Leadership and its Significance in the Ecommerce Industry

This course helped me understand the role of leadership within the Ecommerce industry as well as its significance in organizations. Learn about cross-cultural leadership, change management, levels of leadership, transformational and transactional leadership, and distributed leadership.

Leadership
Self-Reflection

Introduction
Leadership is the lynchpin upon which the entire organization functions. Effective leadership can
make or break an organization. This is precisely why leadership plays a significant role in the
growth and development of an organization. Through this course, I have been able to understand
the role, responsibilities and styles of leadership relevant today.
The growth of internet and the advent of technology has made everything ‘online’. I wish to
make a successful career in the Ecommerce industry. The industry at large has a lot to offer and
possesses immense potential for growth. My learnings from this course have not only helped me
in gaining a deeper insight about the scope of leadership but has also helped in understanding the
role of leadership within the Ecommerce industry.
Cross cultural leadership
The advent of globalization has given rise to a large number of diverse organizations across the
globe. Ecommerce industry dwells on its high reach of customers. The Ecommerce behemoth
Amazon Inc. targets customers from different parts of the world. In order to do that, it is
important to have a diverse group of people working around the globe. Through this course I
learnt that when people from different cultures come together to work, they can face several
issues. Hofstede offers three dimensions which are power distance, uncertainty avoidance and
individualism vs. collectivism (Bakir et. al., 2015). Our society tends towards individualism.
This is predominantly because of our bringing up. As a leader, I need to keep these tendencies in
mind so as to bring about effective coordination within the team.
Change
Change is an inevitable part of every organization. There are several ways in which leaders deal
with change (Cashman, 2017). Through this course, I was able to identify that there are different
kinds of change and they need to be dealt with in different ways. The Ecommerce industry has
witnessed several planned changes as well as certain revolutionary changes. The growth of the
industry in the retail segment that has been witnessed during the last four years is exemplary. For
a successful change to occur, leaders must step out of their comfort zones and induce enthusiasm

engaged learning. During the beginning of the Ecommerce revolution, several people
demonstrated extreme resistance to this change. However, gradually people accepted the new
developments. As a leader, it is essential to identify this resistance and work towards addressing
it in an effective manner.
Three levels of leadership
One interesting topic that I learnt about leadership through this course is the different levels of
leadership. The first level simply talks about the leadership by the virtue of one’s position. The
second level of leadership attempts to influence the way people think. Lastly, the third level
recognizes the importance of thoughts and values of followers. It refers to a deep engagement
and passion. The biggest leader in the Ecommerce retail industry is Amazon Inc.’s Jeff Bezos.
Currently, Bezos has adopted the second level of leadership wherein he possess the power to
influence the thoughts of others. The growth of the Ecommerce industry is a disruptive
innovation that has changed the way people shop for products (King & Baatartogtokh, 2015).
This change is people’s lifestyle has been brought about by Jeff Bezos’s vision of Ecommerce
retail.
Transformational and transactional leadership
As a part of the strategic leadership section, I learnt about transformational and transactional
leadership. Leadership exists at all levels in the organization. However, most people consider the
CEO or the top management of the organization to be the organization’s leadership. Strategic
leadership keeps into account the strategic leadership demonstrated by the middle level
management. I learnt that the leadership role played by middle level management has a
significant influence on organizational performance. On the other hand, some researchers also
depict that the presence of middle management leads to persistence upward communication
resulting in poor performance (Hamstra et. al., 2014).
In the Ecommerce industry as well, there are visionaries and top management employees who
transform an organization and work towards setting goals for the business. On the other hand,
there are middle level managers, warehouse managers, store managers and other employees who

are involved in every day transactions. These are transactional leaders and play a significant role
in ensuring the sustainability of the industry.
Distributed leadership
Distributed leadership is a new concept of leadership that I learnt through this course. Until now
the relationship between the leader and followers was considered to be a twofold relationship.
This unit introduced a new form of relationship that is established through distributed leadership.
This reflects upon the presence of leaders at all levels (Choi & Schnurr, 2014). It is almost like a
web of leaders who are interdependent and their dynamic social interactions influence the growth
of the organization.
This strategy could also be applied to the Ecommerce industry. Instead of having a solid
hierarchy among employees where information flows from top to bottom, the industry at large
could adopt a flat structure which promotes a web of leaders who work together in effective
collaboration to assist the growth of the organization. This would lead to improved performance,
enhanced creativity and increased levels of job satisfaction.
Conclusion
Leadership is one of the most important pillars upon which an organization rests. Through this
course, I have been able to understand the concept and the idea of leadership in greater detail. I
am keen to work in the Ecommerce industry. This course helped me understand the role of
leadership within the Ecommerce industry as well as its significance in organizations. Leadership
is a broad perspective. This course has helped me understanding the growth of leadership as
witnessed by organizations today. The learnings from this course have helped me widen my
horizon in terms of my view on leadership. This will also assist me in my future leadership
endeavours.

References
Bakir, A., Blodgett, J. G., Vitell, S. J., & Rose, G. M. (2015). A preliminary investigation of the
reliability and validity of Hofstede’s cross cultural dimensions. In Proceedings of the
2000 Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) Annual Conference (pp. 226-232). Springer,
Cham.
Cashman, K. (2017). Leadership from the inside out: Becoming a leader for life. Berrett-Koehler
Publishers. United States.
Choi, S., & Schnurr, S. (2014). Exploring distributed leadership: Solving disagreements and
negotiating consensus in a ‘leaderless’ team. Discourse Studies, 16(1), 3-24.
Hamstra, M. R., Van, N. W., Wisse, B., & Sassenberg, K. (2014). Transformational and
transactional leadership and followers’ achievement goals. Journal of Business and
Psychology, 29(3), 413-425.
King, A. A., & Baatartogtokh, B. (2015). How useful is the theory of disruptive
innovation?. MIT Sloan Management Review, 57(1), 77.