Leadership Style of Jeff Bezos: A Case Study

Introduction

There are no `correct' definitions of leadership or style of leadership. Therefore, it is essential to study the different leadership techniques available in the market, and how those applying them have managed to gain success (Chung-Wen 2008) Jeff Bezos is a world-renown leader who is an engineer, philanthropist, and the CEO and founder of Amazon.com, a post which he mostly is known for. Thanks to his leadership style, Amazon.com has become a multi-billion dollar company which boasts of a significant share of the global online shoppers (Cho, 2019). It is, therefore, vital to study the skills and ideas that he combined to come up with a leadership style that has enabled Amazon.com to remain a global leader in online shopping and delivery services.

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First, Bezos' leadership style is one that has prioritized the improvement of customer service to the market that they influence, thus making the customers develop preference and loyalty towards Amazon.com (Husain & Hassan 2016). The development of the `empty chair tradition' during conferences and meetings with the major shareholders in the meeting helps the business mogul to keep the customer in mind of whatever decision his company makes. The empty chair tradition is a literal inclusion of an empty chair during stakeholders' meetings so that the empty chair represents the customers, whose needs must be represented by the empty chair, their representative in the sessions (Solanki 2019). Secondly, Bezos is known for his leadership style, which involves thinking outside the box and making decisions that are outside the norm of the current practice. It is this style of decision-making and leadership that has gotten his leadership style termed as `crazy’ whereby he makes business decisions that are sometimes shocking in the proposals that they make (Rossman 2016). Most of the `crazy’ decisions have been mainly based on the inventions to undertake, and in the process, they have been able to become pacesetters in setting trends in the market.

Additionally, Bezos prefers breaking down the larger team into smaller functional ones. He believes that they can make independent decisions that are important to the business and that when people are in smaller groups, they can work more efficiently than when they are in larger groups where the less experienced members can be overlooked. Yet, their ideas may come in handy in smaller functional groups (Stone 2013). Bezos' leadership style is also known for its long-term thinking instead of thinking short-term. It is long-term thinking that got him to start an online shopping business when they were not accessible, and through these decisions, he has been able to stay ahead of his company's competition who may have a preference for the short-term achievements. Risk-taking has also been a significant characteristic of Bezos' leadership (Newark, 2018). His risk-taking tendencies in the initial stages of the company led to the company needing three attempts at getting back on their feet to be able to get to where they are currently finally. Bezos has been quoted severally insisting on the importance of risk-taking for leaders, and how the two cannot be separated in successful business ventures.

Bezos' leadership is also known for its approach towards employees, whereby the employees are made to think like the owners, thereby stimulating in them the need to make decisions that the owner may make since they know his approach towards specific ideas and issues (Kantor and Streitfeld 2015). It is also this approach that has enabled Amazon.com to have dedicated staff members who work towards achieving the set organizational goals in the timeliest, most cost-effective and most comfortable way possible. Persistence and resilience can also be seen in his leadership, whereby he does not give up easily on an idea or practice despite it looking like it is failing in the initial stages. It is thanks to persistence that he brought the company back on its feet three times despite it failing. In contrast, others would have given up, and it is the same leadership style that has helped him to remain ahead of his competition in the same market consistently. Bezos has also been known for his leadership style, which relies on the focus of processes, and not the failures experienced during the process (Soukup 2017). This leadership style has enabled Amazon.com to be a trendsetter in the industry through their innovative ways of doing things despite them, showing the inability to pick up the pace in their initial stages. When combined with a positive attitude and the preference of long term goals, the Bezos’ leadership style brings about the success that is being experienced currently.

Impact of the Leadership Style Used by Jeff Bezos

The unique approach to leadership has enabled Amazon.com to be set apart from the rest of the competitors in the market. Through his customer-is king approach, Bezos has been able to get brand loyalty that has helped Amazon.com to acquire new customers who are happy with the way that service is delivered to them, as well as how the company treats their preferences. Amazon.com's approach of giving customers options has also come in handy in providing the customers with the much-needed voice that other online shopping platforms are yet to master. Secondly, through his approach towards employees and how he includes them in his leadership style has made his company become among the best online shopping and delivery service providers (Denning 2018). It is through the involvement of employees and making them reason like the owners that Amazon.com has been able to get the best ideas and solutions to undertake. Therefore they have been able to remain ahead of their competition through the involvement of the employees in working towards achieving organizational goals.

His transformative leadership style has also enabled Amazon.com to become a global leader in the online shopping and delivery industry. While others preferred physical shopping and therefore looked for the ways to improve shopping from stores physically, Bezos worked towards creating a different niche in the shopping category, which was online shopping which provides the customers with more options on the brands they can use, as well as providing them with delivery services, which reduces the need for physical shopping. The transformative leadership and the inclusion of innovation in its practice has helped Amazon.com to remain relevant in the industry despite the rise of other companies that provide the same services as them. The leadership style of Bezos has been critical in providing the company with a unique business culture that has enabled them to achieve more than the rest of the competitors in the market (Rhodes and Bhawuk 2018). It is this unique culture that has allowed the company to remain ahead of the competition through combining the importance of employees and the importance of giving customers the chance to have a say in the determination of how services are provided to them that has enabled Amazon.com to make more profits every year despite the challenges they face and the entrance of new players in the market.

References

Byers, A., 2007. Jeff Bezos: the founder of Amazon. Com. The Rosen Publishing Group.

Cho, J., 2019. Amazon. Com, Inc.

Chung-Wen, Y., 2008. The relationships among leadership styles, entrepreneurial orientation, and business performance. Managing Global Transitions, 6(3), p.257.

Denning, S., 2018. The role of the C-suite in Agile transformation: the case of Amazon. Strategy & Leadership.

Hussain, M. and Hassan, D., 2016. The leadership styles dilemma in the business world. International Journal of Organizational Leadership, 5, pp.411-425.

Kantor, J. and Streitfeld, D., 2015. Inside Amazon: Wrestling big ideas in a bruising workplace. The New York Times, 15, p.Q1.

Newark, D., 2018. Leadership and the logic of absurdity. Academy of Management Review, 43(2), pp.198-216.

Rhodes, E. and Bhawuk, D., 2018. The Impact of Charismatic Leadership on Cross-Border Apologies. Academy for Global Business Advancement Annual World Congress.

Rossman, J., 2016. The Amazon Way on IoT: 10 Principles for Every Leader from the World's Leading Internet of Things Strategies (Vol. 2). Clyde Hill Publishing.

Solanki, K., 2019. 'To what extent does Amazon. Com, Inc success be accredited to its organizational culture and ND Jeff Bezos's leadership style?. Archives of Business Research, 7(11), pp.21-40.

Soukup, P.A., 2017. Authority and Leadership: Values, Religion, Media.

Stone, B., 2013. The everything store: Jeff Bezos and the age of Amazon. Random House.