Leadership and Management Roles in Amazon: An Operational Analysis

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MANAGEMENT AND OPERATIONS

Table of Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................................................. 3
LO1 Differentiate between the role of a leader and the function of a manager..................3
P1.............................................................................................................................................. 3
M1 Analyses.............................................................................................................................6
LO2 Apply the role of a leader and the function of a manager in given contexts...............8
P2.............................................................................................................................................. 8
P3............................................................................................................................................ 10
M2 Evaluation........................................................................................................................ 11
LO3 Demonstrate an appreciation of the role leaders and managers play in the
operations function of an organization...................................................................................12
P4............................................................................................................................................ 12
P5............................................................................................................................................ 14
M3 Evaluation........................................................................................................................ 15
LO4 Demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between leadership and
management in a contemporary business environment......................................................16
P6............................................................................................................................................ 16
M4 Analyses...........................................................................................................................17
Conclusion................................................................................................................................. 19
References.................................................................................................................................20

Introduction
Management and operations are the leading factors to gain strength in an organization.
This study will discuss the role of management and leadership to improve the quality
and management in the workplace. The report will present various models and theories
of leadership as well as the cost of quality. The reports will help in understanding the
management and operations of the Amazon organization in terms of its strength and
weakness of the managers in order to meet the capacity management and changes.
This report will also provide a recommendation to the organization in order to improve
their operations and management at the workplace.
To carry out this study amazon organization has been chosen. Amazon organization
was started in 1994 with the appearance of online book library after some time this
organization has introduced the service in retail products and services as well as the
production of mobile devices. To the customers on retail service online this organization
has a staff of 280,000 people. To cover the global market this organization offers a
number of products in every section and category. Amazon is getting customer support
and reliability which is helping them in continuous growth cover complete market and
customers. To create the revenue company has affiliation programs with merchant
partnership. The organization is also providing other services like cloud computing
services by the name AWS. The subsidiary functions of amazon.com are an
advertisement, product promotions and merchant.
LO1 Differentiate between the role of a leader and the function of a
manager
P1
Management is a process of using resources in an unsegregated way in order to
achieve the objective in an effective and efficient manner. In simple words,
management is high utilization of resources by reducing the wastage of resource and

increase the achievement. It is the chain of command where each and every person
has its own work and distribution to achieve the organizational objective (Menz, 2012).
The basic role of management is to effectively manage the resource, strategic planning
or setting an objective, controlling the work and guide the employees in order to
accomplish the objective effectively. If talking about term leadership, it is more focused
to encourage the people in the organization to follow the strategic management.
Leadership is responsible to monitor the association of strategies of the organization
and achieve the objective through the help of workforce (Chemers, 2014). Leadership
helps in preparing the winning strategy to complete the work in an effective manner by
understanding the dynamic working environment. The job of leaders is also to measure
the work progress in the organization.
Figure 1: functions of a manager
source: Dineshbakshi, 2019.
Comparison of leaders and managers-
leaders managers
Leaders always induce the objectives
which are evolved by the manager
managers set the objectives of the
company
Leaders are the motivators of employees
to do the work effectively
Manager role is to direct the work to all the
employees

Leaders influence and convey the
employees to work according to the
policies
Managers basically communicate the
working policies
A leaders role is to inspire the employees
for better performance in work
The manager's role is to do planning in the
organization
Leaders provide right supervisions in team Managers provide directions and guidance
to the groups
The focus of leaders is on people The focus of managers are on things
The role of leaders is to implement the
creative ideas into reality in the
organization
For the betterment of the organization,
managers generate innovative ideas.
The trait theory of leadership refers to the leader's characteristics as theory says the
concept of "leaders is born not made". The basic traits of leadership depict the leaders
as an identity having a high power of honesty, motivation, emotional maturity, cognitive
ability and confidence (Menz, 2012). The other traits alike high efforts, complete
knowledge of business and creativity and innovation in work which makes leaders
different from other employees in Amazon organization. The theory has a different
perspective to measure the effectiveness and success of the organization. There are
two famous leadership styles which are generally used in most of the organization-
Autocratic leadership- in this leadership managers have the full power and authority to
make business operations decisions rather than expecting from others. This leadership
is very effective to make a quick decision in order to take competitive advantage and
also detect the work of employees (Chemers, 2014). But this leadership has one con
due to less integration of employees this leadership lacks inappropriateness.
Democratic leadership- this leadership is adopted by Amazon as every employee is
liberal to participate in decision making with the managers. The ideas and thoughts of
every individual are considered very important to increase the performance and
effectiveness of work. But this leadership is a bit time consuming as various employees
are participating.

Management requires planning the strategies in order to meet the organizational
objective by measuring the employee’s performance. In Amazon, the management skills
are required to maintain the organizational structure and manage responsibilities. The
capability of hard skills of management helps in measuring performance, structure
workplace as per the assets and employees and making decisions. Management must
have the ability to solve critical problems and adopt or understand the required changes
to shape the organization. On the other hand, soft leadership skills refer to self-
motivation, working, communication and teambuilding. These skills of leadership must
be good at the real time that can be used at solving the problem through better
understanding the strategies and objectives of the business.
M1 Analyses
Role of leaders and functions of a manager are quite interrelated but have different
power and characteristics which make differences to solve the workplace problems.
Kotler has defined the leadership at innovative workforce which provides help in
accomplishing the management strategies with the help of organizational people
whereas management refers to an administrative unit. The functions of management
are to plan and organize the resources to achieve objective and leadership is related to
the implementation of the plan in an effective manner by arranging the management.
The management functions focus on structure and system in the organization whereas
leadership is much more than that, it involves an internal strategy to complete the work
on time, motivation, performance management. Basically, management is all about
planning of strategies for long-term sustain and achievement of objective through proper
resource allocation.
Management by objective-
According to Drucker, management by objective is a model which helps in
understanding objectives of management clearly to all the employees in a better
manner in order to fulfilment of work effectively. It focuses on the proper distribution of
responsibility and works among the employees and the managers. It is a very effective

way to achieve the objective by enhancing the commitment and participation of every
individual in the organization and make them agree to accomplish the objective through
management (Menz, 2012). The model needs full support from top management to
clarify the objective and make the effectiveness of management. In order to contribute
to management by objective employees may need training and skills to understand this
(Chemers, 2014). All in all, employees are the one who helps to chive the objective in
an innovative manner through their participation.
Management roles theory-
Management has numbers of roles at the workplace but according to Mintzberg, there
are three main roles that are as follows-
 Interpersonal role: this role refers to the behavioural relationship between
management and employees of the organization. In this role management work
as a leader to make sure the work is done in the correct manner with the help of
employees. As well as management also encourages the employees to increase
their performance and productivity by enhancing their moral support. This
cooperative role of management helps in better connecting with employees to
make proper improvements in the operations of the organization.
 Decisional role: to handle the disturbance at workplace management needs to
take the right decision regarding the allocation of resources. The role of
management is to accomplish the work through the right decisions of scopes.
 Informational role: management also having the role of spokesperson and
communicator to take care of the productivity and performance of the employees.
Managers fairly distribute the work and responsibilities and after that they guide
the employees to understand the role in the workplace and their objective
(Chemers, 2014).

Figure 2: Mintzberg model
Source: Taskworld, 2016
LO2 Apply the role of a leader and the function of a manager in given
contexts
P2
Let’s take some examples to understand the functions of manager and roles of leader
suppose a person is working in Amazon in customer support department where they
need to manage the information in order to handle the queries of the customer. This
department of relation handling and customer support keeps the record of customers
account information and their orders which are done through the website (Day, et al.,
2016). This department also helps the other department and operations of Amazon by
sharing the required information. The operation management of Amazon works on
analytical results that are generated department of customer relation by which customer

expectations and requirement can be met online. The operations of the organization are
done according to the expectations and demands of the customers which are collected
by the department of customer support. Thus, this department helps Amazon in aligning
the operation in order to get high performance.
In this challenging business, environment amazon has highly skilled and experienced
managers in the department to maintain customer relations and accomplish the goals
and objectives. The management team of Amazon has a wide knowledge of business
and has a productive work culture and structure that guide employees (Rosenbach,
2018). To lead the changes in the organization, achievement drive along with the
communication skills are required. Diverse teams of Amazon are collaborating in order
to support each other in business to empower the decisions and enhance organizational
growth. The teams are sharing interpersonal relations and effective understanding with
proper knowledge of the operation to do the work in a creative and innovative way.
Team dynamics are helping in operations to solve the problem as experienced teams
are available to determine the threats and opportunities for long term (Day, et al., 2016).
Roles and duties of management in the organization-
 The management is required to fulfil the objectives which are formed by top
management by showing the strength and weakness that are opposed to
objectives.
 The role of management also refers to hire and staff the experienced and skilled
talent in the organization to align the cost and efforts to achieve the work on time.
 The management team is responsible to get the work done and achieve the
objective with higher performance.
 Teams are responsible to collect the information regarding utilization of
resources with the proper arrangement to support the organization in order to
determine the long term goal.
 The information which is forwarded from the management team is used by
another department to create better products and services.
 The manufacturing or production department uses information on customer
behaviour to produce the desired product.

 So, the manager has the role of planning organizational objective than controlling
the utilization of resources, deliver result in the desired manner and measure the
performance to increase the quality of services.
P3
In Amazon, the managers use transformational and autocratic leadership to manage the
responsibilities and work of employees. Amazon is using the autocratic style of
leadership which helps them to save cost on employee engagement and time in
decision making. Managers of Amazon use their knowledge and experience to give the
best decision according to the situation of operation (Rosenbach, 2018). The autocratic
leadership style has helped them a lot in making the effective and prompt decision at
the workplace during the difficult times of business operations as well as in adopting
changes. The impact of adopting change in business operation motivated the managers
to adopt transformational leadership in which employees are guided towards
development to achieve the objectives of an organization.
The system leadership refers to the leaders in an organization who develop the
conditions where each and every employee at every level can work productively
according to their potential. This system provides a tool to leaders which help them in
predicting the behaviour of people in the organization (Day, et al., 2016). This
leadership helps in building strong and effective organization system which that promote
effective and productive behaviour which leads realisation of organizational objectives.

Figure 3: the leadership system source: the leadership circle
Situational leadership helps the leader or manager in the organization to fit his style
according to the situation at all level to influence the followers. In situational leadership,
it is totally up to the leader whether he wants to change his style or not or might be the
style changes continuously to meet the requirement of the situation (Rosenbach, 2018).
M2 Evaluation
In Amazon, the department of customer support and relation has some strength in
terms of managing approaches as the department is better in communication and
resource allocation. The managers are capable of allocating resources in an effective
manner to gain a competitive advantage in order to meet the objective on time with
better quality. The mangers of Amazon have a good understanding of customer
behaviour and market environment in order to formulate long term strategies to know
the business operations. The various approaches and communication skills are helping
in motivating the employees to improve their quality and increase their productivity. But

due to autocratic leadership managers or leaders are facing some problems while
making the decision as they are single handed which is difficult to make while rapid
changes in operations. And also the Amazon is not expecting the contribution or
participation in decision making so the approach is not much effective to improve the
operations.
LO3 Demonstrate an appreciation of the role leaders and managers
play in the operations function of an organization.
P4
Total quality management-
Total quality management refers to supervising all the activities and tasks which need to
maintain at a desired level of quality, this involves planning about developing and
implementing quality that assures the quality improvement and quality control (Hogan
and Coote, 2014). This approach basically focuses on improvement in performance and
quality in all the departments, processes and functions in the company so that quality
product can be served in order to meet the customer expectation.
Total quality management has seven basic principles that are as follows-
1. Strong leadership- it is the most important principle of total quality management
as without strong leader organization will not be able to monitor and direct the
tasks towards goal and no strong decision can be taken, thus powerful
leadership is important to monitor and control the improvement of the Amazon.
2. Customer focus- customers are the ultimate user of the product only they can
judge the product and service in a better way. So organization must focus on
customer satisfaction in the market, that means the development of product and
services must be done by keeping customers need in mind.
3. Employee’s involvement- in total quality management people involvement is
very necessary as combined efforts give better result so teamwork provides
success in every organization as it acts as the backbone, similarly in Amazon.