown into a well-known internet shopping site. Jeff Bezo’s invention Amazon made him the Internet King and enabled him reach the height of prosperity (Yohn, 2020). Jeff Bezos is the wealthiest individual in the world with a net worth of $157.7 billion. After Bill Gates in 1999, he has been the second way to achieve US$ 100 billion, but he was the first person to reach US$150 billion at any time (Kastner, 2021). For as long as he can remember, Jeff Bezos has been an inventor. Bezos’s desire for new goods has only increased with time, ranging from inventing a sound alarm to prevent annoying siblings from creating a well-known e-commerce site. He just increased his desire to create something clever with time. Amazon was initially designed to provide books to the customers (Gradinaru et al., 2020). His innovative skills lead the web site to provide everything that can be expected. The most known innovation of Jeff is Kindle, the famous e-book gadget he created to compete with the Apple iPad.

A theory that he likes to brag about is a very well ‘Regret Minimization Framework.’ Jeff is a professional and is expected to adopt responsible and robust choices to enhance both his firm and its staff. Jeff is turning to his ‘Regret Minimization Framework,’ which he claims to be a geeky phrase to refer back on his future and evaluate things which he would lament most (Baid, 2020). When previously stated, Jeff Bezos seems to be a man who believes in innovation as necessary. That is why, in his widely regarded internet company, he experiments with technology continuously. The CEO of Amazon takes great care to experiment and create something that complements his consumers’ wishes. Thus, Jeff Bezos is already experimenting with the enterprise since the launch of Amazon in 1994(Marathe and Gawade, 2020). As CEO likes to explore, Amazon has changed to the largest internet market in the world from a book selling online business. One of Jeff Bezos’s most famous qualities is to be a competitor. He does not just want to compete; he needs to abolish it instead. Amazon had previously targeted a coworker competing on children’s goods, drastically dropped their pricing to totally eradicate the rival, and the rival company collapsed ultimately. Jeff came out as a winner as expected.

Jeff is a man who does not leave any stone unturned in order to make it happen when he thinks in a cause. He carries his emotions on his sleeve, albeit not very often, but for any such cause will donate a large amount of money. When Bezos was questioned by an employee to give $100,000 for same-sex marriage, he tried to give some $2 million to it (Yohn, 2020). If he believes in the cause the man does not fear charity. This personality characteristic of Jeff fully resembles, although in a calculated way, Mark Zuckerberg’s personality attribute (Mooers, 2020). It’s a fact that a person who has a family, who has a safe work not only stops being a businessman, if he doesn’t have the quality of taking chances.

 Jeff Bezos has planned to form a company of his own. He did not have the money, and his parents were the only investors he had. He knew there was a 70% probability of failure, yet his determination did not let him down (Taylor, 2018). He has become one of the world’s wealthiest men, and his risk trait has not died. Kindle’s debut to iPod is a vivid paradigm that demonstrates Bezos’ audacious nature. Odd but true, Bezos had opened an office in his garage in his formative days of foundation. Bezos received no yearly bonus benefit since he left in the midst of the year. During this time his thrifty tendencies began to emerge. For his first workplace, Jeff converted a wood door into a desk. The Jeff offices’ workstations feature a design-like door up to this day.

Future implications of his current leadership style

When discussing customer service, it’s less likely that the discussion will not conclude without addressing Amazon. As Burfeind (2019) for years the business was successfully led by Jeff Bezos, the biggest customer-oriented online retailer in the United States, although its leadership style is frequently critical of representing its culture. While some have complimented Bezos for his transformative leadership abilities, the company’s founder has also been accused of generating a hostile work atmosphere. Amazon is among the few businesses with a culture of speech that motivate employees to fight each other’s ideas to make its workers honest perspectives throughout the decision-making process (Turner, 2019). Besides which, Jeff Bezos could be seen as proof that he is a transformative leader who seeks to promote his employees’ intellectual and imaginative encouragement by encouraging different views on their table and by organizational excellence to view situations from different perspectives through arguments that result in an innovative and productive workforce in their company(Gradinaru et al., 2020). Amazon’s CEO says that one of Bezos’ greatest talents compared to any other worker he’s been hired for is that Bezos searches for the truth and keeps it up through decision-making. However, although the culture of discussion is an effective tool for making correct decisions, it has put undue pressure on certain workers, with their boss being totally frank with them as a means of extracting unflawed opinions from them.

The Amazonians say that it is part of the skills of their leader to encourage and motivate them it toward the objectives of the business without getting too close to them and to urge them to do more than they considered their limits (Faherty, Huang, and Land, 2017). It may undoubtedly be seen as a transformative attitude in Bezos, since inspirational motivation is an aspect of transformative leadership when workers effectively express the company vision and are pushed to develop their capabilities with high standards. Analysts thus say that this has been efficient for Amazon for years to constantly raise the personnel standards inside the company.

In order to maintain staff in keeping with the dynamic environment, methods to improve employee abilities should be developed. In 2013, Amazon launched the performance assessment system called the Organization and Leadership Review in the goal of enhancing future leaders, which acknowledges employees who perform well and are low twice a year (Schein, 2020). This method may be seen as a revolutionary effort by Bezos, since the talents and weaknesses of the people would be understood via the system to assist them understands the field they should have to improvise and to open the way to personal development.

Bezos seemed to have a clear picture of the position of most customer-centered people around the globe and earned Amazon’s workers’ trust in success while remaining close to it (Gradinaru et al., 2020). However, Bezos and the management are accused of using tools including such anytime Feedback Tool to eradicate employees which are least reliable or convey their autonomy when employees send criticisms or have confidence in Bezos’s vision of their firm, but it is not clear whether all employees believe their leader related to their job protection and accountability.

Jeff Bezos is a true leader who has used transformative leadership to obtain a competitive edge; however, given the current pandemic situation, his lack of situational leadership is a major flaw in his leadership style, as it is completely obvious that situational leadership is permitted to deal with the new normal that has resulted in the emergence of the pandemic’s outbreak. In March 2020 the employees declared themselves to be fired because of worries about safe working conditions as COVID-19 started to take over (Mooers, 2020). Tim Bray, an Amazon vice president and experienced engineer, resigned in protest, and nine US senators wrote to Bezos, requesting explanation on the firings.

Over the years, more broad complaints of the corporate culture have emerged, including inadequate work breaks, unrealistic demands, and yearly employee “cullings” - dubbed “purposeful Darwinism.” Jeff Bezos announced that in the third quarter of 2021 he would become chief executive of Amazon (Marathe and Gawade, 2020). Despite or maybe because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the news comes after an extremely achieved Amazon 2020 with operational cashflow rising 72 percent to 66.1 billion US$ compared to the previous year and a 35 percent increase in net sales to 386.1 milliards US$(Schein, 2020). In order to be more adaptable and competitive in the long term, Amazon has to enhance and alter his leadership style, despite his faultless and exceptional leadership style.

Jeff Bezos thus faced major difficulties because of his ethical and responsible decision-making and was severely criticised because of the warehouse employees’ terrible working conditions. He has attempted to develop rules and has helped staff through the epidemic to guarantee his employees have better working culture. Therefore, Amazon needs situational leadership to continue its business in the long-term and become a market leader.

Conclusion

Finally there are some areas in which the great leader has received criticism and has to improve in order to guarantee successful management on the job, notwithstanding Jeff Bezos’ leadership efficiency. The pioneer and originator of the online e-commerce idea is Jeff Bezos. His role for Amazon’s commercial success is enormous, but he has to adopt the situational leadership style to remain in the market for a long time.

References

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