Analytical Argumentative Essay on Organisational Behaviour and Leadership in Amazon

This essay explores the concepts of organisational behaviour, leadership, and diversity in Amazon. It discusses the leadership style of Jeff Bezos, the culture of innovation and risk-taking, and the importance of teamwork in the company. The essay also examines the impact of diversity on Amazon's success.

ANALYTICAL ARGUMENTATIVE ESSAY

Organisational behaviour may be considered to be one of the most crucial aspects of the business
studies as the process of managing organisational behaviour and culture involves consideration
of different factors that are not only internal but also external to the business. The instant essay
deals with different facets of the subject of organisational behaviour in details in the subsequent
sections of the paper. It has been identified that teamwork is usually followed across several
unlike sectors to enhance employee unity, performance and organizational culture. In the
consideration of Nita et al. (2016), it can be stated that organizations which frequently need to
generate fresh ideas or product lines by applying a project-related approach accumulate teams
with the purpose of diffusing accountability and to enhance the pace of diversified ideas for
every project. McCaffery (2018) also defined that team member employ teamwork to rebound
relative sides of one another prior to choosing an expansion pathway for the projects. Teamwork
is significant as a result of the problem-solving synergy attained from numerous thoughts
functioning on a single solution. The present project focuses on the context of leadership,
organisational power and diversity. Moreover, it also specifically centres on the subject of team
performance in Amazon.com Inc.
It can be stated that Jeff Bezos the founder of Amazon.com Inc. had led to the establishment and
expansion of the biggest dealing achievement stories in the e-commerce trends. Bezos also
had precious support from the organization’s management team in terms of guiding the progress
of its $825 billion market capital brand (Varty, 2019). It has been recognized that Bezos and its
other key executives within the organization have productively supervised recurrent development
and growth of the organizations’ business lines, emergent it commencing an e-commerce
bookseller to one of the leading digital purveyors. As per the claims of employees, working for
Jeff Bezos is not always an easy task. The management of the brand follows a situational
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leadership style, where the functions and operational criteria are altered as per the market
requirements. However, management preferentially encourages employee participation in the
decision-making process, where creative thinking abilities are appreciated. In the opinion of
Renz (2016), the resources in the chosen company have always been encouraged to come up
with creative ideas and discuss with the management in order to arrive at a definite solution.
Hence, innovation has always been the focal point the company, where employees are also
allowed to use their individual ideas and thoughts in their works to maintain task authenticity. On
the other hand, McCaffery (2018)specified that the management sometimes also followed
autocratic leadership styles, where employees were directed under strict supervision. For
example, it has been identified that in the year 1999, Amazon had a resource-based of 500 for the
task of answering emails. Each of the employees was expected to reply to 12 emails per minute
and they were possible given threats of being fired in case the figure dropped below 7 (Blazek,
2019). This has been a clear indication of the employee exploitation that was followed in the
organization. On contrary to the previous statement, Nita et al. (2016) claimed that every
origination set a standard goal for its employee to maintain its final productivity, similarly, the
management of the chosen company has set a target based on the minute for its employees.
Hence, the context of employee exploitation is not applicable in this case. Furthermore, it has
been assessed that by keeping high expectations from his resources, Bezos had developed an
extremely competent machine that is presently well-known for being competent of making
similar day product deliveries more than a dozen in the US cities (Thorpe, 2016). Hence, it can
be stated that devoid of his affinity for incessantly raising the benchmark for his resources, this
achievement of the company would have never been attained. Moreover, the evolvement of the
organisation and its continuous growth are also helping its employees to receive several financial
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benefits other than the basic compensation. As a result, the work performance and the team effort
of each employee are estimated to enhance with the passage of time. Thus, according to
Hallinger and Wang (2015), in the rapidly changing market dynamics, leadership in almost every
company needs gallant thinking and readiness of disrupting the status quo, even while operations
seem to have been working smoothly. It is a considerable fact that not each innovation process
works out effortlessly, but breakdown to innovate develops process stagnation, and this leads to
limit market share on an immediate basis and, eventually, incurs loss and failure. Therefore, to
suit the ever changing market dynamics it is vital for the leaders to support prophet thought and
apply them in the final tasks (Blazek, 2019). The employees ‘enthusiasms for creative aspects
and innovation inspire others to sustain the ideas and assist in implementing them in the final
work to retain uniqueness and process authenticity. In the opinion of McCaffery (2018), risk-
taking attitude merely come naturally to any leader. In case a leader or organizational model
demands for further steady and risk-averse circumstances, they would require making an attempt
to modify the give up attitude. The realism of employment in the very 21st century need every
resource to be the right innovators and risk-takers. The principal cause that is driving teamwork
reluctant of taking required risks is the panic of being let down due to the mistakes made out of
risks taking attitude. The management of this chosen organization believes in learning from past
mistakes and not repeating those ever at work (Blazek, 2019). Thus, it can be claimed that the
leadership principles at Amazon revolve through the contexts like employees encouragement,
innovation, applying creative solutions to projects and risk-taking methods to sustain the market
uncertainties and retaining the profitable nature of the business.
In the earlier periods of Amazon, Jeff Bezos introduced a statute, where each internal team shall
be formed small enough so that it can be regularly fed with at least two pizzas (Hern, 2019). The
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objective behind this approach was not of cutting down on the company’s catering bill. It has
been like approximately the whole thing Amazon performs, emphasized on two notions:
competence and scalability. The earlier one is apparent; however, the later one is dependent to an
extent. The management used to believe in the fact that a minor team incurs less time organizing
timetables and keeping the resources up to date and also help them in using right time and effort
to get their work done with efficiency. Considering the statement of Rodriguez and Stewart
(2017), it can be claimed that the fad of having lots of smaller numbers of teams within
workplace requires them with the need of working with a collective effort, and enable to way in
the general resources of the corporation, with the purpose of attaining their given long term goals
and short term goals. This is what turns the current organization into, in the words of Benedict
Evans, the venture capital organization, “a machine that makes the machine” (Evans and Evans,
2019). It can be identified that the management of the company definitely carry a risk-taking
attitude and also drive the similar approach amongst its resources, where they get the positive
vibes and confidence of applying their own creative solutions at work to gain an indifferent
outcome.
According to Elsmore (2017), the culture and power of Amazon rely on the concept of creating
unique models to launch new product lines in the market. The internal culture of the selected
organization basically supports adding new relative products in their product lines or by way of
adding up any new internal structure or including the direct reports in the process of e-commerce
functions. The management has been efficient in terms of applying right and accurate technology
that maintain the records of every operations and transaction within the system without
hampering the time schedule of resources. As a result, employees can explicitly focus on the
operational activities and make additional efforts in terms of using their creative aspects at work
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to retain the concept of uniqueness that is major encouraged by the management of Amazon
(Taştanand Davoudi, 2017). For example, the management claims that one does not require
conducting a bunch of meetings to get their resources implementing support for launch in their
new product lines in a potential market. Employees can be made updated with the support of
definite technology, where they just require following the daily up to date status in terms of the
business process (Elsmore, 2017). Employees through the application of advanced technology at
work receive adequate support to use their quality time in generating innovative ideas and
coming up with useful through that may turn up to be beneficial for the business model as well.
Hence, the team members at Amazon receive adequate support to not using their valuable time in
unnecessary works and applying them on finding creative solutions using which they can design
and improvise their own assignments to get the desired outcome.
The organization claims this approach to be the “flywheel” since it considers the level that can
suffocate a distinctive multinational and utilizes it to offer growing impetus assisting up its
whole business. In a similar context, Rodriguez and Stewart (2017) placed the opinion that the
quicker the flywheel rotates and the heavier it is, the harder it would get for an external force to
discontinue it. Perhaps the most fitting instance of this current approach would be the action of
the birth and also the enlargement of the AWS (which was previously termed as Amazon Web
Services). That has been the dissection of the present organization that offers the cloud
computing services, both outside and within the business and for further businesses –counting
the ones that are rivals to Amazon in rest of the genres (for example both Tesco and Netflix
utilize the podium, in spite of Amazon selling its most famous and appreciated grocery items and
streaming videos) (Hern, 2019). Moreover, Amazon follows a very systematic culture and
function as well within its work culture. The direction of instruction of the management begins
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where team members are required working with each other merely following a structured and
also a systematic method. For example, McCaffery (2018) highlighted that in case an advertising
team required few relative data on the category of shoe sales to fix on the method to best to
expend their resources, they faced difficulties in sending accurate email analytics and ask for it.
The team members were required to reach the analytics dashboard themselves and get the work
done. In case that dashboard failed to exist, the resources were also required to develop one for
the purpose of meeting the standard process of the word line. And this approach required
covering everything. As per the consideration of Rodriguez and Stewart (2017), this has been an
unnecessary and most ineffective utilisation of resources, where the resources are burdened with
redundant methods of working. Disturbances in the work process is a part of daily life activity,
therefore, the management of every organization needs to imply effective solution that can be
used a back up to the hindrances. However, Amazon’s culture partially follows an exploitation
approach where employees were engaged in unproductive methods to get their work done for the
purpose of maintaining a systematic approach. This can lead to sever team demotivation and
dissatisfaction, where employees might get exhausted with the repetitive slow and unproductive
attempts at work, which ultimately incurs huge time and energy as well. As a result, the chances
of deriving process efficiency might reduce with this attempt. Therefore, it is worth to note that
the sense of employees and management’s power is directly related with the organisational
culture and the management should make a consistent effort to use such power politics for the
purpose of betterment of workplace and not for exploiting the human resources.
It can be stated that Amazon has always been committed to the concept of diversity and
enclosure. The management of the band ensures of seeking its resources from every possible
cultural background to unite with its existing teams, and the culture of the organization also
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supports its employees to carry their genuine, innovative, and finest selves to employment.
In the statement of Sun et al. (2017), it is always Day, when it comes to Amazon. This indicates
the fact that the company hardly discontinues construction or seeking methods to innovate its
internal functions to meet the ever-changing demands and requirements of its potential and
dailycustomers. The similar concept is applicable when it comes to the perception of diversity.
Using its steady leadership principles and guidelines the management prefer to help direct its
employees to retain the customs of innovating diversity, insertion and maintaining equality like
we the brand does in every genre of its business: with the application of its internal ad useful data
and construction of disruptive solutions (Cropley and Cropley, 2017). Amazon seeks varied
builders from every possible area of being to join its teams and encourage every team member to
maintain their positive approach towards each other and helping one another to understand the
nature and concept of work followed within Amazon hence, the culture of equality is followed
within the organization alongside the notion of team diversification.
On the other hand, further data collected from credible sources underscores the fact that
employees within the organization are strongly outraged by its management’s opposition towards
the preparation of adding more diversity to its board (Ray, 2019). It has been recognized that in
the year 2018, Amazon had been considered as a replica for production superiority in several
ways. However, when the focus is paid to its track evidence for assortmentand diversity of
gender and race in its greatest ranks, the brand has been anidler and few of
itsindividualresourceshad to come across severe struggles to fit the scenario of diversity.
Tensions surfaced few spans earlier where the management received an employee email thread,
following the brand’sresistance to its shareholder suggestion that would necessitateAmazon’s
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board to officiallydeemminority candidates and women whilechoosingfresh board members
(Ray, 2019).
Further information gathered from a similar source highlights the fact that the suggestion made
by the CtW Investment Group, instructs the management of Amazon to put into practice a
‘Rooney Rule’ that promotes cultural diversity within the organization. The rule primarily
emphasizes the selection and election of persons in colour within the Board (Ray, 2019). The
Rooney Rule was first applied in the National Football League groups to interview at least a
single marginal applicant for the position of general manager and head coaching openings.
Presently, the ten Amazon’s entire director’s boards are the white members. 7 are men and 3 are
women. In the similar concept, Hunt et al.(2015) denoted that the shareholders associated with
the specific organization carry a steady believe that managerial approval of cultural
diversification would definitely benefit Amazon by offering superior access to more talent,
elevating active talent more successfully and recuperating its decision-making process by
dipping groupthink and alike emotional biases (Cropley and Cropley, 2017). In this context, it
may be noted that the diversity is a crucial concept in the study of organisational behaviour and
includes several approaches as to the gender discrimination, employees’ composition, Boards'
structure, training and development program and organisational culture. Each of these
dimensions is critical for the successful running of the business and hence, the management may
need to formulate efficient strategy in order to take care each of these facets of the organisational
diversity so that the culture of inclusion is maintained and sustained within the workplace.
Based on the discussion and analysis performed in the preceding sections of the essay, the
researcher of this argumentative essay with the reference to Amazon’s human resource activities
has arrived at a concluding statement that the concept of leadership and organisational diversity
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is very success-critical aspects of the business. Such findings underscore both its shortcomings
and possible scopes for the upcoming periods. The management of Amazon has managed to
apply the accurate leadership styles, cultural aspects and diversity approach within its system,
which led the brand to maintain its profitable position in the fiercely competitive market.
However, the strive of reaching ultimate success and leadership position in the market sometime
drive the management to include certain unnecessary employee exploitation methods, which
often leads to dissatisfaction. The degree of competition in the market is increasing gradually,
hence, it is high time for Amazon to focus on its disputes leading to employee demotivation and
replace the method with much simpler solutions that can derive both systemic and efficient team
outcome. Though there have been lots of externalities that may adversely impact the
organisational performance, it is up to management to strategically plan the same and undertaken
the necessary corrective and remedial actions in order to those mitigate risks associated with the
same. Therefore, it may be concluded that a well-designed and efficient human resource policy
and effective organisational culture supported by competent and determined leadership will
significantly contribute towards the corporate goal of attainment of sustainability in the long-run
in most time and cost effective manner.
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