Amazon's Organisational Structure: A Comparison of Online and Physical

This report provides an analysis of Amazon's organisational structure, comparing its online and physical business platforms. It begins by defining organisational structure and highlighting its importance in achieving business goals. The report then discusses Amazon's hierarchical structure for its online operations, emphasizing the 'Two Pizza Rule' for team management, and contrasts it with the functional organisational structure used in its physical retail stores. The analysis explores the reasons behind Amazon's diversification into physical retail and assesses the performance differences between its online and physical sectors. The report concludes that Amazon's structural choices are tailored to the specific demands of each business model and highlights the company's ongoing efforts to expand its presence in the physical market. Desklib offers a wide array of similar solved assignments and study resources for students.

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Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................3
TASK ..............................................................................................................................................3
Online organisational structure of Amazon :..............................................................................3
Physical organisational structure and performance of Amazon :................................................4
Difference between online and physical performance and structure of Amazon :.....................4
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES:...............................................................................................................................6
Books and Journals:....................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
The academic study of the ways in which people entrant with each other in groups can
be said as organisational behaviour. This academic study provides with some principles, which
when provided within an organisation can greatly help in making the business operations
effective by maintaining a good working environment. This study includes different areas of
research that can help in building the efficiency, these are- taking actions toward increasing job
satisfaction, improving job performance, encouraging leadership and several other human
resource related factors of corporate world (Bharthy and Sethi, 2020). Some of these factors are
build to improve the employee's relationship with the business that promotes their loyalty
towards the organisation. The following report is based on the discussion about the
organisational structures of the one world's best online selling company, Amazon on based of its
online and physical platforms. Fistly the report will cover the definition of organisational
structure. Then it cover about the type of organisational structure the company uses on its
different platforms.
TASK
An organisational structure is a framework which outline the ways in which the different
activities in a organisation are directed to do. These ways are framed in order to achieve
organisation's goals (Bandyopadhyay and Srivastava, 2021). The form or structure in which the
sharing of information between different levels of work and authorisation is allowed or guided, is
the main aspect of organisational structure. The sharing of information can be in two ways –
centralised( only higher from and provide different information and policies) and decentralised
(members or employees of the organisation are allowed to share information between each
other). This organisational structure have many different types which are used by different
companies.
Online organisational structure of Amazon :
The CEO, Jeff bezos is one of world's richest person through the success of this online
retail market leading firm, Amazon. This retail giant primarily uses hierarchical type of business
structure with vertical and top to down approach. This is a rigid type of structure that is not easy
to be changed. To cope with factor, the company uses a strategy of dividation of work and teams,
which it calls as 'Two Pizza Rule'. In this the size of the teams that are working on any project

should be limited and involve number of members that can be fed with two pizza. These teams
are limited to consist only 8 to 9 people. In its structure, Jeff bezos lies at the top who deals with
6 top authorities of the company that are head of some respective departments and who further
rely on divided senior employees (Russell, Giæver and Onkila, 2021). The current working scale
of this company is very huge and complex with vast variety of products and services, this makes
it to also include some other type of structures – matrix and divisional. Different departments are
formed due to immense numbers of products and services which make department heads to
focus on its results as well as keep an view over organisation's performance, this makes
researchers to consider divisonal structure of Amazon. It follows matrix too as it work in eco
system wide category and rely on others for building of products and delivering activities.
Physical organisational structure and performance of Amazon :
It is the largest e-commerce company of the world. But considering the growth in other
areas, in the past years it has made small and continuous steps to enter the industry of retail
which it calls as 'brick and mortar'. The reason of moving to brick and mortar is that the company
feels that future of retail is blended as there are some commodities that a customers prefers to
buy physically. Amazon launched its first physical book store in 2015 which now has expanded
in various parts. It also acquired Whole foods, which gave it a total of 460 stores in different
parts of the world. It has planned to open cashless grocery stores in UK, named as Amazon Go.
It is continuously showing the world that it is not limited to just inline platforms and taking small
steps in making presence in the physical retail world through its planning and operatives like
buying and opening several physical stores (Wong and Wong, 2017). For maintaining its
physical business, it is using functional organisational structure, which is a common type of
organisational structure and divides the organisation into small groups based on the specialised
functional areas such as HR (human resource), finance, sales and marketing. As a emerging
physical sectored business, the company focus on the interactions among different of its levels.
This type of structure also helps the company to get informed about the related business
operations in different parts of the world. This structure gets fit with the size of the company's
current business as through this the corporate structure is also characterised as global functional
based groups (Perreira, Berta and Herbert, 2018).

Difference between online and physical performance and structure of Amazon :
As mentioned above, the company uses hierarchical structure in its online business and
functional type of structure in maintaining and building its physical stores. These types of
structures are formed according to the operations of each corresponding form of business.
Amazon has achieved greatness and market leading position in online market and this sector is
only responsible for its growth. But considering the goal of capturing more sector of market, it
took steps in diversifying in the retail market. This makes them target the customers who prefer
to buy commodities physically. It also promotes the sector of fashion and clothes as they are
preferred more by looking their quality and finishing as cannot be seen and felt in pictures. The
moving in retail sector proved profitable yet, but the company is working in capturing a big
amount of market and set their limits (Arnav and Shivashankaran, 2021).
CONCLUSION
From the above report it has been concluded that, organisational behaviour is a study that
is needed to be considered in maintaining a good working environment of an organisation for its
employees. Amazon is a online retailer giant which deals in a variety of goods and services. It's
organisational structure is made with considering its large and complex form. It is taking useful
steps for making presence in the physical market. It has already bought and opened stores of
different segments.

REFERENCES:
Books and Journals:
Arnav, A. and Shivashankaran, R., 2021. Customer service orientation has an impact on
organisational effectiveness in the IT and ITES industries. International Journal of Technology
Transfer and Commercialisation. 18(2). pp.147-158.
Bandyopadhyay, C. and Srivastava, K.B., 2021. Mediating Role of Psychological Contract
Fulfilment on the Relationship between Strength of HR Signal and Organisational Commitment:
Evidence from the Indian Manufacturing Sector. South Asian Journal of Human Resources
Management. 8(2). pp.240-259.
Bharthy, H. and Sethi, U.J., 2020. Organisational Citizenship Behaviour: Effect of Gender, Age
and Marital Status on Altruistic Behaviour. Asia-Pacific Journal of Management Research and
Innovation. 16(3). pp.188-195.
Perreira, T.A., Berta, W. and Herbert, M., 2018. The employee retention triad in health care:
Exploring relationships amongst organisational justice, affective commitment and turnover
intention. Journal of clinical nursing. 27(7-8). pp.e1451-e1461.
Russell, S., Giæver, F. and Onkila, T., 2021. Employee agency in the context of organisational
sustainability. In Research Handbook of Sustainability Agency. Edward Elgar Publishing.
Wong, Y.W. and Wong, Y.T., 2017. The effects of perceived organisational support and
affective commitment on turnover intention: a test of two competing models. Journal of Chinese
Human Resource Management.