Evaluating Leadership & HR: A Case Study of Amazon Practices

This report delves into the leadership practices and human resource management strategies employed by Amazon, a multinational technology company. It highlights Amazon's emphasis on a democratic leadership style, valuing employee input and fostering a positive work environment. The report also discusses the HR department's focus on hiring skilled employees and providing growth opportunities, contributing to high retention rates. Key leadership practices, such as customer centricity and a commitment to innovation, are examined alongside challenges like complexity in FBA logistics and intense competition. The report suggests improvements such as tutorial videos for sellers and leveraging customer reviews to address these challenges, ultimately emphasizing the critical role of effective leadership in Amazon's success. Desklib provides this assignment solution as well as other resources for students.

Leadership Practices in
Amazon

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
Organisation Details.....................................................................................................................3
Leadership style in Amazon.........................................................................................................3
HR Management..........................................................................................................................4
Leadership practices adopted by the Leaders..............................................................................4
Challenge and difficulties faced by the leaders...........................................................................4
Suggestions..................................................................................................................................5
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6
Books and Journals......................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
Leaders have power to influence others to perform work with full efficiency. In order to
make any organisation successful it is important to have an effective and strong leaders within
the organisation (Bryar and Carr, 2021). As they are the one who will influence its followers and
they will make efforts in direction to achieve goals. This report is base on an multinational
company named Amazon. The report includes leadership practices and human resource
management which are taken place within the company along with the challenges faced by those
leaders and measures they can adopt to overcome from those challenges.
MAIN BODY
Organisation Details
Amazon is an American based public limited company, who have started its operations
in1994 and founded by Jeff Bozos (Carino, 2021). The headquarter of company is in
Washington, United States. The company is mainly dealing in E- commerce operations, along
with it they are included in cloud computing, artificial intelligence and digital streaming and so
on. Their are certain products and services which are being provided by Amazon, some most
popular products are Amazon Fresh, Kindle, Alexa, Echo, Kindle store, Amazon Academy and
so on.
Leadership style in Amazon
Leadership style is the practice which is being followed by leader in order to influence
employees to work on correct path (Denning, 2019). The most popular leadership style which is
mainly followed by organisations are as follows -
 Autocratic – The leaders involved within autocratic leadership style are result oriented.
They does not involve lower level authorities at the time of decision making. They
believes that employees working at higher level of management have expertise
knowledge and can provide better suggestions.
 Participative – The participative leadership style is also considered as democratic
leadership style as at the time of decision making they involve all employees. This
creates a positive working environment all over the organisation as employees feels free
to make decisions.

 Laissez- faire – The laissez- faire leadership style is mostly followed in the organisation
which have workforce of experienced employees as makes the employees leave free to
take any decision as they want. The manager does not make interference in any decision
as they know that employees will put efforts in direction to achieve organisational goals.
The major focus of Amazon is towards following Democratic leadership style (Harney
and Dundon, 2020). All the employees decision are equally important for Amazon as different
employees provide variety of ideas through which organisation can provide innovative outputs.
HR Management
The human resource professions of Amazon make hiring of employees which are
productive enough (Kerubo, Kerubo and Muturi, 2019). With this, Amazon is having a high
retention rate as they are satisfied by the polices framed by human resource department in favour
of employees. HR department take necessary actions in favour to employees and provide equal
growth opportunities to the person who deserves it. At the time of hiring be prefer skills over the
degrees as an skilled employee is able to produce more and effective output as compare to an
individual having higher professional degrees.
Leadership practices adopted by the Leaders
The leaders of Amazon are involved in following some of the practices which helps them
in certain aspects (O’Toole, 2019). There best practices are as follows -
 Customer centric – The whole working of Amazon totally depends upon the customers
taste and preferences. They make focus on each and every single step which helps them
in seeking attention of customers. Thus, all the leaders are making its efforts to make
work done with its workforce to satisfy needs of customers. Invest and simplify – Amazon leaders take innovative step towards innovation and
creative along with finding out the methods which can make work simple. They make a
proper analysis and then take decision on investment.
Challenge and difficulties faced by the leaders
There are certain challenges which leaders have to face while working within the
organisation (Rossman and Euchner, 2018). Some of the most important challenges which
leaders of Amazon is facing are as follows -

 Complexity – The procedures of FBA logistics, duplicate listing, fees for re negotiation,
tax rates and so are are the things which a seller have to look after at the time of dealing
with Amazon. The sellers have to bear extra cost for understand the whole mechanism
which makes them unsatisfied. This is why sellers step out from the business, if this
phenomenon continues then the revenue of Amazon will decline rapidly. Huge competitors – The competitions within E- commerce industry is growing rapidly
thus Amazon have to make continuous innovation within the operations to beat
competition. With this, now most of the competitors are involved in directly
manufacturing and then selling its products though which they are able to save lot of cost
and are able to keep the prices of its products low.
Suggestions
In order to overcome for the major challenges which leaders of amazon is facing following
measures can be adopted by them (Sempértegui, 2021).
 Amazon leaders can work with its team member in direction to prepare tutorial videos
which will help sellers in understanding the concept of FBA, fees and taxes etc.
 Amazon can make improvement in the structure or procedure for connecting its sellers.
They can make the procedure easy to use which will help sellers in understanding easily
and they will show more initiation.
 The reviews provided by customers upon Amazon should be considered by them. The
customers review is the most important tools though which companies can understand the
perception of its customer base.
CONCLUSION
From the above file it can be concluded that, leaders are the most important pillar of
organisation. There are certain leadership style which is being followed by organisation, but
Amazon emphases more of Participative leadership style this is because they provide equal
opportunities to all its workforce. The human resource department of Amazon is involved in
making continuous efforts in enchasing satisfaction level of customers. There certain challenges
which are being faced by Leaders of Amazon but by preparing tutorial videos and focusing of
customer review this problem can be resolved.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Bryar, C. and Carr, B., 2021. Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside
Amazon. Pan Macmillan.
Carino, M.S., 2021. How Did Amazon Reach Its Prime?.
Denning, S., 2019. How Amazon practices the three laws of agile management. Strategy &
Leadership.
Harney, B. and Dundon, T., 2020. Amazon: HRM and change in the house of neo-liberalism.
In Case Studies in Work, Employment and Human Resource Management. Edward
Elgar Publishing.
Kerubo, L., Kerubo, N.R. and Muturi, W., 2019. Influence of Strategic Leadership Practices on
Organizational Performance; A Case Study of Tea Factories in Kisii County. Global
Journal of Management And Business Research.
O’Toole, J., 2019. The prospects for enlightened corporate leadership. California Management
Review, 61(3), pp.72-92.
Rossman, J. and Euchner, J., 2018. Innovation the Amazon Way: An Interview with John
Rossman John Rossman talks with Jim Euchner about how Amazon manages to be both
operationally excellent and disruptively innovative. Research-Technology
Management, 61(1), pp.13-22.
Sempértegui, A., 2021. Indigenous women's activism, ecofeminism, and extractivism: partial
connections in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Politics & Gender, 17(1), pp.197-224.