Analyzing Jeff Bezos' Leadership and Its Impact on Amazon's Growth

This essay delves into the leadership style of Jeff Bezos, the founder, CEO, and chairman of Amazon.com, examining its impact on the company's success. The paper explores Bezos' approach to leadership, highlighting both transactional and transformational elements, and analyzes how these styles...Read More

Running head: MANAGEMENT
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Name of the student
Name of the university
Author note

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Introduction
The concept of the leadership plays a very significant role towards the creation of the
healthy and the sustainable organization. According to Stone (2013) a business organization is
generally impacted and influenced by the ability of the leader towards the effective
determination of the actions and the steps that are necessary for moving the organization
forward. The thesis statement of this essay argues with the background of the leader chosen, his
approach top leadership , the challenges faced followed by a personal reflection regrading the
learning. The paper explores the leadership style of Jeff Beroz who is the founder , the CEO and
the chairman of Amazon.com. The essay aims to explore the leadership style of this leader and
how it fits with the existing theories and the structures of the leadership. The paper analyses the
health of amazon together with the relationship of the leadership style towards the establishment
of the example of leadership for the world.
Discussion
Background of the Leader
Jeff Beroz started his journey of Amazon with three sun workstation that sets on the
wooden doors for the extension cords and the doors running from everywhere. Jeff was a
visionary to leave his well paying job as the senior vice president with D.E Shaw for beginning
with Amazon (Collinson and Tourish 2015). Com. Jeff being the visionary saw the opportunity
prompted by the huge rate of growth regrading the use of internet within an year and ran with his
vision without looking back. He saw the potential of the online retail industry while being
employed as the computer specialist on the Wall Street in the New York City. After the

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consideration of many of the products for sale, Jeff decided to try on the books. Amazon.com
exploded in the market as one of the premier webpage to buy, sell and rent books. Jeff Beroz
pioneered the retail industry with his range of innovations that included online shopping, online
reviews of the customers and more. Currently amazon is one of the largest international e-
commerce company with Jeff Beroz being one of the most influential leader and successful
business in the entire globe.
Leadership Approaches
The Transactional Leadership
Jeff Beroz has been a task oriented transactional leader. According to () Beroz has been
the micro manager with some of the rigorous standards often paying no attention and interest to
the opinions of some of the other people. This is the trait of the transactional leadership. As per
the analysis of Furr and Dyer (2014) the transactional leadership theory includes the influences
due to the best interest regrading the actions of the leaders. These leadership traits are quite
effective for the achievement of the operational goals and the development of the business that
thrives in the time of the global competition.

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Figure : Transactional Leadership Model ; Source: (Kantor and Streitfeld 2015)
The figure above illustrates the transaction leadership model which the leader Jeff utilized for
expansion of his business organization of Amazon.com.
Transformational Leadership
Transformational leadership is one of the popular leadership style. It generally conjures
with the vision regrading the charismatic and powerful CEO , Jedd towards leading his
organization, Amazon to new level and a new heights. The style of the transformational
leadership involves the committed relationship among the leaders and the followers. Unlike the
transactional leaders, the traits of the transformational leaders includes the ability towards
transforming the other with actions and words.
According to Delener (2013), one of the scholar of transformational initiative
characterized the style as pursues, pioneers widen and lift the interests of their workers, when
they produce mindfulness and acknowledgment of the reasons and mission of the gathering, and

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when they blend their representatives to look past their own personal circumstance for the benefit
of the gathering.
Besides, the distinction among transformational and transactional leadership traits is that
the previous' goal is to change the association's way of life to drive execution while the last
works inside the current hierarchical culture (Ribischon 2017). Transformational leadership like
hireling authority centers around the requirements of the others instead of the pioneer. The
fundamental contrast between the two is that transformational initiative spotlights on the
authoritative target though the worker administration centers around the adherents.
Apart from the transactional leadership traits and qualities, the head and the CEO of the
organization also have the behavior related to the change agent who tends to seek innovation. As
per the analysis of Harrison (2017) the production of the transformational leadership produces
some of the extraordinary results towards the delivery of the follower creativity. The leaders
having the transformational leadership are known for their creation of the fascinating vision
regrading the future that gains the minds and the heart of the people. The transformation
leadership traits and behaviors include the linking of the company’s long term goal to the values
of the people thereby rising the communication and the interest for acting on the vision, the
driving of the team effort beyond the ordinary possibilities (Kantor and Streitfeld 2015). The
traits of the transformational leadership was very much visible from the growth of Amazon.com
which is arguably the result of the ability towards the inspiration, the envision and the
innovativeness of the leaders even when the investors and the competitors in the market did not
relied on his creation and innovation that could bring some of the positive financial returns.

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Figure - The styles of Leadership
Source – (Zehndorfer 2013)
The figure above illustrates the styles of the leadership model that Jeff used for maximizing the
profit of his organization so that Amazon reaches to the top of the market of e-commerce and
retail in the world (Ritala, Golnam and Wegmann 2014.). The transformational style of
leadership of Bezos has resulted the Amazon towards the attainment f the growth that is has
achieved through out the last two decades. Amazon went from being a mere book store in the
online to an online retail store that challenged both the online and the offline competitors due to
the factor of the commitment and the visionary focus of Jeff. The thirst for the innovation and the
change that was exhibited by the leader is the main quality and the trait of the leadership that
resulted in the benefit or the profit scale of Amazon together with the accumulation of raise and
numerous of loyal customer base.
Challenges

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Despite of the recommendable efforts of the leader, Jeff’s qualities of transactional
leadership arguably resulted in the stressful working environments where the employees often do
not feel positioned regrading the caution of this extra ordinary leader regrading his new and
unrealistic plans of the business expansion. Kantor and Streitfeld (2015) explained the attributes
of the huge loss of Amazon regardless of the revenue and the growth of the sales targeting the
challenges of the leadership traits and the hunger of the organization for the expansion of the
already vast portfolio.
In short two of the most key challenges that Jeff Bezos faced as a leader includes putting the
plans into the actions and leading the innovative and the new changes.
Reflection
The leadership style, traits and the story of Jeff Bezos , who is one of the most influential
business man and leader is truly inspirational (Kristensen et al. 2017). Some of the big time
lessons that I learned from this leader includes the following.
Focusing on the long term results - It is essential since the fundamental measures of the success
will be the value of the shareholder that is being created over the long term.
The satisfaction of the customer comes before the competitive rivalry – It is essential to focus
relentlessly over the customer since they are the medium from which a business generates
income or profit
Sticking towards a learn structure – This is essential to survive the bruises and the bumps of the
economic crash if any. It is important to minimize the spending over the unnecessary personnel
and process for maximizing profit (Furr and Dyer 2014)

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Retention of the talented employees – It is important to retain talented employees since these
employees with high rate of the entrepreneurial mindset forms the lifeblood of any of the
business.
Besides these some of the beneficial leadership lessons that I got from the CEO of Amazon.com
includes giving the employees a meaning visions, being patient, embracing failure and learning
from criticism.
Conclusion
It can thus be concluded that a business organization is generally impacted and
influenced by the ability of the leader towards the effective determination of the actions and the
steps that are necessary for moving the organization forward. The paper tried to explore the
leadership style of Jeff Beroz who is the founder , the CEO and the chairman of Amazon.com.
The essay aims to explore the leadership style of this leader and how it fits with the existing
theories and the structures of the leadership. With both the transactional and the transformational
leadership traits, this leader has pushed Amazon.com to the epitome of the world and listed his
organization among the top Fortune 500 companies of the world.

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References
Collinson, D. and Tourish, D., 2015. Teaching leadership critically: New directions for
leadership pedagogy. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 14(4), pp.576-594.
Delener, N., 2013. Leadership excellence in higher education: Present and future. Journal of
Contemporary Issues in Business and Government, The, 19(1), p.19.
Furr, N.R. and Dyer, J., 2014. The Innovator's Method: Bringing the Lean Start-Up Into Your
Organization. Harvard Business Press.
Furr, N.R. and Dyer, J., 2014. The Innovator's Method: Bringing the Lean Start-Up Into Your
Organization. Harvard Business Press.
Harrison, C., 2017. Leadership theory and research: A critical approach to new and existing
paradigms. Springer.
Kantor, J. and Streitfeld, D., 2015. Amazon’s bruising, thrilling workplace. New York Times, 16.
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workplace. New York Times, 15, pp.74-80.
Kantor, J. and Streitfeld, D., 2015. Inside Amazon: Wrestling big ideas in a bruising
workplace. New York Times, 15, pp.74-80.
Kristensen, M., Penner, J., Nguyen, A., Moy, J. and Lam, S., 2017. Company Synopsis for:
Amazon. com, Inc.

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Ribischon, N., 2017. Why Amazon is the world’s most innovative company of 2017. Fast
Company.
Ritala, P., Golnam, A. and Wegmann, A., 2014. Coopetition-based business models: The case of
Amazon. com. Industrial Marketing Management, 43(2), pp.236-249.
Stone, B., 2013. The everything store: Jeff Bezos and the age of Amazon. Random House.
Zehndorfer, E., 2013. Leadership: A critical introduction. Routledge.