Organisational Behavior: Impact of Organizational Structure on Employees in Amazon

Running head: ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOR
ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOR
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1ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOR
TASK 1
Introduction
As opined by Long (2018), organizational performance greatly depends on the
organizational structure which is being used by the business corporations within their workplace.
Burrell and Morgan (2017) are of the viewpoint that having an effective organizational structure
with clearly defined job roles of the individuals facilitates the adequate completion of the
different job roles of the business corporations and thereby helps the business corporations to
attain the desired level of success. This paper intends to analyze the entity of organizational
structure and its impact on the employees in the particular context of the e-retail corporation
Amazon.
Organizational Structures and its characteristics features
Mansouri, Singh and Khan (2018) are of the viewpoint that the construct of
organizational structure is the system within the business corporations which outlines the kind of
job roles that would be performed by the specific individuals or the departments so as to
facilitate the attainment of the organizational objectives or goals. Adding to this, Ahsan, Sabil
and Othman (2018) have noted that the organizational structure clearly illustrates the different
job roles, activities, key responsibilities and others that would be performed by the diverse
employees or for that matter the departments of the concerned business corporations. The most
important kinds of organizational structures with their major characteristic features are listed
below-

2ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOR
1. Functional Top-Down Hierarchy: consists of different departments wherein employees
with same skill sets are grouped together, the departments are created on the basis of the
functions that they perform (Brook 2016)
2. Divisional Organizational Chart: the structure is on the basis of product line, the
different divisions are independent of each other (Al Saifi 2015)
3. Matrix Organizational Chart: consists of different teams which in turn are segregated
on the basis of the projects or tasks that they handle, more flexible and dynamic in nature
because of better communication (Gupta 2017)
4. Flat Organizational Chart: fewer divisions, employees get greater decision making
powers, focus is on self-management (Brook 2016)
An analysis of the organizational structure of Amazon indicates the fact that it takes the help
of the functional organizational structure and thus it is seen that the different departments of the
concerned corporation are being divided on the basis of the work that the employees related to
the same perform. For instance, the corporation has different departments like sales, marketing,
customer support and other departments which in turn deal with certain specific work of the
concerned corporation. A graphical representation of the same is being outlined by the below
given figure-

3ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOR
Figure 1: Organizational Structure of Amazon
Source: Amazon.com 2019
Organizational Culture and Organizational Effectiveness
Yasir and Majid (2017) are of the viewpoint that organizational or the workplace culture
which is being followed within a particular business corporation determines the manner in which
the workers would be completing the different tasks within the same. Adding to this, Burrell and
Morgan (2017) have noted that the usage of continuous learning or for that matter innovative
organizational culture by business corporations like Amazon and others have helped them to
encourage the employees of their corporation to take the help of the constructs of design
thinking, creativity, innovation and others. This becomes important from the perspective of the
business corporations like Amazon which specializes in offering innovative services to the
customers. Furthermore, for the improvement of its organizational culture, Amazon is presently
taking the help of the job characteristic theory because of which it is seen that the workers rather