Leadership Styles in Amazon

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1.0 Introduction
Amazon, one of the largest online retail companies, has its headquarters in Seattle, a city in the
United States. Jeff Bezos founded the company in 1994 as an online bookstore. In the subsequent
years' Amazon started selling; jewelry, computer software, and hardware toys. DVDs and
furniture. Amazon's vision statement is to become the customer-centric company on Earth. This
means people from all over the World can come and discover what they what to buy online. The
company has grown to become one of the largest online companies in the World in recent years
(McFadden, 2021). This essay focuses on analyzing leadership styles in Amazon that make the
company achieve a competitive advantage for contributing to its success in achieving its vision
statement.

2.0 Amazon Successful Leadership Styles

According to Jogulu (2010), a leadership style is a behavior seen by a leader when he is
directing, steering, inspiring, and managing employees in an organization. The amazon
leadership style has been seen as a pragmatist. Leaders who are pragmatists set very high
standards expecting them to be met by them and their employees. The three leadership styles
adopted by Amazon that have led to its success are an autocratic, delegate, and democratic.

2.1 Autocratic Leadership Style

Autocratic leadership is a style of leadership where an individual has control of all decision-
making in the organization, and other group members have little input in the daily business
operations. The leaders make decisions based on their ideas and, in many circumstances, will
follow their follower's advice. Despite this, autocratic leadership has some benefits that can
propel the organization to be successful. Authoritarian leadership provides quick decision-
making under challenging circumstances because the leader will not consult any group member.
When the leader has substantial knowledge about a project, practical decision-making will
enable him to get things accomplished quickly. Autocratic leadership provides a clear direction
in the organization where leadership is lacking. Poor organization can result from a lack of

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leadership or inability to set deadlines for a particular project. In such circumstances, an
autocratic leader can take charge of the organization, assign responsibilities to employees, and
set timelines for project competition. A group of employees tends to complete a particular
project when given to them as a leader. The autocratic leadership relives pressure on members of
a specific group in situations where complex decisions need to be made. This situation allows
members of the organization to concentrate on the core business and leave decision-making to
the leader, which ultimately leads to success (Cherry,2020). Bezos uses a scare tactic as a
method style of leadership. He knows everything going on in his company, and these methods
make things to be done faster.
Jeff Bezos has a public email where annoying customers send their complaints. He not only
reads the email but forwards them to the relevant employees. When the employees receive this
email, they act fast to solve the problem and prepare an explanation. Jeff Bezos is surrounded by
lower-level leaders who have limited capacity to question his authority. He micromanages
through implementing standards that any manager can perform. Further individual employee
performance is measured and analyzed against each other therefore creating a competitive
atmosphere. This leadership style keeps the Amazon employees on their toes to deliver quality
services to their customers since their performance is measured (Noddy, 2019). This leadership
style has contributed to the success of Amazon since it was incorporated.

2.2 Delegative Leadership Style

This is a leadership style where a manager shares duties and authority with the employees. The
employees are allowed to complete tasks and projects without the leader. The act of delegating is
often an official process as it requires the manager to agree with the employee to complete the
project. The delegation has advantages, especially on employee satisfaction, whereby they feel
thereby are authoritative. An employee who has a high sense of self-motivated skills thrives well
with this style. The style enables employees to develop in-depth skills that will allow them to
grow their leadership status and provide them with a better structure of how the company works.
When delegating, ensure the tasks are shared with the right people; this means that you assign
duties and responsibilities to the most skillful employee. The next step is explaining the job
thoroughly to the employees and even make them demonstrate their understanding. After
successful project completion, there is a need to celebrate victories with the employees to

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recognize their effort (Campbellsville, 2017). Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has come up with ways
on how he can handle his innovation strategies. He delegates most of his innovative ideas to his
trusted lieutenants to be implemented. The views are discussed by first defining the customer
problem to determine a meaningful solution. The next step is to explain how the product will
give a solution to the customers. The last step is product trial by customers, which is done
repeatedly. Most successful products in Amazon require iteration in months or even can take a
year. If the product is successful, it will be released, and the customers will start using it. Some
of the successful outcomes that customers are using include; Amazon prime, prime now, prime
air, kindle, and cloud computing. After the successful delegation of an innovation idea from the
company CEO to his lieutenants, these products came up. The leadership has contributed to
global strategy success because customers are using these products all over the World to better
their lives (Kaplan, nd).

2.3 Democratic Leadership Style

Democratic leadership involves a rational management style that encourages a more participative
role in the organizational decision-making process. It represents one of the most dominant and
influential governance styles principally driven by collaboration and affirmation of followers.
Ideally, it provides every involved member in a group or organization to participate and offer
their ideas in a more non-manipulated manner, leading to equality and shared value. As much as
the group leader is still involved in the decision-making process, the incorporation and
engagement of every member make the democratic leadership style more agreeable and
participative. The overriding element of a democratic leader is that he encourages team
involvement, concentration, and participation while acknowledging and honoring the
performance preferences of individual members (Galston, 2018).
Democratic leadership style particularly suits executives with the desire and motive to make their
employees informed, engaged, and involved in the analytic and decision-making process.
Democratic leaders encourage employees to set workable goals and acknowledge their
achievements. Leaders in highly democratic environments develop strategic initiatives with their
employees to assess their progressive performances, foster employee growth and support them in
enhancing job satisfaction and professional advancement. The democratic leadership style
provides continual opportunities for organization employees, encourages collaboration, team

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building, and develops a sense of personal development and job satisfaction in employees.
Ultimately, democratic leadership fosters employee innovation and investment in the
organization by allowing managers to invest in their worker's ideas and roles (Shapiro, 2014).
As the largest customer-oriented online retailer, Amazon’s democratic structure has enabled the
successful implementation of its global strategies and portfolio perspective. The democratic
leadership style has made Amazon’s CEO and co-founder, Jeff Bezos become a more
transformational and impactful leader to the employees, ultimately contributing to its innovative
global portfolio. Under its democratic structure, Amazon deploys a culture of discourse that
allows its employees to critic and antagonize the ideas/views of other employees as a way of
generating honest views from the employees to bolster the decision-making process. Jeff Bezos
transformational approach drives his employees' intellectual and resourceful stimulation by
encouraging diverse opinions at the table and getting employees to see situations from different
eyes by discussing their points of view, which leads to a more innovative workforce and
increased productivity in the company. Bezos’s democratic approach encourages employees to
think critically and develop ideas which ultimately contributes to Amazon’s innovation structure.
The involvement of employees in the decision-making process has proved to be an effective
decision-making tool and driver of change, success and innovation in Amazon, contributing to
their global dominance and successful product portfolio (Sattar, 2020).

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3.0 Conclusion
Amazon has had successful growth for the last 20 years. This is because of their successful
leadership style. The discussed leadership style had been part of the growth of Amazon since it
started in 1994. Jeff Bezos has been using the autocratic leadership style since he developed
Amazon to manage his employee’s performance. He views his customer as a central part of the
company's performance. Reading emails directly from his customers shows that he values them
and wants to improve their satisfaction. This strategy has enabled Amazon to be successful
globally through an increase in market concentration. The second style is delegation; here, Bezos
assigns innovative ideas to managers. The ideas become products that focus on solving a
customer-related problem. This style emphasizes that Jeff does not rely on the autocratic style
alone and relies on his employees to implement his ideas. The last style is a democracy where the
company CEO has allowed his employees to critic the ideas of others as a method of improving
his innovation strategies. In this style, employees reduce instances of risks occurring by
criticizing ideas that can create losses. All these three styles contribute to the global success of
Amazon by emphasizing on customer care and innovation. The autocratic style is the most
dominant style of leadership used by Jeff Bezos, but the other two styles cannot be ignored to
contributing to success in the growth of Amazon.

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References

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Kaplan, S. (n.d.). How Amazon Execs use a 4-Step Innovation Process Template to Create
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Shapiro, I. (2014). Judgment and Democratic Leadership. Good Democratic Leadership, 128–
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