Essay Sample on Introduction to Business Concepts

Introduction

Organizational behavior (OB) is the study of the behavior of humans in organizational settings, the interactions between human behavior and the company itself. OB is a multidisciplinary field that aims at understanding the group and individual behavior, the organizational and interpersonal procedure changes. It examines the influence of individuals, structure, and groups on the behavior on the organization for the aim of application of the knowledge towards implementation in the organization to improve its effectiveness (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Moorman & Fetter, 1990: Leveriza, 1993). The main aim of OB is to focus on the groups, structure and individual and how they engage to ensure the mission, vision, and objective of the company is attained. It achieves this from meeting the needs of each and party, alongside the implementation of the company's objectives. The primary goal of most companies is to succeed and reach their targets in productivity in service delivery, a factor that significantly depends on the inputs applied. Among the inputs in production include technology, skills and the labor, the factors that are influenced by the OB (Ivancevich, Matteson & Konopaske, 1990: Williams & Huber, 1986: Sayles & Strauss 1966). Although everything has an impact on the general success of the company, the employee is the crucial factor in the success as he is expected to have the relevant skill suiting the work and performance of a specific unit in the product production and service delivery.

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OB is one of the powerful tools that can be applied by the managers to evaluate the interactions and capacities of the employees in their areas of work (Bock, Zmud, Kim & Lee, 2005: Davis, K., & Newstrom, 1989: Timm & Peterson, 2000). This is because there is an interconnection in all behaviors of the organizational behavior. The manager has the responsibility of getting the work done through the employees, through the allocation of finances, providing guidelines and making decisions in relations to achieving the goals of the organization. The manager has the role of identification of the behavior of the employee and connects it to the behavior of others for the effective running of the institution. The company manager's behavior plays a significant role in creating a lasting effect on the employee, therefore can affect the employee behavior negatively or positively.

A Review of Four Companies

Amazon, Alphabet (previously named as Google), Alibaba and Facebook, the new technology titans are driving business model innovation and manage the own internal business relations successfully, arguably leading the future of the business. Their achievements so far can be attributed to the application of the leadership and motivation organization behaviour theories. Leadership organization theory influences the leadership style of any company (Ritala, Golnam & Wegmann, 2014). Leadership can be defined as the process of guiding an individual, groups, and organization with the aim of establishing and attainment of goals set. The issue of leadership includes diversified classifications, styles, and theories as applied by companies. The success of any leader is influenced by his character, qualities, ability to solve a problem and his relation with the employees (Kirst-Ashman, 2008: Staff, Pew & Mavor, 1900). Different companies have different leadership styles with distinct companies having different beliefs about leadership (Isckia & Lescop, 2009). On the other hand, motivation organization theory affects the company's productivity (Denisi & Pritchard, 2006). It is concerned with the driving issues that make the employees work to a specific outcome and achieve it. Motivation has a general input in the productivity of workers as it influences the employee's energy through the maintenance and control of the behavior (Holbeche, 2005). Motivation plays an essential role in the job satisfaction of the employees, therefore, plays a part in the achievement of the goals of any company (Field, 1998: Milton, 1981). This is because it helps in the development of the job attachment by the employee in his or her experience, therefore influence the desire to achieve (Alexiades, 2013). This research will provide an in-depth analysis of the theories' practice in the technology firms and how the influence their performance. The examination will contrast the theories as applied in Amazon, Alphabet (previously named as Google), Alibaba and Facebook and provide recommendations of managing the companies.

Amazon Company

Amazon is an American electronic commerce organization founded by Jeff Bozos in 1994 and started online as an online bookstore (Kantor, 2018). However, it expanded its services to other fields such as marketing and selling of video, MP3, and audiobook, video games, electronics, furniture and household, food, jewelry, and software. The company takes pride in the ownership of an arm of publishing, a television and film studio, production of It is a global online retailer with the prominent cloud service provision. Amazon is based in the U.S, Seattle, Washington. The company is management consists of a ten-member board of director: Jeff Bezos, John Brown, Tom Alberg, Daniel Huttenlocher, Jamie Gorelick, Jon Rubinstein, Thomas Ryder, Wendell Weeks and Patty Stonesifer. Jeff Bezos is the chair of the board as well as the company's Chief Executive officer (CEO). The CEO's leadership styles as outlined in the leadership behavior theory have contributed significantly to the success of the company.

One of the leading factors that have led to the rapid growth of the company shown by Jeff Bezos is prioritizing the needs of the customers by ensuring the clients satisfied (Henrich, 1997). He adopted the policy of "the customer is the king" that ensure there are simplicity and convenience in their online shopping engagements. He ensures there is the immediate execution of the customer's orders every time they need it. Jeff has an overly forthright leadership trait. He possesses an abrasive personality that ensures there is discipline among his workers. He is enthusiastic and has the eager to warn the workers who do not behave or act according to the expectation of the company by confronting them. This is an illustration of the overarching confidence that he practices in his metric's power. Jeff's letter to the shareholder in 1997 that stated, "You can work long, hard or smart, but at Amazon.com you can't choose two out of three," is an indication of the unhealthy competition among the co-workers that he encourages (Amazon, 2018). Extensively, the company CEO embraces external trends, especially in technology. He ensures that the company is up to date with the changing technology, which creates a lot of opportunities for the company.

However, Amazon does not implement the motivation organization behavior fully (Henrich, 2000). Unlike other technology companies like Facebook and Google that accrue its workers such as meals, catering needs, and other personal wellness priorities, Amazon fails to provide such to its workers, which may be a demotivating factor. The organization does not conduct an appraisal on employees, which may affect the feeling of the workers as their work is not evaluated. Amidst the workers strive in satisfying the needs of the customers, they have to cater and cover by themselves for some expenses such as cell phones and travel which may be a limiting factor to high productivity.

Alphabet (Previously Named as Google)

The alphabet is a multinational organization based in the U.S, in Mountain View, California. It was established in 2015 after the Google's corporate restructuring, and become the host company to Google and other Google subsidiaries like Google Fiber, Calico, Gv, Waymo and Chronicle (Reuters, 2018). The company has invested widely in some industries such as life sciences, technology, capital investment, and research. The creation of Alphabet Company was as a result of the desire to do the business in Google internet service better and accountable with the incorporation of other group companies other than majoring in internet services only. The company is managed by a team of nine-member board of directors. It is administered by two co-founders comprising Larry Page who serves as the CEO and Sergey Brin who is the company's president. The leadership applied in the running of the company by the CEO is a unique one, and has facilitated the continuous growth of the company and diversification of investment.

Larry Page employs a leadership style that defines him his personality as creative and intelligent (CE, 2018). He encourages his team of workers to believe in bold ideas. He emphasizes to his employees that they should focus on developing ideas that are crazy. He goes to the extent of accepting all ideas as the terms that it is a result of the ideas that the world would transform. He embarks on teamwork building activities in his management style by encouraging quick and fast decision making. Page ensures there is a good communication which has been productive in the company. He argues that the company is a like a family, therefore builds strong ties with employees (Fortune, 2018). Unlike Jeff Bezos who approaches discipline issues through confronting, page ensures all the workers employed in the company are creative by being involved directly in the recruiting process (Kantor, 2018).

Alphabet Company is one of the best companies in motivating the workers. It has implemented the organizational motivation theory that has seen the company grow instantaneously. The company provides financial as well as non-financial motivation (Karch, 2018). The company issues healthcare coverage and retirement benefits to all its employees. This encourages and builds the morale of the employees as they are assured that they get a package after many years of service at the company, therefore, more productivity. The company also offers free meals and transport to its workers who play a great significance in the working attitude of the company.

Alibaba Group

Alibaba Group is a Chinese global corporation that specializes in retail, AI, internet, technology, and e-commerce. It mainly engages in e-commerce that is consisted of three online B2B business by the creation of the SME and buyers across the globe linkage . It was founded in 1999 and is managed by a board of directors comprised of eleven members. The company was founded by Jack Ma who is the chairman of the board and the CEO of the company. The success of Alibaba Group was greatly influenced by the leadership of Jack Ma who exhibits organization leadership traits that have been implemented over the years (Yazdanifard & Li, 2014).

Jack Ma has a clear mind which is well outlined by his aspirations to make the company bigger and bigger. As a foresighted and visionary leader, he believes in the empowerment of the future generations. He is so keen in the hiring process by ensuring that he recruits a team of workers that have excellent skills. He emphasizes that the employees should have superior technical skills than their leaders (Kim, Zhang & Zhang, 2016). As a result, he develops and encourages an attitude of positivity and optimist among his workers. Extensively, he pays well his employees to facilitate an all-inclusive society that ensures all the workers benefit from the company. He creates unity in the company by acknowledging the role and importance of every worker as the primary input of the company. His culture that he has instilled among his workers on creating a better world contributes immensely to the growth of the organization (Kim, Zhang & Zhang, 2016).

Alibaba Group applies the organizational motivation b...